bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Cooperation and Rivalry in the International Steel Cartel, 1926–1933
Authors: Barbezat Daniel
Published: September 2009

The International Steel Cartel of 1926 was a necessary step toward a coordinated system of cartels to govern steel exports. Like the present industrial policies of the European Community, however, differences in the aims of the domestic industries caused rivalry among the members of the 1926 agreement. Although thecartel was not able to fix its members' production shares, it was able to limit tradebetween them, which allowed for the formation and operation of their domesticcartels.
Male-Female Wage Discrimination in Nineteenth-Century France
Authors: Cox Donald , Nye John Vincent
Published: September 2009

Traditional male-female wage discrimination measures rely on residuals from earnings functions that standardize for observable characteristics. But many productivity determinants are unobservable, and existing proxies for them are often difficult to interpret. Instead of using the earnings-function approach, we estimate production functions, using data from the 1839–45 and 1860–65 French industry censuses for textiles. While most of our findings cast doubt on the idea of discrimination against women in pay, they do not rule out some other forms of discrimination, such as occupational segregation.
The Economics of Exhaustion, the Postan Thesis, and the Agricultural Revolution
Authors: Clark Gregory
Published: September 2009

The Postan thesis is that medieval agriculture had low yields because there was insufficient pasture to keep the arable land fertile. This argument (and variants of it) has become an orthodox technological explanation for low preindustrial yields. Yet the thesis, on its face, implies that early cultivators were ignorant, irrational, or completely custom bound. This article develops a revised Postan thesis, in which medieval cultivators knew that pasture restored fertility but were unwilling to employ it. Impatience made this way of increasing yields unattractive because it required large capital investments in the soil nitrogen stock.
Private Credit Markets in Paris, 1690–1840
Authors: Hoffman Philip T. , Postel-Vinay Gilles , Rosenthal Jean-Laurent
Published: September 2009

Relying on a large sample of private and public loan contracts taken from Parisian notarial records, this article examines the private borrowers and lenders who participated in the credit market between 1690 and 1840. It explains the important role notaries played in the market, describes the types of loans available to borrowers and lenders, stresses the importance of the life cycle in explaining the recourse to indebtedness, and ends with a discussion of the difficulties lenders had in assessing creditworthiness.
Market Organization, Protection, and Vertical Integration: German Cotton Textiles before 1914
Authors: Brown John C.
Published: September 2009

This article examines the causes for the relatively high degree of vertical integration in the German cotton textile industry before 1914. Underdeveloped input and output markets exposed German textile firms to price risks not faced by English firms that had access to highly-developed cotton, yarn, and cloth markets. In addition, tariff protection may have prompted integration by its impact on market development. In the weaving sector in particular, the response to this structure of markets was a more diversified product line and integration of both spinning and weaving.
Educational Choice in the Era Before Free Public Schooling: Evidence from German Immigrant Children in Pennsylvania, 1771–1817
Authors: Grubb Farley
Published: September 2009

Education clauses in 3,478 immigrant servant contracts are used to measure the incidence of schooling versus informal instruction by location, age, and sex. The proportion of servants receiving education was high, over 20 percent being taught outside of schools. Education expanded between 1770 and 1800 through a net increase in schooling rather than because of a substitution of schooling for informal instruction. In the 1770s formal schooling in rural areas lagged behind that in urban, but achieved parity by 1800. Little difference in education was found based on gender.
Uncontrolled Land Development and the Duration of the Depression in the United States
Authors: Field Alexander James
Published: September 2009

Aggregate economic activity was heavily influenced by the construction sector's expansion, collapse, and failure to revive during the interwar years. The 1920s building boom was the first to respond to the potential of the automobile and the last to be largely unplanned. Its uncoordinated character slowed the growth of full employment output toward the end of the 1920s. The physical and legal detritus of unregulated land development posed continuing obstacles to recovery during the second half of the 1930s.
Regulation and Bank Failures: New Evidence from the Agricultural Collapse of the 1920s
Authors: Wheelock David C.
Published: September 2009

This article examines the contribution of government policies to the high number of bank failures in the United States during the 1920s. In the state of Kansas, which had a system of voluntary deposit insurance and where branch banking was strictly prohibited, bank failure rates were highest in counties suffering the greatest agricultural distress and where deposit insurance system membership was highest. The evidence for Kansas illustrates how prohibitions on branch banking caused unit banks to be especially vulnerable to local economic shocks and suggests that deposit insurance caused more bank failures than would have occurred otherwise.
Responding to Relative Decline: The Plank Road Boom of Antebellum New York
Authors: Majewski John , Baer Christopher , Klein Daniel B.
Published: September 2009

