Voluntary cooperative policy failed in 1920s recessions because federal spending was tiny

Evidence

Unemployment slowly rose throughout the 1920s, making its reduction a political priority for both the Harding and Hoover administrations. As noted in chapter 4, Hoover, first as secretary of commerce under Harding and then as president, sought both limited public works and voluntary cooperative solutions to the unemployment problem. Neither policy had much impact on the recessions of 1924 and 1926. Indeed, given that the federal expenditures in 1929 were only “about 2.5 percent of gross national product” this was hardly surprising. — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 506

Categorization

• XREF: The tiny-share-of-GDP point (2.5 percent) is a core argument in anti-austerity economics; connects to the austerity literature the reader is building, and to the ‘fiscal multiplier’ debate.