The Committee on Research in Economic History was established in 1940, more than a generation ago. Most of those who were active in its creation and administration have died or retired from active academic life; and surely a fresh direction of internal evolution has altered, at least in important ways, the objectives of the discipline. Accordingly, it appears appropriate to set down here an account of what were the hopes and intentions of those especially active in its initiation and early planning, and to record its more obvious achievements. Members of ensuing generations will have time in their later lives to pass judgment on the intellectual value of this particular effort at academic improvement and intellectual growth. Indeed, I propose to close my survey with the transmogrification of the Committee into the Council—an event of the mid-1950's, at a point in time already far enough removed to offer a considerable perspective.

If by land policy we mean a comprehensive, well-thought-out plan that made for an efficient long-range use of our agricultural resources, we are reasonably safe in saying we had none. If we had anything that came close to resembling a policy, it was that of throwing open vast quantities of public and private lands to cultivation which resulted in maladjustments that made it difficult, if not impossible, for many farmers to adjust themselves to capitalistic methods of production and distribution. The extent of these maladjustments may be gauged in part by observing the status of agriculture on the eve of the New Deal. Shrinking foreign markets, world-wide competition, rising tariff walls, poor farm management practices, and excessive production and distribution costs were accompanied by sharp increases in indebtedness, farm foreclosures, and tenancy. Agriculture was receiving a dwindling share of the national income, capital formation was being discouraged, and farming had been relegated to a subordinate position within the economy.

The Saint Esprit was a merchant ship which sailed from the harbor of Marseilles in the spring of 1248, bound for Acre. One hundred and fifty contracts relating directly to this voyage are preserved in the notarial records. This article attempts to reconstruct the circumstances surrounding this venture and analyzes the statistical data available with regard to passengers, investors, and cargo. The general picture which emerges from studying the total venture offers a new perspective on medieval business.

The ensuing remarks are addressed to two topics which seem to me important: (a) what conflicts, if any, are there between business history and economic history; and (b) how can research in the two areas be mutually helpful.

The coastal trade of the British North American colonies, as well as the coastal trade among the American states and the remaining British colonies after the American Revolution and well into the nineteenth century, remains one of those areas in North American economic history about which we know very little. The broad outlines and patterns of this coastal trade, or various segments of it, have been described by others, but as Arthur L. Jensen has put it: “Trade among the continental colonies has been treated as something of a poor relation in many studies of colonial commerce.” The most serious inadequacy is the lack of any overall view of the specific patterns and magnitudes of the coastal trade and its relationship both to the overseas trades and to overall economic activity. Various and strikingly contrasting views have been expressed. One historian of transportation states: “Prior to the Revolution intercolonial commerce was inconsiderable, and intercolonial trade-routes, where they existed, were entirely inadequate.” On the other hand, Innis, in referring to the trade between Newfoundland and New England, states that in 1765 exports from New England to Newfoundland probably exceeded £200,000 sterling (including smuggling), and that by 1774 they had reached £.300,000 or £400,000.

Pierre Prévost lived from 1751 to 1839. In 1780 he was invited by Frederick the Great to go to Berlin as a professor of young boys at the Academy of Nobles. He became a member of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin, and his entry dissertation dealt with political economy. In 1784 Prévost returned to Geneva, where he became professor of literature at the university of that city. In 1793 he was a member of the National Assembly at Geneva, but retired after four months. In 1794 he was imprisoned for twenty days by a revolutionary tribunal. Immediately upon his release he became professor of physics and philosophy at the University of Geneva, a chair which he exchanged in 1810 for that of general physics. With Marc-Auguste Pictet, Prévost was the codiscoverer of the moving equilibrium of temperature.

