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During the 1930s Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal created a wide range of spending and loan programs. Brief descriptions are provided for the programs created by the New Deal and loan and spending programs that were in place before the New Deal. I worked with others to create a panel data set with estimates of the spending and lending by the programs each year from 1930 through 1940. The data aggregated to broad categories are reported here and the methods and sources used to construct the estimates of the spending and lending for the categories are discussed.

The present chapter analyzes land inequality's role in expanding mass literacy between North and South America. According to the central claims, countries with low land inequality, organized in family farms linked to commercial elites, such as the United States, have consistently shown higher literacy levels than latifundia countries with high land inequality and landed elites, such as Latin American countries, where literacy has tended to be blocked. To analyze this hypothesis, a new and original database of landginis, large holding ratio, and illiteracy rates has been calculated from the original censuses of each country, offering the most extensive collection of data on land inequality and literacy for America in this period. By employing panel ordinary least squares, fixed and random effects approach, it is found that, historically, countries with higher land inequality and latifundia systems had worse literacy levels. Nevertheless, not all Latin American countries had latifundia systems, high land inequality, and high illiteracy.

Furthermore, in the United States, some states had higher levels of land inequality and illiteracy than some Latin American regions. Moreover, the results suggest that land inequality accentuated illiteracy more among adults than younger ones. Land inequality acted as a barrier to literacy.

The European Marriage Pattern (EMP) was characteristic of preindustrial northwestern Europe and, in recent years, has been proposed as an important factor in the rise of the West. Yet, the origins and ultimate causes of the EMP remain obscure. We examine a novel hypothesis that the EMP can emerge in geographic environments with a lighter infectious disease burden. We overcome significant challenges facing empirical analysis of premodern societies. Using a large, individual-level database of marriages from the county of Kent, England, as well as a spatial regression discontinuity approach, we demonstrate a robust association between physical ecology and female age at first marriage (FAFM). We also find that the two potential channels proposed in the literature play starkly different roles in explaining our finding. Specifically, we fail to find that pastoralism plays any significant role in explaining the EMP, while the mortality rate channel accounts for a significant portion of the observed relationship between the disease environment and FAFM.

Richard Nixon and his advisors were aware of the inherent economic problems of wage–price controls: suppressed inflation, shortages, biases, avoidance, cheating, etc. Nixon's secret White House tapes reveal that Nixon disliked controls, never expecting them to extinguish inflation but only agreed to them to deflect attention from devaluation of the dollar. The political popularity of his controls changed his view of them, even producing a second freeze on retail prices in 1973. Importantly, the tapes reveal that Nixon pushed for inflationary monetary policies long after his 1972 reelection. Federal Reserve Chair, Arthur Burns, seemingly capitulated to Nixon's pressures by restraining interest rate increases in Federal Open Market Committee meetings. Politics won out over economics. Nixon and his advisors avoided addressing the reason for increasing inflation – the monetary expansion that Nixon pressured Arthur Burns to pursue in support of his 1972 re-election – an expansion that continued long after the election. This tragic policy failure was avoidable had the administration focused on controlling the true cause of the inflation.

Using annual mortality rates at the provincial level for men and women, we construct a Gini index to estimate changes in regional health inequalities since 1860 in Spain. We find a long steady decline in health inequality across provinces from 1860 until today, interrupted by World War I and the Spanish Civil War. Over the 40 years of Franco's rule, health inequality stopped its downward trend and rose. Today, regional differences across provinces are at their lowest historical levels.

This chapter relies on tax records to estimate the distribution of wealth in 19th century Lima. In particular, by using real estate tax records of 1836 and 1857, I estimate the distribution of wealth of proprietors of Lima prior and during the Guano Era. I find that wealth inequality among proprietors remained practically the same in those two years. During this period of economic bonanza, social mobility was possible but did not change the distribution of wealth. Wealth inequality remained practically the same across real estate proprietors. On the other hand, a comparison of the wealth of proprietors and the labor income of laborers suggests that inequality between proprietors and low-skilled workers increased during the Guano Era.

The US central government enactment of the 1866 Post Roads Act preempted state and municipal telegraph franchise entry barriers. Like present-day telecommunication companies, local franchise regulations were an entry barrier to US telegraph companies. These pre-1866 state and municipal telegraph laws were barriers of both entry and trade between states. Barriers that would of reduced the benefits of a common market if the barriers had not been preempted by the 1866 Post Roads Act. I document what laws were preempted by the 1866 Post Roads Act, explain how these laws increased entry barriers, provide evidence that preemption was enforced, and use two counterfactuals to calculate rough estimates of the decrease in entry costs from enforcement of the act.

The purpose of the study was to explore multidirectional flows of information over the course of an emergency. The following research questions were designed to guide this study: How does social media communication unfold over the course of an emergency at a cultural event? How does the nature and purpose of social media communication between all SM users change once an emergency occurs that affects event operations? How does the sentiment of social media communication change once an emergency occurs that affects event operations?

This study explored how social media was used to communicate about on-site emergencies at community cultural events. Three events were studied before, during and after an on-site emergency that disrupted the event. The Twitter and Facebook posts referencing emergencies that took place at Shambhala, Detonate and Zombicon were explored, and the nature and purpose of the posts revealed how online communication changed throughout the emergencies. The Social Mediated Crisis Communication Model guided this research and findings contribute to the model's ongoing development by incorporating additional theories and models.

The research demonstrates that social media communication shifts during an emergency and how communication moves through a network changes. Once an emergency is underway, communication increases and who is talking with whom changes. The nature and purpose of the social media conversation also evolves over the course of an emergency.

This study examined the social media communication during three on-site emergencies at three different cultural events. The findings contribute to the understanding of the Social Media Crisis Communication Model. Specifically, the research confirms the various actors who engage online but also shows that two-way communication is not common. As this study only examined three events experiencing three different emergencies, we have a limited understanding of how the type of emergencies affects social media communication.

The findings show the need for pre-crisis work by event organizers. It is necessary for the events to build trust with their online communities to ensure that when an emergency occurs the event will be seen as a trusted source. Also, staff training is needed to ensure people are prepared to handle the complexities of communicating online during an emergency. Issues like misinformation, influencers and the rapid pace of social media communication create a challenging environment for staff who are unprepared.

Emergencies can threaten the survival of event organizations and put the health and wellness of attendees, staff and other stakeholders at risk. The study of crisis communication in special event contexts has received little theoretical attention and yet it is an important area of event management practice. Social media is an essential part of communication strategies and should be integrated into emergency planning to best reach people when an emergency threatens the safety of those involved with the event. The Social Media Crisis Communication Model offers some insight, but understanding its relevance is necessary if it is to be integrated into event emergency management.