bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Some Practical Points of Investment Procedure
Authors: Critchley D.
Published: August 2016

This paper is not intended either to be an exhaustive treatise on investment department practice, or to give the student any assistance in examinations on investment policy. It is hoped, however, that it might engender an interesting discussion of points which a newcomer to an investment department will find useful, and it may give some background to examination reading. The paper is concerned only with investment in securities dealt in on the Stock Exchange.

The prime purpose of the Stock Exchange is to bring together buyer and seller of stocks and shares. In most Exchanges, including the provincial ones in this country, this meeting is made directly by the broker of the buyer finding the broker of the seller, or vice versa. In London a shop-keeping system exists with a number of firms of jobbers making prices in specialized sections of the market. For instance, three firms of jobbers will buy or sell insurance shares, and those same firms operate in three or four other sections of the market—one of them operates in bank, shipping, tea and hire-purchase shares.
Monetary Policy
Authors: Haycocks H. W.
Published: August 2016

I first became interested in economics round about 1931 when I started studying for the Fellowship. None of you have experienced what it is like to live through a severe depression. In Liverpool unemployment was some 25% to 30% of the insured population. My brother and two cousins lost their jobs and were out of work for a long period. It was extremely demoralizing for them and the character of one was adversely affected for the rest of his life. This situation influenced me very much and made me an ardent radical. It seemed to me ridiculous that an economy should be working at full capacity one year and at 75% to 50% the next. Something was clearly wrong with the way we organized things. The mistakes were those of human beings and not those of God. (At that time many people did think that such things as trade cycles and rates of interest were natural phenomena.) To my young and simple mind an economic plan seemed a simple scheme to construct and I felt that it was only the obstruction of vested interests and the ignorance of the general public that prevented enlightened people putting into operation a plan that would preserve full employment and a reasonable standard of living for everybody. The experience of recent years suggests that there is much truth in this.
Computers and Actuarial Science
Authors: Benjamin S.
Published: August 2016

The purpose of this article is to explore the application of computers to actuarial science. It is frankly a propaganda attempt to counterbalance the emphasis on data-processing applications which there has been in the past.

I think that this emphasis has been an unfortunate mistake. Computers can be regarded as glorified desk calculators or high-speed punched-card machinery but this misses the real potential of the qualitative difference between computers and earlier machinery. This potential can only be realized when we learn to look at jobs ‘computer-wise’. There is only one way to learn this and that is to learn how to programme and then to get down to some hard detail.
In Search of a Formula
Authors: Barnett H. A. R.
Published: August 2016

In October 1961, the author wrote the editors a letter which was subsequently published (J.S.S.16, 481) urging the submission of articles which were only germs of ideas. Part of what follows has arisen out of earlier research, and part falls into the ‘germ’ category in the hope that it might give rise to future development.

Ever since the days when Makeham‘s formula appeared to have ceased to fit most mortality experiences, some actuaries have striven to find an ideal formula to take its place, and perhaps others have been interested. Even if such a formula were found, it might only be a matter of a short time before the shape of the mortality curve changes in such a way as to render that formula out-of-date too; but that is no reason for not continuing to strive.
Life Assurance and the European Organizations
Authors: Isles I.
Published: August 2016

British life offices transacting life assurance outside the United Kingdom have until now confined themselves almost entirely to the countries of the British Commonwealth—because among the countries with stable currencies the members of the Commonwealth have in the main been the ones with which we have had the largest numbers of other business contacts. Another influence has been the absence of a language barrier. Before the 1914–18 War some offices transacted business on the Continent of Europe but thereafter most of them pulled out; today as far as I know only one British office transacts life assurance in France, one in Germany and none in Italy.

One might be forgiven therefore for thinking that actuaries handling life office affairs need not concern themselves with life business on the Continent of Europe—particularly as, at the beginning of last year, the negotiations for Britain's entry into the European Common Market broke down.
The Appraisal of Capital Projects
Authors: Lewin C. G.
Published: August 2016

This paper covers a field in which few actuaries have been actively engaged in the past, namely the appraisal of proposed capital projects to determine their likely profitability. In recent years this subject has received increasing attention from the accountancy profession and from operational research practitioners. Various methods of tackling the problems have been proposed, including ‘discounted cash flow’ techniques. Most of the methods used employ compound interest and some involve probability concepts; it is surprising, therefore, that actuaries have not given the subject more attention. Furthermore, actuaries concerned with the investment of funds should also be interested in the matter from another angle: the shares which will yield the greatest return to investors may well tend to be those of the companies which carry out proper financial appraisals of the ventures in which they propose to engage.
I Sequential Sampling
Authors: Harding V.
Published: August 2016

Most statistical techniques are based on a sample of fixed sizen. This may be becausenis chosen beforehand or because it is dictated by the circumstances. Sometimes, however, the members of the sample occur one after the other and we can then use sequential methods.

