Z: **Archived from Fall 2007**: American Economic History: Economics 113

Mock Second Midterm: Econ 113: American Economic History: Fall 2007

(A) One-Sentence Identifications: Briefly state the importance of each of the following people/places/things/concepts for American economic history (40 pts):

Henry Ford; Crash of 1929; New Deal; Bretton Woods; Gold Standard; General Motors; Jim Crow; National Industrial Recovery Act; National Labor Relations Act; Civil Rights Act of 1964; Plessy v. Ferguson; John Maynard Keynes; Milton Friedman; Mass Production; World War II; Federal Reserve; Morrill Land Grant Colleges; Gilded Age; Wage Discrimination; Sharecropping.

(B) One-Paragraph Discussions: Write one paragraph (three to six sentences) answering each of the following questions (40 pts):

1. How was America different from other more-or-less equally developed countries in sending its children to high school in the first half of the twentieth century?
2. What role did the stock market crash of 1929 play in bringing on the Great Depression of 1929-1941?
3. Why did the distribution of income among white male Americans become so much more equal between the 1920s and the 1960s?
4. Chicago-school economists tend to argue that large-scale persistent discrimination has small economic effects unless it is supported and enforced by the government. Do you think this is accurate?
5. What role did the United States play in putting western Europe on the right economic track (or a right economic track) in the years after World War II?

(C) Essay: Write an essay on one of the two following topics (40 pts):

1. What, in your view, are the similarities and differences in economic discrimination against women and against African-Americans since 1865? To what extent is it helpful and insightful to view these two phenomena as analogous? To what extent is it misleading and destructive?

2. The Great Depression and the political reaction to it changed the American economy. How did these change the American economy? To what extent were the changes permanent?

Mock Midterm: Econ 113: American Economic History: Fall 2007

(A) One-Sentence Identifications: Briefly state the importance of each of the following people/places/things/concepts for American economic history:

Henry Hudson; Christopher Columbus; Mississippi River; cotton gin; Sutter's Mill; tobacco; corn; smallpox; Boston; Philadelphia; Alexander Hamilton; Andrew Jackson; Erie Canal; New York Central Railroad; Central Pacific Railroad; Ohio River; beaver fur; interchangable parts; tariff; New Orleans.

(B) One-Paragraph Discussions: Write one paragraph (three to six sentences) answering each of the following questions:

Why does Jared Diamond believe that inventing agricuture was a very bad thing? Why couldn't the Aztecs and the Incas repel the Spanish invasions? How would the U.S. economy have been different in 1860 if the U.S. government had followed a zero-tariff policy? How would the U.S. economy have been different in 1860 if the cotton gin had never been invented? Were there important economic reasons for the American Revolution?

(C) Essay: Write an essay on one of the two following topics:

1. What, in your view, are the main important themes of pre-1865 American economic history? What is the most important theme? And why?
2. As of the middle of the nineteenth century, the American economy was almost universally regarded as successful. What were the major aspects of this economic success? Why did they come to pass--why did so much go so right for the American economy?