Empirical studies of delegate voting at the Constitutional Convention have relied on the same 16 roll call votes. This article re-examines various assumptions used in the collection of these data. We first create a baseline regression. We then consider the effect of dropping delegates not in attendance, re-inferring the votes from primary sources, examining various subsamples of the roll calls, and reconstructing constituency variables to include state districts. Our findings suggest that personal interests were indeed important for decision making at the Constitutional Convention, but constituent interests were less important than previously claimed.

In the 1960s many American cities experienced violent, race-related civil disturbances. This article examines census data from 1950 to 1980 to measure the riots' impact on the value of central-city residential property, and especially on black-owned property. Both OLS and IV estimates indicate that the riots depressed the median value of black-owned property between 1960 and 1970, with little or no rebound in the 1970s. Census tract data for a small number of cities suggest relative losses of population and property value in tracts that were directly affected by riots compared to other tracts in the same cities.

Locomotive inspection was among the most important Progressive Era federal workplace regulations. Inspection rules were enforced by a new Bureau of Locomotive Inspection, which claimed credit for subsequent safety improvements. Relying on published and unpublished data this article assesses these claims. Literary sources suggest that the bureau achieved compliance by emphasizing regulatory benefits and that its activities sharply reduced locomotive defects through the 1920s, in part by reducing agency problems. A model for 1923–1932 reinforces this conclusion, but suggests that the safety gains came at high cost. After 1932 safety improvements stagnated, for inspection ran out of steam.

Africa and Latin America secured independence from European colonial rule a century and half apart: most of Latin America by the 1820s and most of Africa by 1960. Despite the distance in time and space, they share important similarities. In each case independence was followed by political instability, violent conflict, and economic stagnation lasting for about a half-century. The parallels suggest that Africa might be exiting from a period of postimperial collapse and entering one of relative political stability and economic growth, as did Latin America almost two centuries ago.

When George Carmack struck gold in the Yukon territory on 17 August 1896, he freely shared the details and started what would eventually be three waves of rushes. This reflected a social norm of the Klondike, namely that any miner who struck gold would share this information. Miners did not behave this way in other nineteenth-century gold rushes. The article's hypothesis is that the extreme mining conditions and local geography of the Yukon led to very secure property rights over mining claims. Therefore, it took only a small incentive payment to induce miners to act in the social interest.

Between 1660 and 1815 the combat fatality rate among British navy captains fell by 98 percent, even as the combat success of the British Navy rose dramatically. Both developments can be explained as a result of learning by doing among British commanders. This learning was importantly driven by the extensive wartime experience accumulated over this period, combined with the unparalleled financial incentives for combat success offered to British commanders.

This article uses nineteenth-century evidence to calculate the impact of early exposure to malaria-ridden environments on nutritional status and the immune system in America. I estimate the risk of contracting malarial fevers in the 1850s by using correlations between malaria and environmental factors such as climate and geographical features. The study demonstrates that Union Army recruits who spent their early years in malaria-endemic counties were 1.1 inches shorter at enlistment due to malnutrition and were 13 percent more susceptible to infections during the U.S. Civil War as a result of immune disorders than were those from malaria-free regions.

The article employs a general equilibrium model to describe Italy's response to commodity and factor market integration during the expansion of the Roman Empire. This novel approach constructs a comprehensive story of the Italian economy that corroborates established developments and sheds light on controversial and unanswered questions. The success of the model supports arguments that Romans were rational economic actors and that the Roman economy was a well-integrated market system.