Hostname: page-component-599cfd5f84-wh4qq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-07T06:35:48.608Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Institutions and US regional development: a study of Massachusetts and Virginia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2009

SUKKOO KIM
SUKKOO KIM*
Affiliation:
Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, MO, USA and NBER, Cambridge, CA, USA
*
*Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The development of the American economy was accompanied by significant spatial income inequalities between the northern and southern regions. While many factors contributed to northern industrialization and southern stagnation, an important factor was differences in the region's institutions. In the North, a democratic institution fostered growth whereas in the South, oligarchic institutions favored status quo. To gain insights on the nature and causes of this divergence, this paper examines the development of political and legal institutions in Massachusetts and Virginia, the two leading states in the North and the South.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , August 2009 , pp. 181 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © The JOIE Foundation 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acemoglu, Daron and Robinson, James A. (2000), ‘Why Did the West Extend the Franchise? Democracy, Inequality, and Growth in Historical Perspective’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115: 1167–1199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acemoglu, Daron and Robinson, James A. (2006), ‘Persistence of Power, Elites and Institutions’, NBER Working Paper #12108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acemoglu, Daron, Johnson, Simon, and Robinson, James A. (2002), ‘Reversal of Fortunes: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117: 1231–1294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Akagi, Roy H. (1924), The Town Proprietors of the New England Colonies: A Study of Their Development, Organization, Activities and Controversies, 1620–1770, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Allen, David G. (1981), In English Ways: The Movement of Societies and the Transfer of English Local Law and Custom to Massachusetts Bay in the Seventeenth Century, New York: W.W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Alston, Lee J. and Shapiro, Morton O. (1984) ‘Inheritance Laws Across the Colonies: Causes and Consequences’, Journal of Economic History, 44 (2): 277–287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andrews, Charles M. (1934), The Colonial Period of American History: The Settlements, Volume 1, New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Berkowitz, Daniel and Clay, Karen (2006), ‘The Effects of Judicial Independence on Courts: Evidence from the American States’, Journal of Legal Studies, 35 (2): 399–440.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berlin, Ira (1998), Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breen, T. H. (1970), The Character of the Good Ruler: Puritan Political Ideas in New England 1630–1730, New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Brewer, Holly (1997), ‘Entailing Aristocracy in Colonial Virginia: “Ancient Feudal Restraints” and Revolutionary Reform’, William and Mary Quarterly, 54: 307–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Robert E. and Brown, B. Katherine (1964), Virginia 1705–1786: Democracy or Aristocracy? East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, Bruce A. (1975), ‘John Marshall, the Virginia Political Economy, and the Dartmouth Decision’, American Journal of Legal History, 19: 40–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, Edward M. (1976), The Fathers of the Town: Leadership and Community Structure in Eighteenth-Century New England, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Downey, Tom (1999), ‘Riparian Rights and Manufacturing in Antebellum South Carolina: William Gregg and the Origins of the “Industrial Mind”’, Journal of Southern History, 65: 77–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Easterlin, Richard (1960), ‘Interregional Differences in Per Capita Income, Population, and Total Income, 1840–1950’, in Parker, William (ed.), Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Edling, Max M. (2003), A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the US Constitution and the Making of the American State, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ely, James W. and Bodenhamer, David J. (1984), ‘Regionalism and the Legal History of the South’, in Bodenhamer, D. and Ely, J. (eds.), Ambivalent Legacy: A Legal History of the South, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.Google Scholar
Engerman, Stanley L. and Sokoloff, Kenneth L. (1997), ‘Factor Endowments, Institutions, and Differential Paths of Growth Among New World Economies: A View From Economic Historians of the United States’, in How Latin America Fell Behind: Essays on the Economic Histories of Brazil and Mexico 1800–1914, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Fischer, David H. (1989), Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert W. (1989), Without Consent or Contract, New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert W. and Engerman, Stanley L. (1974), Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, Boston: Little, Brown & Company.Google Scholar
Friedman, Lawrence M. (1984), ‘The Law Between the States: Some Thoughts on Southern Legal History’, in Bodenhamer, D. and Ely, J. (eds.), Ambivalent Legacy: A Legal History of the South, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.Google Scholar
Gemery, Henry. A. (2000), ‘The White Population of the Colonial United States 1607–1790’, in Haines, M. and Steckel, R. (eds.), A Population History of North America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Glaeser, Edward L. and Shleifer, Andrei (2002), ‘Legal Origins’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117: 1193–1230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griffith, Lucille (1968), The Virginia House of Burgesses, 1750–1774, Revised Edition, University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Groebel, Julius (1931), ‘King's Law and Local Custom in Seventeenth-Century New England’, Columbia Law Review, 31: 416–448.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Kermit L. (1989), The Magic Mirror: Law in American History, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Harrison, Fairfax (1925), Virginia Land Grants: A Study of Conveyancing in Relation to Colonial Politics, Richmond: Old Dominion Press.Google Scholar
Haskins, George L. (1960), Law and Authority in Early Massachusetts, New York: Macmillan Company.Google Scholar
Hindus, Michael S. (1980), Prison and Plantation: Crime, Justice, and Authority in Massachusetts and South Carolina, 1767–1878, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Horwitz, Morton J. (1977), The Transformation of American Law 1780–1860, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huebner, Timothy S. (1999), The Southern Judicial Tradition: State Judges and Sectional Distinctiveness, 1790–1890, Athens: University of Georgia Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hughes, Jonathan and Cain, Louis (2007), American Economic History, Seventh Edition, Boston: Addison Wesley.Google Scholar