The bibliography of this subject is the subject, and the enormous filescourse of over three centuries are formidability itself. To reduce the element of formidability it is necessary to turn to studies of the newspaper in terms of countries, regions, owners, editors and journalists. But again the bibliography reflects the character of the press. Newspapermen have contributed notably, but unfortunately the training in newspaper work is not ideal for an economic interpretation of the subject. The increasing participation of university graduates in journalism provides a basis for more objective studies, but even here the training.exercises a subtle influence and weakens the possibility of a sustained and effective interpretation. Throughout the history of the newspaper industry, studies reflect the dominant influence of the moment, or perhaps it is safer to say, represent the dominant influence of the tradition of the industry; hence they show a perceptible lag between the newspaper as it is and the newspaper as it was. In the main they are obsessed with the role of the press in relation to political opinion, the importance of freedom of the press, the fourth estate and so on; they are suffused with innumerable cliches1 constantly bubbling up from the effervescence of writing.

Students of Russia's first phase of industrialization concentrate on the real aspects of growth—the growth of population, production, and the change in industrial structure. In this they follow the traditional approach to economic history, which usually emphasizes the real variables of the growth process at the expense of the money variables. I do not propose to question the assumption that the study of the production aspect of an economy is a sine qua non of the analysis of industrialization. Yet the exclusion of factors that affect aggregate demand may lead to a failure to observe some important dimensions of growth. In any case, the relevance of money in Russia's first “Industrial Revolution,” which was underway in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, was considerable. Therefore, in what follows, I concentrate on the monetary developments and policies of this period. After a short survey of the quantitative information on the trends of the real variables, monetary developments and their impact on economic activity are studied. I then treat Russia's foreign trade and balance of payments and their links to monetary phenomena, and finally, make an attempt at a critical evaluation of the trade, monetary and fiscal policies of the Russian government in this period.

In the history of federal aid to transportation in the United States the land grants given to assist in the construction of canals have been almost completely overshadowed by the far more munificent land subsidies to the railroads. The disparity between the two is, indeed, striking: the canals received altogether about 4,500,000 acres, as against the approximately 130,000,000 acres which ultimately passed to the railroads. Nevertheless, the importance of the canal grants is not to be judged solely by the amount of land involved. To the extent that they were effective they contributed to the building of waterways, the influence of which on the economic development of the Middle West was considerably greater than is generally appreciated today. The Ohio canals, for example, are credited with stimulating the growth of that state in a way comparable to the impetus given New York by the Erie Canal; the Wabash and Erie Canal in Indiana, chronically insolvent as it was, produced, within ten years of its opening, a fivefold increase in the population of the counties that it traversed; and the historian of the Illinois and Michigan Canal asserts that this waterway “not only transformed a wilderness into a settled and prosperous community, but it made Chicago the metropolis of the Mississippi Valley.” The natural enthusiasm of authors for their subject may require some discounting of these claims, but not enough, in the face of the evidence that is offered to support them, to detract seriously from the significance of the land-grant canals.

This article begins by disputing the claim by some scholars that the concept of a demographic transition is not applicable to Japan. Next, analysis of differentials and trends in natality over the period 1920 to 1960 suggests that changes in infant mortality and the degree of child employability may have been crucial reasons for Japan's modern fertility decline. In the short run, costs of birth regulation significantly helped determine levels of marital fertility. But in the long run, changes in such costs, without changes in attitudes toward desired number of births, could not have caused fertility decline.

When he became Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies in the Unionist government of 1895, Joseph Chamberlain was already the acknowledged leader of those who believed that Britain would most surely safeguard her military and economic future through closer links with the Empire and the extension of its boundaries. Yet a mere fifteen years before he had played an important part in the campaign against Disraeli's imperialist designs that had swept the Liberals back to power. The change in Chamberlain's political fortunes as a result of the Home Rule controversy needs no recapitulation here. More interesting is the process by which he was won over to those very ideas of imperial consolidation that Disraeli had propounded so frequently.

The U.S. Constitution removed real and monetary trade barriers between the states. By contrast, these states when they were British colonies exercised considerable real and monetary sovereignty over their borders. Purchasing power parity is used to measure how much economic integration between the states was gained in the decades after the Constitution's adoption compared with what existed among the same locations during the late colonial period. Using this measure, the short-run effect of the Constitution on economic integration was minimal. This may have been because the Constitution did not eliminate all the institutional barriers to interstate trade before 1812.

