The Impact of the New Deal on Local Economic Development

新政对地方经济发展的影响

• 批准号: 0080324
• 负责人: Shawn Kantor
• 金额: $ 28.32万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2000
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2000-07-15 至 2004-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0080324&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Impact; New; Deal; Local; Economic

The New Deal not only provided employment for millions of unemployed workers, but it also added significantly to the nation's infrastructure. Policy makers today, faced with the simultaneous problems of aging infrastructure and the public's demand for welfare reform, often cite New Deal-type work relief projects as a model for an effective solution. Despite numerous studies of the politics of the New Deal, there are surprisingly few micro-level analyses of how New Deal expenditures affected local economic development in the 1930s. To help fill this gap, this project studies the impact of the New Deal on a variety of measures of economic activity, including real estate wealth, housing values, retail sales, manufacturing activity, agricultural development, as well as demographic changes attributable to the New Deal.The research is a continuation of work that was begun under NSF grant number SBR-9708098. A major objective of the research is to use the geographic variation in spending across U.S. counties to perform a series of studies that simultaneously examine the impact of the New Deal on local economic activity, both in the county where the monies were spent and in nearby counties, and the political and economic factors that influenced the distribution of New Deal funds. Because the New Deal was instituted during a period of extremely high unemployment, it seems reasonable to expect that the federal government's spending would have bolstered economic activity in many areas. Yet, recent work on the impact of public infrastructure on economic growth does not unambiguously support conclusions that more spending on public infrastructure leads to substantial increases in economic growth. It is also possible that New Deal spending crowded out the efforts of the private sector and state and local governments. Using a series of measures of economic activity, our goal is to assess the impact of the New Deal on local economies.Since the project examines the impact of the New Deal in relatively small geographic areas, it is important to allow for spillovers from New Deal spending in neighboring counties. That is, one could envision situations in which spending in one county either enhanced or hindered growth in neighboring areas. Moreover, the spillovers are not necessarily confined to the direct effects of New Deal spending. Economic growth in neighboring counties often influences economic growth in the county of interest. In addition, there may be immeasurable economic shocks in one county that might spill over into neighboring counties.Measuring the impact of the New Deal on local economies is complicated further because in most cases we probably cannot treat New Deal spending as purely exogenous. New Deal expenditures might have been related to economic activity in conflicting ways. Given the stated goals of the New Deal, we might anticipate that the New Dealers distributed more resources to areas with lower incomes or to areas with higher unemployment or slower growth. On the other hand, many of the New Deal programs required that the state or local government have the resources to seek help for projects from the federal government or go even further and provide matching funds to help finance the projects. Thus New Deal spending might have been positively influenced by measures of economic activity. To deal with the spillover effects and simultaneity issues this project develops a generalized three stage least squares models that incorporates both the simultaneous relationship between New Deal spending and economic activity and the spatial correlation inherent in the deterministic and random components of the empirical model.

这项新交易不仅为数百万的失业工人提供了就业机会，而且还为美国的基础设施提供了很大的增加。今天，政策制定者面临着同时陈化基础设施的问题以及公众对福利改革的需求，经常将新的交易型工作救济项目作为有效解决方案的模型。尽管对新交易的政治进行了许多研究，但令人惊讶的是，关于新政支出如何影响1930年代的当地经济发展，很少有微观层面的分析。为了填补这一空白，该项目研究了新交易对各种经济活动衡量标准的影响，包括房地产财富，住房价值，零售销售，制造业活动，农业发展以及可归因于新政的人口变化。这项研究是根据NSF Grant Number Number Number SBR-9708098开始的研究的延续。这项研究的一个主要目的是利用美国各县支出的地理差异来进行一系列研究，同时研究新政对当地经济活动的影响，包括在这些县和附近的县，以及影响新交易资金分配的政治和经济因素。由于新交易是在失业率极高的时期达成的，因此可以期望联邦政府的支出会在许多领域增强经济活动，这似乎是合理的。然而，最近关于公共基础设施对经济增长的影响的工作并没有明确支持结论，即在公共基础设施上的支出更多会导致经济增长的大幅增长。新政也有可能挤满了私营部门，州和地方政府的努力。我们的目标是利用一系列经济活动的衡量标准来评估新交易对当地经济的影响。由于该项目研究了新交易对相对较小的地理区域的影响，因此允许在邻近县进行新交易支出的溢出量很重要。也就是说，可以设想一个情况，在一个县的支出在一个县增加或阻碍了邻近地区的增长。此外，溢出不一定仅限于新交易支出的直接影响。邻近县的经济增长通常会影响利益县的经济增长。此外，一个县可能会出现不可估量的经济冲击，可能会溢出到邻近的县。衡量新政对当地经济的影响进一步复杂，因为在大多数情况下，我们可能无法将新的交易支出视为纯粹是外源性的。新的交易支出可能与经济活动有关。鉴于新交易的既定目标，我们可能会预料，新经销商将更多的资源分配给收入较低的地区或失业率较高或增长较慢的地区。另一方面，许多新的交易计划都要求州或地方政府拥有资源来为联邦政府寻求帮助，或者进一步发展并提供匹配的资金以帮助资助这些项目。因此，新的交易支出可能受到经济活动措施的积极影响。 为了处理溢出效应和同时性问题，该项目开发了一个概括的三个阶段最小二乘模型，该模型既包含了新的交易支出与经济活动之间的同时关系，又结合了经验模型的确定性和随机组成部分固有的空间相关性。