This paper investigates the factors explaining significant policy change by studying how bipartisan support developed to sustain the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (RTAA) of 1934.

The severity of the Great Depression was due to the loss of confidence engendered by the collapse of the banking system in Winter 1933. Dissatisfaction with Federal Reserve actions led President Hoover and the Congress in January 1932 to create the Reconstruction Finance Corporation that was...

We analyze Senate roll-call votes concerning tariffs on specific goods in order to understand the economic and political factors influencing the passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930.

Despite the widespread view from Berle and Means (1932) onward that ownership of firms in increasingly separated from managerial control of those firms, almost no time series research exists to address this issue. Using the earliest available source on ownership for a large cross-section of US...