TY  - JOUR
AU  - Rosenbloom,Joshua L.
AU  - Sundstrom,William A.
TI  - The Sources of Regional Variation in the Severity of the Great Depression: Evidence from U.S. Manufacturing, 1919-1937
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6288
PY  - 1997
Y2  - November 1997
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6288
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6288.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Joshua Rosenbloom
Department of Economics
University of Kansas
Snow Hall 436
1460 Jayhawk Blvd
Lawrence, KS  66045-2113
Tel: 785/864-2839
Fax: 785/864-5270
E-Mail: jrosenbloom@ku.edu

William Sundstrom
Department of Economics
Santa Clara University
Santa Clara, CA 95053
E-Mail: wsundstrom@scu.edu
AB  - The severity of the Great Depression in the United States varied by region.  Most notably compared with the rest of the country, the South Atlantic states experienced a milder contraction while the Mountain states suffered more severely.  The impact of the contraction was more" uniform across other regions of the country--surprisingly so, considering the large regional" differences in industrial structure.  We employ data from the biennial Census of Manufactures on" 20 individual manufacturing industries disaggregated by state to analyze the relative" contributions of industry mix and location to regional variations in economic performance during" the period 1919-1937.  Industrial composition had a significant impact on regional employment" growth, with regions that concentrated on the production of durable goods or inputs to the" construction sector tending to fare worse than others.  Long-run regional trends also played an" important role in regional variation, and explain much of the South Atlantic region's more" favorable performance over the cycle.
ER  -