All Posts Tagged With: "Herbert Hoover"

The Depression You’ve Never Heard Of: 1920-1921

When it comes to diagnosing the causes of the Great Depression and prescribing cures for our present recession, the pundits and economists from the biggest schools typically argue about two different types of intervention. Big-government Keynesians, such as Paul Krugman, argue for massive fiscal stimulus—that is, huge budget deficits—to fill the gap in aggregate demand. [...]

18Nov2009 | Robert P. Murphy | 1 comment | Continued

Mainstream Macro in an Austrian Nutshell

While the events that have unfolded over the past year have required some outside-the-box theorizing by mainstream macroeconomists, the econo-mists of the Austrian school can offer a straightforward, fill-in-the-blanks explanation by drawing on the theory first articulated by Ludwig von Mises and then developed by Friedrich A. Hayek.

24Apr2009 | Roger W. Garrison | 10 comments | Continued

The Great Contraction, 1929-33

The recession that began in mid-1929 need not have become a disaster. Many downturns had occurred previously in U.S. economic history, and nearly all of them had been fairly shallow and soon followed by recovery and continued growth. In the nineteenth century most people had believed that the government neither knew how nor possessed the [...]

1Apr2007 | Robert Higgs | 0 comments | Continued

Death by Public Works

Burton Folsom, Jr. is the Charles Kline Professor in History and Management at Hillsdale College. His book The Myth of the Robber Barons is in its fourth edition.
Almost all historians who write on the New Deal praise Franklin Roosevelt for using government to “solve” economic problems. Often, however, these historians only tell part of the [...]

1Mar2007 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 1 comment | Continued

Freedom for Workers

In my January/February column this year I explained why I believe that, given the existence of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which regulates American labor-management relations, a classical liberal should support a national right-to-work-act. Last year Freeman book review editor George Leef published Free Choice for Workers: A History of the Right to Work [...]

1Sep2006 | Charles W. Baird | 0 comments | Continued