Jason E Taylor – författare

The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) was enacted by Congress in June of 1933 to assist the nation's recovery during the Great Depression. Its passage ushered in a unique experiment in US economic history: under the NIRA, the federal government explicitly supported, and in some cases enforced, alliances within industries. Antitrust laws were suspended, and companies were required to agree upon industry-level "codes of fair competition" that regulated wages and hours and could implement anti-competitive provisions such as those fixing prices, establishing production quotas, and imposing restrictions on new productive capacity.The NIRA is generally viewed as a monolithic program, its dramatic and sweeping effects best measurable through a macroeconomic lens. In this pioneering book, however, Jason E. Taylor examines the act instead using microeconomic tools, probing the uneven implementation of the act's codes and the radical heterogeneity of its impact across industries and time. Deconstructing the Monolith employs a mixture of archival and empirical research to enrich our understanding of how the program affected the behavior and well-being of workers and firms during the two years NIRA existed as well as in the period immediately following its demise.

The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) was enacted by Congress in June of 1933 to assist the nation’s recovery during the Great Depression. Its passage ushered in a unique experiment in US economic history: under the NIRA, the federal government explicitly supported, and in some cases enforced, alliances within industries. Antitrust laws were suspended, and companies were required to agree upon industry-level “codes of fair competition” that regulated wages and hours and could implement anti-competitive provisions such as those fixing prices, establishing production quotas, and imposing restrictions on new productive capacity.             The NIRA is generally viewed as a monolithic program, its dramatic and sweeping effects best measurable through a macroeconomic lens. In this pioneering book, however, Jason E. Taylor examines the act instead using microeconomic tools, probing the uneven implementation of the act’s codes and the radical heterogeneity of its impact across industries and time. Deconstructing the Monolith employs a mixture of archival and empirical research to enrich our understanding of how the program affected the behavior and well-being of workers and firms during the two years NIRA existed as well as in the period immediately following its demise.  

During the final stages of Prohibition, the US government allowed the consumption and sale of “non-intoxicating” beer, which was at or below 3.2% alcohol-by-weight. Beer’s return—permitted with an eye toward job creation during the Great Depression—was one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s earliest New Deal policies. In this book, economic historian Jason E. Taylor takes readers through the rapid resurgence of American breweries and shows how beer helped spark a sharp recovery in the spring of 1933.Taylor begins with stories of how the nation’s 1,400 breweries were decimated by the onset of Prohibition in 1920. He then turns to the frothy debates that led Congress to declare 3.2 beer “non-intoxicating,” and hence allowable under Prohibition. While April 7th is now celebrated as “National Beer Day,” the original April 7th—when legal beer returned after more than 13 years away—brought raucous scenes that make today’s Mardi Gras festivities seem tame by comparison.The Brew Deal shares stories of breweries, people, politics, perseverance, and the various roles that 3.2 beer has played in the evolving American beer scene.