The labor-force participation rate (LFPR, hereafter) of older males in the United States has fallen dramatically over the last 120 years.For the discussions of the long-term trend of the labor force participation rate of older males prior to 1940, see Durand, Labor Force; Long, Labor Force; Ransom and Sutch, “Labor” and “Trend”; Moen, Essays and “Labor”; Margo “Labor Force Participation”; Carter and Sutch, “Fixing the Facts”; and Lee, “Long-Term Unemployment.” In 1880 nearly four out of five men 65 and older were gainfully employed. Today, only 15 percent of males at those ages participate in the labor market. Such a sharp decline in the labor market activity of older men has been regarded as one of the most marked changes in the U.S. labor market that the twentieth century witnessed. In addition to the secular rise in retirement, the sharp increase in the share of the aged population has made this retirement behavior a major social issue in the post–World War II era. Many economists have attributed this phenomenon to the implementation and expansion of social insurance programs, especially Social Security.See Boskin, “Social Security”; Parsons, “Decline” and “Male Retirement Behavior”; Hurd and Boskin, “Effect”; and Gruber and Wise, Social Security. See Krueger and Pischke, “Effect”; and Lee “Rise” for some evidence against this argument. However, about half of the fall in the LFPR of older men took place prior to 1940, when the public programs for old-age security were not as yet well developed. Though a number of factors have been suggested, including rising retirement incomes and a changing industrial environment, it is not entirely clear what caused the exit of older workers from the work force during this period.Costa, Evolution.

In this article we investigate the possibility that a regulatory regime designed to maximize the profitability of the early Dutch whaling industry could have simultaneously guaranteed the biological sustainability of the eastern Arctic Bowhead whale. We find that policies with economic profit as the sole objective could have saved the whales, as well as increasing the incomes of the whalers, under assumptions commonly made in fisheries models. However, the necessary assumptions are implausible. Under more historically relevant assumptions we find that regulation could not have simultaneously increased profits and preserved the stock of whales.

One important, but overlooked, risk mitigation device that facilitated the growth of the slave trade in the eighteenth century was the increasing availability of insurance for ships and their human cargoes. In this article we explore, for the first time, the relative cost of insurance for British slave traders, the underlying processes by which this key aspect of the business of slavery was conducted, and the factors behind price and other changes over time. Comparisons are also drawn with the transatlantic slave trades of other nations. As well as analyzing the business of underwriting slave voyages, we have two other objectives. First, we explore the meaning of slave insurance from the perspective of those directly involved in the trade. Was it about insuring lives or goods? Second, we provide new estimates of the importance of the slave trade to U.K. marine insurance. Did the former drive the growth of the latter, as Joseph Inikori has claimed?

Covered mortgage bonds have been used successfully in Europe for two centuries, but failed in the United States when introduced as farm mortgage debentures in the 1880s. Using firm-level data and a sample of loans made by one Kansas mortgage company, I find that debenture programs grew out of established loan brokerage operations and were used to fund mortgages that were difficult to broker because of size, term, or risk characteristics. Debentures broadened access to the interregional mortgage market and facilitated an expansion of western farm mortgage debt before the innovation failed in the mortgage crisis of the 1890s.

“[T]he availability of affordable mortgage financing is essential to turning the corner on the current housing crisis …. One option we have looked at extensively is covered bonds, which … have the potential to increase mortgage financing, improve underwriting standards, and strengthen U.S. financial institutions ….”

Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson

July 28, 2008

In order to examine the relation between exports and inequality, this article first estimates per-capita income, exports, and other indicators of economic development in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Manuscript data are analyzed to measure and interpret three kinds of inequality: of income, of total wealth, and of landholding. The results suggest that exports and foreign ownership contributed far less to inequality than is imagined in dependency theory.