Futures prices were well above spot prices for most commodities during most of the Great Depression; evidently the spectacular declines in agricultural prices caught many people by surprise. Based on the historical correlations between commodity prices and consumer prices, commodity markets anticipated stable consumer prices during the first year of the Great Depression. The dramatic drop in nominal Treasury-bill yields thus should be read as a drop in ex ante real rates. Later in the Great Depression, markets anticipated deflation, but not as severe as actually occurred.

The 1940's were a turning point in married women's labor-force participation, leading many to credit World War II with spurring economic and social change. This paper uses two retrospective surveys, from 1944 and 1951, to show that half of all married women employed in 1950 were working in 1940, and more than half of the decade's new entrants joined after the war. Of all wartime entrants, the majority exited after 1944 but before 1950. The war had several significant indirect impacts on women's employment, but its direct influence appears to have been more modest.

In recent years, the "leverage theory" of tied good sales has faced heavy and influential criticism. In an important sense, though, the models used by its critics are actually incapable of addressing the leverage theory's central concerns. Here I reconsider the leverage hypothesis and argue that tying can indeed serve as a mechanism for leveraging market power. The mechanism through which this leverage occurs, its profitability, and its welfare implications are discussed in detail.