This thesis analyzes the effects of both federal and state programs on the state of Tennessee's revenues and expenditures during and following the Great Depression. A historical review of the time period spanning from 1929 to 1940 in conjunction with sorting and analysis of data on state revenue and expenditure contribute to a better understanding of the overall economic interaction between Tennessee and the federal government.

This paper examines North Dakota's response to the Great Depression. By establishing a historical background, combined with the qualitative data, it shows that North Dakota's agricultural economy and progressive legacy played major roles in how the Great Depression affected the state, as well as how North Dakota reacted to the economic crisis. In forming a historically narrative, the paper aims to show the political turbulence the Depression helped cause and the outrages attempts North Dakotan politicians made to aid their citizens. The qualitative side aims to explain North Dakota's place among its neighbors and examine some of the potential factors that affected the economy of the state.

This paper investigates the political economy of the state of Wisconsin during the years of the Great Depression. In the existing literature, state responses to the economic downturn have been overshadowed by the changes happening in the federal government during the period. The paper is broken into nine sections. Section I is an introduction. Section II gives an overview of Wisconsin during the 1930s. Section III explores the LaFollette family and the growth of the Progressive Party in Wisconsin. Section IV is a detailed discussion of the Unemployment Reserves and Compensation Act of 1932, the first of its kind in the United States. Section V looks into the debate over income taxes versus property taxes. Section VI discusses Chapter 15 of the 1935 Session Laws. Section VII describes data categorization I did to fill a gap in federal records. Section VIII is an early empirical look at the drivers of state tax revenue during the 1930s. Section IX is a bibliography.

During the Great Depression, states were forced to decide how to approach taxation and spending issues. Deficit spending was a relatively new theory at the time so many states took a very conservative approach. Virginia, even as a heavily Democratic southern state, was one of the states that was very conservative and disagreed with President Roosevelt’s New Deal. Virginian officials believed their highest priority was avoiding a deficit, followed by helping the people. This paper shows how the state governments chose to tax and spend with a comparison to comparable states. After completing a narrative of the political landscape, a regression analysis was completed to analyze independent variables and their relationship to per capita state tax revenue. Positive correlations indicated per capita state tax revenue increased as the independent variable increased. This analysis is very important to governments even today to develop public policies to help state revenues during a depression.

Individual states varied in their responses to the Great Depression and federal New Deal programs, and these reactions affected the success of relief efforts. A combined historical and data-based econometric approach is employed to characterize the impact of state policies on outcomes. At first, Ohio relied on charity and local governments rather than state public assistance. The state legislature was divided between rural and urban interests and few taxation mechanisms existed. Eventually, use and sales taxes were imposed, though income taxes did not prove feasible. Political squabbles and the resurgence of the Republican party somewhat derailed state relief efforts, leaving many areas dependent on New Deal programs until the national recovery took hold. State-reported data and federal statistics were used to generate four initial econometric models of per capita state revenue. The effects of real per capita state income, real per capita federal tax revenue, per capita auto registrations, and percent of democratic representatives in the state legislature’s lower house were statistically significant in at least one model, while those for the mean democratic vote percent in presidential elections from 1896 up to the most recent election and real per capita federal grants to states were not.

The goal of this project is to understand the unique consequences of the Great Depression on the state of Texas. This was done through historical research of the events, debates, and laws in the state during the 1930s, as well analysis of economic data. It was found that Texas, while struggling with many of the same issues as other states, also struggled with a shaky oil market and political stagnation. Like other plains states, Texas struggled through the dust bowl, becoming a leader in land conservation. It was also found that the two factors that influenced Texas’s state revenues the most, the gas tax and the property tax, also affected the revenues of thirteen other states as well.

The financial crises of 2008 have inflamed the interest in looking back at the Great Depression and reexamining its causes and consequences. Although unlike the recent financial crises mortgages are not considered as the primary reason for the Great Depression, extensive research from Brocker and Hanes (2013) indicates that the 1920s real estate boom was a major contributor to the severity of the Great Depression. Also, the interventionist policies of the Roosevelt administration followed by the Great Depression triggered some of the significant changes in the US housing market that are still in effect. In this paper, I present information on the growth in institutional lending within the US mortgage market in the 1920s. I outline major structural changes in mortgages, in particular mortgages from Building and Loan Associations (B&Ls), and finally I use data from the balance sheets of B&Ls in the states of New York, Iowa, Wisconsin and North Carolina to examine how building and loan mortgages grew in the 1920s and then estimate the relationship between mortgages and building permits, interest rates and real estate owned assets.

The United States government instituted ground-breaking programs in the wake of the Great Depression, some of which were mainly left to the states to implement. This autonomy led to large differences in the implementation and later recovery of these states. There currently exists a dearth of state level analysis of this period, which this paper aims to remedy. Through the investigation of Rhode Islands’ actions in the 1930’s in regards to recovery and federal programs, this paper establishes that individual state characteristics and actions have great impact on the states recovery. In Rhode Island, an unstable political climate led to inconsistent techniques in raising revenue and decreasing unemployment. Depending on the majority political party, either taxes were increased and federal funds were sought after or state independence and smaller government were pursued. In either case progress was slowed by constant argument in the state legislature. It is also shown, in a statistical analysis of the state, that public works loans and percent of foreign born state population had statistically significant negative effects on per capita state tax revenue, an important source of revenue for the state.

The following paper details some of the most important reactions the State of Oregon had to the Great Depression during the 1930s.The majority of the work available today on the Great Depression deals with what the federal government did to help the states, but seldom is there information on what the states did themselves. Professor Price Fishback, of the University of Arizona, has provided his honors students with an opportunity to work on a project that has never been done before. With the data we now have, we are able to talk about what the states did during the Great Depression and back it up with hard evidence. By looking through state statutes and newspapers from the 1930s, I was able to construct a narrative describing Oregon during that time. A regression analysis is also included to find the effects of five variables on state tax revenue per capita and I was able to compare these variables with Oregon’s surrounding states to see how they all fared in comparison. The thesis paper provides us with greater insight to the State of Oregon during the Great Depression as well as a better understanding to the data that we currently have.