The production of economic history, like that in many fields of scholarly endeavor, increased sharply in the past quarter-century, compared to the rate of output in earlier eras. While the “new” economic history, with its emphasis on economic theory and measurement, has attracted considerable attention during the last decade, “traditional” economic history, written along institutional lines, has continued to be significant, both quantitatively (in terms of numbers of books and articles) and qualitatively (as assessed by contributions to our understanding of economic processes.)

This article argues that the development of the peasant commune in Russia, with its periodic repartition of serf holdings, hierarchy of authority, and dependence on corvee as a form of obligation, was a consequence of enslavement of the Russian peasant. These features of the commune are seen as reducing the costs of both monitoring labor effort, and maintaining the productive capacity of the serf. The chronology of their development and their association with the more fertile land of European Russia and with private as opposed to state ownership provide evidence for the argument.

For many years a relatively small number dominated the private sector of the American of the American economy. Most of the nation's goods and a substantial part of its services are produced and distributed by very large corporations. Of late, most Americans seem unconcerned about this fact. They regard big business with equanimity, even approval, and as Richard Hofstadter points out, antitrust has become “one of the faded passions of American reform.”

Roger Ransom takes exception on three counts to my published study of the burden of the Navigation Acts, questioning (1) the counterfactual proposition I employed, (2) my estimate of the relative burden, and (3) the likelihood of differing regional impacts of the Acts. I shall briefly take up each of these in turn.

Was there an ample supply of low-skilled, free labor in the antebellum Southeast to develop a textile industry producing coarser goods? Using county-level data from the 1850 and 1860 manuscript censuses and other historical sources, we found there was a surplus of low-skilled, free (mostly white) labor in Edgefield County, South Carolina, where the textile industry was firmly established before the Civil War. If Edgefield County was not a unique case, then potential investors in southern textiles were probably not restrained by an inadequate labor force. Moreover, our Edgefield study reinforces other analyses which indicate that many whites hovered on the margins of southern society even in its most prosperous decade before the Civil War.

The task of discussing sociological changes in the field of European enterpreneurship is not an easy one, mainly because of the scarcity of historical data of the earliest period and the fact that there has been comparatively little individual biographical research relating to that period. These changes can perhaps best be illustrated by attempting to define the individual typifying the entrepreneur in each of the three economic periods that Sombart has designated as early, middle or mature, and late capitalism.

Cross-section data on expenditure patterns and time-series data on nominal national income and the characteristics of the consuming population are combined to yield aggregate expenditure and household budget share estimates for Canadians from 1870 to 1914. Recently developed econometric techniques are used to produce the new time series. Unlike older estimates that give relatively stable budget shares, the new series break at 1900. This finding has significant implications for the debate over Canadian real income changes in the period, a debate prolonged by problems of converting nominal into real income and of estimating real consumption directly.

This paper attempts to answer three questions. How much did agricultural research contribute to agricultural growth in British India? Was its limited impact due to too little investment or inefficient allocation of research resources? Could more research have led to a “Green Revolution” in foodgrain production? Available data indicate that the impact of research was small and that more should have been invested in research. The evidence suggests, however, that larger investments in foodgrain research would not have resulted in a Green Revolution in British India.

Within the sweep of Canada's economic progress, I should liketo devote special attention to one period—from about 1900 to the outbreak of World War I—as die period of most rapid growth in the history of Canada since die union of the separate provinces under Confederation in 1867, with die possible exception of die war-stimulated 1940's. I propose to point out certain parallels between that remarkable expansionary period and a much earlier one. I shall also attempt to isolate die important factors responsible for the upsurge of growdi after 1900.

The power of the Medici as a banking house, and their weakness also, become clearer when we examine the source of their funds. The main problem is whether the Medici bank operated mainly with the money invested by the partners or whether most of the operating capital was supplied from outside sources. It would be easy to settle this question if some balance sheets of the Medici bank were still available. As none have come down to us, another method of approach has to be used.

The paper will show how the Marxian concept of class can be applied to the processes of slavery in the American antebellum South. The use of the notion of classes, and particularly the reconceptualized concepts of fundamental and subsumed class processes, provides an alternative to the received non-Marxian categories of plantation capitalism and planter hegemony. These concepts are developed and applied to Southern class conflicts over both state banking and national monetary policy. Competition among various classes is shown to have had significant influences on the nature of these conflicts.

This paper is in no way a definitive study of classes, especially of the business classes, in the city of Genoa in the thirteenth century. The materials for such a study do exist in the notarial archives and in earlier publications on this and related subjects. Rather, this is a report drawn from “work resumed” and work in its early stages at that.

This paper reexamines the extent to which the giant corporations cooperated with wage and price controls during World War II, an issue to which Galbraith first drew attention. Two forms of evidence are explored: a sample of court cases involving the Office of Price Administration and large corporations, and the monographs in which former administrators reflected on their wartime experiences. The conclusion is that the compliance record could be characterized as a good one, but that this achievement depended on the constraints on allocation and collective bargaining that existed during the war.