A Reassessment of Investment Failure in the Interwar American Economy

Michael Bernstein ()

The Journal of Economic History, 1984, vol. 44, issue 2, 479-488

Abstract: A radical shift in the industrial composition of investment and final demand played an important role in delaying a complete recovery from the trough of 1932. Under the conditions of technological discovery prevailing in the 1930s, this shift in the composition of demand made full employment virtually impossible to achieve as recovery from the crash got under way. A complete recovery required a mass of interrelated new techniques and human and physical capital which, in the timid financial environment prevailing after 1929 (and given the uncertainties of the New Deal), could not be organized on the necessary scale by private investment markets. These findings pose a new agenda for research on the political economy of the New Deal and on the economic history of the post-World War II era.

Date: 1984
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:jechis:v:44:y:1984:i:02:p:479-488_03

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Journal of Economic History from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().