We examine (1) why, when a national capital market developed in the United States, regional interest rate differentials existed and seemed to narrow toward 1900, and (2) the changing patterns of banking behavior in the post-Civil War period. We show that a national capital market was established early (1870s), and regional rate differentials were a response to variations and changes in the interest sensitivity of business loan demand. Bank structure was characterized by monopoly, but it declined because of increasing sophistication of business financing decisions, which became more sensitive to open market rates (in particular the stock market) and to loan rates themselves.

New economic historians' explanations of market activity slight the timing of change, as well as the importance of institutions and attitudes. These deficiencies, unimportant in analyses of goods market activity, are unacceptable in analyses of political activity. To extend the domain of economic history to political activity, therefore, I summarize the political market in sentiment (what voters want ex ante), loyalty (what voters want ex post), and acquiescence (what voters accept). To show how these measures facilitate analysis of political activity, I discuss the origins of the American Civil War.

The introduction and diffusion of what Alfred Chandler called modern business enterprise had a profound capital-saving impact on the American economy. Given the availability of the railroad and telegraph, purchasing more managerial labor services paid off principally via increased speed of production and inventory turnover, which spread costs of holding capital over a larger volume of output. This article challenges the consensus that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century technological change in the United States was overwhelmingly labor saving and interprets the factor-saving bias of modern business enterprise as representative rather than anomalous.

Economic analysis of the labor supply of married women has long emphasized the impact of the unemployment of husbands—the added worker effect. This article re-examines the magnitude of the added worker effect in the waning years of the Great Depression. Previous studies of the labor supply of married women during this period failed to take account of various institutional features of New Deal work relief programs, which reduced the size of the added worker effect.

Two series of the dollar-sterling exchange rate are presented for the 1791–1834 period, both series based on actual transactions and corrected for the component of interest in bills of exchange and for episodes of floating exchange rates. Expressed as deviations from a true parity measure and conjoined with existing data for 1835–1900, the series permit an examination of the stability of the gold points over the entire nineteenth century. The steady narrowing of metallic points, previously found for 1835–1900 and confirmed here, does not apply to the earlier period; but evidence suggests that movement to an integrated market in foreign exchange developed in the 1820s.

This article addresses two questions. First, when and to what extent did capital markets integrate north and south of the Alps? Second, how mobile was capital? Analysing a unique new dataset on pre-modern urban annuities, we find that northern markets were consistently better integrated than Italian markets. Long-term integration was driven by initially peripheral places in the Netherlands and Upper Germany integrating with the rest of the Holy Roman Empire where the distance and volume of inter-urban investments grew primarily in the sixteenth century. The institutions of the Empire contributed to stronger market integration north of the Alps.

Certain data from the familial world have value as a means for charting increments in wealth over the long term. Dowries from medieval Ragusa (Dubrovnik), 1235 to 1460, provide such evidence where other surviving records prove inadequate. Social cohesion and endogamy allowed the noble merchant citizenry to utilize dowries to redistribute personal fortunes broadly, thereby creating broad-based wealth. Comparisons with Italian towns indicate dowry increase was widespread but often served different social and economic purposes. Analyzing dotal strategies at Ragusa allows a glimpse of the means a cohesive elite could employ to promote economic growth.

In the September 2003 issue of this JOURNAL, we provided benchmark comparisons of U.K./U.S. income from 1870 to 1990. In contrast to long-span projections from Angus Maddison and others, our estimates show the United States leading from 1870 in terms of income per capita and output per worker. In a 12-page comment that accompanies our article, Professor Stephen Broadberry criticizes our work on three grounds. First, he charges our estimates are inconsistent with his U.K./U.S. sectoral productivity comparisons. Second, he chastises us on the grounds that our price benchmarks conflict with standard U.S. and U.K. price indices. Finally, he queries our nominal GDP estimates.

The article examines the development of the insurance function of trade unions. It analyzes how such policies worked, and why union benefit packages differed across occupations. It also addresses the impact of insurance policies on union organization. Insurance benefits increased the ability of unions to attract and retain members. They did not, however, significantly increase the power of union leaders relative to employers or union rank and file.

Economic historians generally agree that improvements in transportation were a significant aspect of nineteenth-century United States development, and the dramatic fall in transportation costs, 1815–1860, has been given special emphasis by a number of scholars. According to George R. Taylor, nothing less than a transportation revolution was experienced in the United States during this period

Very few issues in American economic history have stirred as many contrasting views as the debate regarding the effects of the British Navigation Acts on the Thirteen American Colonies. The most recent entry in the long argument is Robert Thomas' analysis of the problem. Thomas constructs quantitative estimates of the impact of the Acts which are designed “… to measure, relative to some hypothetical alternative, the extent of the burdens and benefits stemming from imperial regulation of the foreign commerce of the 13 colonies.” He presents these estimates to test the hypothesis that: “… membership in the British Empire, after 1763, did not impose a significant hardship upon the American Colonies.” Thomas has employed new data in constructing his estimates, and he has carefully brought economic theory explicitly into the discussion. His framework requires the construction of a “counterfactual” hypothesis against which to evaluate the impact of policy. As he views it: “The only reasonable alternative in this case is to calculate the burdens or benefits of British regulation relative to how the colonists would have fared outside the British Empire, but still within a mercantilist world.” Given such a model, the value of the burden and benefit is estimated in terms of market prices and the pattern of trade which would have emerged had the colonies been free in 1763.

