This paper reviews the output of journal publications by the twenty five leading economic history programs during the past fifteen years. At present, there are no formal ratings of the quality of economic history programs at the various academic institutions, but journal publications can serve as a partial indicator of quality. The Roose-Andersen ratings graduate programs provide separate rankings of economics and history programs, but this information may not be appropriate in evaluating economic history programs, and the ratings have not been updated since 1969. Journal publications are certainly not the only measure of quality academic institutions, but journals are regarded as the standard outlet for disseminating new research findings and expanding the frontiers of knowledge. Those institutions that have concentrated their publication efforts on books, textbooks, monographs, working papers, and other nonjournal forms of publication will of course be underrepresented by the procedures followed in this paper.

From 1847 to 1853 New Yorkers built more than 3,500 miles of wooden roads. Financed primarily by residents of declining rural townships, plank roads were seen as a means of linking isolated areas to the canal and railroad network. A broad range of individuals invested in the roads, suggesting that the drive for bigger markets was supported by a large cross section of the population. Considerable community spirit animated the movement, indicating that New Yorkers used the social capital of the community to reach their entrepreneurial aspirations.

The general theme of these discussions calls for a reinterpretation of the West as an underdeveloped region. This lends credence to a hypothesis occasionally encountered that history is comprised of the examination of a succession of conceptual anachronisms devised in each case by the historian's generation for the solution of contemporary problems and applied as an afterthought to the reconstruction of the past. The adoption of the concept of underdevelopment in die present circumstance is in line with this hypothesis and is, in this regard, in good company with well-worn frames of reference utilized by earlier generations of North American economic historians. Turner advanced the frontier thesis as a tool of analysis of the past at a time when major concern was arising over the frontier's disappearance. Innis fashioned the staple-trade approach to Canadian economic development in the interwar years when for a time it appeared that Canadian prosperity and material advance had vanished coincidentally with the mortal illness of the last great Canadian staple, wheat.

This paper will deal not with the development, but rather with the lack of development of laissez-faire thought in Massachusetts during most of the nineteenth century. A common misconception of American economic thought, as of American economy, ascribes a continuous laissez-faire bent to policy in the United States. This misconception will be found not only in the pretty publications of the National Association of Manufacturers where it might be expected, but also in the serious works of our most careful scholars into which it obtrudes almost automatically. Thus Mr. Nef recently referred to laissez faire as “part of our national heritage.” Yet, in general, and specifically as applied to Massachusetts, this is completely erroneous.

During World War II a system of labor participation and representation emerged in a series of national economic planning agencies. This study is primarily concerned with the representation and participation of organized labor in the activities of the National Defense Advisory Commission, the Office of Production Management, and the War Production Board. Some attention is also given to the War Manpower Commission and the Office of Price Administration.

This article analyzes the growth and distribution of agricultural tenancy in Iowa from 1850 to 1900. For the period before 1880 (when the published censuses did not record land-tenure data), it estimates tenancy rates based on a twelvecounty sample. It analyzes several explanations of the causes of tenancy and concludes that it was a natural outgrowth of a normally operating market system rather than a sign of economic malfunction. The article argues that the widening margin between current rates of return to land and mortgage interest rates explains much of the growth in tenancy. It also finds that regional specialization in farming largely explains the spatial distribution of tenancy by 1900.

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.

Langdon Cheves's role as president of the Second Bank of the United States (1819–1822) warrants reassessment. First, he did not save the bank from threatened failure, since it was, in truth, already sound. Second, he was irresponsible in accumulating huge excess reserves during the depression year of 1820; reserves estimated here as sufficient to support an increase of up to 17 percent in the volume of notes and deposits in the U.S. money supply.

In the 1950s the British Treasury made an unusual departure from its traditional effort to minimize government spending, arguing that publicly funded development corporations rather than private developers should build town centers in New Towns so as to reap returns from property development. Often associated with frontier growth, development gain is partly created by the state and can only emerge and be realized with the passage of time and the evolution of expectations. Divisions within the state kept Treasury officials from fully securing a greater public role in New Town center building.

This article analyzes the connection between investment decisions and financing arrangements in the nineteenth-century American whaling industry. Managers of whaling ventures shared their risks by selling some equity claims but retained a substantial portion due to moral hazard considerations. As a result, they had little incentive to consider the covariance between their own returns, and those of others, in planning their voyages. This stifled diversity in whaling voyages and increased industry-wide risk. The analysis suggests a link between financial market development, or the extent of risk sharing in financial markets, and the range of economic activities pursued.

Until his untimely death Zvi Griliches was an important contributor to the measurement and interpretation of productivity growth in the United States and elsewhere. Economists working in this area have been principally concerned with trends in two key measures of productivity: labor productivity, or output per hour, and multifactor or total factor productivity (MFP). Growth in labor productivity is the growth in real output less growth in hours, and multifactor productivity growth is the growth in real output less a weighted average of growth of inputs conventionally measured, with the weights corresponding to shares of factors in national income. The former measure is the most important determinant of growth in our material standard of living as measured by growth in per capita real output. The latter variable, subject to some qualifications, gives us some measure of the impact on economic growth of scientific and technical progress in different periods. The two are closely related, since growth in labor productivity can be decomposed into a portion accounted for by capital deepening (rise in the ratio of capital services per labor hour) and the “residual” contributed by growth in MFP.

The integration of women into formal labor markets was one of the most salient changes of the twentieth century. The “female century,” in the words of The Economist, witnessed an extraordinary transformation of women's opportunities and outcomes both in and outside the household. My dissertation explores both the causes and the consequences of women's move from home to market in the United States during three episodes of rapid change. It begins by documenting demand-side shifts during the 1940s that increased the earnings and occupational choices of African-American women; then demonstrates the impact of contraceptive technology on the extent and intensity of women's participation in the formal labor market after 1960; and, finally, estimates the consequences of shifts in women's labor supply for the growth of earnings inequality in the United States during the 1980s.