A sequential sampling scheme gives us a ‘stopping rule’ for deciding, after observing each successive member of the sample, whether we can stop sampling and reach a decision or whether we must examine another member.

As an example take the problem of deciding between hypotheses H0and H1that a parameterθtakes one of two valuesθ0andθ1respectively, using Wald's Sequential Probability Ratio (SPR) test.
Statistics and Economic History
Authors: Kuznets Simon
Published: August 2016

This paper deals with the relation between statistical analysis as applied in economic inquiry and history as written or interpreted by economic historians. Although both these branches of economic study derive from the same body of raw materials of inquiry—the recordable past and present of economic society—each has developed in comparative isolation from the other. Statistical economists have failed to utilize adequately the contributions that economic historians have made to our knowledge of the past; and historians have rarely employed either the analytical tools or the basic theoretical hypotheses of statistical research. It is the thesis of this essay that such failure to effect a close interrelation between historical approach and statistical analysis needs to be corrected in the light of the final goal of economic study.
Recruiting Contract Laborers for the Amoskeag Mills
Authors: Creamer Daniel
Published: August 2016

Much has been written concerning the fraudulent and coercive practices that frequently attended the importation of contract laborers into the United States during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In an effort to eliminate these abuses, a great deal of publicity was given to these unsavory practices. In contrast, there is a dearth of documentary evidence on cases in which a contract arrangement was mutually advantageous to both the contract laborer and the employer. Yet there must have been many such instances.
The Origin of Banking: Religious Finance in Babylonia
Authors: Bromberg Benjamin
Published: August 2016

The economic importance of the sanctuaries of antiquity has long JL been recognized. The Babylonian shrines were no exceptions; not only were the chief Mesopotamian temples religious centers, law courts, schools, and archive depositories, but they were also banks and mercantile establishments. Indeed, as fiscal institutions of the Babylonian economy, the importance of the sanctuaries cannot be overemphasized: “In financial or monetary transactions the position of the Babylonian temples was not unlike that of national banks; they carried on their business with all the added weight of official authority.”
Six Letters from Malthus to Pierre Prévost
Authors: Zinke George William
Published: August 2016

Pierre Prévost lived from 1751 to 1839. In 1780 he was invited by Frederick the Great to go to Berlin as a professor of young boys at the Academy of Nobles. He became a member of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin, and his entry dissertation dealt with political economy. In 1784 Prévost returned to Geneva, where he became professor of literature at the university of that city. In 1793 he was a member of the National Assembly at Geneva, but retired after four months. In 1794 he was imprisoned for twenty days by a revolutionary tribunal. Immediately upon his release he became professor of physics and philosophy at the University of Geneva, a chair which he exchanged in 1810 for that of general physics. With Marc-Auguste Pictet, Prévost was the codiscoverer of the moving equilibrium of temperature.
British-American Rivalry in the Chilean Trade, 1817–1820
Authors: Goebel Dorothy Burne
Published: August 2016

The early commercial relations between the United States and South America in the years preceding the enunciation of the Monroe Doctrine have until quite recently received but scant attention. This neglect may in part be attributed to the historian's concern with the political implications of the revolutionary movements in Spanish. America and their bearing upon our foreign policies. In part, also, it may be ascribed to the paucity of materials (either published or in manuscript); information on commercial affairs transmitted by American special agents and consuls in the ports of Latin America was generally fragmentary and incomplete. Yet even a tardy examination of our trade relations with Chile in the years 1817-1820 may be of value, especially since the materials available for this study present a picture of the volume, the variety, and the difficulties of our trade that is unique in the annals of our early relations with South America.
The Business Entrepreneur in a Changing Colonial Economy, 1763–1795
Authors: East Robert A.
Published: August 2016

To study the role of the entrepreneur is to study the personal factor in economic history, to introduce the problem of what today is called the businessman. Unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may be, the expression “businessmap” was apparently not used in late colonial times, although “going into business” or “going into merchandising” was. The distinction is important; the colonial economy was far too general, and its participants too many-sided, to permit the assumption that there was a colonial man of business in the modern business sense.
The Role of Money in Economic History
Authors: Mitchell Wesley C.
Published: August 2016