A revised view of the nature of Russian industrialization is proposed. It is argued that economic conditions on the serf estates did not hinder industrialization; they in fact facilitated proto-industrialization by promoting the nonagricultural pursuits of the peasantry. In opposition to the traditional view that industrialization took place after the Emancipation of the serfs in 1861, and that there was an “agrarian crisis” in the nineteenth century, it is argued that industrialization was well underway on a wide scale on the basis of serf labor before 1861. The so-called agrarian crisis may really have been a period of increased proto-industrial activity by the peasants.

In 1852 the Secretary of the Treasury reported that there were “no incorporated banks in regular and active operation” in Arkansas, California, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Texas, and Wisconsin—seven of the thirty-one states then in existence—in the District of Columbia, nor in the two organized territories, Minnesota and Oregon. In most of these jurisdictions corporate banking was constitutionally prohibited; in others it was kept out by current opposition. At the same time it was a state-controlled monopoly in Indiana and Missouri, as it was a little later in Iowa. Going to the opposite extreme, Michigan in 1838 made banking free. Her experiment was eventually repeated by Illinois, by Wisconsin, and by Indiana. Meanwhile, there were unincorporated banks throughout the region, though their creation of credit was probably small compared with that of incorporated banks.

Over the course of two hundred years Chesapeake planters sought to make the most of scarce labor while exploiting abundant land. Large planters were able to offset a secular decline in tobacco crops per laborer with productivity gains in grains, thus maintaining or enhancing revenues per hand in constant value. Intensification of the labor process and a switch from hoe to plow culture account for most of the increase; agricultural improvements, very little.

Did late-nineteenth-century U.S. tariffs promote infant industries? After earlier failures, the tinplate industry became established and flourished after receiving protection with the 1890 McKinley tariff. Treating producers' entry and exit decisions as endogenous, a probability model is estimated to determine the conditions under which domestic tinplate production will occur. Counterfactual simulations indicate that, without the McKinley duties, domestic tinplate production would have arisen about a decade later as U.S. iron and steel input prices converged with those in Britain. Although the traiff accelerated the industry's development, welfare calculations suggest that protection does not pass a cost-benefit test.

During the nineteenth century, U.S. manufacturers shifted away from the “hand labor” mode of production, characteristic of artisan shops, to “machine labor,” which was increasingly concentrated in steam-powered factories. This transition fundamentally changed production tasks, jobs, and job requirements. This paper uses digitized data on these two production modes from an 1899 U.S. Commissioner of Labor report to estimate the frequency and impact of the use of inanimate power on production operation times. About half of production operations were mechanized; the use of inanimate power raised productivity, accounting for about one-quarter to one-third of the overall productivity advantage of machine labor. However, additional factors, such as the increased division of labor and adoption of high-volume production, also played quantitatively important roles in raising productivity in machine production versus by hand.

The purpose of this article is to investigate trends in the quality of British cotton textile exports during the period 1815-1913. “Quality” is defined as real value per yard of cloth and pound of yarn exported. Thus, a reduction in export quality does not mean that a specific type of cloth has deteriorated. Rather, it means that there has been a shift from more expensive to less expensive types of cloth. It may also mean that the same type of cloth is being ex-ported in a different state—white instead of printed or gray instead of bleached.

Mercantilism is defined for this discussion as a policy of government that expressed in the economic sphere the spirit of nationalism that animated the growth of the national state in early modern times. The policy aimed to gain for the nation a high degree of security or self-sufficiency, especially as regards food supply, raw materials needed for essential industries, and the sinews of war. This end was to be achieved in large measure by means of an effective control over the external activities and resources upon which the nation was dependent. In turn, that urge impelled the mercantilists to prefer colonial dependencies to independent foreign countries in seeking sources of supply. If the state could not free itself completely from trade with foreign nations, it sought to control that trade in its own interest as much as possible. To realize such objectives, mercantilism embraced three subordinate and related policies. The Corn Laws fostered the nation's agriculture and aimed to realize the ideal of self-sufficiency as regards food supply. State aids to manufacturing industries, such as the protective tariff, sought to provide essential finished goods, including the sinews of war. The Navigation Acts were intended to assure that foreign trade would be carried on in such a way as to yield the maximum advantage to the state concerned.