TY  - JOUR
AU  - Kang,Sung Won
AU  - Rockoff,Hugh
TI  - Capitalizing Patriotism: The Liberty Loans of World War I
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11919
PY  - 2006
Y2  - January 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11919
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11919.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
sungwon Kang
Samsung Economic Research Institute
7th floor, Kukje Center Building
191, Hangangro 2-Ga, Youngsan-Gu
Seoul, Korea 140-702
Tel: 82-2-3780-8531
Fax: 82-2-3780-8008
E-Mail: sungwon90.kang@samsung.com

Hugh Rockoff
Department of Economics
75 Hamilton Street
Rutgers University
College Avenue Campus
New Brunswick, NJ  08901-1248
Tel: 609/897-0117
Fax: 732/932-7416
E-Mail: rockoff@fas-econ.rutgers.edu
AB  - In World War I the Secretary of the Treasury, William Gibbs McAdoo, hoped to create a broad market for government bonds, the famous Liberty Loans, by following an aggressive policy of "capitalizing patriotism." He called on everyone from Wall Street bankers to the Boy Scouts to volunteer for the campaigns to sell the bonds. He helped recruit the nation's best known artists to draw posters depicting the contribution to the war effort to be made by buying bonds, and he organized giant bond rallies featuring Hollywood stars such as Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Charlie Chaplin. These efforts, however, enjoyed little success. The yields on the Liberty bonds were kept low mainly by making the bonds tax exempt and by making sure that a large proportion of them was purchased directly or indirectly by the Federal Reserve. Patriotism proved to be a weak offset to normal market forces.
ER  -