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Socialism and Wages in the Recovery from the Great Depression in the United States and Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Peter Temin
Peter Temin
Affiliation:
The author is Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139.
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Abstract

The sustained unemployment in the United States during the recovery from the Great Depression has proved difficult to explain, as has the rapid elimination of unemployment in Germany. I argue that employment in the United States was restricted by high wages, which government policy raised above the level of efficiency wages. Socialist control and military expansion by the Nazis reduced unemployment, but also held down consumption.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , June 1990 , pp. 297 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1990

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