Irwin, James R. (1988), ‘Exploring the Affinity of Wheat and Slavery in the Virginia Piedmont’, Explorations in Economic History, 25: 295–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Alice H. (1980), Wealth of a Nation To Be: American Colonies on the Eve of the Revolution, New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Keim, C. Ray. (1968), ‘Primogeniture and Entail in Colonial Virginia’, William and Mary Quarterly, 25: 545–586.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keller, Clair W. (1969), ‘The Pennsylvania County Commission System, 1712–1740’, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 92: 372–382.Google Scholar
Key, V. O. (1949), Southern Politics in State and Nation: A New Edition, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.Google Scholar
Kim, Sukkoo (1998), ‘Economic Integration and Convergence: US Regions, 1840–1990’, Journal of Economic History, 58: 659–683.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Sukkoo (2008), ‘Political Institutions, Federalism and US Urban Development: The Case of American Exceptionalism’, in progress.Google Scholar
Kim, Sukkoo and Margo, Robert (2004), ‘Historical Perspectives on US Economic Geography’, in Henderson, J. V. and Thisse, J.-F. (eds.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, Volume 4, Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Konig, David T. (1979), Law and Society in Puritan Massachusetts Essex County, 1629–1692, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Konig, David T. (1992), ‘The Virgin and the Virgin's Sister: Virginia, Massachusetts, and the Contested Legacy of Colonial Law’, in Osgood, R. (ed.), The History of Law in Massachusetts: The Supreme Judicial Court 1692–1992, Boston: Supreme Judicial Court Historical Society.Google Scholar
Kulikoff, Allan (1986), Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680–1800, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
La Porta, Rafael, Florencio Lopez deSilanes, Andrei Shleifer, and Vishney, Robert (1998), ‘Law and Finance’, Journal of Political Economy, 106 (6): 1113–1155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Majewski, John (2000), A House Dividing: Economic Development in Pennsylvania and Virginia Before the Civil War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, John F. (1991), Profits in the Wilderness: Entrepreneurship and the Founding of New England Towns in the Seventeenth Century, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Mathews, Lois K. (1962), The Expansion of New England: The Spread of New England Settlement and Institutions to the Mississippi River 1620–1865, New York: Russell & Russell.Google Scholar
McDonald, Forrest (2000), States’ Rights and the Union: Imperium in Imperio 1776–1876, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Meinig, D.W. (1993), The Shaping of America: Continental America 1800–1967, Volume 2. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, F. Thornton (1994), Juries and Judges Versus the Law: Virginia's Provincial Legal Perspective, 1783–1828, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.Google Scholar
Michener, Kris and McLean, Ian (1999), ‘US Regional Growth and Convergence, 1880–1980’, Journal of Economic History, 59: 1016–1042.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, Edmund S. (1975), American Slavery American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia, New York: W.W. Norton & Co.Google Scholar
Morris, Thomas D. (1996), Southern Slavery and the Law 1619–1860, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Nelson, William E. (1975), Americanization of the Common Law: The Impact of Legal Change on Massachusetts Society, 1760–1830, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
North, Douglass C. (1990), Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
North, Douglass C. and Weingast, Barry R. (1989), ‘Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England’, Journal of Economic History, 49 (4): 803–832.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Osgood, Herbert L. (1904), The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, Volumes 1 and 2, London: Macmillan Company.Google Scholar
Porter, Albert O. (1947), County Government in Virginia: A Legislative History, 1607–1904, New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, Jacob M. (1991), ‘Credit in the Slave Trade and Plantation Economies’, in Solow, B. (ed.), Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Priest, Claire (2006) ‘Creating an American Property Law: Alienability and Its Limits in American History’, Harvard Law Review, 120 (2): 387–457.Google Scholar
Roeber, A. G. (1981), Faithful Magistrates and Republican Lawyers: Creators of Virginia Legal Culture, 1680–1810, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Rutman, Darrett B. (1965), Winthrop's Boston: Portrait of a Puritan Town, 1630–1649, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Scheiber, Harry (1975), ‘Instrumentalism and Property Rights’, Wisconsin Law Review.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Gary T. (1981), ‘Tort Law and the Economy in Nineteenth-Century America: A Reinterpretation’, Yale Law Journal, 90 (8): 1717–1775.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shea, William L. (1983), The Virginia Militia in the Seventeenth Century, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Simpson, A. W. B. (1979), ‘The Horwitz Thesis and the History of Contracts’, University of Chicago Law Review, 46 (3): 533–601.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skowronek, Stephen (1982), Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities 1877–1920, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steckel, Richard (1983), ‘The Economic Foundations of East–West Migration during the Nineteenth Century’, Explorations in Economic History, 20: 14–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steinberg, Theodore (1991), Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sydnor, Charles S. (1952), American Revolutionaries in the Making: Political Practices in Washington's Virginia, New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Tushnet, Mark (1981), The American Law of Slavery 1810–1860: Consideration of Humanity and Interest, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wahl, Jenny B. (1998), The Bondsman's Burden: An Economic Analysis of the Common Law of Southern Slavery, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wall, Robert E. (1972), Massachusetts Bay: The Crucial Decade, 1640–1650, New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Walton, Gary M. and Rockoff, Hugh (2002), History of the American Economy, Ninth Edition, Toronto: Thomson Learning Inc.Google Scholar
Wilentz, Sean (2005), The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, New York: W.W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Wright, Gavin (2006), Slavery and American Economic Development, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Zainaldin, Jamil (1983), Law in Antebellum Society: Legal Change and Economic Expansion, New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar