Prof Woolf  
339 Old Mill  656-0190    arthur.woolf@uvm.edu
Office Hours:  MWF 3:30 - 4:30 and by appointment
class syllabus available at www.uvm.edu/~awoolf and follow the links or  www.uvm.edu/~awoolf/classes/fall2006/ec210/ec210syllabus.html

Overview:

This course is a chronological and topical approach to economic issues of the twentieth century.  The goal of this course is to help you understand how the U.S. economy came to be where it is today.  That includes analyzing our successes and failures and trying to use economic tools and reasoning and a historical perspective to gain an understanding of current issues that confront the U.S. economy.

 

The course will begin with a general overview of the causes and consequences economic growth, the contribution economic historians have made to our understanding of the past (and how we got to where we are today), and we will set the stage by discussing what the economy looked like at the turn of the century.  The course will examine broad contours of changes that influenced the economy at the turn of that century.  We will then turn to the 1920s and examine structural changes that occurred during the decade and examine weaknesses that made that decade a prelude to the Great Depression.  The Great Depression is probably the defining economic event of the twentieth century.  The New Deal, the government's response to the Depression, has as its legacy many programs and policies that still underpin the U.S. economy.  The effects of both the Depression and the New Deal are still being felt and we are still arguing over the causes of the Depression and its consequences.  We will have time after that to analyze topics based on student interest.

 

Readings:

Nearly all of the readings for this class are available online and most through JSTOR.  You can only access JSTOR through a UVM-based computer, not from your personal computer at home.  It will be to your advantage to download the files and then print them in order to read and take notes on them.  You will be expected to read the articles before the class period.  

 

Grades:

Grades for the class will be based on a combination of short papers, class participation, and a final paper and possibly a presentation. You will be required to write four short papers, each about 3 or 4 pages long.  Each will be worth 10% of your final grade.  Class participation, including presentations, will count for 30% of your final grade and the final paper will account for the remaining 30%.   Part of the class participation grade may be based on unannounced in-class quizzes.  The quizzes will be based on the readings due for that day. 

 

 

Course Introduction

August 28

 

Overview of the United States’ economy at the turn of the twentieth century

Aug 30

Cox, William. and Alm, Richard, Time Well Spent:  The Declining Real Cost of Living in America, 1997 Annual Report, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, pp. 1-26

Brad DeLong, The Shape of Twentieth Century History (1998), San Francisco Fed Regional Review
Easterlin, Richard, The Worldwide Standard of Living Since 1800, J Economic Perspectives, Winter 2000, 7-26

David Cutler, The Role of Public Health Improvements in Health Advances:  The 20th Century United States (2004)

Globalization and Growth

Sept 11

Ben Bernanke, Global Economic Integration:  What's New and What's Not? (2006)
Michael Bordo, Barry Eichengreen, Doug Irwin:  Is Globalization Today Really Different Than Globalization One Hundred Years Ago? (1999) pp 1-52.

Williamson, Jeffrey,  Globalization, Labor Markets, and Policy Backlash in the Past, Journal of Economic Perspectives (1998)

Education, Labor, and Race in the Early 20^th Century

Sept 18
Tim Leonard:  Eugenics and Economics  in the Progressive Era, Journal of Economic Perspectives (2005)

Jennifer Roback (1986), The Political Economy of Segregation:  The Case of Segregated Streetcars, Journal of Economic History, December 1986, pp. 893-917

Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz (1999). Human Capital and Social Capital: The Rise of Secondary Schooling in America, 1910-1940,  Journal of Interdisciplinary History

 

Financing Big Government in the Twentieth Century

Sept 25

Wallis, John, American Government Finance in the Long Run, J Economic Perspectives, Winter 2000, 61-82, at

Baack, Bennett and Ray, Edwin, Special Interests and the Adoption of the Income Tax in the U.S., J Economic History,  September 1985, 607-625

 

The 1910s and 1920s: Macro and Micro Issues

Oct 2

Jeffrey Miron and Jeffrey Swiebel, Alcohol Consumption During Prohibition, American Economic Review (1991)

Raff, Daniel, Wage Determination Theory and the Five Dollar Day at Ford, J Economic History, June 1988, 387-99

Collins, William, When the Tide Turned:  Immigration and the Delay of the Great Black Migration, JEH, September 1997, 607-632

Werner Troesken, Race, Disease, and the Provision of Water in American Cities 1889-1921 (2000)

Alston, Lee, Farm Foreclosures in the United States During the Interwar Period,  JEH,  December 1983, 885-903

The Great Crash

Oct 16

Eugene White (1990), “The Stock Market Boom and the Crash of 1929,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 4:2 (Spring), pp. 67-83 

Christina Romer (1990): "The Great Crash and the Onset of the Great Depression," Quarterly Journal of Economics 105:3 (August), pp. 597-624.  

 

The Great Depression and the New Deal

Oct 23

Romer, Christina,  The Nation in Depression, J Economic Perspectives, Spring 1993, 19-39

Wright, Gavin,  The Political Economy of New Deal Spending, Review of Economics and Statistics, 1974, 30-38

Price Fishback, William Horrace, and Shawn Kantor,   Did New Deal Grant Programs Stimulate Local Economies?  A Study of Federal Grants and Retail Sales During the Great Depression, J Economic History (2005) pp.36-71

Greg Ip, Long Study of the Great Depression has Shaped Bernanke's Views, Wall Street Journal, December 25, 2005

World War II and the End of the Depression

Nov 6

Higgs, Robert,  Wartime Prosperity?  A Reassessment of the U.S. Economy in the 1940s, J Economic History, March 1992, 41-60

Post War Economic History:  Health  and Social  Issues

Nov 13

Sarah Turner and John Bound,  Closing the Gap or Widening the Divide: The Effects of the G.I. Bill and World War II on the Educational Outcomes of Black Americans  Journal of Economic History (March 2003), pp 145-177
Claudia Goldin, The Quiet Revolution That Transformed Women's Employment, Education, and Family, American Economic Review (2006), pp1-21.

The Economic History of the Future

Nov 27

Robert Fogel,  Changes in the Process of Aging in the Twentieth Century, 2004.