Wartime Prosperity? A Reassessment of the U.S. Economy in the 1940s

@article{Higgs1992WartimePA,
  title={Wartime Prosperity? A Reassessment of the U.S. Economy in the 1940s},
  author={Robert J. Higgs},
  journal={The Journal of Economic History},
  year={1992},
  volume={52},
  pages={41 - 60}
}
  • R. Higgs
  • Published 1 March 1992
  • Economics
  • The Journal of Economic History
Relying on standard measures of macroeconomic performance, historians and economists believe that “war prosperity” prevailed in the United States during World War II. This belief is ill-founded, because it does not recognize that the United States had a command economy during the war. From 1942 to 1946 some macroeconomic performance measures are statistically inaccurate; others are conceptually inappropriate. A better grounded interpretation is that during the war the economy was a huge arsenal… 
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