Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-7drxs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T11:28:25.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Uncontrolled Land Development and the Duration of the Depression in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Alexander James Field
Alexander James Field
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics at Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Aggregate economic activity was heavily influenced by the construction sector's expansion, collapse, and failure to revive during the interwar years. The 1920s building boom was the first to respond to the potential of the automobile and the last to be largely unplanned. Its uncoordinated character slowed the growth of full employment output toward the end of the 1920s. The physical and legal detritus of unregulated land development posed continuing obstacles to recovery during the second half of the 1930s.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , December 1992 , pp. 785 - 805
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Adams, Thomas, The Design of Residential Areas (Cambridge, 1934).Google Scholar
Allen, Frederick Lewis, Only Yesterday (New York, 1931).Google Scholar
“Arithmetic of Land Development,” Architectural Forum, 70 (05 1939), 367–70.Google Scholar
Barger, Harold, Outlay and Income in the United States: 1921–1938 (New York, 1942).Google Scholar
Bernanke, Ben, “Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in the Propagation of the Great Depression,” American Economic Review, 73 (06 1983), pp. 257–76.Google Scholar
Blank, David M., The Volume of Residential Construction, 1889–1950 (New York, 1954).Google Scholar
Bodfish, H. Morton, “The Free Lot Subdivider: His Method of Operation and the Available Methods of Control,” Journal of Land and Public Utility Economics, 5 (05/08 1929), pp. 187–98, 285–92.Google Scholar
Campbell, Burnham O., “The Housing Life Cycle and Long Swings in Residential Construction: A Statistical and Theoretical Analysis” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1961).Google Scholar
Clark, Evans, The Internal Debts of the United States (New York, 1933).Google Scholar
Colean, Miles, American Housing: Problems and Prospects (New York, 1944).Google Scholar
Colean, Miles, Renewing Our Cities (New York, 1953).Google Scholar
Cornick, Philip H., Premature Subdivision and Its Consequences (New York, 1938).Google Scholar
Denison, Edward F., Accounting for United States Economic Growth, 1929–1969 (Washington, DC, 1974).Google Scholar
Edwards, George W., “The Control of the Security Investment System,” Harvard Business Review, 12 (10 1933), pp. 1–11.Google Scholar
Eichengreen, Barry, “Til Death Do Us Part: The U.S. Capital Market and Foreign Lending, 1920–1955” (NBER Working Paper No. 2394, 10 1987).Google Scholar
Federal Housing Administration, Sixth Annual Report (Washington, DC, 1939).Google Scholar
Federal Housing Administration, Low Rental Housing for Private Investment (Washington, DC, 1940).Google Scholar
Federal Housing Administration, Planning Profitable Neighborhoods (Washington, DC, 1940).Google Scholar
Federal Housing Administration, Seventh Annual Report (Washington, DC, 1940).Google Scholar
Federal Housing Administration, A Handbook on Urban Redevelopment for Cities in the United States (Washington, DC, 1941).Google Scholar
Field, Alexander J., “Asset Exchanges and the Transactions Demand for Money, 1919–1929,” American Economic Review, 74 (03 1984), pp. 43–59.Google Scholar
Field, Alexander J., “A New Interpretation of the Onset of the Great Depression,” this Journal, 44 (06 1984), pp. 489–98.Google Scholar
Field, Alexander J., “On the Unimportance of Machinery,” Explorations in Economic History, 22 (10 1985), pp. 378–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Field, Alexander J., “Bankruptcy, Debt, and the Macroeconomy, 1919–1946” (Working Paper, Santa Clara University, 03 1988).Google Scholar
Fisher, Ernest m., “Speculation in Urban Lands,” American Economic Review, 23, suppl. (03 1933), pp. 152–62.Google Scholar
Fisher, Ernest M., and Smith, Raymond F., “Land Subdividing and the Rate of Utilization,” Michigan Business Studies, 4:5 (Ann Arbor, 1932).Google Scholar
Friedman, Milton, and Schwartz, Anna J., A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 (Princeton, 1963).Google Scholar
Galbraith, John Kenneth, The Great Crash (Boston, 1954).Google Scholar
Goldsmith, Raymond, A Study of Saving in the United States, 3 vols. (Princeton, 1955–1956).Google Scholar