From 1847 to 1853 New Yorkers built more than 3,500 miles of wooden roads. Financed primarily by residents of declining rural townships, plank roads were seen as a means of linking isolated areas to the canal and railroad network. A broad range of individuals invested in the roads, suggesting that the drive for bigger markets was supported by a large cross section of the population. Considerable community spirit animated the movement, indicating that New Yorkers used the social capital of the community to reach their entrepreneurial aspirations.
Keynes Versus Churchill: Revaluation and British Unemployment in the 1920s
Authors: Wolcott Susan
Published: September 2009

The textbook explanation for Britain's high unemployment in the 1920s is that the return to gold at $4.86 left the currency overvalued. Recent estimates suggest that an 11 percent devaluation would have eliminated roughly half the unemployment in 1925. This article questions the validity of that conclusion. It measures the power of exchange rate devaluations to decrease unemployment in the context of sectorally distinct labor markets. The results suggest that though a devaluation would have been helpful, eliminating half of 1925's unemployment would have required one much greater than 11 percent and would have caused significant price pressures.
Competition in a Network Industry: The Telephone Industry, 1894–1910
Authors: Gabel David
Published: September 2009

The re-emergence of AT&T as the dominant firm in the telephone industry resulted from its adopting a predatory response to entrants. AT&T's strategy was effective because government regulations and capital market imperfections provided the incumbent with a first-mover advantage that prevented challengers from entering simultaneously in all markets.
The Economic Lag of Central and Eastern Europe: Income Estimates for the Habsburg Successor States, 1870–1910
Authors: Good David F.
Published: September 2009

The lack of nineteenth-century national income figures for the small states of present-day Central and Eastern Europe hampers studies of long-term economic development in the region. This article fills the gap by using a proxy approach to estimate GDP per capita on the territories of the Habsburg successor states for the period 1870 to 1910. The results give added support for more optimistic interpretations of the region's performance under Habsburg rule. More importantly, they can be linked to national income figures for later years and used directly in comparisons of international income levels between 1870 and 1987.
The Jurisprudence of American Slave Sales
Authors: Wahl Jenny B.
Published: September 2009

An analysis of all appellate cases involving slave-sales reveals that southern courts helped minimize the costs of trading in slaves. Slave-sales law also surpassed other contemporaneous commercial law in sophistication. Why? Greater information gaps between slave buyers and sellers called for more complex institutional support. The enormous property value embodied by slaves also led to more litigation, greater need for settled law, and a more even match of power between plaintiff and defendant. Additionally, legal rules surrounding slave sales substituted for the employment law governing free-labor markets.
The Modern Silk Road: The Global Raw-Silk Market, 1850–1930
Authors: Ma Debin
Published: September 2009

From the mid-nineteenth century, the raw-silk trade served as the most important trade linkage between the then still largely closed economies of East Asia and the industrialized West. This article traces the evolution of the global raw-silk market during the period 1850 through 1930. Using comprehensive data on raw-silk prices and quantities and applying co-integration techniques, I find a well-integrated global raw-silk market evolved during this period. This article also examines the evolution of technologies and institutions of the global silk industry, which exhibited characteristics of path dependency and technical interrelatedness.
Did Japan Ever Suffer From a Shortage of Natural Resources Before World War II?
Authors: Yasuba Yasukichi
Published: September 2009

Until the end of the nineteenth century, Japan raised its per capita income, starting from a low level, by exporting primary commodities and importing manufactured goods. Around the turn of the century, Japan became a net importer of natural resources. Yet it is doubtful that Japan ever suffered severely from a shortage of natural resources before the Manchurian Incident of 1931. It was the military expansion in the 1930s that created an artificial shortage of mineral resources, the wholesale exodus of population, and a lowering in the standard of living of the general public.
The Rental Price of Housing in New York City, 1830–1860
Authors: Margo Robert A.
Published: September 2009

Advertisements from antebellum New York City newspapers are used to estimate hedonic indices of the rental price of housing. Rents varied with the quality of housing and its location, suggesting a well-defined market for rental housing. Controlling for housing characteristics and location, the relative price of housing rose between 1830 and 1860.
Was There a National Labor Market at the End of the Nineteenth Century? New Evidence on Earnings in Manufacturing
Authors: Rosenbloom Joshua L.
Published: September 2009

Average annual earnings calculated from the census of manufactures are used to extend previous research on labor market integration in the United States. In contrast to earlier research examining occupational wage rates, census average earnings indicate that a well-integrated labor market had emerged in the Northeast and North Central regions as early as 1879. They also reveal substantial convergence within the South Atlantic and South Central regions, suggesting the emergence of a unified southern labor market. Large and persistent North-South differentials indicate, however, that a unified national labor market did not develop before World War I.
The Note Issue Paradox in the Free Banking Era
Authors: Bodenhorn Howard , Haupert Michael
Published: September 2009

