The article analyzes the evolution of the Amsterdam capital market as a consequence of Dutch overseas expansion and the introduction of transferable VOC shares. Offering investors prospects of speculative gains without serious loss of liquidity, these instruments created a booming secondary market offering a wide range of allied credit techniques. By 1609 this market had become sufficiently strong to dictate terms for new public debt issues. These findings show that, contrary to commonly held notions about the emergence of secondary markets, private finance took precedence over public finance in the Dutch Republic.

This article argues that one contributing factor to the Cuban Revolution of 1959 was the 1956 revision of U.S. sugar quotas. Its significance has been overlooked because its real economic impact was programmed to occur after 1959. Combining a statistical simulation and an event study of sugar companies' rates of return on equity, we show that the revision had adverse long-run consequences for sugar exports, and that forward-looking investors anticipated them and incorporated them into their valuation of sugar-company stocks after 1953. Further evidence shows that the Batista regime and prominent insurgents understood the vital nature of Cuba's sugar import quota.

I evaluate the effectiveness of financial markets in the early Roman Empire in this article. I review the theory of financial intermediation to describe a hierarchy of financial sources and survey briefly the history of financial intermediation in eighteenth-century Western Europe to provide a standard against which to evaluate the Roman evidence. I then describe the nature of financial arrangements in the early Roman Empire in terms of this hierarchy. This exercise reveals the extent to which the Roman economy resembled more recent societies and sheds light on the prospects for economic growth in the Roman Empire.

In 1917, after scientific breakthroughs allowed for the early detection of bovine tuberculosis, the USDA began a campaign to eradicate the disease. Agents inspected nearly every cattle farm in the country and condemned roughly 4 million reactors to slaughter without full compensation. This article analyzes how the eradication program functioned, how incentives were aligned to ensure widespread participation without excessive moral hazard problems, and why the United States led most European nations in controlling the disease. The U.S. campaign was a spectacular success, reducing human suffering and death and yielding benefits in the farm sector alone that exceeded ten times the cost.

Using individual measures of adult and child literacy, this article examines human capital acquisition in one Southern city, Charleston, 1790–1840. White adult literacy rates differed greatly by sex and class and rose gradually over time. Mothers played a critical role in human capital transmission in early childhood and long after children had left their care. Both relatively recent literacy acquisition and early childhood family structure influenced the occupation to which children were apprenticed. These results are consistent with present-day studies that trace sources of adult well-being back into childhood.

Alexander Hamilton's “Report on Manufactures” (1791) is a classic document of U.S. economic policy, but its fate in Congress is not well known. It is commonly believed that the report was never implemented. Although Hamilton's proposals for bounties (subsidies) failed to receive support, virtually every tariff recommendation was adopted by Congress in early 1792. These tariffs were not highly protectionist because Hamilton feared discouraging imports, which were the critical tax base on which he planned to fund the public debt. As a consequence, protectionist interests shifted their political support from the Federalists to the Jeffersonian Republicans during the 1790s.

Using information on banks' balance sheets, I analyze the causal links between the banking and currency problems in the German crisis of 1931. I find that the crisis had two independent causes: Political shocks triggered a run on the Reichsmark; and the excessive risk-taking by banks that were “too big to fail” led to a run on banks. Due to the high level of foreign debt in the banking system, the run on the currency and the deposit withdrawals reinforced each other in a vicious circle and resulted in a banking panic and the abandonment of the gold standard.

It is lovely to see attention to this critical episode in the Great Depression. Isabel Schnabel repeats the familiar argument that bank behavior was a primary cause of the German crisis. We have argued elsewhere that the German crisis clearly began as a currency crisis, not a banking crisis. The purpose of this comment is to examine the data that Schnabel's article brings to bear on this question and evaluate the evidence it presents in support of its hypotheses.

Ferguson and Temin criticize my article for only paying lip service to the notion of a twin crisis while providing a story of a pure banking crisis. In fact, I have never claimed that the crisis was a pure banking crisis. The question is whether and to what extent banks contributed to the crisis. Ferguson and Temin take the position that the crisis was a pure currency crisis. I argue that weaknesses in the banking sector existed, which interacted with the currency problems in numerous ways. The focus of my article on banks reflects the nature of the question, rather than any view that currency problems were unimportant.

In the September 2003 issue of this JOURNAL, we provided benchmark comparisons of U.K./U.S. income from 1870 to 1990. In contrast to long-span projections from Angus Maddison and others, our estimates show the United States leading from 1870 in terms of income per capita and output per worker. In a 12-page comment that accompanies our article, Professor Stephen Broadberry criticizes our work on three grounds. First, he charges our estimates are inconsistent with his U.K./U.S. sectoral productivity comparisons. Second, he chastises us on the grounds that our price benchmarks conflict with standard U.S. and U.K. price indices. Finally, he queries our nominal GDP estimates.