Evidence from banks in one southern city casts doubt upon the view that the quasi-monopolistic structure of the national banking system financed American industrialization by depriving southern and western regions of relatively inexpensive money. An increased number of national banks were lending much more locally in the 1880s and 1890s in Knoxville, Tennessee, than they were in the 1860s and 1870s. The national banking expansion and associated expansion in the number of state-chartered banks appear to have resulted from a local boom rather than from removal of barriers to entry.

Present interest in communication research in the social and physical sciences raises some interesting and difficult questions for the economic historian. Arthur Cole, who claims that he is merely trying to carry further the work of Harold Innis and others at Toronto, but who is surely the moving spirit in this session, has suggested that we might begin by pin-pointing a few leading questions for examination. Is this comparatively recent development to be regarded as merely a passing phase in the history of fashions in thought? Is the process of relating communication to economic change mainly a process of sophistication and is there anything to argue about in this relationship? Or, on the other hand, does it in fact amount to a major break-through in scientific and historical analysis, something comparable to the impact made on economics about a century ago by the Austrian School?

This article offers a comparative analysis of the inflationary exeriences of Weimar Germany and post-Soviet Russia, applying theories about money and government budget constraints in the manner of Thomas Sargent and François Velde. The comparison looks beyond economic policy itself to the political and social consequences of the two inflationary crises. The parallel is fairly close: close enough to suggest that Russia, despite its recent quiescence, may not have seen the end of its monetary—or political—travails.

The study attempts to rehabilitate the reputation of the Byzantine emperor, Manuel I Comnenus, by considering often overlooked evidence of the Genoese experience in Constantinople during his reign. Manuel's alleged ill-treatment of Italian merchants is seen to have resulted not from greed but from his concern with maintaining peace in Constantinople. The Genoese, who remained peaceful and loyal to their agreements with Manuel, prospered under his goodwill in spite of Genoa's refusal to commit itself to a Byzantine offensive alliance. It is concluded that Manuel's commercial policy was equitable to the Italians and beneficial to his empire's economic health.

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.

The Great Depression of the 1930s involved a severe disruption in the supply of home mortgage credit. This paper empirically identifies a mechanism lying behind this credit crunch: the impairment of lenders’ balance sheets by illiquid foreclosed real estate. With data on hundreds of building and loans (B&Ls), the leading mortgage lenders in this period, we find that the overhang of foreclosed real estate explains about 30 percent of the drop in new lending between 1930 and 1935.

Control of livestock disease had large spillover effects on human health. By 1900 the United States was a leader in livestock disease control, thanks to the efforts of the Bureau of Animal Industry. Its first chief, Daniel Salmon, established a model that would be copied around the world in campaigns against human and animal diseases. For the most part, the Progressive Era regulations to advance livestock health and food safety were spectacular successes. The bureau's main blunder was its failure to deal effectively with trichinosis, which was far more widespread than generally believed.

Does the prosperity of medieval manors depend on their position in the feudal system? How large are these effects? And what are the underlying economic mechanisms? Using Domesday Book, a unique country-wide survey conducted by William the Conqueror, we reinterpret the eleventh-century English feudal system as a network in which manors are linked to one another based on their common ownership structure. Both a reduced-form and a more structural approach reveal the existence of external economies of scale: manorial prosperity was closely intertwined with the fortune of feudal peers. Our findings quantitatively establish the existence of feudal coordination in High-Medieval agricultural activities, revealing how institutionalized interactions could serve to mitigate transaction costs.

While it is inevitable that the word “capitalism” will be used by various participants at the Congress in various senses, some mutual understandings concerning the different meanings likely to be intended may help to clarify the discussions. The following is an attempt (a) to indicate the different usages which will probably occur, (b) to suggest modifying adjectives or substitute terms by which the different meanings may be distinguished, and (c) to indicate relevant historical questions.

My thesis examines the process of industrialization in nineteenthcentury New England before the Civil War. I have attempted to achieve three principal objectives: first, the purely descriptive task of beginning to fill our present vacuum of detailed information on the American economy before 1840; second, to test the specific hypothesis that New England and perhaps other American regions would exhibit concentrated spurts of industrial output similar to those which characterized the emergence of modern economies in nineteenth-century Europe; third, to construct an explanation of the forces which determined the particular course of development which was observed.

The scarcity of quantitative evidence on economic growth in the nineteenth century is a strong incentive for the use of representative indicators, instead of compound indexes or supplemented by them. Consumption series of coal, iron, and cotton are prominent candidates to serve this purpose, due to the central roles played by these materials in European industrialization. A further point in their favor is the relatively high availability and quality of mining and foreign trade statistics. The specific functions and link-ages of those three staples, however, were quite different, and thus their growth paths represent different aspects and processes. For the overall modernizing transformation of an economy, coal consumption evidently suggests itself as the best single indicator, at least until the end of the century. Its growth reflects the increasing output of industry, transportation, and even agriculture, inasmuch as they relied on coal for heat and/or for motive power. This means that coal stands for a broad cross-section of the economy, and furthermore, for a growing one. The substitution of mineral fuel for wood or charcoal and of steam for water power was not only the most general component of industrialization, in the wider sense of the term. It also was a prerequisite for the growth potential of firms and industries in many instances, among them such strategic sectors as iron and steel or overland transportation. Similarly, the introduction of steam engines was a characteristic of the innovating firm in agriculture and in land reclamation. On these grounds one would expect the growth of coal consumption to represent the pace of transition to modern economic growth, rather than the growth of industrial product only.

Fire destroyed the Patent Office on December 15, 1836. From the ensuing actions by the Congress and Commissioner, it is possible to create a comprehensive and accurate description of the scope and level of technology and changes therein, as the United States transformed itself into an industrial society. This paper reports the progress made toward that description (in the form of a unified reference work), illustrates some uses of the data, and suggests other uses of the final version in expanding understanding of the processes of sociocultural change, particularly those of capitalist development.