Is there anything new left to be said about Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal? Economist Jason E. Taylor believes there is, in his study of the microeconomics of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA). The centerpiece of FDR's first one hundred days in office, the NIRA brought together business executives, workers, consumers, and federal officials to regulate wages, hours, and production in each of the nation's industries, setting up government-mandated codes of competition. In the depths of the Great Depression, the NIRA essentially suspended antitrust laws, allowing firms considerable latitude in setting wages and prices, seeking to counter what was commonly referred to as “cutthroat competition” and to raise prices and wages. The measure became law in 1933 and was found unconstitutional in 1935. Taylor seeks to offer a history of the NIRA that uncovers “a better sense of what the program really did by examining documents detailing how the NIRA affected the day-to-day lives of workers, business owners, and consumers during its nearly two-year run,” asking, in short, “What was the view of the program—and how did it affect economic decisions—on the ground?” (p. vii, italics in original). Taylor questions the view advanced by previous scholarship, which he argues portrayed the NIRA “as a monolithic macroeconomic program” (thus the book's title); Taylor instead urges scholars to appreciate the “vast heterogeneity within various aspects of the NIRA” (p. viii). He notes, for example, wide differences in the NIRA's impact, varying by the nature of the industry, geographic location, and questions of timing and implementation. Taylor is interested in whether the NIRA helped or delayed economic recovery, seeking to reconstruct its impact on both business and consumers between 1933 and 1935.

Taylor sketches a brief intellectual history of the views held by economic policymakers during the 1920s and the early months of the Great Depression, noting continuities and differences between the approach to the Depression tried by Herbert Hoover's administration (which relied on moral suasion) and that of the NIRA (which relied on the force of law). This sketch provides the backdrop to five more detailed chapters, which offer case studies of the early period of code negotiation and implementation, federal efforts at mandating industry compliance with the competition codes (the famous “Blue Eagle” logo displayed by participating businesses), and the great heterogeneity of codes with respect to specific industries. In a pair of chapters, Taylor next offers a detailed investigation of the breakdown in the NIRA's ability to compel firms to follow the codes, demonstrating the impact of this “compliance crisis” on wages, prices, productivity, and labor. The book concludes with an assessment of the unanimous Supreme Court decision that struck down the NIRA's codes of competition, A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935). In keeping with his focus on the heterogeneity of the NIRA's influence, Taylor uses the Schechter decision to explore the act's differential impacts on a variety of industries. In general, industries that had adopted longer and more complicated codes of competition experienced what Taylor terms “a larger post-Schechter output boom” than did industries governed by simpler codes (p. 171).

Taylor relies on research in the NIRA records, held at the National Archives in Record Group 9, and supplements these primary sources with research in contemporaneous newspapers and periodicals. Taylor carefully guides the reader through the regression analysis that underpins his argument for the heterogeneity of the NIRA's impact on the economy, making the stakes of his approach clear even to those unfamiliar with statistical modeling. While some readers might appreciate more direct engagement with previous historical work on the NIRA—classic accounts by Ellis Hawley and Donald Brand make brief appearances; Alan Brinkley's The End of Reform (1995) and Meg Jacobs's Pocketbook Politics (2005) do not—Taylor's account provides a wealth of detail about the act's codes of competition. His analysis merits close engagement from economic historians; his careful attention to the variegated nature of American industries during the economy of the early 1930s will be appreciated by all who are interested in the history of business during the Great Depression and New Deal.

There can always be something new to say about every historical topic. In many respects, Taylor's book serves as a reminder of Dutch historian Pieter Geyl's famous maxim: “History is an argument without end.”