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Institutional Choice and the Development of U.S. Agricultural Policies in the 1920s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Elizabeth Hoffman  and
Gary D. Libecap
Elizabeth Hoffman
Affiliation:
The author are Professors of Economics, University of Arizona, Tucson AZ 8571
Gary D. Libecap
Affiliation:
The author are Professors of Economics, University of Arizona, Tucson AZ 8571
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Abstract

We examine U.S. agricultural policy as an institutional choice. Price controls in World War I had demonstrated the government's influence in markets, and with falling crop prices in the 1920s, farmers appealed to the federal government. The federal government was large enough by then to intervene in variou ways. It could have assisted private cooperatives by providing antitrust exemptions, market information, and enforcement of cooperative rules or intervened directly with mandatory output reductions and targeted prices. The policies adopted were influenced by crop-specific characteristics and broader market conditions affecting the success of private cooperatives.

Type
Papers Presented at the Fiftieth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , June 1991 , pp. 397 - 411
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1991

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References

We would like to thank Brian Binger, Price Fishback, Shawn Kantor, Paul Rhode, Barbara Sands, and participants at the 1990 NBER/DAE Summer Institute and the University of Arizona Economic History Workshop for helpful comments. Valuable research assistance was provided by Bradley Cloud, Douglas Denney, Chrissy Levering, and Michael Thompson. Funding was provided by NSF Grant SES-8920965.Google Scholar

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