The role money has played, and still plays, in the evolution of social organization and individual behavior remains a dark area though some corners besides price history have been studied intensively. You know better than I how much has been written by anthropologists, numismatists, and historians about such matters as the different forms of money men have used, the evolution of coinage, the relation of gifts and piracy to the rise of regular trade and organized markets, the commutation of dues in kind and services into money payments, the transformation of an agricultural peasantry into an industrial proletariat, the changing methods of governmental finance in war and peace, the development of credit and banking, the spread of bookkeeping and its refinement into accounting, the diverse forms of business enterprises, and the interrelations between making goods and making money. Some of the monographs I have read upon these and related topics are admirable pieces of work. But monographs are flashlights; they do not give general illumination. What we do not yet have, what we need, and what economic historians should supply is a coherent story of how monetary forms have infiltrated one human relation after another, and their effects upon men's practices and habits of thought. I am well aware that the spadework desirable for this job is far from completed; but even now wellequipped students could draw an authentic sketch of the process as a whole. By so doing they would both stimulate detailed research and enlighten the thinking of all who are concerned with social organization, past and present.
The “Historical” Character of Economic Theories
Authors: Spiethoff Arthur
Published: August 2016

Translator's introduction: To understand the significance of this paper, the American reader should recall that, as Talcott Parsons says, German “idealistic empiricism” led to a repudiation of analytical social and economic theory “in favor of the concrete uniqueness and individuality of all things human.” The “general analytical level of scientific comprehension [was] a priori excluded” from the field of human action. Understanding of things human “in terms of the concrete individuality of the specific historical case became the goal.” Professor Arthur Spiethoff, once a student, later an assistant, of Gustav von Schmoller, and a friend of Edwin F. Gay while the latter studied in Berlin, moved away from that point of view. He recognized analytical theory as a legitimate subject and thereby deviated from what can be considered the typical nineteenth-century German attitude.
Twenty-Five Years of the Economic History Association: A Reflective Evaluation
Authors: Heaton Herbert
Published: August 2016

I'm honored by this assignment: partly because I think after-dinner speeches are a necessary combination of regularizer and tranquilizer; also because it is a pleasure to share in our silver jubilee before silver vanishes from circulation. I wonder what the Association will do when the golden jubilee comes round. But the last two words of the title were not of my choosing, and when the program came I had to consult my dictionary. There I learned that “to evaluate” means “to ascertain the numerical value of”—which suggests I am to talk in digits. As for “reflective,” the good book says “throwing back images, light, etc., as in a mirror.” Of late years, since I gave up using a hairbrush and took to an electric razor, I haven't done much looking into mirrors; and when I do so my bifocals compel me to stand so close that the view is limited in area or to move far back and thereby get width and depth of vision.
A Quantitative Approach to the Study of the Effects of British Imperial Policy upon Colonial Welfare: Some Preliminary Findings
Authors: Thomas Robert Paul
Published: August 2016

Historians have long debated whether the American colonies on balance benefited or were hindered by British imperial regulation. George Bancroft thought the regulations worked a definite hardship on the colonies. George L. Beer believed these regulations nicely balanced and that the colonies shared in the general advantages. Lawrence Harper, in a now classic article, actually attempted to calculate the cost and found that British policies “placed a heavy burden upon the colonies.” Oliver Dickerson wrote that “no case can be made … that such laws were economically oppressive,” while Curtis P. Nettels, writing at the same time to the same point, stated: “British policy as it affected the colonies after 1763 was restrictive, injurious, negative.” It is quite evident that a difference of opinion exists among reputable colonial historians over this important historical issue.
Landlords and Rural Capitalists in the Modernization of Japan
Authors: Smith Thomas C.
Published: August 2016

There is impressive evidence that wealthy peasants contributed significantly to the success of the Meiji Restoration, the political revolution that launched Japan on her career of modernization. These rural capitalists, for such they were, helped to give the revolution direction as well as power. How otherwise is one to account for a government dominated by samurai, the elite carriers of tradition, following policies that did great violence to Japan's past and destroyed the privileged status of the warrior class? But if the influence of the representatives of rural wealth was so strong, why did they consent to a clique of warriors holding political power almost as a private prerogative for a generation after the Restoration? Despite the demand for a share in power in the eighties, they did consent and weakly accepted the Meiji constitution which sanctified authoritarian government.
The Genesis of the Great Northern's Mesabi Ore Traffic
Authors: Thompson Joseph W.
Published: August 2016

In his valedictory address when retiring as Chairman of the Board of Directors in 1912, James J. Hill said of the Great Northern Railway Company, “The financial outlook of this company is as well assured as that of most governments. … No emergency can surprise it.” 1 The rise of the Great Northern to this almost impregnable position revolved mainly around Hill's far-famed leadership and two major commodities—wheat and iron ore.
Money and Politics in the Rebuilding of Paris, 1860–1870
Authors: Pinkney David H.
Published: August 2016