In recent years a number of papers have appeared offering explanations of the long-noted, long-unresolved note issue paradox in both the free and national banking eras. Some have argued that previous profit calculations overstate the true cost of note issue because they fail to account for risks and costs that are not easily modeled. Others have argued that profit calculations are reasonably accurate and demonstrate that the bankers acted irrationally in failing to reap easily gathered profits. Yet another approach radically modified the basis of the calculation and found potential profits to be quite small. This note offers an explanation overlooked by most previous studies: that although note issue was profitable, a more profitable avenue existed. Because of legal and institutional restrictions, banks found it more profitable at the margin to create deposits rather than issue notes in extending credit.
The Immigrant Assimilation Puzzle in Late Nineteenth-Centuty America
Authors: Hatton Timothy J.
Published: September 2009

Recent studies suggest that the earnings of pre-1890 immigrants grew slowly compared with those of natives and imply that these immigrants did not assimilate well into the American labor market. Using data for Michigan and California this article estimates new specifications for immigrant and native-born earnings, and finds that immigrants who arrived as children had similar earnings profiles to the native-born. Immigrants who arrived as adults suffered an initial earnings disadvantage but their earnings grew faster than those of the native-born. These results are consistent with the traditional view that pre-1890 immigrants assimilated well.
The Decline in Southern Agricultural Output, 1860–1880
Authors: Brinkley Garland L.
Published: September 2009

Per capita agricultural output sharply declined in the “Confederate States” between 1860 and 1880. This article asserts that the decline in agricultural output was partially the result of increased disease (hookworm) brought about by substandard living conditions suffered by the Southern population during the Civil War. Skeletal remains and mortality data, ubiquitous hookworm symptoms among the Southern population, and regression analysis support this hypothesis. The econometric results strongly suggest that emancipation and increased hookworm infection were responsible for the income decline while an increase in the percentage of sharecropping tenancy arrangements increased southern productivity.
The Political Instability of Reciprocal Trade and the Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom
Authors: La Croix Sumner J. , Grandy Christopher
Published: September 2009

The overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 offers an illuminating case study of the political economy of preferential trading relationships between large and small countries. The limited-term reciprocity treaty of 1876 between Hawaii and the United States generated problematic strategic dynamics, as the normal operation of the treaty gradually worsened Hawaii’s bargaining position. This allowed the United States to extract better terms when the treaty expired in 1883 and to act opportunistically in 1890 with the passage of the McKinley Tariff. The political economy of the treaty contributed significantly to the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy.
Failed Cooperation in Heterogeneous Industries Under the National Recovery Administration
Authors: Alexander Barbara J.
Published: September 2009

A case study, a formal model, and an anaLysis of Census of Manufactures data support a conclusion that cost heterogeneity was a major source of the “compliance crisis” affecting a number of National Recovery Administration “codes of fair competition.” Key elements of the argument are assumptions that progressives at the NRA allowed majority coalitions of small, high-cost finns to impose codes in heterogeneous industries, and that these codes were designed by the high-cost firms under an ultimately erroneous belief that they would be enforced by the NRA.
Matching Supply to Demand: Crop Production and Disposal by English Demesnes in the Century of the Black Death
Authors: Campbell Bruce M. S.
Published: September 2009

Manorial accounts allow detailed investigation of the market involvement of medieval seignorial demesnes. Production decisions taken locally emerge as strongly, if indirectly, influenced by the market. Disposal decisions, in contrast, were much more a matter of estate policy and therefore of institutional factors. Probably because of differential transaction costs, many lords preferred to provision their households directly from their estates rather than sell the bulk of their produce and purchase most of their provisions. The forces promoting commercialization within the seignorial arable sector appear to have been stronger at the opening than the close of the fourteenth century.
The Rising Share of British Industrial Exports in Industrial Output, 1700–1851
Authors: Esteban Javier Cuenca
Published: September 2009

Ongoing research on British overseas trade does not support supply-side explanations of British industrialization. Contrary to widely publicized views, the share of British industrial exports in alternative measures of industrial output rose almost continuously throughout the period 1723 to 1851. This finding rests on the official values of British domestic exports, and it is confirmed by new annual estimates of Britain's domestic export, and it is confirmed by new annual estimates of Britain's domestic export values at current an constant prices form 1772 to 1821. Further research on prices, and on Britain's strikingly underutilized trade records, may lead to a more balanced perception of supply and demand forces during the Industrial Revolution.
On the Costs of Inward-Looking Development: Price Distortions, Growth, and Divergence in Latin America
Authors: Taylor Alan M.
Published: September 2009

