Farm Product Prices, Redistribution, and the Early U.S. Great Depression
Joshua Hausman,
Paul Rhode and
Johannes Wieland
The Journal of Economic History, 2021, vol. 81, issue 3, 649-687
Abstract:
We argue that falling farm product prices, incomes, and spending may explain 10–30 percent of the 1930 U.S. output decline. Crop prices collapsed, reducing farmers’ incomes. And across U.S. states and Ohio counties, auto sales fell most in crop-growing areas. The large spending response may be explained by farmers’ indebtedness. Reasonable assumptions about the marginal propensity to spend of farmers relative to nonfarmers and the pass-through of farm prices to retail prices imply that the collapse of farm product prices in 1930 was a powerful propagation mechanism worsening the Depression.
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)
Related works:
Working Paper: Farm Product Prices, Redistribution, and the Early U.S. Great Depression (2020) 
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:81:y:2021:i:3:p:649-687_1
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 ().