This article presents new estimates of time spent in home production in the United States during the twentieth century. Historical time-diary studies for various segments of the population are linked to estimates from recent time use surveys. The new estimates suggest that time spent in home production by prime-age women fell by around six hours from 1900 to 1965 and by another 12 hours from 1965 to 2005. Time spent by prime-age men rose by 13 hours from 1900 to 2005. Average across the entire population, per capita time spent in home production increased slightly over the century.

Old Regime polities typically suffered from fiscal fragmentation and absolutist rule. By the start of World War I, however, many such countries had centralized institutions and limited government. This article uses a new panel data set to perform a statistical analysis of political regimes and public revenues in Europe from 1650 to 1913. Panel regressions indicate that centralized and limited regimes were associated with significantly higher revenues than fragmented and absolutist ones. Structural break tests also suggest close relationships between major turning points in revenue series and political transformations.

The henequen boom coincided with the rule of Porfirio Díaz (1876–1911). During the boom, many Maya in Yucatan lost their rights to land and moved to henequen haciendas. As part of the implicit contract with hacendados, peons accumulated large debts at the time of marriage, most of which were never repaid. We argue that the debts bound workers to the hacienda as part of a system of paternalism and that more productive workers incurred more debt. We examine the institutional setting in which debt operated and stress the formal and informal institutional contexts within which hacendados and workers negotiated contracts.

John Kenneth Turner1

Using a newly constructed panel data set, which includes annual estimates of lending rates for 47 Japanese prefectures, we analyze why interest rates converged over the period 1884–1925. We find evidence that technological innovations and institutional changes played an important role in creating a national capital market in Japan. In particular, the diffusion in the use of the telegraph, the growth in commercial branch banking networks, and the development of Bank of Japan's branches reduced interest rate differentials. Bank regulation appears to have played little role in impeding financial market integration.

Why do voters publicly fund education? I examine two explanations: public funds may be a means for decisive voters to transfer wealth to themselves or voters may subsidize the education of others to raise social education levels and realize external benefits. I test these theories in the 1800s, when full tax support of primary schools emerged. States where median and mean wealth was closer together had higher fractions of education revenue from public sources. Attendance rates rose when the public share of education funding rose, especially for poor children. These facts are consistent with a model with external benefits of education.

Many states nationalized portions of their railroad network between 1860 and 1912. This article uses new cross-country data to examine which factors contributed to nationalizations and how nationalizations influenced network expansion. I find evidence that nationalizations were greater in countries with low constraints on the executive branch, with French and German civil law systems, and where neighboring countries had higher military capability. I also find evidence that nationalizations reduced mileage growth. The results suggest that external military threats increased the appeal of nationalizations, while legal and political institutions influenced their costs. They also suggest that nationalizations reduced investment incentives.

Historians disagree about whether geographic mobility on the frontier reflected economic hardship or opportunity because of the inability to observe the outcomes of non-persisters. This article uses a new sample of frontier families linked between the 1860, 1870, and 1880 U.S. censuses to study mobility and wealth accumulation. Using the incidence of Confederate guerilla warfare in frontier counties to generate exogenous migration, I find the effect of persistence on wealth accumulation is insignificant. Also, young, blue-collar, and landless families—those with the highest net benefits of migration—were the most likely to move. These findings reflect widespread economic opportunity on the frontier.

Using a new historical data set on the availability of schools, I analyze why there was so little primary education in British India, where as late as 1911 there were fewer than three primary schools for every ten villages. The findings show that greater caste and religious diversity contributed to both low and misguided private spending. Indeed more diverse districts had fewer privately managed primary schools and a smaller ratio of primary to secondary schools. Given primary schools were correlated with subsequent literacy, local factors that disrupted primary school provision had important consequences for India's limited achievement in basic education.