From the 1930s to the 1980s, economic policies in Latin America epitomized the inward-looking model of development. The model emerged in the Depression, and was later codified in unorthodox economic theories. Even though economic performance was seen as disappointing by the 1960s, the distortions persisted and worsened into the 1970s and 1980s. This article examines the costs of distortions and explores the structural differences between growth dynamics in Latin America and elsewhere. Distortions had profound effects on many aspects of the growth process, help explain divergent development, and raise important questions about economic growth and the evolution of institutions.
Commons Sense: Common Property Rights, Efficiency, and Institutional Change
Authors: Clark Gregory
Published: September 2009

Common property rights were widespread in English agriculture for at least 600 years. Since privatizing common fields allegedly produced huge profits in the eighteenth century, common land owners seemingly squandered 15 percent of potential income for generations. Ingenious explanations have been produced for this market failure. This article argues for a simple, brutal resolution. Common fields survived because enclosure was generally unprofitable before 1750, when changing relative prices made private property rights marginally more efficient. Then people responded quickly to modest profits. The rich gains from enclosure existed only in the imaginings of wild-eyed eighteenth century agrarian reformers.
When Your Word Is Not Enough: Race, Collateral, and Household Credit
Authors: Olney Martha L.
Published: September 2009

Black families included in the 1918/19 BLS Consumer Purchases Survey used installment credit more frequently and merchant credit less frequently than White families. Economic and demographic characteristics explain the racial difference for installment but not for merchant credit. I argue greater demand for installment credit by Black families was satisfied because repossession of collateral upon buyer default overcame merchants' personal prejudice with regard to creditworthiness, but absence of tangible collateral impacted the availability of merchant credit. Low use of merchant credit can account for relatively high interwar saving rates for low-income Black families.
Economic Integration and Convergence: U.S. Regions, 1840–1987
Authors: Kim Sukkoo
Published: September 2009

Between the nineteenth and twentieth centureis, the regions of the United States went from a set of relatively isolated regional economies to an integrated national economy. Economic integration, as we as long-run secular changes in the economic structure associated with economic growth, played an important role in determining U.S. regional industrial structures. Moreover, although differences in regional industrial structures do not explain all the variations in regional income per capita, they played an important role in causing U.S. regional incomes to diverge and converge between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The Demise of Central Banking and the Domestic Exchanges: Evidence from Antebellum Ohio
Authors: Knodell Jane
Published: September 2009

This article describes the institutional transition from a centrally managed interregional payments system to an unmanaged, decentralized one after President Andrew Jackson's veto of the rechartering of the Second Bank of the United States, and evaluates the effect on the level and variability of exchange rates. Comparison of the reduction in specie points, driven by falling transportation and insurance costs, with the reduction in exchange rates in two Ohio cities over the period from 1830 to 1859 lends support to the article's conclusion that decentralization was one cause of higher and more volatile inland exchange rates.
Exclusive Dealing and the Whiskey Trust, 1890–1895
Authors: Troesken Werner
Published: September 2009

This article uses the history of the Whiskey Trust to explore the competitive effects of vertical restraints such as exclusive dealing. The Whiskey Trust distilled alcoholic spirits and bribed distributors not to carry competing brands of spirits. For the Whiskey Trust, exclusive dealing was an ineffective predatory strategy. Despite the trust's market dominance and manifold predatory strategies, it failed to preempt entry. The trust failed, in part, because its rivals could vertically integrate at low cost. Competition disciplined the trust more effectively than did numerous antitrust suits.
Tracking Economic Change with Ambiguous Tools: Soviet Planning, 1928–1991
Authors: Hunter Holland
Published: September 2009

The articles by Harrison and Allen that follow deal with a major episode in economic history, one that offers both rich empirical evidence and challenging theoretic problems. It is now possible to conduct an economic post mortem on seven turbulent decades in the experience of the very large economy that made up the Soviet Union, and these articles examine some key operational issues lying at the heart of that experience. Readers will find the best introduction to these issues in Paul Gregory's masterly monograph, Before Command. My task here is limited to identifying the context for the intellectual action on the stage.
The Standard of Living in the Soviet Union, 1928–1940
Authors: Allen Robert C.
Published: September 2009

New estimates of the growth in total and per capita consumption are developed for the Soviet Union during the first three Five-Year Plans. These estimates show that consumption per head rose 27 percent from 1928 to 1937. The gains were confined to the urban population and to those moving from the countly to the city. In the standard interpretation, per capita consumption fell in the 1930s. The reasons for the difference in interpretation are examined in detail. The estimates presented here are based on new information and on alternative approaches to valuation and index number problems.
The Role of Gender in Biased Technical Change: U.S. Manufacturing, 1850–1919
Authors: Field-Hendrey Elizabeth
Published: September 2009

