Using the records of British firms that supplied nearly 90 percent of world trade in cotton spinning machinery, we track the evolution and diffusion of spinning technology over more than 50 years. In contrast to scenarios in which modern technologies supplant older methods, we observe two paradigms in competitive coexistence, each one supporting ongoing productivity growth through complementary improvements in machinery, organization, and workforce skills. International productivity differences were magnified under the skill-based mule, British spinners being the world's best. Global diffusion of ring spinning was driven by advances in fiber control, a “directed” technological response to the expansion of world trade.

I examine the effects of an unearned income transfer on the retirement rates and living arrangements of black Union Army veterans. I find that blacks were more than twice as responsive as whites to income transfers in their retirement decisions and 6 to 8 times as responsive in their choice of independent living arrangements. My findings have implications for understanding racial differences in rates of retirement and independent living at the beginning of the twentieth century, the rise in retirement prior to 1930, and the subsequent convergence in black-white retirement rates and living arrangements.

The early modern era witnessed the formation across Europe of centralized states that captured increasing shares of resources as taxes. These states not only enjoyed greater capacity to deal with domestic and external challenges, they were also able to shield their economies better against wars. This article examines the Ottoman experience with fiscal centralization using recently compiled evidence from budgets. It shows that due to high shares of intermediaries, Ottoman revenues lagged behind those of other states in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Ottomans responded to military defeats, however, and achieved significant increases in central revenues during the nineteenth century.

Investors in new stock issues in Germany in the 1880s experienced low spreads between the price they paid for stock and the price at which they could sell the stock in the market. Stock issuing companies paid substantial fees to underwriting banks, and these costs increased with the underwriter's market share. Bank's faced lower issuing costs than did nonfinancial firms. These patterns are consistent with a situation in which underwriters exploited their access to better information (agency problems) and had market power, but do not support the supposed lemons problems that motivated the imposition of stringent regulations in 1896.

The received view pins the adoption of labor regulation before 1914 on domestic forces. Using directed dyad-year event history analysis, we find that trade was also a pathway of diffusion. Market access served as an important instrument to encourage the diffusion of labor regulation. The type of trade mattered as much as the volume. In the European core, states emulated the labor regulation of partners because intra-industry trade was important. The New World exported less differentiated products and pressures to imitate were weak.

We construct an individual-level data set of partnership contracts in late-nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro to study the determinants of contract terms. Partners with limited liability contributed more capital and received lower draws for private expenses and lower profit shares than their unlimited partners. Unlimited partners in turn received higher-powered incentives when they contracted with limited partners than when they contracted with unlimited partners. A reform that changed the relative bargaining power further improved the terms of unlimited partners in limited firms. These findings highlight the roles of risk, incentives, and bargaining power in shaping contracts.

This article tests whether smaller domestic markets can explain why France industrialized more slowly than Britain. To do so, it uses the Tableauxdu Maximum. It begins by presenting this source and then checks if the data from the source are plausible using a logit theoretical gravity equation. The results of this gravity equation are then employed to compute the expected market size of specific supply centers. Even if differences in real, nominal, and disposable income are taken into account, some French supply centers had access to domestic markets that were larger than the whole of Britain.

Scholars have long noted the significant impact of general purpose technologies (GPTs) on the economy. However, limited attention has been paid to exploring how they are employed to generate inventions in downstream sectors (crossover inventions), and what factors may facilitate such diffusion. In a study of the introduction of electrical technology in the late-nineteenth-century United States, we find that knowledge spillovers between industries had little influence on the geography of crossover inventions as well as the speed and productivity of crossover inventors. Instead, human capital and an environment promoting inventions in general were more important.