Editors' Notes

EDITORS' REPORT, SEPTEMBER 2003

The Journal of Economic History completed another successful year in 2002/03, marked (for a change) by an absence of dramatic change. Most contributors and some book publishers have by now adapted to our tripod office system: North American materials go to Wright at Stanford, all other geographic areas go to Harley at Western Ontario, with Susan Isaac handling production editing tasks at Florida State. If your paper or book does not fit neatly into this classification system, you can send it wherever you want, but we reserve the right to reallocate afterwards.

Next year will bring significant changes. Gavin Wright will complete his term as co-editor for North American topics in June, 2004. His successor will be Jeremy Atack of Vanderbilt University. Knick Harley continues as co-editor for all other parts of the world. But the location of Knick's office will change over the course of the year from Western Ontario to Oxford University. Continuity will be provided by Susan Isaac, who thankfully will stay at Florida State.

The accompanying figure and tables show that the trends of previous years have also been maintained. Figure 1 reports that new submissions have increased for the fourth consecutive year, putting us above the modestly-declining trend line of the past 20 years. From this point forward, we can look ahead to reversing the direction of the trend itself.

As always, there are interesting patterns to be found in the composition of submissions to the journal (Tables 1–3). Tables 1 and 2 suggest that the downward slide on the North American side has been reversed, the share going to that office rising from 37 to 46 percent. The largest topical area at both offices was Political Economy, replacing last year's enthusiasm for International Trade and Finance. Table 3 shows that distribution of submissions by historical time period is stubbornly persistent. Is this a confirmation of path dependence in our own discipline? Perhaps, but it is difficult to say because of the inexplicable appearance of five papers whose historical coverage was “not applicable or unknown.”

Table 4 suggests that the JOURNAL continues to operate both efficiently and selectively. The rejection rate fell from 53 percent to 40 percent, but this apparent drift towards leniency was mainly attributable to an increase in revise-and-resubmits. As we always take care to write and as many of you know from experience, there is no assurance that a resubmission will be accepted the second time around. Overall, only about one-third of new submissions are ultimately published in the JOURNAL.

Hardhearted as we may be as editors, we try not to waste your time excessively. We note with reassurance that last year we kept the median time to decision for new submissions at 91 days, statistically equal to our 90-day target.

Much of the credit for this performance goes to the referees, particularly the hard-working members of the editorial board. We continue to be impressed by the dedicated care and thought that go into the majority of referee reports, with no reward other than the satisfactions and stimulation of participating in academic dialogue and trying to maintain intellectual standards in our interdisciplinary field. We extend special thanks to the outgoing members of the board: Margaret Levenstein, Joshua Rosenbloom, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, and Alan M. Taylor. And we welcome those added during the past year: Zorina Khan, Steven Quinn, Paul Rhode, Nathan Sussman, Werner Troesken, Joachim Voth, and Susan Wolcott.

Our referees for the last year were:

Brian A'Hearn, Franklin and Marshall College

Pablo Martín Aceña, Universidad de Alcalá

Mark Aldrich, Smith College

Douglas Allen, Simon Fraser University

Robert Allen, University of Oxford

Steven G. Allen, North Carolina State University

Lee Alston, University of Colorado

George Alter, Indiana University

Morris Altman, University of Saskatchewan

Jeremy Atack, Vanderbilt University

Gary B. Gorton, Wharton School

Dudley Baines, London School of Economics

Jean Meyer Barth, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Mexico

Stefan Battilossi, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Richard Beason, University of Alberta

Greg Besharov, Duke University

Kathleen Biddick, University of Notre Dame

Howard Bodenhorn, Lafayette College

Dan Bogart, University of California, Los Angeles

Peter Boomgaard, Free University of Amsterdam

Michael Bordo, Rutgers University

George Boyer, Cornell University

Colleen Callahan, American University

Ann Carlos, University of Colorado

Gregory Clark, University of California, Davis

Sally Clarke, University of Texas at Austin

John Coatsworth, Harvard University

Peter Coclanis, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Philip Coelho, Ball State University

William Collins, Vanderbilt University

Jon Conrad, Cornell University

Metin Coşgel, University of Connecticut

Antonio Cubel, Universidad de Valencia

Lance Davis, California Institute of Technology

Jan de Vries, University of California, Berkeley

Nicholas H. Dimsdale, University of Oxford

Rafael Dobado, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Richard Duncan-Jones, Trinity College, Cambridge