Differential treatment of men and women in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century labor markets casts doubt on the common practice of adding male and female labor to create a single “labor” variable in the production function. This article shows that men and women must be disaggregated in the production function, and investigates the effects of inappropriate aggregation on the debate over the Habakkuk-Rothbarth labor scarcity hypothesis. With disaggregation, a female-using bias and an overall labor-using bias is found for the period 1850 through 1919. Technical change was male-neutral through 1900 and male-using thereafter.
A Loveless Economy? Intergenerational Altruism and the Marriage Market in a Tuscan Town, 1415–1436
Authors: Botticini Maristella
Published: September 2009

This article examines the role of dowries and highlights the variables that affected the size of dowries in fifteenth-century Tuscany. The estimation, which matches the households found in the marriage contrascts with the corresponding households in the FlorentineCatastoof 1427, offers support for the present net value hypothesis and for the altruism model. Results indicate a positive correlation between a bride's dowry size and her age when used as peoxy for her contribution to the marital household. Parents also provided their daughters with larger dowries when they married “down” into relatively less wealthy or socially prominent households.
Why Did Prices Rise in the 1930s?
Authors: Romer Christina D.
Published: September 2009

Prices rose in most years between 1933 and 1941 even though output was substantially below trend. This inflation cannot be explained as simply the effect of devaluation and changes in expectations. Rather, because prewar price changes depended significantly on the growth rate of real output, the extraordinarily rapid growth after 1933 was an important force leading to inflation. At the same time, the NIRA, by encouraging minimum wages and collusive pricing arrangements, caused a crucial diminution of the usual deviation-from-trend effect. The conjunction of these forces caused inflation at a time when the U.S. economy remained depressed.
“If It's Yellow, It Must Be Butter”: Margarine Regulation in North America Since 1886
Authors: Dupré Ruth
Published: September 2009

The first domestic food to be regulated by the federal government in the United States, margarine had a unique regulation history. No other food products has been so harshly treated throughtout the world. The American margarine policy up to the 1950s is generally considered remarkably severe. The Canadian policy was even more stringent and more enduring. The province of Quebec, and until very recently of Ontario, still prohibits the yellow coloring of margarine. This article compares the history of margarine regulation in the two countries and uses the interest-group theory of government to investigate why it was so stringent.
Big Business, Growth, and Decline
Authors: Tunzelmann G. N. von
Published: September 2009

The downside of Chandler's success is that it has placed the large enterprise and the American economy on a pedestal, next to which eveiy other case appears a fumbling effort towards their apparent virtues. As some of the individual country studies inCAHshow, well before even Chandler set out on this mission, American management consultants such as McKinsey were “exporting” the M-form company structure as their nostrum for all the world's business ills. As is shown in Fear's chapter and in several others, this involved a very simplistic diagnosis ofwhat those ills consisted of. The M-form conferred substantial advantages at a certain time and place in the evolution of industry, but it was no panacea. Furthermore, as I have suggested previously, its aetiology for comprehending its own prognoses was too shallow.
The Political Economy of Banking Regulation, 1864–1933
Authors: White Eugene Nelson
Published: September 2009

The laws and regulations that shaped the structure of the banking industry from the Civil War to the Great Depression were strongly influenced by the banking community. In this period legal constraints on banks were weakened by competition between state and federal regulators trying to increase membership in their banking systems. The elimination of regulation was not completed, however, because the politically most powerful group in the industry, the unit banks, had an interest in preserving some regulations.
The Transition from Primitive Communism: The Wolof Social Formation of West Africa
Authors: Jensen Rolf
Published: September 2009

The transition from a classless to a class society has been a major dilemma to Marxist economic historians. Using the Wolof social formation of West Africa as its historical example, this paper produces a class theoretic analysis of primitive communism. From this analysis, it is then able to show how such a transition could take place.
The Political Economy of the Raj: The Decline of Colonialism
Authors: Tomlinson B. R.
Published: September 2009

Taking a fresh look at the institutions of economic management in colonial India explains much about the history of the last decades of the raj. The concept of political economy—the interaction of economic forces and political choices—provides a useful approach to the study of government economic policy and practice that can give a new perspective on the history of the late British Empire as a whole.
Sharecropping and Investment in Agriculture in Early Modern France
Authors: Hoffman Philip T.
Published: September 2009

The paper examines the spread of sharecropping that followed a wave of investment in agriculture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France. Using results from the modern theory of share contracts, it argues that sharecropping was a means of risk sharing that favored both landlords and tenants. Although the evidence used in this paper comes from France, the results may well apply to other areas of early modern Europe.
British Industrialization Before 1841: Evidence of Slower Growth During the Industrial Revolution
Authors: Harley C. Knick
Published: September 2009

