Reflections on Alexander Field’s <i>The Economic Consequences of U.S. Mobilization for the Second World War</i>: <i>An Introduction</i>

In his persuasively argued and provocative new book, Alexander Field attacks the frequently made claim that there was a series of production miracles in the United States during World War II.He begins with carefully constructed estimates of total factor productivity (TFP).He finds, surprisingly for those of us reared on the production-miracle narrative, that TFP declined during the war.This is a counterpoint to his equally surprising finding that TFP rose in the Great Depression.But why did TFP decline during the war?Partly, the decline was simply the result of the inevitable temporary fall in output that occurs when production is shifted from one product to another.Field gives the example of the Ford Motor Company's shift from Model Ts to Model As in 1927.The shift involved a complete retooling of Ford's production line.As a result, production fell from about 1.55 million automobiles in 1926 to 400 thousand in 1927.But production of the Model A soon soared.By February 1929, one million had been sold.Something similar was happening on an economy-wide scale, Field argues, in World War II.However, the war economy faced many additional problems that undermined productivity that Field documents.These include the cutoff or severe reduction of supplies of natural rubber, petroleum for Northeastern refineries, and other raw materials; a severe labor shortage that developed toward the end of the war; and so on.In chapters on these problems Field provides detailed narrative histories that explain his finding that TFP declined.These studies, I should add, reflect a good deal of old-school scholarship at its best.Field, clearly, has read and digested a mountain of material: academic books and articles, government reports, memoirs of participants, minutes of the meetings of government agencies, data accumulated by government agencies, and more.Few economic historians will read every word and examine every graph and table.But many will find the book useful as a source of information about issues that they are concerned with.