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α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
Agricultural distress in the 1920s is routinely quoted among the causes of the Great Depression. This article challenges the conventional wisdom. World agriculture was not plagued by overproduction and falling terms of trade. The indebtedness of American farmers, a legacy of the boom years 1918–1921, did jeopardize the rural banks, but the relation between their crises, the banking panic of 1930, and the Great Depression is tenuous at best.