New indices of industrial production show that Britain's industrial growth in the last decades of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century was about a third slower than currently available estimates indicate. Therefore, mid-eighteenth-century industrial output was nearly twice as high as previously assumed.
The Growth of the Utilities Industries in Italy, 1861–1913
Authors: Fenoaltea Stefano
Published: September 2009

This article presents new estimates of the Italian utilities industries' production from 1861 to 1913. The improvements over the currently available series include the restriction of the electricity series to the production of the electric utilities, the extrapolation of the gas production series to 1861, and the calculation of production series for the water supply industry. These new estimates suggest that the existing aggregate production series significantly overstates the utilities' growth rate. The existing utilities series for other countries do not incorporate separate estimates for the water supply industry, and also appear to overstate the industryapos;s growth rate.
The Role of Business Liquidity During the Great Depression and Afterwards: Differences Between Large and Small Firms
Authors: Hunter Helen Manning
Published: September 2009

This paper describes two contrary developments in corporate finance during the Great Depression. In 1930s downswings the top one percent of firms acquired unusually high rations of liquid assets to receipts, thus withdrawing funds from the spending stream. Smaller firms, however, were forced into highly illiquid positions (by postwar standards) by episodes of monetary restriction in 1931 and 1937. It is argued that both developments made the Depression more severe. A structural change is found after 1945 in the financial behavior of large firms. This is attributed to a new cyclical pattern of price change and lower business uncertainty during postwar recessions.
Changes in Mechanical and Plant Technology: The Corn Belt, 1910–1940
Authors: Bogue Allan G.
Published: September 2009

During the period 1910–1940 some changes were occurring in the production practices of the Corn Belt. Three of the most important were the substitution of the tractor for horse power, the introduction of hybrid seed corn, and the development of viable mechanical picker-huskers for harvesting corn. This paper examines the background of those innovations, evaluates current assumptions about them, presents data concerning the relative per acre savings or additional income involved in adoption, and notes the possibility that assumptions about the economic rationality involved in corn improvement research, as well as the implications of the “dry hole effect,” may require some revision.
Development Indicators and the Historical Study of Human Welfare: Towards a New Perspective
Authors: Othick John
Published: September 2009

Empirical evidence from the Third World on the impact of early industrialization on welfare has produced new ideas on relations between growth, distribution, and the quality of life. Historical welfare must also be reassessed with less emphasis on material living standards. Distribution should be more systematically analyzed, and quality of life indicators considered. By adopting the approach, historians will revitalize old debates and make these more relevant to issues in modern development studies. Historians also need to investigate welfare themes in recent and comparative history to a greater extent than hitherto, which requires closer integration between economic, social, and political history.
Poverty and Industrialization at the End of the “Phase-Transition” in the Czech Crown Lands
Authors: Komlos John H.
Published: September 2009

What was the relationship between institutionalized poverty and protoindustrial activity in Bunzlau County of Bohemia at the end of the 1820s? The agriculturally weaker estates developed protoindustries and were therefore the first to institutionalize the care of the poor. Yet protoindustrial development decreased the vulnerability of those at the low end of the income distribution, although industrial activity attracted immigrants from agricultural estates. The immigrants competed for resources with the economically weak, thereby increasing the need for poor relief. On balance, however, protoindustrial activity ameliorated the lot of the destitute peasantry living in this mountainous region of northern Bohemia.
Standards of Living and the Life Cycle in Colonial Connecticut
Authors: Main Jackson Turner
Published: September 2009

Requirements for a subsistence standard of living and for higher levels in the colonial period changed with marital status. A man's income, his personal wealth, his consumption goods, and for farmers their land, had to increase with marriage and as children multiplied, though the old man might end as he began, dependent on other members of the family. In order to judge the proportion of men at different levels of wealth, and to measure inequality, the historian must construct a series of tables using all available measures of wealth for each stage in the life cycle.
Land Abundance, Interest/Profit Rates, and Nineteenth-Century American and British Technology
Authors: Field Alexander James
Published: September 2009

Virtually all sectors of the nineteenth-century American economy were less capital-intensive than their British counterparts. This resulted from persistently higher American interest/profit rates, due in turn to American land abundance. The paper adduces the evidence in support of these propositions, and explores their interrelationships through the use of a linear model inspired by the writings of David Ricardo.
The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas: An Economic Analysis
Authors: Galenson David W.
Published: September 2009

Indentured servitude appeared in Virginia by 1620. Initially a device used to transport European workers to the New World, over time servitude dwindled as black slavery grew in importance in the British colonies. Indentured servitude reappeared in the Americas in the mid-nineteenth century as a means of transporting Asians to the Caribbean sugar islands and South America following the abolition of slavery. Servitude then remained in legal use until its abolition in 1917. This paper provides an economic analysis of the innovation of indentured servitude, describes the economic forces that caused its decline and disappearance from the British colonies, and considers why indentured servitude was revived for migration to the West Indies during the time of the great free migration of Europeans to the Americas.
Real Estate Mortgages, Foreclosures, and Midwestern Agrarian Unrest, 1865–1920
Authors: Stock James H.
Published: September 2009