During the winter of 1867–1868 readers of Le Temps were entertained by a series of articles on the municipal finances of Paris by one of the paper's sharp-tongued contributors, the republican deputy Jules Ferry. The substance of the articles was not original, nor were they the most revealing of the many publications on the subject that appeared during the ‘sixties, but they were cutting and witty, and in 1868 Ferry republished diem as a booklet with an arresting title, The Fantastic Accounts of Haussmann. (Comptes fantastiques d'Haussmann was a pun on Contes fantastiques d'Hoffmann, a play presented at the Odéon in 1851 and later set to Offenbach's music.) When more analytical studies were forgotten, Ferry's work was remembered. The title found its way into popular histories, and for most people, Baron Haussmann's financing of the rebuilding of Paris is still something seen darkly through the glass of Ferry's political pamphlet.
The Molasses Act and the Market Strategy of the British Sugar Planters
Authors: Sheridan Richard B.
Published: August 2016

In The past few decades several approaches have been adopted with respect to the Molasses Act controversy of 1730–1733. It has been considered from the standpoint of Anglo-French commercial rivalry; as a conflict between two British colonial regions; as a measure designed to aid one group of British colonies at the expense of another; and as a source of precedents for parliamentary taxation of the colonies on the one hand and the colonists’ refusal to comply with such taxation on the other. While the trade between North America and the French West Indies was the chief target of attack, it is not always realized that proponents of the Molasses Act had other objectives in mind. British sugar planters were not only at odds with North American merchants who traded with the foreign sugar islands, but also with Irish merchants who pursued a similar course of trade and with the buyers of sugar in England. Failure to achieve results by means of restrictive legislation in one area did not necessarily preclude success in others. The controversy needs to be understood in terms of the international sugar economy, the changing nature of the British market for sugar and rum, and the planters’ attempt to adapt the Navigation Acts to these changes. From the planters’ standpoint, the Molasses Act was only one of several measures that were needed to adapt the Navigation Acts to the realities of the market, so it may be unrealistic to consider any one act in isolation.
Relative Prices in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Brady Dorothy S.
Published: August 2016

Never in history has man successfully invented a device, an instrument, a machine, or a structure without creating a demand for performance far beyond the capacity of the original design. The acceptance of an innovation starts a continuous stream of improvements in the product or in its manufacture that leads to larger, more powerful, or more efficient models; and the widespread diffusion of a product almost automatically implies the evolution of a broad range in the dimensions of serviceability. The increase in the size of the product is an important aspect of industrial growth. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, very few sailing vessels of 300 tons were produced in American shipyards. When the clipper ships were finally outmoded, the largest were at least ten times that size. The first American-made steam engines before 1810 included some that were large for the time, around 100 horsepower. By 1865, engines of 1,000 horsepower were in use, and by 1880 the size had been increased to 4,000 horsepower.
The International Scientific Committee on Price History
Authors: Cole Arthur H. , Crandall Ruth
Published: August 2016

In September 1928, two eminent economists with an interest in price history met and conversed at Hanover, New Hampshire: Sir William Beveridge and Edwin F. Gay. The former was Director of the London School of Economics and the latter, Professor of Economic History at Harvard University. For some time Sir William had been conducting research in medieval English manorial records and had already amassed data on price movements of English commodities. Moreover, he seems to have shared Gay's long-held views that broader research was needed to provide carefully selected and critically handled long homogeneous series of commodity prices and wages for a number of countries.
Monetary Movements and Market Structure—Forces for Contraction in Fourteenth-and Fifteenth-Century England
Authors: Miskimin Harry A.
Published: August 2016

That the Black Death of 1348–1349 disrupted the economies of Europe during the later middle ages is not open to doubt. That the economic effects of the plague varied from sector to sector is perhaps equally indubitable. The diversity of its impact upon various economic sectors reveals itself both in contemporary evidence and in the fiery controversies generated by modern economic historians, each basing his argument on conflicting statistics or inferences drawn, often without careful regard, from disparate sectors. It is thus not accidental that even the most cursory review of the literature concerning the period after the plague will unearth a surprising lack of agreement among the specialists.
Discussion of Miskimin paper
Authors: Ware Ronald D.
Published: August 2016

