The great surge in munitions production in World War II, which reached its peak in 1943, was produced by a building boom launched in 1941 and 1942. Resources were drawn rapidly to war production centers by financial incentives and other personal and corporate motives such as patriotism. This...

The United States is often taken to be the exemplar of the benefits of a monetary union. Since 1788 Americans, with the exception of the Civil War years, have been able to buy and sell goods, travel, and invest within a vast area without ever having to be concerned about changes in exchange...

One of the most sustained uses of economic warfare by the United States, at least judged by the variety of means used and the issue at stake, occurred in Spain and Portugal during WWII. We provide an overview of this episode by weaving together findings from the secondary literature and from new...

According to the standard accounts of the mobilization of resources in the United States during WWII, things went badly in the beginning because the agencies in charge were given insufficient authority and were mismanaged. But then in 1943 the story continues, the War Production Board installed...

This paper examines the U.S. Economy in World War II. It argues that the mobilization must be viewed as a rapidly evolving historical process rather than, as is often the case, a single differentiated event. For example, the employment of unemployed resources, a factor often cited to explain the...

An 1890s loan book of the Bank A. Levy permits a detailed examination of the lending operations of a private bank in California during the National Banking Era (1864-1914). This period has been intensively analyzed at the macroeconomic level, but there are few microeconomic studies of banks....