The U.S. recovery from the Great Depression was nearly as exceptional as the Depression itself. When Franklin Roosevelt took office in March 1933, the unemployment rate was 21 percent, real GNP per capita was lower than it had been in 1907, and much of the banking system had collapsed.1 Seven years later, in 1940, the unemployment rate had fallen to 9.5 percent and GNP per capita had grown 54 percent. Productivity had advanced at an unprecedented pace (Field 2011). But recovery had not been uniform. It was interrupted by a severe recession in 1937/38 in which the unemployment rate rose more than 3 percentage points.
Economic historians have long been interested in what caused the 1929 to 1933 U.S. downturn, but comparatively little work examines the recovery that followed.2 This dissertation helps fill this gap. It adds to our understanding both of the rapid recovery and of the double-dip recession. I consider three episodes that illuminate the role of fiscal policy, unionization, and devaluation in this period. The first chapter examines the effects of a 2 percent of GDP fiscal stimulus program, the veterans’ bonus of 1936. I document that fiscal policy worked: veterans spent a large share of their bonus. The second chapter examines the causes of the severe recession that followed the boom year of 1936. I show that a supply shock in the auto industry helps to explain this recessions’ severity as well as its timing and geographic incidence. Finally, in the third chapter, I consider the sources of recovery during Franklin Roosevelt’s first months in office. Just as a shock to the relative price of autos helped cause the 1937-38 recession, I suggest that an increase in the relative price of farm products helped cause the rapid recovery in spring 1933.