Canada has suffered throughout her history by the comparison of her rate of progress with that of the United States. Almost every traveler to this continent during the past two or more centuries has found occasion to comment on the apparent difference in the degree of economic prosperity on the two sides of the border. Lord Durham was compelled to recognize this difference as one of the underlying causes of political disaffection in the country. Local observers joined in deploring the failure of Canada to keep pace economically with the United States. Haliburton, expressing his views through his fictitious Yankee clockmaker, was scathing in his denunciation of the lack of industry and business imagination among his fellow Nova Scotians. Canadians today, with a similarly critical insight into the economic state of their country, are but little less inclined to point out the unfavorable comparison it makes with the neighbor to the south. The belief persists that the really enterprising Canadian must cross the border if he is to realize his fullest ambitions.

The development of American agricultural techniques in the period JL prior to 1800 may be thought of as occurring through the amalgamation of the techniques and resources of the Old World and the New. The first half of the nineteenth century, though dominated by the changes imposed by agricultural expansion on the frontier and by a growing urban population, featured also careful evaluation of the differences between American and European agriculture, a process that resulted in extensive but selected borrowings. The middle of the century witnessed declarations of American technical independence on the basis of equality and indeed superiority over Europe in some areas and the dominance of the idea that henceforth agricultural progress would depend on America's own exploration and experimentation.

This workshop addressed a question of concern to medieval economic history for over a generation. Frederic C. Lane called for a theory of consumption, and Carlo Cipolla and Robert Lopez have encouraged a more thorough investigation of the role of demand. Because demand is sometimes understood in terms of needs and of taste, it is often subsumed under the heading of social history, which characterizes and describes, while economic analysis has centered on studies of supply, with their more precise and quantifiable parameters.Will the largely descriptive tools at our disposal help us to understand how demand affected the early-modern economy? The workshop considered demand for goods and services and demand for money. The first three papers addressed the Mediterranean south, and the last three focused upon Europe north of the Alps.

In their comment Curran and Johnston raise two general points. They suggest (1) that my main conclusions are not substantiated by statistical tests of stability, and (2) that the specifications used in my analysis are inappropriate.

Let me summarize my reply. With regard to Curran and Johnston's statistical tests for the structural stability of my money model, there are three major points. First, in using the Chow test for structural stability the authors do not use the relevant statistical information to carry out the test, so the results they derive are not the appropriate test of the economic hypotheses. I on the other hand report and interpret the results of the relevant Chow test that uses the appropriate statistical information and lends support to my hypothesis that the Bank War altered the public's liquidity preference. Second, Curran and Johnston do not correctly analyze and interpret their own results. Actually, the implications of their own evidence support my original hypothesis that the Bank War caused a shift in the liquidity preference of the public. Third, although the Chow test is a statistical test for stability, in this case it is not a direct test of the economic question at hand; that is, it is a weak test. I therefore provide a more direct statistical F test that provides evidence to support my hypothesis that the Bank War caused the Panic of 1837 and that refutes the Temin hypothesis that the Bank War left monetary behavior unaffected.1 Furthermore, the empirical evidence demonstrates that banks were quite interest sensitive during the years prior to the Bank War and that the Bank War altered commercial bank behavior before 1837 in a manner that, coupled with the shift in the public's liquidity preference, culminated in the Panic of 1837.

This topic was discussed by a panel consisting of D. L. Kemmerer, JL University of Illinois; William B. Gates, Jr., Williams College; Broadus Mitchell, Rutgers University; and Thomas C. Cochran, New York University. The chairman was Edward C. Kirkland, Bowdoin College. In essence, the discussion was a criticism and evaluation of a paper by Mr. Kemmerer, the only formal presentation in the proceedings.

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the phenomenon of economic growth. The interest was sparked by the introduction of new models by Paul Romer and Robert Lucas. The neoclassical Solow growth model, despite its influence over the years, has a fundamental flaw: growth is determined exogenously. The new models by Romer and Lucas solve for the growth rate of the economy endogenously. In these models, due to spillovers in capital or in human capital, growth can go on indefinitely. In a later work, Romer argued that increasing returns are necessary elements in models of technological innovations, which in turn form the foundation for endogenous growth models. The theoretical innovations in modeling growth stimulated a significant body of empirical work.

The pamphlet literature and the public documents of our early national period show that in spite of repeated instances of governmental interference in economic life, a great deal of thinking was being done along laissez-faire lines. This thought was unsystematic. It was pragmatic rather than philosophical, never doctrinaire, concerned primarily with defending and attacking specific measures of public policy. Nevertheless, it was serious thought, and in many instances had an important influence on legislative action. It was not restricted to any political group, but pervaded to a greater or less degree the thinking of all leaders of the community. Owing little to the teachings of contemporary European economists, American libertarianism deserves analysis as an indigenous body of theory, growing out of, and adjusted to American conditions.

Historians of medieval prices have relied very heavily on grain prices, which are abundant and easily available. In France, for example, there is an impressive run of biweekly figures from the grain market at Albi. A different category of data, that has not received much attention, concerns the cost of travel in fourteenth-century France.

The purpose of this article was to present the estimates of the urban and rural workforces derived from census data. These censusbased estimates present a fairly consistent pattern of change over time, and appear useful even in their present state. These estimates should be tested further against other time series so that we will eventually have a sound urban and rural workforce series with which to better analyze the process of structural change. The limited use to which these estimates were put in the present article yielded some interesting results, as well as some suggestions for further research.

In terms of the United States workforce, changes in the industrial distribution reflect predominantly the relative shift in population from rural to urban areas, and little change in the workforce structure of either area. Indeed, at the sectoral level, there appears to have been more change occurring in rural than in urban areas. On the other hand, within the service sector there was more erratic change occurring in the rural areas than in the cities, but the differences may be easily reconciled. The urban sector experienced a more rapid increase and greater variability in the participation rate than did the rural sector. The pattern of variability was compared with the known evidence on unemployment, and variation in the former appears explicable in terms of variation in the latter.

The history of coffee is a tale of romance and complexity, sometimes bitter, sometimes enlightened. Mark Pendergrast weaves this tale with the art of a master storyteller. From its legendary discovery in the ancient land of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), coffee became a source of stimulus for new ideas, work, and social controversy. Traded throughout the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, the curious beverage was brought to the hands of Pope Clement VIII by priests who wanted to ban it. He tasted and replied: “Why, this Satan's drink is so delicious,… it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it” (p. 8). So the Western European romance with it began. By the eighteenth century, coffeehouses provided an egalitarian meeting place and a social context for emerging liberal institutions and the American and French Revolutions.