The hypothesis that the fear of foreclosure of farm mortgages provided an important impetus to American agrarian reform movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is reconsidered. This hypothesis is consistent with the observation that farm income, although volatile, on average improved over this period.Indeed, despite low average foreclosure rates, the temporary effects of foreclosures on specific regions in which there was unrest appears to have been dramatic. An examination of indebtedness data and measures of unrest both for the period of the Alliance movement and for the era of the Nonpartisan League in North Dakota appears to support the hypothesis linking the fear of foreclosure to agrarian unrest.
Government and the Cost of Exchange in History
Authors: North Douglass C.
Published: September 2009

A general transaction cost framework is developed to analyze the costs of exchange and the role of government in the costs of exchange. Three general types of exchange are specified: personal exchange, exchange without third-party enforcement, and exchange with third-party enforcement. The framework is then employed to analyze government and the costs of exchange in history.
Keynes and Protection
Authors: Eichengreen Barry
Published: September 2009

The paper traces the development of Keynes's views of free trade and protection and their relationship to British economic policy from 1922 to 1946.

“Is there anything that a tariff could do which an earthquake could not do better?”
Scientists, Entrepreneurs, and the Policy Process: A Study of the Post–1945 California Sardine Depletion
Authors: McEvoy Arthur F. , Scheiber Harry N.
Published: September 2009

The California Marine Research Committee was established by the state legislature in 1947 in response to the catastrophic failure of the Pacific Coast sardine fishery. Scientists, state and federal resource-managment officials, and industry leaders put aside long–standing differences of viewpoint to launch a uniquely comprehensive, multidisciplinary research effort. This paper, based on newly opened archival materials, analyzes the founding and early work of the agency. How a stalemate occurred that delayed a consensus on policy recommendations and had the practical effect of continuing virtually unregulated sardine fishing is explained. The article illustrates the institutional development of post–war “Big Science” as a major actor in the policy process and analyzes the mobilization of public agencies to cope with complex environmental issues in resource–extractive industries.
Economic Interests and the American Constitution: A Quantitative Rehabilitation of Charles A. Beard
Authors: McGuire Robert A. , Ohsfeldt Robert L.
Published: September 2009

An important change in the structure of U.S. institutions occurred when the government under the Articles of Confederation was replaced by a new government under the Constitution. In 1913, Charles A. Beard proposed a view of the formation of the United States Constitution—an economic interpretation—that remains a much discussed yet unresolved explanation of the behavior and motives of the men who wrote the document. This paper provides the first rigorous statistical test of this issue. We summarize the preliminary results of a statistical analysis of the relationship between the voting behavior of individual delegates involved in the making of the Constitution and their economic and personal characteristics. Contrary to current historical wisdom, significant patterns related to economic interests are found in the voting, with the division of interests generally consistent with that outlined by Charles A. Beard seventy years ago.
Trends and Cycles in U.S. Trade with Spain and the Spanish Empire, 1790–1819
Authors: Esteban Javier Cuenca
Published: September 2009

Analysis of balance-of-payments components with Spain and Spanish America helps account for spectacular economic gains to the United States in the neutrality years and for the subsequent turn to net deficit positions during the 1810s. Excess export values at constant prices with Spain and favorable terms of trade with Spanish America decisively contributed to large surpluses on commodity account through 1795–1813. Most cycles in merchandise trade are consistent with greater demand elasticities for exports than for imports.Net earings on freight, insurance, and mercantile profits boosted overall returns from the Spanish Empire at the very times when they were most needed to finance the re-export trade and to settle deficits elsewhere.
Mold Poisoning and Population Growth in England and France, 1750–1850
Authors: Matossian Mary Kilbourne
Published: September 2009

Climatic and dietary changes may have reduced the incidence of mold poisoning in England and France, 1750–1850, thereby stimulating fertility and reducing mortality. Because mold poisons developed in cereals, the staff of life was often the scepter of death. When people ate less rye and more wheat or less wheat and more potatoes, even without increasing their caloric intake or improving their nutrient balance, their chances of survival improved.
Poverty in the Antebellum Northeast: The View from New York State's Poor Relief Rolls
Authors: Hannon Joan Underhill
Published: September 2009

