Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: The Great Depression from a Firm-Level View

大萧条不仅是美国经济的分水岭，也是经济政策和经济学本身的分水岭。毫不奇怪，人们对大萧条进行了深入研究；尽管如此，仍存在许多问题。造成这种情况的部分原因是缺乏“正确”的数据。特别是，几乎所有的研究都必须依赖至少汇总到行业或州一级的数据。这使得很难回答“微观”问题，例如，在国家复兴管理局（NRA）下的勾结。这也使人们难以检验关于大萧条的某些“宏观”假设，比如银行倒闭是导致经济崩溃还是相反。本提案旨在通过创建一个涵盖1929年至1935年大萧条前半期的公司层面观察数据集来弥补这一缺陷，该数据集既包括随机样本，也包括对特定行业和州的完整列举。收集这些公司层面的数据具有潜在的巨大社会效益，远远超过拟议工作所带来的任何好处。这是一种纯粹的公共产品。19世纪制造业普查的attack - bateman样本已被样本的创造者用于各种研究，以检查资本深化（attack et al. 2004a）和工资不平等的趋势（attack et al. 2004b）。它也被其他一些人用于各种项目，如工业化和城市化研究（Kim 2005）和国际比较（Inwood 2008）。这表明了这些数据被用于研究的范围。虽然阿克-贝特曼的样本来自美国经济史上一个有趣的时间点，跨度长达30年，但这里的样本涵盖了美国经济史上最动荡的时期。似乎可以肯定的是，这个样本将被用于类似的各种各样的研究，以了解大萧条，并与阿克-贝特曼样本一起研究美国经济的长期变化。有许多项目需要使用这个数据集。与今天的政策辩论相关的一个项目，是大萧条头两年发生在密西西比州的一场“随机”银行危机的影响。在Richardson和Troost（2005）的一篇论文中，作者认为，由于历史原因，覆盖该州北半部的圣路易斯联邦储备银行（St. Louis Fed）认为信贷应该随着商业周期而扩张和收缩。这使得他们非常不愿意向陷入困境的银行提供资金。另一方面，在大萧条初期，亚特兰大联邦储备银行在遏制初期银行挤兑方面要积极得多，该银行覆盖了该州的南半部。作者展示了这种准随机差异如何对大萧条初期这两个地区倒闭的银行数量产生重大影响。不出所料，圣路易斯地区的银行破产率远高于亚特兰大地区。在大萧条的头两年里，圣路易斯联邦储备银行目睹了大量成员银行的倒闭，最终在1931年7月，圣路易斯联邦储备银行的态度有所缓和，开始向陷入困境的银行输送现金。然而，今天仍然困扰着政策辩论的一个问题是，给银行的钱最终是进入了实体经济，还是只是作为储备留在了美联储。这个问题可以用这些数据来回答，至少在制造业方面是这样。这些贴现贷款促进了产出增长吗？招聘吗?甚至是生产率增长？该提案打算在大萧条的前六年建立一个制造业公司的随机样本，并从一些选定的行业收集所有数据。在这个过程中，它旨在解决围绕大萧条的一些悬而未决的问题。有了这些，研究结果可以揭示一些当今如此紧迫的棘手政策问题。政府应该救助华尔街来帮助普通民众吗？政府支出在刺激经济方面是否有效？竞争政策在促进或阻碍生产率增长方面发挥了什么作用？这里收集的数据对于经济界和广大公众理解美国经济史上这一最有趣时期的企业层面动态无疑是非常有价值的。

The Great Depression was a watershed moment not only for the U.S. economy but for economic policy and economics proper. Unsurprisingly then, the Depression has been intensely studied; still, many questions remain. Part of the reason for this is a lack of the "right" data. In particular, almost all studies have had to rely on data aggregated to at least the industry or state-levels. This makes it difficult to answer "micro'' questions about, for example, collusion under the National Recovery Administration (NRA). It also makes it difficult to test certain "macro" hypotheses about the Depression such as whether banking failures led to the collapse of the economy or the reverse. This proposal aims to remedy this shortcoming by creating a dataset of firm-level observations covering the first half of the Depression from 1929 through 1935 involving both a random sample and complete enumerations of specific industries and states.Collecting this firm-level data has potentially large social benefits far exceeding any that come from the proposed work. It is a pure public good .The Atack-Bateman sample of the 19th century Censuses of Manufactures has been used in a variety of studies by the creators of the sample to examine capital deepening of (Atack et al. 2004a) and trends in wage inequality (Atack et al. 2004b). It also has been used by a number of other people for a variety of projects such as studies of industrialization and urbanization (Kim 2005) and in international comparisons (Inwood 2008). This demonstrates the range of studies that this data has been used for. While the Atack-Bateman sample comes from an interesting point in time in American economic history and spans 30 years, the sample here would cover the most turbulent period in all of American economic history. It seems certain that this sample would be used in a similarly wide variety of studies to understand the Depression and in conjunction with the Atack-Bateman sample to study long-run changes in the American economy.There are a number of projects to be undertaken with this dataset. One project relevant to policy debates today is the effect of what was a "random" banking crisis in Mississippi over the first two years of the Depression. In a paper by Richardson and Troost (2005), the authors argue that for historical reasons, the St. Louis Fed, which covered the northern half of the state, believed that credit should expand and contract with the business cycle. This left them very reluctant to extend cash to banks that were in trouble. On the other hand, the Atlanta Fed, which covers the southern half of the state, was much more aggressive in stemming incipient bank runs at the beginning of the Depression. The authors show how this quasi-random difference had a major impact on how many banks failed in these two regions over the first part of the Depression. Unsurprisingly, banks in the St. Louis district failed at a much higher rate than those in the Atlanta district. After watching a huge number of their member banks fail in the first two years of the Depression, finally, in July 1931, the St. Louis Fed relented and started funneling cash to struggling banks. The question though that still plagues policy debates today is whether the money given to the banks ends up in the real economy or does it just sit as reserves back at the Fed. This question can be answered with this data at least with regards to the manufacturing sector. Did these discount loans foster output growth? Hiring? Maybe even productivity growth?This proposal intends to build a random sample of manufacturing firms over the first six years of the Depression as well as collect all the data from a number of selected industries. In the process, it aims to address a number of the outstanding issues surrounding the Depression. With that, the results can shed light on some of the knotty policy issues that are so pressing today. Should governments bailout Wall Street to help Main Street? Is government spending effective in stimulating the economy? What role does competitive policy play in helping or hindering productivity growth? The data collected here will surely prove to be exceedingly valuable for understanding firm-level dynamics in this most interesting period in American economic history for the economics community and the public at large.