“Results Are Often Suspiciously Consistent with the Political Dispositions of the Modeler”

(p. 14) For scholars and popular writers alike, the Great Depression has long been a kind of economic Rorschach test. Free marketers look at the economic disaster and blame the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which inaugurated a global trade war; monetarists attack the Federal Reserve for its tight-money policies; Keynesians berate Herbert Hoover for his attempts to balance the budget as the crisis worsened.

. . .

Generally, . . . , Morris is remarkably evenhanded, giving both sides of scholarly debates in deep detail. This is particularly the case in his coverage of the New Deal, where he weighs the practical effects of the dizzying array of policies begun by Roosevelt, from his devaluation of the dollar to the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps. And Morris explains in accessible prose how economists have used modeling to study the New Deal (he wryly notes that this “is still a work in progress — if only because results are often suspiciously consistent with the political dispositions of the modeler”).

For the full review, see:

Stephen Mihm. “When Europe Sneezed.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, April 23, 2017): 14.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date April 21, 2017, and has the title “What Caused the Depression? A New Overview Spreads the Blame,’ by Sandeep Jauhar.”)

The book under review, is:

Morris, Charles R. A Rabble of Dead Money: The Great Crash and the Global Depression: 1929-1939. Philadelphia, PA: PublicAffairs, 2017.

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