The subject I should like to discuss grows directly out of the theme of the meetings as a whole. They have been concerned with the American West as an Underdeveloped Region, and the title was intended to suggest the analogy between the United States of an earlier period and the so-called underdeveloped nations of the present day. To many it would suggest a contrast in policy. These other nations are now in many cases striving to achieve economic development by national planning and deliberate measures of governmental policy. On the other hand the United States achieved its massive economic development without over-all economic planning, without five-year plans or explicit national targets of input and output, and—it is sometimes believed—without the adoption of policies deliberately intended to promote development.

Previous “new” economic history research on late Victorian Britain often assumes that technology was exogenous to British entrepreneurs. Foreign innovations were available for inspection, and if they were not found suitable, there was no way to adapt new techniques to the British situation. Alternatively, one can assert that technological failure is a key issue in any study of retarded economic performance. A test for the presence of induced innovation—an endogenous theory of technological change—is applied to the British pig iron and cotton textile industries. Results are compared to other technological studies of British and American industry.

The general sentiment of Congress toward resumption of specie payments had become more and more desultory, not to say negative, during the early part of the 1870's. Nevertheless, the Resumption Act was passed in 1875, and resumption of specie payments at the pre-Civil War parity occurred on schedule in 1879. Observers have slighted this incongruity. Passage of the Resumption Act has come to be regarded as a true reflection of Victorian sentiment; ultimate resumption in 1879 was the proof of the pudding.2 What seems to have been lost in this rationalization of cause and effect is the generally unfavorable light in which resumption was being viewed in the middle 1870's, the alternatives that were available in lieu of resumption, and some of the forces of “immorality” that made these alternatives attractive.

The following nore on source material relates to an important aspect of British industrial development in the eighteenth century. Some use of this material has been made by M. W. Flinn of Aberdeen University and myself in our studies of the industry in the Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but the field of the sources is so wide and relevant to so much of the economic history of Britain in that period that a summary may be of use to future researches in these rich and neglected sources.

This paper is concerned with two questions: What was iron and steel used for in the course of the late nineteenth century? And how were the uses of iron and steel affected by changes in the methods of production of iron and steel? The first question asks what was the composition of the iron and steel industry's output, that is, what products were being produced. The second question asks if the changes in this composition were caused by changes in the supply schedules of the industry.

The role of technology shocks as a driver of the Great Depression is the topic of our own earlier work and the paper by Watanabe in this issue. While the two studies differ in their data and assumptions, they complement each other and strengthen the conclusion of both papers: technology shocks were not the driving force of the Great Depression.

One of the most colorful episodes in American business history is the development of the Texas oil industry. From the 1956 movie Giant to the 1978–1991 television series Dallas the Texas oil boom has fascinated millions of people. Among economic historians and economists, the industry has been the basis for studies of firm behavior, regulation, collective action, and regional economic development.

This paper estimates the causal impact of short-term aggregate fluctuations in Egypt, 1911–48, using global cotton price shocks. Firm entry was procyclical, and exit was acyclical. There were persistent differences between cohorts over the cycle; expansionary cohorts were of lower quality. The evidence supports models of firm entry with ex-ante heterogeneity. The findings highlight the extensive margin of entry as the primary adjustment mechanism. As a result, recessions had a strong “isolation” effect. This nature of firm entry amplified and propagated temporary price shocks.

Sumptuary laws that regulated clothing based on social status were an important part of the political economy of premodern states. We introduce a model that captures the notion that consumption by ordinary citizens poses a status threat to ruling elites. Our model predicts a non-monotonic effect of income—sumptuary legislation initially increases with income, but then falls as income increases further. The initial rise is more likely for states with less extractive institutions, whose ruling elites face a greater status threat from the rising commercial class. We test these predictions using a new dataset of country and city-level sumptuary laws.

It is unfortunately an established fact that both men and womenfolk have, in utterly irresponsible manner, driven extravagance in dress and new styles to such shameful and wanton extremes that the different classes are barely to be known apart.

Sir Ambrose Crowley is well known as one of the greatest of early English industrialists. His claim to distinction rests on the immense scale of his operations and on his imaginative approach to the problems of industrial organization. The group of factories he established in County Durham, near Gateshead, constituted what was believed to be the largest ironworks in Europe and was probably the largest industrial unit in the England of his day outside the naval dockyards. Sir Ambrose, whose manufacturing career began in 1682, was an iron manufacturer, converting bar iron into the end products of the iron industry—steel, steelware, nails, and a wide range of iron components and implements. He had entered this branch of the industry as a nailmaker, and nailmaking remained the mainstay of his business.