This paper documents a secular increase during the antebellum period in the fraction of New York's population that received public poor relief. The increase was concentrated among able-bodied adults who required only short-term assistance during periods of sickness or unemployment. Cross-sectional patterns suggest that the rise of market production and the spread of wage labor in both urban-industrial and rural-agricultural sectors, rather than urbanization or industrialization, may have been responsible for the upward trend in short-term, ablebodied pauperism.
Tariff Protection and Production in the Early U.S. Cotton Textile Industry
Authors: Bils Mark
Published: September 2009

The importance of tariff protection in the U.S. cotton textile industry is examined quantitatively for the period around 1833. In sharp contradiction to past writings it is found that the industry was almost entirely dependent on protection.
Authority and Efficiency: The Labor Market and the Managerial Revolution of the Late Nineteenth Century
Authors: Clark Gregory
Published: September 2009

The managerial revolution resulted in the concentration of production decisions in the hands of management. Radical economists and historians have disputed the conventional view that these changes in work organization were necessary to increase production efficiency. Yet curiously there seem to be few issues of fact in dispute between the radical and the conventional accounts. I offer here an interpretation of the radical position which explains why this is so, and why profitable and efficient organizations of work will differ in capitalist economies. The argument hinges on the conditions under which workers were able to act collectively.
The Economic Emancipation of the Non-Slaveholding Class: Upcountry Farmers in the Georgia Cotton Economy
Authors: Weiman David F.
Published: September 2009

The transformation of the Cotton South after the Civil War involved distinct regional developments. Regional analysis of crop production in Reconstruction Georgia, for example, identifies different patterns of specialization in cotton in the Cotton Belt and Upcountry counties. It also reveals an overlooked aspect of Reconstruction, the integration of Upcountry farmers into the cotton economy. The spread of cotton culture into the Upcountry followed the construction of an internal marketing and transportation system in Georgia in the 1870s which was related to and was part of the formation of a national market in the postbellum United States.
Integration of International Capital Markets: Quantitative Evidence from the Eighteenth to Twentieth Centuries
Authors: Neal Larry
Published: September 2009

The integration of capital markets is usually tested with an interest rate arbitrage model even though much different financial assets must be compared. This paper compares prices of identical assets that are traded simultaneously in two or more markets. The range, average level, and time series pattern of the differences can be used to infer threshold levels, transaction cost levels, and the efficiency of arbitrage operations, respectively.Examples are given for financial crises from 1745 to 1907, using prices from the London, Amsterdam, Paris, and New York stock exchanges. These show European capital markets to be well integrated by mid-eighteenth century.
Bitter Harvest:The South Carolina Low Country in Historical Perspective
Authors: Coclanis Peter A.
Published: September 2009

The factors responsible for the South Carolina Low Country's rapid economic rise in the eigthteenth century and for the area's subsequent lapse into stagnation and decline are described and analyzed. The conclusion is that the rise and fall of the Low Country grew out of the white settlers' early economic commitment to the production of plantation staples with bound labor. The Low Country was locked into a pattern of economic development that required a high demand for low country staples. When demand for low country staples abated, the area faced economic ruin.
International Trade and the Evolution of the American Capital Market, 1888–1911
Authors: Clark William , Turner Charlie
Published: September 2009

We examine the relationship between international trade and regional American credit markets. The evidence presented suggests that foreign payment flows had a significant effect on the level of interest rates in the East North Central, West North Central, Pacific, and Southern regions of the United States.
Deaths of Slaves in the Middle Passage
Authors: Cohn Raymond L.
Published: September 2009

It is widely accepted by students of the slave trade that slave mortality during the Middle Passage fell between the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries. The first person to make the claim of declining mortality was Philip Curtin, who reopened research on slave mortality in his book The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census. Curtin examined a number of sources, and his conclusion was that “… there is a decreasing rate of loss over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.” Curtin's book stimulated a great deal of further research, much of it by Herbert Klein. Klein's conclusion was the same as Curtin's: “it is undoubtedly true that over the whole of the 18th century, mortality in the Middle Passage was on the decline.” This result has since been repeated in a number of places. Riley has recently summed up the consensus view on the subject: “Most students of this question report that mortality declined over time, but the available data are sporadic in time and place.” The only dissenting view has come from Postma who found “no discernible trend toward decrease or increase in the overall pattern” in the Dutch trade.
The Preindustrial Economics of Adam Smith
Authors: Caton Hiram
Published: September 2009

The Wealth of Nations does not recognize the fact of industrial production, and its analysis of price does not account for the fundamental feature of industrial markets, falling price per output unit based on exponential growth obtained by technological applications. Smith's laissez-faire doctrine contains distinctive value postulates intended to promulgate an egalitarian agrarian capitalism in the spirit of physiocracy. Criticisms of Smith by Alexander Hamilton, J.-B. Say, Andrew Ure, and Friedrich List are instanced to support the present interpretation.