Evan Osborne
(937) 775-4599
260N Rike
evan.osborne@wright.edu
I.
College: Raj Soin College of Business
Department: Economics
II. Course information
The Great Depression
UH 400
Course credit hours: 4
III. Course registration
Prerequisites: EC 204 and 205, or EC 200, or consent of instructor
IV. Student learning outcomes
Students will understand the economics, politics, and history of the Great Depression in the United States
and worldwide.
V. Course materials
Text : None.
Readings : Available from library course reserves or directly from the Web, and listed below.
VI. Method of instruction – Lecture, in-class debate.
VII. Evaluation and policy
There will be one midterm exam, a final, three debates and two papers based on those three
debates. Both exams are essay. The midterm is in class on Wednesday, Feb. 3, and the final is
Wednesday, March 17, 3:15-5:15.
The debates will be held for the entire class on Fri., Jan. 22, Mon., Feb. 8 and Wed., Feb. 24. The
debate and the paper are group projects. Teams of three or four students (a total of six teams) will be
assigned to debate one of three issues. (If possible, students should construct their own teams. If not, I
will assign them.) To make sure all debate participants have the same amount of time to prepare, the
resolution for the next debate will be announced on the day of the current debate, and the resolution for
the first debate will be announced as soon as teams are assembled. The debate format is as follows:
For the resolution: eight minutes
Against the resolution: eight minutes
Each team then makes a four-minute rebuttal.
Each team has a total of seven minutes to prepare between speeches. (Note: the first speech for each team
should be prepared in advance.)
The remainder of the time will be devoted to, in order: questions from the other team; questions from the
instructor; questions from the rest of the class; vote on whether the resolution is agreed to.
Performance in the debate will be judged on preparation, quality of logic and evidence and, where
appropriate, moral reasoning.
Each student will be responsible for two debate papers, namely papers taking a stand for or against the
resolutions in the debates in which they do not directly participate. For example, two teams will
participate in the first debate, so that four teams do not participate. Members of those four teams will be
responsible for writing individual papers indicating whether in their judgment the resolution should or
should not be agreed to. These papers may be revised as often as students like. Any rough draft handed
in will be available for pickup within 48 hours. (Drafts handed in Friday are available for pickup the
subsequent Monday.) The papers must be logically reasoned decisions on the topic of the prior debate.
External research may be and indeed is encouraged to be done. A minimum of five double-spaced pages
is generally expected. These papers are judged by (a) their ability to intelligently discuss issues raised in
the debate; (2) their familiarity with relevant class material; (c) the soundness of their logic and moral
reasoning, including recognition of potential weaknesses in their own argument, and the evidence they are
using to draw their conclusions. Each paper is due on the day of the next debate. Papers associated with
the final debate are due on the last day of class, Friday, March 12.
Attendance is not part of the course grade. It is calculated as follows:
Final exam: 40%
Midterm exam: 20%
Debate-related papers: 15 percent each;
Performance in debate: 10 percent. (Note: all team members receive same grade. Performance is judged
on preparation, research, and an ability to present the key issues in a logical way. “Winning” the debate is
not part of a successful grade per se.)
VIII. Grading policy
I hand back grades as shares of 100 points, and compute a weighted average of them according to the
formula above. Course grades are given by the standard formula:
A: 90-100 point weighted average
B: 80-89 point weighted average
C: 70-79 point weighted average
D: 60-69 point weighted average
F: Less than 60-point weighted average
IX. Course schedule and outline
Schedule (Note: extremely approximate)
I.
Introduction – depression impressions.
II.
Prologue – the macroeconomy before macroeconomics.
A. The great crash of 1893-1896.
B. The crash immediately after World War I.
C. The roaring 1920s.
III.
The greater crash of 1929-1933.
A.
Who was Herbert Hoover?
B. What happened, in numbers, words and pictures, and what the US government
tried to do about it.
C. Theories of the great crash:
1. The uncertainty theory
2. The monetary theory
3.
IV.
Coordination failure – the coming of John Maynard Keynes, and what he
did and didn’t believe.
The first, collectivist New Deal
A.
Who was Franklin Delano Roosevelt?
B. The 100-day overturning of the American economy – of bank holidays, gold
seizures, government spending and stock-market villains.
Reading
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Inaugural address, March 4, 1933
(http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/fdrfirstinaugural.html).
“Rising Debt a Threat to Japanese Economy,” The New York Times, Oct. 21,
2009.
C. The collectivization of America -- the National Industrial Recovery Act and
the Agricultural Adjustment Act.
Readings:
Friedrich Hayek, The Uses of Knowledge in Society.
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (Ch. 25).
D. The Supreme Court and the first New Deal.
V.
The second, class-warfare New Deal
A. The brief recovery, 1935-1937
B. Roosevelt’s second-term policies, and their effect.
C. Organized labor in the second New Deal.
D. The Supreme Court accepts the New Deal.
Reading:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Fireside Chat on Reorganization of the Judiciary,
March 9, 1937
VI.
The Great Depression around the world, and what we can learn from it.
A. Great Britain
B. France
C. Japan
D. Canada
E. China
VII.
The political philosophy of the New Deal; of the New Deal and collectivism,
individualism, and human rights.
A. What is fascism?
B. The economics of fascism in Italy and Germany
C. To what extent was the New Deal collectivist, fascist or something else?
1.
Progenitors of fascism? The Progressive era, especially the great
planning experiment of World War I
2.
The New Deal as the product of an era in world history
D. The authoritarian side of the New Deal
1.
The National Recovery Administration
2. The militarism of the Civilian Conservation Corps
3. Propaganda
4. Utopianism
VIII.
Denouement – the New Deal and its legacy of a changed country.
Readings:
Wendell Wilkie, nomination-acceptance speech, August 17, 1940.
“Higher Jobless Rates Could be the New Normal,” Associated Press, Oct. 19,
2009.