How the Republicans Caused the Stock Market Crash of 1929

About the Book

This book presents an alternative view of the Stock Market Boom and Crash of 1929 as having resulted from government intervention, specifically from a case of flawed government policy in the form of the Republican party's 1928 election promise of an upward tariff revision―the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill. As such, the stock market in particular and the market mechanism in general were not to blame, government was. Where the market was to blame, however, was in its reaction to the massive technology shock that was electric power-based extremely-high-throughput, continuous-flow mass production techniques (EHTCFPT) pioneered at the Ford Motor Company's Highland Park plant in Detroit, Michigan. Specifically, aggregate income and expenditure failed to rise commensurately with vastly increased productive capacity, resulting in under income.

About the Author

Bernard C. Beaudreau is Professor of Economics at Université Laval, Quebec City, Canada. He is the author of Mass Production, the Stock Market Crash, and the Great Depression: the Macroeconomics of Electrification (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996).