| dc.description.abstract | In this dissertation, I analyze the effects of expanding access to financial markets and securities during the early twentieth century and study how the expansion was affected by the Great Depression. The mechanisms for increasing access to financial markets studied take three main forms: employee stock ownership programs, government bonds, and stock brokerage offices. In the first chapter, I use the unanticipated crash of the stock market to study the effects of employee stock ownership programs on productivity during a financial crisis. I collect data on the duration of ESOPs and the institutional details of the programs from reports by the National Industrial Conference Board, annual company reports, and other primary sources to show the potential consequences of these programs in the 1930s. My second chapter analyzes the Liberty Loan Program of World War I which was the first large-scale government-sponsored saving initiative in which middle- and working-class households were encouraged to participate. Using the exogenous shock of the U.S. joining World War I and the government spending that ensued, a vector autoregression framework is developed and initial conditions are met which allow me to empirically study the short-run effects of issuing public debt versus increasing taxation. The third chapter documents the rapid expansion of New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) member firms during the 1920s and sheds light on possible effects of accessibility to the stock market as well as the competing roles of banks and brokerages. The novel data collected show patterns of member firm expansion concentrated in the Midwestern and Southern United States up until the Great Depression. | |