This paper is the latest contribution to the now considerable literature dealing with the putative depression in the later middle ages. In particular, Harry Miskimin's present monetary analysis is an extension of the recent exchange in the pages of the Economic History Review, involving him and his colleague, Robert Lopez, and their dissentient, Carlo Cipolla. The striking characteristic of this stimulating reconstruction is the reconciliation of some of the seemingly inconsistent or dissonant data adduced by previous writers. While every effort to clarify the operative factors and to establish cause and effect relationships in this disputed subject of Renaissance economic patterns is gratefully received, and while I personally am inclined toward the “depressionist” or at least “stagnationist” position in the current controversy, I am regretfully not entirely satisfied with the argument of this paper. My unease can be explained in part and, I would hope, will be communicated, by a few observations relating to the graphs which illustrate the text.
Land Speculator “Profits” Reconsidered: Central Iowa as a Test Case
Authors: Swierenga Robert P.
Published: August 2016

“Show us a non-resident who has made money speculating in western land,” wrote a frontier newspaper editor in 1850, “and we will show you a rare bird, more rare by far than a successful gold hunter.” Despite this warning and dozens like it, thousands of investors ventured surplus or borrowed funds on frontier land throughout the nineteenth century. Many, in fact, jumped from one frontier to the next on the heels of government surveyors and land officers. Either these businessmen were gluttons for punishment, or speculating in government land was far more rewarding than some contemporaries were willing to admit.
Markets, Technology, and the Structure of Enterprise in the Development of the Eleventh-Century Chinese Iron and Steel Industry
Authors: Hartwell Robert
Published: August 2016

From about 750 to 1100, China experienced a series of economic changes roughly comparable to the subsequent patterns of European growth from the Crusades to the eve of the French Revolution. The spread in the use of money, development of new credit and fiscal institutions, increase in interregional and international trade, and colonization of hitherto marginal land which took place in the Occident during the half millennium preceding the Reformation was paralleled by an earlier era of progress in East Asia during the two-hundred-fifty years from the rebellion of An Lu-shan (755) to the treaty of Shan-yüan 1004). And the achievements of late sixteenthand early seventeenth-century England, which John Nef terms an “early industrial revolution,” were in many respects even exceeded by the impressive expansion of mining and manufacturing in eleventh-century China.
Old Wine in New Bottles: A Review of the Cambridge Economic History, Volume VI
Authors: Parker William N.
Published: August 2016

The publication of a new volume of the Cambridge Economic History is itself an historical event. Like a great freight train, bursting out from its dark tunnel, it rattles across our landscape, loaded high with gold and spices, coal and lumber—a few peasants, merchants, silk-hatted bankers, officials, and businessmen clinging to the roofs of the cars. Livestock are terrified and students astonished; but as happy economic historians we line the tracks and wave our greeting, and then, as the noise and smoke fade away, we return to our firesides to tell each other stories of what we have seen.
A Merchant Adventurer in Brazil 1808–1818
Authors: Heaton Herbert
Published: August 2016

At thirty-seven John Luccock was looking forward with quiet assurance to a gentle transition into the comfortable middle age of a sedentary merchant. Napoleon and Jefferson spoiled his view, and before he was thirty-eight he had gone rolling down to Rio. There for ten years he imported and exported; watched a sleepy colonial outpost transform itself painfully into an imperial capital city; rambled, notebook in hand, around the almost trackless interior of Brazil, studying the remnants of an aboriginal culture and the way of life of those who had come to conquer. At forty-eight he returned home, leaving his health and middle age behind him. At fifty-six he died.
Intercompany Technical Standardization in the Early American Automobile Industry
Authors: Thompson George V.
Published: August 2016

Industrial historians have generally failed to note the importance of the technical standards that have been developed through intercompany agreements in the automobile industry. While they have studied the changing institutional character of American industry and have chronicled the mechanical developments of recent technology, they have undertaken but few explorations into die complex interrelationships between mechanical technology and business structure. In relating the growdi of intercompany technical standards' in the automobile industry up to about 1930, this study attempts to show the influence of changing business conditions on standardization and hence on the mechanical technology of the automobile.
Philippe de Girard and the Introduction of Mechanical Flax Spinning in Austria
Authors: Long Dwight C.
Published: August 2016

The Industrial Revolution had begun to affect the Austrian textile industry by the beginning of the nineteenth century. First to feel the effects were the woolen industry and the new cotton industry, which soon had copies of the new English spinning machines in operation. In England adaptation of these machines to flax had been made by John Marshall at Leeds as early as 1793, so that flax was spun dry in successful competition with hand-spun yarn, but only in the coarser yarns up to No. 16. However, similar attempts were not successful in Austria. The machines and processes were not so efficient as the English and could not compete with the cheap domestic hand-spun yarn. Because flax fibers are held together by a gum, they cannot be spun like cotton without excessive waste. Special treatment and machines had to be devised in order that flax might be spun in the range of numbers demanded by the market, and profitably. In the second decade of the new century efforts were being made in Austria, as elsewhere, to solve these special problems. Production of linen goods led all other industries in the monarchy. It provided a livelihood, wholly or in part, for thousands of families in town and country and constituted an important export. But the severe blows dealt by the Napoleonic Wars were followed by growing competition from more progressive linen industries in western Europe and especially from the rapidly growing and more easily mechanized cotton industry. The importance of the introduction of machinery in the Austrian linen industry as a means of meeting these threats to its very existence thus becomes apparent.
Medieval Economic Competition
Authors: Hirshler Eric E.
Published: August 2016

