A Quantity-Based Annual Index of U.S. Industrial Production, 1790–1915: An Empirical Appraisal of Historical Business-Cycle Fluctuations

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Reliable data are an indispensable tool in accurately evaluating the evolution of an economy.This dissertation was completed in 2002 at the Department of Economics, Duke University, under the supervision of Michelle Connoly. In reality, economists, much like archeologists, are routinely forced to interpret past events from the statistical artifacts at hand. Because contemporary federal agencies and private organizations infrequently collected economic statistics, definitive facts on the nineteenth-century U.S. business cycle are sparse. Indeed, the notorious void of macroeconomic data for the pre­Civil War period led to Paul David's apt naming of the first half of the nineteenth century as America's “statistical dark age.”David, “New Light.” The reason is simply the deficiency of comprehensive yet reliable annual macroeconomic data for the entire nineteenth century.