We treat the direct reduction loan contract as an instance of financial innovation and describe its adoption within the building and loan (B&L) industry beginning in the 1880s and culminating in the 1930s. A long chain of complementary innovations at B&Ls gradually reduced the costs of adoption,...

This article identifies and explores means of meeting political and strategic challenges to the enactment of a federal job creation program sufficiently large and well-targeted to cope with mass unemployment. The challenges include: anti-government ideology; perceived failure of the Obama...

A wide literature in the sociology of agriculture has depicted the development of agricultural experiment stations at land grant colleges as part of a development project to improve agricultural productivity in particular commodities. Some experiment stations developed regional agricultural...

The article elaborates upon the reasons of institutional default (Part 1) and, in turn, upon the implications of economic default in Europe (Part 2). In relation to the reasons of institutional default, the paper cast light on three broadly interrelating elements: First, the conceptual issue...

Roosevelt's New Deal stays in sharp contrast to the course followed by European policy since 2009. At first, Roosevelt focussed on fighting the generally pessimistic mood of the public, on strictly regulating the financial sector and on setting up investment and employment programmes. After...

Macroeconomists have long debated the aggregate effects of anti-competitive provisions under the “Codes of Fair Conduct” promulgated by the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA). Despite the emphasis on these provisions, there is only limited evidence documenting any actual effects at the...

This essay examines how the Banking Acts of the 1933 and 1935 and related New Deal legislation influenced risk taking in the financial sector of the U.S. economy. The analysis focuses on contingent liability of bank owners for losses incurred by their firms and how the elimination of this...

The author offers an overview and an overall interpretation of the various policy measures and programs composing in the New Deal launched by the newly appointed American President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A theoretical basis and clear objectives underlie the New Deal economic policies in their...

This introduction aims to offer a preliminary reading to the collection of essays presented in the volume. It describes how the Great Depression of the 1930s was interpreted by the group of young Italian economists connected with the Catholic University of Milan and its periodical the Rivista...