An Establishment-Level View of the Great Depression

大萧条是美国历史上最严重的经济危机，因此引起了经济学家的极大兴趣。无论是好是坏，大萧条是无数经济政策辩论的试金石。因此，任何对我们对这一时期的理解的贡献都将加强围绕这些问题的辩论质量，并将导致更好的政策。几乎所有现有的关于大萧条的研究都依赖于综合数据，这使得经济学家对大萧条的衰退和复苏缺乏完整的理解。这个项目的目标是收集两套全面的大萧条微观观察。第一个来源是1929年、1931年、1933年和1935年的制造业普查。将公开发布的全面样本将把新收集的一组行业与之前收集的特定州和行业的数据结合在一起。总而言之，这里建议的样本将占现有附表的10%以上。人口普查记录的一个局限性是缺乏关于机构或其母公司的财务状况的信息。我们的第二个数据来源是当时的主要信用评级机构邓白氏(Dun&amp；BradStreet)的记录，它填补了这一空白。特别是，这一来源提供了一种类似于现代信用评级的信用衡量标准，以及对机构净值的估计。这个项目的最终产品将是一个真正的公共产品，作为经济历史学家和研究大萧条的宏观经济学家的核心资源。然后，我们计划回答一些关于关键宏观总量下降的简单但关键的问题，包括就业和价格水平。我们还将把这些机构的所有者与1920年和1930年的人口普查联系起来，以获得人口信息。这将使我们能够研究，特别是对于小企业主来说，所有者本身的哪些特征有助于预测生存。这将提供对信贷约束在大萧条中的作用的洞察。最后，我们将利用将这些机构与它们的母公司联系起来的能力来研究“市场”在公司内部资源的作用。特别是，我们将讨论它们是否可以取代当时失灵的外部资本市场。对于后两个项目，D&A；B的记录对于提供企业对外部信贷依赖程度的信息至关重要。

The Great Depression was the most serious economic crisis in American history and so has attracted great interest from economists. For good or bad, the Depression serves as a litmus test for numerous economic policy debates. For this reason, any contribution to our understanding of this period strengthens the quality of debate surrounding these issues and will lead to better policy. Almost all existing studies of the Depression have relied on aggregate data, leaving economists with an incomplete understanding of the decline and recovery.The goal of this project is collect two comprehensive sets of micro-level observations from the Great Depression. The first source is the Census of Manufactures taken in 1929, 1931, 1933, and 1935. The comprehensive sample, which would be released publicly, would combine a newly collected set of industries with previously collected data on particular states and industries. In total, the sample proposed here will comprise more than 10% of the extant schedules. A limitation of the Census records is a lack of information on the financial position of the establishments or their parent companies. Our second source of data is the records of Dun & Bradstreet (D&B), a major credit rating agency at the time, which fills that gap. In particular, this source provides a measure of creditworthiness, similar to modern credit ratings, and an estimate of the establishment's net worth. The end product of this project will be a true public good serving as a central resource for economic historians and macroeconomists studying the Depression.We then plan to answer some simple though crucial questions regarding the declines in key macro aggregates, including employment and the price level. We also will link the owners of the establishments to the population censuses of 1920 and 1930 to obtain demographic information. This will allow us to study, particularly for small business owners, what characteristics of the owners themselves helped predict survival. This will offer insights into the role of credit constraints in the Depression. Finally, we will use the ability to link the establishments into their parent companies to study the role of "markets" for resources inside of the firm. In particular, we will address whether they can act as a substitute for the malfunctioning external capital markets at the time. For these last two projects, the D&B records will be crucial in providing information on the dependence of businesses on external credit.