Mt.Hamilton Society - Alex Field on Econ consequences of WW2

This talk was originally scheduled in October 2024, but did not happen then. This is the rescheduled event.

The word miracle is often the first that comes to mind when thinking about U.S. economic performance during the Second World War. Conventional narratives feature doom and gloom throughout the Great Depression. Then Pearl Harbor is attacked, and like a phoenix rising from the ashes the U.S. economy generates untold quantities of munitions. The Allies win, and after the war, the US dominates the world economy, benefitting from all the lessons learned during from its production successes, while its postwar competitors -- erstwhile allies and enemies alike -- - lie in smoldering ruins.

Alex Field provides an important corrective to this narrative. The U.S. did produce prodigious amounts of munitions – over 300,000 aircraft between 1940 and 1945. But its record with respect to productivity (output per unit input) was much weaker. Manufacturing productivity declined as the economy transitioned quickly from surplus to shortage conditions. Shortages were driven not just by the surge of military spending, but also by the sudden, radical, and ultimately temporary change in the product mix. Shortages meant complementary inputs could not be obtained immediately, forcing both labor and physical capital to lie temporarily idle, making production intermittency an endemic affliction in wartime manufacturing.

Though the continental United States suffered little direct harm from enemy attack, German U-boats visited massive disruption of petroleum deliveries to the Eastern seaboard, forcing more expensive overland transport from East Texas and Louisiana via tank car, barge, and ultimately new pipelines. The Japanese threw an even bigger wrench into the economy when, after overrunning Singapore in February 1942, they cut off 97 percent of the supply of natural rubber, the one strategic material for which the U.S. had no domestic supply, little opportunities for substitution in many critical end products, and very few alternate sources of latex once the Southeast Asian supply was cut off.

U.S. world economic dominance in 1948? Almost all of this was due to a productivity advantage that the country had already opened up by 1941. It turns out that behind the backdrop of double-digit unemployment the Depression years (1929-41) had, perhaps surprisingly, experienced very rapid rates of technological advance, helping also to explain production success during the war.

Please join us for a provocative presentation of some of Professor Field’s latest research.

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Alexander Field is the Michel and Mary Orradre Professor of Economics at Santa Clara University. Over the past two decades his main research has been on U.S. productivity growth during the second quarter of the twentieth century. In 2011 he published A Great Leap Forward: 1930s Depression and U.S. Economic Growth (Yale), selected that year as a Choice Outstanding Economic Title in the Economics Area. In 2012 it won the Alice Hansen Jones Biennial Book Prize as well as the Alpha Sigma Nu National Book Award in the Social Sciences. His new book, The Economic Consequences of U.S. Mobilization for the Second World War was published by Yale in 2022. Professor Field has served as a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar,,as Executive Director of the Economic History Association, and in a variety of other editorial and administrative capacities including Acting Academic Vice President and Acting Dean of the Business School at Santa Clara. He has a Bachelor's degree from Harvard, a doctorate from Berkeley, and taught previously at Stanford University.

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Please join the Mont Hamilton Society in this 16th year since our founding, to hear and interact with Alexander Field on this important topic that concerns us all.

This meeting will be in-person for no more than 20 individuals only, including lunch. We think you will enjoy the intellectual stimulation, the edification, the camaraderie, and to meet new people.

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About the Mont Hamilton Society - In 1947 Friedrich Hayek, an economist and social philosopher who later won the Nobel Prize, organized a meeting at Mt. Pelerin, a resort in Switzerland. Hayek convened a modest sized group of (39) economists, historians, philosophers and journalists for the purpose of supporting research and discussion on the role of markets vs. government. The Mont Pelerin Society is now a large and prestigious international organization.

In 2009, a group of friends began to meet in San Jose for the purposes of improving their understanding of economic theory, applying it to current events and sharing their understanding with others as well as promoting a joyous sense of camaraderie. In recognition of the example set by the Mont Pelerin Society, they decided to name their group the Mont Hamilton Society. Members understand the realities of the business world, share an interest in economic thinking, and value civil discourse from a variety of perspectives. Faculty and students from the Department of Economics at San Jose State University are frequent guests at Society meetings. In June 2017 the Mont Hamilton Society became the San Jose affiliate chapter of the Bastiat Society, an AIER.org project, hence our name from then till late last year was: Mont Hamilton/Bastiat Society. However AIER decided late in 2024 to discontinue the Bastiat Society program, so we are reverting to our original name: The Mont Hamilton Society and continuing on our own.

There are no membership fees or organizational meetings at this time, but all interested are encouraged to join and participate.

If you would like to be on our invitations list, or know someone else who might like to receive notice of our 7 - 10 (or more - during pre-covid years) luncheons or other events per year, or if you have any questions, please send an email to:

[email protected]

You or your suggested contact(s) will receive an announcement/invitation and a reminder or two for each event as they are scheduled, or a prompt answer to your question/s.

These events are discussions, not standard lectures. To facilitate this, the in-person gatherings before Covid Lockdowns were kept "small," typically 12 - 24 individuals only. Some presentations are video recorded, depending on demand. Constructive feedback on our events and interest in recordings is welcome, since we are continuing to evolve our meeting formats.

Thank you for your interest.

Host or Publisher Mont Hamilton/Bastiat Society