Nineteenth-century romanticism and the hardships of capitalist individualism have caused scholars to emphasize collectivistic social and economic institutions i n the Middle Ages. Carried to extremes by the English socialists, this attitude tended to ignore or even to deny the competitive aspects of medieval production. Church authorities and guild ordinances were often cited in support of the thesis that the era was noncompetitive. Even Sombart was able to see in the medieval craftsman and tradesman apetit bourgeoiswho typically held to the morals prescribed by church authorities.
The Making of an Economic Historian
Authors: Heaton Herbert
Published: August 2016

My two predecessors assure me that our association is too young to possess any precedents or traditions. In the matter of themes for presidential addresses the only foreshadow of a tradition seems to be the cult of variety and free choice. My own choice of subject is therefore influenced by the fact that during the past year I have been writing a biography of our first president and America's first native-born thoroughly trained economic historian, Edwin F. Gay. As I followed the career of one member of our guild in the making, comparisons with others would persist in cropping up, and the question took shape: “What are economic historians made of?”
Europe's Contribution to the American Dairy Industry
Authors: Edwards Everett E.
Published: August 2016

IN recent years much has been said and written about milk as the most nearly perfect of all modern foods, but it is important to realize that it is also the most venerable of human nutriments. Its use began long before recorded history, and it has continued throughout the ages to be a staple part of the human diet. Man's making friends with the lactating animals, such as the cow and the goat, was a significant step in the advancement of human nutrition and therefore of civilization as well. Butter and cheese proved to be important ways of preserving the food values of milk, and their invention, though probably accidental in both instances, was an important contribution to human nutrition. In the long history of dairying, custom and accidental discovery have probably been more important than conscious experimentation and innovation.
The Place of Theory in Teaching American Economic History
Authors: Kirkland Edward C.
Published: August 2016

This topic was discussed by a panel consisting of D. L. Kemmerer, JL University of Illinois; William B. Gates, Jr., Williams College; Broadus Mitchell, Rutgers University; and Thomas C. Cochran, New York University. The chairman was Edward C. Kirkland, Bowdoin College. In essence, the discussion was a criticism and evaluation of a paper by Mr. Kemmerer, the only formal presentation in the proceedings.
The Rate of Industrial Growth in Russia Since 1885
Authors: Gerschenkron Alexander
Published: August 2016

The main purpose of this paper is to compare the rates of industrial A growth in various periods of Russian history from the middle of the eighties until the end of the interwar period and to describe briefly the specific factors that promoted or obstructed the process of industrialization of the country. While no definitive conclusions are reached, some of the similarities and differences between industrial developments before and after 1914 are pointed out in the last section of this paper. History in the conditional mood is an enticing pastime. However, I have successfully withstood the temptation to concentrate on estimates of the relative level of industrial output that Russia might have attained in the absence of a revolution.
Family Structure and Economic Change in Nineteenth-Century Europe
Authors: Habakkuk H. J.
Published: August 2016

The scholars of continental Europe have devoted much attention to the social consequences of rules and customs of inheritance, and there exists a large body of work on this subject by lawyers and agricultural historians. The purpose of this paper is to consider, in the light of this European evidence, the possible significance of such rules and customs for economic development in the nineteenth century.
Foreign Observers of the British Iron Industry During the Eighteenth Century
Authors: Birch Alan
Published: August 2016

The following nore on source material relates to an important aspect of British industrial development in the eighteenth century. Some use of this material has been made by M. W. Flinn of Aberdeen University and myself in our studies of the industry in the Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but the field of the sources is so wide and relevant to so much of the economic history of Britain in that period that a summary may be of use to future researches in these rich and neglected sources.
The Impact of Growth on Government: The Example of Spain
Authors: Kellenbenz Hermann
Published: August 2016

This article deals with the interrelations between the economyand the government of the expanding Spanish empire in the era of overseas expansion during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Specifically, it attempts to show how the government reacted to the phenomenon of the growing empire. In a full treatment it would be necessary to show how the various Spanish territories of the Peninsula were unified by the process of the “reconquista” and by the marriage policy of the Catholic Icings; how during the sixteenth century Navarre and Portugal were joined; how the overseas expansion of Spanish power, beginning in the late Middle Ages, continued during the sixteenth century; and how Spain, as a consequence of Hapsburg marriage policy, built an important bridge of possessions from the Netherlands to Italy. Obviously, these questions cannot be dealt with in detail in one article, but they form the background for the following discussion.
A New Plea for the Separation of Ireland
Authors: Butlin Noel G.
Published: August 2016

