The Impact of the New Deal on Local Economic Development

新政不仅为数百万失业工人提供了就业机会，而且还大大增加了国家的基础设施。面对基础设施老化和民众要求福利改革的双重问题，今天的决策者们往往把新政式的以工代赈作为有效解决问题的模式。尽管有许多关于新政政治的研究，但令人惊讶的是，很少有微观层面的分析新政支出如何影响20世纪30年代的地方经济发展。为了填补这一空白，本项目研究新政对经济活动的各种措施的影响，包括真实的房地产财富，房屋价值，零售，制造业活动，农业发展，以及人口变化归因于新政。该研究是在NSF资助编号SBR-9708098下开始的工作的延续。该研究的一个主要目标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，包括在资金支出的县和附近的县，以及影响新政资金分配的政治和经济因素。由于新政是在失业率极高的时期实施的，因此似乎有理由预期联邦政府的支出将在许多领域提振经济活动。然而，最近关于公共基础设施对经济增长的影响的研究并没有明确支持这样的结论，即更多的公共基础设施支出会导致经济增长的大幅增长。也有可能是新政的支出排挤了私营部门、州和地方政府的努力。我们的目标是通过一系列经济活动指标来评估新政对地方经济的影响。由于本项目研究的是新政在相对较小的地理区域的影响，因此考虑到新政支出对邻近县的溢出效应是很重要的。也就是说，人们可以想象这样的情况，即一个县的支出要么促进要么阻碍了邻近地区的增长。此外，溢出效应并不一定局限于新政支出的直接影响。邻近县的经济增长往往影响感兴趣县的经济增长。此外，一个县可能会受到无法估量的经济冲击，这种冲击可能会波及到邻近的县，衡量新政对当地经济的影响更加复杂，因为在大多数情况下，我们可能不能将新政支出视为纯粹的外源性支出。新政支出可能以相互矛盾的方式与经济活动相关。鉴于新政的既定目标，我们可以预期新政者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，许多新政计划要求州或地方政府有资源向联邦政府寻求项目帮助，或者更进一步，提供配套资金来帮助资助项目。因此，新政的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不确定性问题，本项目开发了一个广义三阶段最小二乘模型，该模型结合了新政支出和经济活动之间的同步关系以及经验模型中确定性和随机成分所固有的空间相关性。

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.