The bibliographic essays include author contributions for all but two of the chapters. Chapters 2 and 14 include such extensive reference citations that we felt that separate bibliographic essays would not be necessary.

ABRAMOVITZ AND DAVID

Statistical Sources: Trends and Fluctuations

The most convenient, authoritative compilation of long-term statistical information is the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, D.C., 1975).

The following paragraphs contain references to outstanding sources of statistics on particular subjects together with discussions by the compilers of the estimates and of the forces governing their trends and fluctuations.

Paul A. David, in “Real Income and Economic Welfare in the Early Republic,” Discussion Paper in Economic and Social History No. 5, March 1996, University of Oxford, presents the basic estimates of national product used in this chapter for the period 1800 to 1840. Alternative estimates may be found in Thomas Weiss, “U.S. Labor Force Estimates and Economic Growth, 1800-1860” in Robert E. Gallman and John Joseph Wallis (eds.), American Economic Growth and Standards of Living Before the Civil War (Chicago, 1992). The figures underlying the estimates used in this chapter for the decades from 1840 to 1890 were made by Robert Gallman, “Gross National Product in the United States, 1834—1909” in Dorothy S. Brady (ed.), Output, Employment and Productivity in the United States after 1800, Studies in Income and Wealth, vol. 30 (New York, 1966). These, however, have now been superseded by his estimates presented in Vol. II of The Cambridge Economic History of the United States, “Economic Growth and Structural Change in the Long Nineteenth Century.”