John J. Wallis


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The New Deal

My New Deal research began with a class paper for my first year Macroeconomics class. It appeared in the Journal of Economic history:

  • "Private Relief and Public Unemployment in the Great Depression," with Daniel K. Benjamin, Journal of Economic History, 41, pp. 97-102, March 1981.
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    My thesis was never published. It attempted to estimate the effects of public work relief programs on private employment during the New Deal.

    • Dissertation: "Work Relief and Unemployment in the 1930s"

    The dissertation asked more questions than it answered. Several lines of research developed. One on employment statistics. I worked on this with Dan Benjamin while he was at the Labor Department. The resulting state level employment series were published in:

  • "Employment in the Great Depression: New Data and Hypothesis," Explorations in Economic History, 26, 45-72, January, 1989.
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    A second line of research was the "Political Economy of New Deal Spending" following on Gavin Wrights REStat piece. I used this, initially, as a way to identify the allocation of federal grants between states in an instrumental variables approach. It grew.

    • "Employment, Politics, and Economic Recovery in the Great Depression," Review of Economics and Statistics, 59, pp. 516-520, August, 1987.
    • "The Political Economy of New Deal Spending, Revisited, With and Without Nevada," Explorations in Economic History, 35, 140-170, April 1998.

    • "The Political Economy of New Deal Spending, Yet Again: A Reply to Fleck." Explorations in Economic History, April 2001.

    • "What Determines the Allocation of Grants to the States?"1997, NBER Working Paper on Historical Factors in Long Run Growth, #90.

    • "Can the New Deal's Three R's be Rehabilitated? A Program-by-Program, County-by-County Analyis." with Price V. Fishback and Shawn Kantor. Explorations in Economic History, July 2003.

    A third line of research involved more general interpretations of the New Deal, how it fit into 20th century economic history, and into American public finance history.

    • "The Birth of the Old Federalism: Financing the New Deal," Journal of Economic History, 44, pp. 139-159, March 1984.
    • "Why 1933? The Origins and Timing of National Government Growth, 1933 to 1940." In Robert Higgs, ed. The Emerging Modern Political Economy, JAI Press, 1986.
    • "The Great Depression: Have We Learned Our Lessons?" in Second Thoughts: The Uses of American Economic History, in Donald N. McCloskey ed., Oxford University Press, 1991.
    • "The Impact of the New Deal on American Federalism," with Wallace Oates, in Bordo, Goldin, and White, ed. The Defining Moment: The Great Depression and the American Economy in the Twentieth Century, NBER, University of Chicago Press, 1998.
    • "The Political Economy of New Deal Fiscal Federalism," Economic Inquiry, 29, pp. 510-524, 1991.
    • "American Government Finance in the Long Run: 1790 to 1990," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2000.
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    • "Politics, Relief, and Reform: The Transformation of America’s Social Welfare System during the New Deal." With Price Fishback and Shawn Kantor. To appear in Goldin and Glaeser, ed. Corruption and Reform.
    • "The New Deal" and "Government Administration" Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, Joel Mokyr, ed. Oxford University Press, 2003.
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    While I am not actively working on the New Deal, interest in it never dies.