Barbara J. Alexander

Publications (4)0 Total impact

• Article: Designing a New America: The Origins of New Deal Planning, 1890 1943. By Patrick D. Reagan. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999. Pp. viii, 362. $40.00. Civilizing Capitalism: The National Consumers' League, Women's Activism, and Labor Standards in the New Deal Era. By Landon R. Y. Storrs. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Pp. viii, 392. $49.95, cloth; $19.95, paper.

  BARBARA J. ALEXANDER
  The Journal of Economic History. 02/2008; 60(04).
• Article: Essays on the Great Depression. By Ben S. Bernanke. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Pp. vii, 310. $35.00.

  Barbara J. Alexander
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  ABSTRACT: Ben S. Bernanke s Essays on the Great Depression make satisfying reading. Spanning microeconomic foundations and macroeconomic outcomes, the book pulls together articles containing some of the best and most conclusive research on the economic catastrophe of the 1930s. Bernanke s work, with co-authors Harold James, Ilian Mihov, James L. Powell, Martin Parkinson, and Kevin Carey, tackles key questions head-on; here the reader will find lucid treatment of the role played in the crisis by worldwide operation of the gold standard, as well as dissection of key developments in interwar labor-market institutions. The work is on the methodological forefront, with a number of careful comparative analyses across nations and industries.
  The Journal of Economic History. 01/2001; 61(01):247-249.
• Article: Failed Cooperation in Heterogeneous Industries Under the National Recovery Administration

  Barbara J. Alexander
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  ABSTRACT: I modify the uniform-price auction rules in allowing the seller to ration bidders. This allows me to provide a strategic foundation for underpricing when the seller has an interest in ownership dispersion. Moreover, many of the so-called "collusive-seeming" equilibria disappear.
  The Journal of Economic History. 01/1997; 57(02):322-344.
• Article: The Rational Racketeer: Pasta Protection in Depression Era Chicago.

  Barbara J Alexander
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  ABSTRACT: This study evaluates a Depression Era Chicago pasta racket against predictions generated by alternative economic models assuming varying levels of racketeer control over the industry. Models of an 'all-powerful" racketeer and of a racketeer in an omnipotent alliance with a dominant firm are rejected because the actual protection payments were much lower than those implied by the models. Moreover, the regressive structure of the payments made per macaroni press--a portion of the total racketeer-levied "tax"--was contrary to the models' predictions that the most efficient large-press firms would pay the highest tax rates. In contrast, all of theavailable information on the racket is consistent with a model in which the racketeer acts as a cartel ringmaster whose primary duties are to monitor and control members' output levels. In addition, the regressive tax would block entry by any displaced workers seeking to produce pasta using small, previously mothballed presses. Copyright 1997 by the University of Chicago.
  Journal of Law and Economics. 01/1997; 40(1):175-202.