The critical election of 1932 represented a turning point in the future electoral successes of the Democrats and Republicans for over three decades. This paper seeks to measure the importance of the New Deal in facilitating the Democrats' control of the federal government well into the 1960s. We...

The critical election of 1932 represented a turning point in the future electoral successes of the Democrats and Republicans for over three decades. This paper seeks to measure the importance of the New Deal in facilitating the Democrats' control of the federal government well into the 1960s. We...

We examine the importance of Roosevelt's 'relief, recovery, and reform' motives to the distribution of New Deal funds across over 3,000 U.S. counties, program by program. The major relief programs most closely followed Roosevelt's three R's. Other programs were tilted more in favor of areas with...

The American social welfare system was transformed during the 1930s. Prior to the New Deal public relief was administered almost exclusively by local governments. The administration of local public relief was widely thought to be corrupt. Beginning in 1933, federal, state, and local governments...

Problems with mortgage financing are widely considered to be a major cause of the recent financial meltdown. Several modern programs have been designed to mimic the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) of the 1930s. We analyze the impact of the HOLC on the nonfarm rental and owned home markets...

During the Great Depression contemporaries worried that people hit by hard times would resort to crime. President Franklin Roosevelt argued that the massive government relief efforts “struck at the roots of crime” by providing subsistence income to needy families. After constructing a panel...