The most recent representation of “British” economic development over the century from 1855, as given in Kuznets’ Modern Economic Growth, does not suggest much vitality in this important economy. This representation is not new. Since it became fashionable to villify the “Britain” of the 1950's and 1960's as the laggard country of Europe, attempts have been made to justify or rationalize recent British performance by claiming that recent slow growth rates have been long established. The justification is based merely on the fable of the tortoise and the hare: slow but steady growth in Britain versus the erratic path of foreigners. Kuznets’ picture of Britain over the past century would, however, suggest a country in which population growth competed only with France for lowest place among developed countries; omitting Netherlands from his list because of its limited period, Kuznets showed that the decade average rate of increase of British gross product, at 21.1 percent, was third lowest and only slightly above that of France with its special population experience; and British increase in product per head, at 14.1 percent decade average, ranked only above that of Australia, with its very low rate of growth at 8 percent. No race was being won here; rather the judgment on the recent past, from the perspective of a century of growth, is that Britain has always had it so bad. The question is whether this perspective is open to reasonable doubt.
Industrial Emigration in Early Victorian Britain
Authors: Shepperson Wilbur S.
Published: August 2016

Since the days of Queen Elizabeth, emigration has been a habit with the British people. But it was the nineteenth century, when almost seventeen million persons emigrated, that witnessed the United Kingdom's most extensive exodus: approximately eighty per cent of the emigrants went to North America. A broad, historical explanation of the forces that motivated British subjects to abandon their homeland can be found in numerous works. Therefore, this paper is an attempt to view in greater detail one small facet of a not uncommon, yet entangling, subject. A series of specialized studies producing greater exactness of information would perhaps lead to a fuller and more complete understanding of a topic that has been open to much conjecture.
State Intervention as an Obstacle to Economic Growth in the Habsburg Monarchy
Authors: Freudenberger Herman
Published: August 2016

State intervention as an obstacle to economic growth and development is a proposition that is especially intriguing in connection with the Habsburg monarchy of the eighteenth century. The posing of the question forces the historian to consider whether it can be applied to the problem of a static society ruled by a dynasty and controlled by a large agglomeration of urban-corporate and rural-manorial structures. What is a state in this context and what are obstacles to economic progress?
Values as an Obstacle to Economic Growth: The American Colonies
Authors: Diamond Sigmund
Published: August 2016

The story is told that Dean Donham of the Harvard Business School once asked Professor Schumpeter, after a lecture on the entrepreneur—Schumpeter's plumed knight of economic development–what was the most important single factor in accounting for the success of the businessman. Quick as a shot came the answer: “Good health.” For purposes of this inquiry into certain aspects of American social structure and American values which seem to have been of decisive importance in contributing to American economic growth, certain variables–like the health of the businessman and the endowment of the country with respect to natural resources –will not be considered.
Finance and Capital in the United States, 1850–1900
Authors: Sylla Richard
Published: August 2016

The connections between financial development and economic growth are drawing increased attention on many fronts. This dissertation studies ways in which the American financial system functioned to aid in the accumulation and mobilization of capital in the second half of the nineteenth century. The evolution of the banking system, by far the dominant nineteenth-century financial intermediary, is emphasized, but the role of Federal government finance is of scarcely less importance. The interrelated actions of the banks and the Treasury did much to set the tone in various financial markets during most of the period. While considerable study has been devoted to these actions and their short-run effects, much less has been written about their long-run implications. A major contention of the work is that financial strains caused by the Civil War and the various responses to these strains were accompanied by significant changes in the banking system—in its structure, the types of assets in which it dealt, and in its relations with the Treasury—all of which increased its potential for satisfying the demands placed upon it by a rapidly expanding economy. These changes helped to make capital, which may well have been the relatively scarce factor in the antebellum era, more abundant in the postwar Gilded Age, and they therefore abetted the rapid industrialization of those decades.
Economic Backwardness and the Characteristics of Development
Authors: Barsby Steven L.
Published: August 2016

