Stimulus on the Home Front: the State-Level Effects of WWII Spending

Authors

Gillian Brunet, Smith CollegeFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

Publication Title

Review of Economics and Statistics

Abstract

I use newly-digitized contract data on U.S. war production spending over 1940-1945 to analyze the macroeconomic effects of U.S. military spending in World War II. I find personal income multipliers of 0.34 over two years and 0.49 over three years. Personal income multipliers may substantially understate GDP multipliers, perhaps by as much as 50%. Employment estimates imply costs per job-year over the same time horizons of $405,013 and $232,268 in 2015 dollars, suggesting job creation was limited. I also find evidence of negative scale effects: larger positive spending shocks are associated with systematically smaller multiplier estimates.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Rights

Licensed to Smith College and distributed CC-BY 4.0 under the Smith College Faculty Open Access Policy.

Comments

Peer reviewed accepted manuscript.

Recommended Citation

Brunet, Gillian, "Stimulus on the Home Front: the State-Level Effects of WWII Spending" (2024). Economics: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/eco_facpubs/111