On the Similarities between the 1932 Harvard Memorandum and the Chicago Antidepression Recommendations

Both the 1932 Harvard and Chicago recommendations for dealing with the Great Depression include vigorous open market purchases by the Fed; federal government deficit spending, including public works, financed by new money creation; reduction in tariffs; and the cancellation of inter-allied debts. The similarities are no coincidence, since both documents draw mostly from well-known classical and early neoclassical monetary analysis and free trade principles, and partially from Keynes's pre-1936 work. The classical principles are embodied in then-familiar texts by John Stuart Mill, Alfred Marshall, Irving Fisher, and Frank Taussig. Memoranda typically do not spell out their theoretical sources.