Alexander Gerschenkron has suggested that certain characteristics of development during a country's initial period of industrialization, or “great spurt,” can be better understood if reference is made to that country's degree of relative backwardness just prior to the spurt. Referring to the European countries which began their rapid industrialization during the nineteenth century, Gerschenkron stated that the greater a country's relative backwardness on the eve of its spurt (1) the more rapid was the subsequent rate of manufacturing growth, (2) the greater was the stress on bigness of the size of plant and enterprise, (3) the greater was the stress on producers’ goods as opposed to consumers’ goods, (4) the less rapid was the increase in the level of consumption, (5) the greater was the role played by special institutional factors designed to speed industrialization, and (6) the less the agricultural sector contributed to economic growth, as measured by the rate of increase in agricultural labor productivity.
Food Surpluses and Deficits in the American Colonies, 1768–1772
Authors: Klingaman David
Published: August 2016

Scholars are gradually piecing together the puzzle of the economic development of the American colonies through quantitative studies designed to clarify and measure economic variables having theoretical relevance for the wider process of economic growth and development. Recently, researchers such as Jones, Land, Shepherd, Walton, and Thomas have been helping others to build a base that one day may permit the writing of a comprehensive study of the process of early American economic development which may even include reliable estimates of economic growth and living standards. The data problems for the colonial period of American economic history are severe, and much of the research has tended to concentrate on the important role of international trade, where the extant data sources are capable of yielding rich lodes of quantitative information. Customs 16/1, entitled the Ledger of Imports and Exports for America, 1768–1772, has been the most valuable source of trade data, since it is the only comprehensive document which shows the trade of the American colonies with all parts of the world and not just with the British Isles. Still yet to be mined are the rich sources of data buried in the naval office lists for the various colonies. These sources also give the trade of each colony with all parts of the world although they are more tedious to work with than the better collated Customs 16/1.
Labor Scarcity and the Problem of American Industrial Efficiency in the 1850's: A Reply
Authors: Temin Peter
Published: August 2016

In a recent issue of this Journal, Ian Drummond took issue with my article discussing the relation of labor scarcity to British observations of American industrial efficiency in the 1850's. I tried to show that (1) the contemporary observations were not specific enough to show whether or not Americans were using the same technology as the British; (2) even if the observations showed that the Americans used the same technology as the British, it would not follow that the higher ratio of land to labor in the United States had induced a higher ratio of capital to labor; and (3) if the observations proved that the Americans used a more efficient technology than the British, the connection between this fact and the high land-labor ratio was not clear. Under (2), I tried to demonstrate that the land-labor ratio and the capital-labor ratio were separate, and that it was improper to make inferences about the latter from data about the former. In fact, if we assume that land was not used in manufacturing, the data imply that while the land-labor ratio in America was higher than in Britain, the capital-labor ratio was lower.
Uncertainty and Economic Change
Authors: Easterbrook W. T.
Published: August 2016

Present-Day economic historians should be well qualified to talk about uncertainty. There was a happier time when the empirical and concrete study of individual situations was deemed sufficient, when mediodological problems of the long run were left for historians to raise and solve if they could and controversies centered on questions that they themselves formulated. Differences there were, but few irreconcilable differences; areas of the unknown were recognized but there appeared to be no gaps in knowledge that could not be bridged in the course of time. Now, for better or worse, this sheltered position has itself become a datum of history. The challenge of social scientists seeking chics to an understanding of die forces shaping secular change has become increasingly insistent and effective; the strenuous wooing of Clio by economic theorists, statisticians, and Parsonian sociologists can no longer be ignored. Assuming that retreat to the shelter of cloistered storytelling is out of the question, creative response on the part of historians to the uncertainties of their twentieth-century environment becomes a condition of leadership in historical inquiry, its lack a virtual guarantee of submergence.
The Social Basis of the American System of Manufacturing
Authors: Sawyer John E.
Published: August 2016

Of The many tasks confronting economic history, none are more shrouded in uncertainty than those encompassed in the theme “Institutional and Cultural Factors in Economic History.” We have in general treated these factors respectfully, but as a profession we have preferred to work in areas more clearly defined and with tools more fully developed. As a result few areas have received less sustained attention than the zones where we must seek the interplay of economic, social, and cultural forces.
United States Transport Advance and Externalities
Authors: Lebergott Stanley
Published: August 2016

What role the railroad played and how changes in transportstimulated American economic advance, while puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture. And such questions never lacked for conjecture. But recent studies have given a rigorous and brilliant cast to that inquiry, if not a totally novel one. An older tradition was shaped by the historian's desire to see economic change “as it was,” by his recognition that every happening was indispensable to the actual course of history. The newer focus, on history “as it was not,” reflects a belief that in economic affairs, as in those of the heart, desire will find its object—or a sufficiently close substitute. It i s difficult for the economist to view any historic innovation as revolutionary or to equate technological novelty with economic importance. It is an easy step to use comparative statics; to measure history “as it was not”; and thereby to define economic importance.