Ruth Dupre, Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales

Christopher Dyer, University of Leicester

Joseph E. Inikori, University of Rochester

Michael Edelstein, Queens College, City University of New York

Barry Eichengreen, University of California, Berkeley

Robert Ellickson, Yale University

Robert Elson, Griffith University

Pieter Emmer, Leiden University

Stanley Engerman, University of Rochester

Gerald Feldman, University of California, Berkeley

Stefano Fenoaltea, Università de Roma “Tor Vergata”

Adam Fforde, Adam Fforde and Associates Pty Ltd

Alexander Field, Santa Clara University

Price Fishback, University of Arizona

Robert Fleck, Montana State University

Caroline Fohlin, Johns Hopkins University

Giovanni Frederico, European University Institute

Rainer Fremdling, University of Groningen

Francesco Galassi, University ofWarwick

Gustavo Gorni, Università degli studi di Trento

Margrit Grabas, Universität des Saarlandes

George Grantham, McGill University

Shane Greenstein, Kellogg School, Northwestern University

Avner Greif, Stanford University

Richard Grossman, Wesleyan University

Timothy Guinnane, Yale University

Stephen Haber, Stanford University

Michael Haines, Colgate University

Brian Hamnett, University of Essex

Christopher Hanes, State University of New York, Binghamton

Gelina Harlaftis, Ionian University

John Hatcher, Cambridge University

Tim Hatton, University of Essex

Santhi Hejeebu, University of Iowa

Ingrid Henriksen, University of Copenhagen

John Hobson, University of Sydney

Julian Hoppit, University College, London

Christopher Howgego, The Ashmolean Museum

Susan Howson, University of Toronto

Hilary Hoynes, University of California, Davis

Philip Huang, University of California, Los Angeles

Michael Hueberman, University of Montreal

Richard Ippolito, George Mason University School of Law

M. Alex Irigoin, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Douglas Irwin, Dartmouth College

Sanford Jacoby, University of California, Los Angeles

Adam Jaffe, Brandeis University

Harold James, Princeton University

John James, University of Virginia

Mark Kanazawa, Carleton College

Eona Karakacili, University of Western Ontario

Zorina Khan, Bowdoin College

John Komlos, University of Munich

Sandra Kuntz Ficker, Autonoma Metropolitana, Mexico

David Laidler, University of Western Ontario

Naomi Lamoreaux, University of California, Los Angeles

Richard Langlois, University of Connecticut

Margaret Levenstein, University of Michigan

Colin Lewis, London School of Economics

Frank Lewis, Queen's University

Lillian Li, Swarthmore College

Gary Libecap, University of Arizona

Thomas Lindblad, Leiden University

Peter Lindert, University of California, Davis

David Loschky, University of Missouri

Mary MacKinnon, McGill University

John Majewski, University of California, Santa Barbara

Tom Maloney, University of Utah

Juan-Manuel Renero, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas

Carlos Marichal, El Colegio de México

Kent Matthews, Cardiff Business School

David Mattingly, University of Leicester

Ann McCants, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Deirdre McCloskey, University of Illinois at Chicago

