Volume 2, No. 4 (Winter 1999)
Couch and Shughart’s book brings together a number of public-choice studies by other authors which have appeared in various journals, but have never been formally connected to each other in a single book. The authors also perform their own statistical tests, using data discovered by Leonard Arrington in 1969 that lists detailed New Deal expenses across states. Because The Political Economy of the New Deal depends upon interpretation of numerous statistical tests, it is not exactly the book you might want to give to your favorite history professor who insists that Roosevelt saved the country. Couch and Shughart demonstrate too many times that the New Deal inhibited economic growth and thus needlessly continued the misery first wrought by the policies of Herbert Hoover.