Gordon, Robert A., “Cyclical Experience in the Interwar Period: The Investment Boom of the Twenties,” in NBER, ed., Conference on Business Cycles (New York, 1951), pp. 163–214.Google Scholar
Gordon, Robert A., “Population Growth and the Capital Coefficient,” American Economic Review, 46 (06 1956), pp. 307–22.Google Scholar
Gordon, Robert J., and Veitch, John M., “Fixed Investment in the American Business Cycle,” in Gordon, Robert J., ed., The American Business Cycle: Continuity and Change (Chicago, 1986), pp. 267–357.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Robert J., and Wilcox, James A., “Monetarist Interpretations of the Great Depression: An Evaluation and Critique,” in Brunner, Karl, ed., The Great Depression Revisited (Boston, 1981), pp. 49–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grebler, Leo, Blank, David, and Winnick, Louis, Capital Formation in Residential Real Estate: Trends and Prospects (Princeton, 1956).Google Scholar
Haar, Charles M., and Kayden, Jerold S., Zoning and the American Dream: Promises Still to Keep (Washington, DC, 1989).Google Scholar
Haberler, Gottfried, Prosperity and Depression (Geneva, 1941).Google Scholar
Hamilton, James, “Monetary Factors in the Great Depression,” Journal of Monetary Economics, 19 (1987), pp. 145–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herman, Edward S., “Conflicts of Interest in the Savings and Loan Industry,” in Federal Home Bank Board, ed., Study of the Savings and Loan Industry, vol. 2 (Washington, DC, 1970), pp. 763–969.Google Scholar
Hickman, Bert, Growth and Stability in the Postwar Economy, (Washington, DC, 1960).Google Scholar
Hickman, Bert, “What Became of the Building Cycle?” in David, Paul A. and Reder, Melvin, eds., Nations and Households in Economic Growth: Essays in Honor of Moses Abramovitz (New York, 1974), pp. 291–314.Google Scholar
Hoyt, Homer, One Hundred Years of Land Values in Chicago (Chicago, 1933).Google Scholar
Kennedy, Susan, The Banking Crisis of 1933 (Lexington, KY, 1973).Google Scholar
Michigan State Planning Commission, A Study of Subdivision Development in the Detroit Metropolitian Area (Lansing, MI, 1939).Google Scholar
Mintz, Iise, Deterioration in the Quality of Foreign Bonds Issued in the United States (New York, 1951).Google Scholar
Mishkin, Frederick, “The Household Balance Sheet and the Great Depression,” this Journal, 38 (12 1978), pp. 918–37.Google Scholar
Muth, Richard F., Cities and Housing: The Spatial Pattern of Urban Residential Land Use (Chicago, 1959).Google Scholar
Muth, Richard F., “Theoretical Issues in Housing Market Research,” in Muth, Richard F. and Goodman, Allen C., eds., The Economics of Housing Markets (New York, 1989), pp. 1–47.Google Scholar
National Housing Administration, Fourth Annual Report (Washington, DC, 1945).Google Scholar
National Housing Administration, Land Assembly for Urban Redevelopment (Washington, DC, 1946).Google Scholar
New Jersey State Planning Board, Premature Land Subdivision a Luxury (Trenton, 1941).Google Scholar
Ratcliff, Richard A., Urban Land Economics (New York, 1949).Google Scholar
Reps, John W., Town Planning in Frontier America (Princeton, 1969).Google Scholar
Romer, Christina, “The Great Crash and the Onset of the Great Depression” (Working Paper, Princeton University and NBER, 03 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saulnier, Raymond J., Urban Mortgage Lending by Life Insurance Companies (New York, 1950).Google Scholar
Siegan, Bernard H., Other People's Property (Lexington, MA, 1976).Google Scholar
Simpson, Herbert D., “Real Estate Speculation and the Depression,” American Economic Review, 23, suppl. (03 1933), pp. 163–71.Google Scholar
Soulé, George, Prosperity Decade (New York, 1947).Google Scholar
Temin, Peter, Did Monetary Forces Cause the Great Depression? (New York, 1976).Google Scholar
Temin, Peter, Lessons from the Great Depression (Cambridge, MA, 1989).Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States of America: Colonial Times to 1970, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1975).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Justice, Annual Reports of the Attorney General (Washington, DC, 1920–1940).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin No. 699: Changes in Cost of Living in Large Cities in the United States, 1913–41 (Washington, DC, 1941).Google Scholar
Weiss, Marc A., The Rise of the Community Builders (New York, 1987).Google Scholar
Weiss, Marc A., “Richard T. Ely and the Contribution of Economic Research to National Housing Policy, 1920–1940,” in Perkins, Edwin J., ed., Essays in Economic and Business History VII (Los Angeles, 1989).Google Scholar