Michael McCormick, Harvard University

Robert McGuire, University of Akron

Marvin McInnis, Queen's University

Ian McLean, University of Adelaide

Benjamin R. McRee, Franklin and Marshall College

Christopher Meissner, Cambridge University

David Meredith, University of New South Wales

Rory Miller, University of Liverpool

Terence C. Mills, Loughborough University

Ryoshin Minami, Tokyo Keizai University

Kris Mitchener, Santa Clara University

Jon Moen, University of Mississippi

Donald E. Moggridge, University of Toronto

Joel Mokyr, Northwestern University

Michael Montesano, National University of Singapore

Kenneth Morgan, Brunel University

Chiaki Moriguchi, Northwestern University

David Mowery, University of California, Berkeley

Larry Neal, University of Illinois

David Northrup, Boston College

Anthony Patrick O'Brien, Lehigh University

Patrick K. O'Brien, London School of Economics

Cormac Ó Gráda, University College, Dublin

Martha Olney, University of California, Berkeley

Arij Ouweneel, University of Amsterdam

Les Oxley, University of Canterbury

Şevket Pamuk, Boǧaziçi University

Gerardo della Paolera, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella

Prasannan Parthasarathi, Boston College

Ed Perkins, University of Southern California

Michael Pokorny, London Metropolitan University

Kenneth Pomeranz, University of California, Irvine

Lawrence Poos, Catholic University of America

Om Prakash, University of Delhi

Donald Quataert, State University of New York at Binghamton

Stephen Quinn, Texas Christian University

Jack Rakove, Stanford University

Roger Ransom, University of California, Riverside

Angela Redish, University of British Columbia

Paul Rhode, University of North Carolina

Albrecht Ritschl, Humboldt University of Berlin

Patrice Robitaille, Division of International Finance, Federal Reserve System

Hugh Rockoff, Rutgers University

Christina Romer, University of California, Berkeley

Joshua Rosenbloom, University of Kansas

Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, University of California, Los Angeles

Joan Rosés Vendoiro, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Winifred Rothenberg, Tufts University

Richard Saller, University of Chicago

Richard Salvucci, Trinity University

Blanca Sanchez Alonso, Universidad San Pablo CEU

Lars Sandberg, Ohio State University

Peter Scholliers, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Lennart Schön, Lund University

Loren Schweninger, University of North Carolina-Greensboro

Carole Shammas, University of Southern California

Amy Singer, Tel Aviv University

Daniel Smith, University of Illinois-Chicago

Richard M. Smith, Cambridge University

Kenneth Sokoloff, University of California, Los Angeles

Peter Solar, Free University of Brussels

Solomous Solomou University of Cambridge

Mark Spoerer, University of Hohenheim

Richard Steckel, Ohio State University

Michael Storper, University of California, Los Angeles and London School of Economics

Claire Strom, North Dakota State University

S. Sugiyama, Keio University

William Summerhill, University of California, Los Angeles

Bill Sundstrom, Santa Clara University

Nathan Sussman, Hebrew University

Richard Sylla, New York University

Rick Szostak, University of Alberta

Alan M. Taylor, University of California, Davis

Peter Temin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Ross Thomson, University of Vermont

James D. Tracy, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Werner Troesken, University of Pittsburgh

William Tsutsui, University of Kansas

John Turner, Queen's University, Belfast

Pierre van der Eng, Australian National University

Hans-Joachim Voth, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

John Wallis, University of Maryland

David Washbrook, St. Antony's College, Oxford University

Warren Weber, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

David Weiman, Barnard College, Columbia University

David Wheelock, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Eugene White, Rutgers University

Susan Wolcott, State University of New York, Binghamton

Willem Zwalve, Leiden University

ANNOUNCING A CONFERENCE WOMEN'S ECONOMIES IN COLONIAL BRITISH AMERICA

Sponsored by the Program in Early American Economy and Society

Friday, 1 October 2004

At the Library Company of Philadelphia, 1314 Locust St., Philadelphia, PA

The theme of this conference reflects a recent flourishing of scholarship about the role of women in shaping the early North American economy during a time of both unprecedented economic development and significant changes in traditional family, household, and market economies. These changes were evinced everywhere European peoples settled in mainland North America during the early modern era, and recent scholarly work on women's experiences makes it imperative for us to rethink many long-standing generalizations about such topics as frontier and urban female economies; family strategies for dividing labor and creating economic efficiencies within the household; shaping new economic identities out of varied European, African, West Indian, and Native American cultures; the nature of women's retailing and entrepreneurship aside from household roles; the varieties of negotiation of race and class in economic contexts; comparative women's economies from region to region, plantation to farm, or across generations and social origins; and much more.

The papers and comments at this conference include some of the finest of this new work, including that by Ellen Hartigan-OConnor, Serena Zabin, Carole Shammas, Marla Miller, Mary Beth Sievens, Stephanie Grauman Wolf, Kristi Rutz-Robbins, Kate Fawver, and others.

The papers prepared for this conference will be posted on the PEAES web pages by 1 September 2004. We encourage everyone coming to the conference to read them in advance, and then join us for a lively discussion about the authors' findings and arguments. This conference is free and open to everyone interested in this topic. For further questions, please contact Cathy Matson, PEAES Director, at cmatson@udel.edu.