The article develops a model of gold-standard efficiency in the context of the theory of efficient asset markets. Efficiency is measured by the ratio of experienced disutility to the hypothetical loss under perfect gold arbitrage and neutral exchange-rate speculation. Dollar-sterling gold-point estimates for 1890 to 1906 are generated using the methodology of focusing on the dominant arbitrageurs, the prevailing exchange instrument, and the primary form of gold shipped. Gold- standard efficiency is remarkably high and only marginally below exchange- market efficiency from 1950 to 1966 under Bretton Woods.

The image of the “backward” immigrant has enjoyed a prominent place in American history, in large part because of the perceived “non-American” fertility behavior of many immigrant groups. The European perspective on these migrants, however, has been to see them as innovators, breaking free from the demographic constraints of the Old World. Drawing upon a large sample of reconstituted Norwegian immigrant families, this article examines the rising and then declining fertility of this group over the second half of the nineteenth century. It concludes that their fertility experience was influenced both by cultural tenacity and economic opportunity.

“Show us a non-resident who has made money speculating in western land,” wrote a frontier newspaper editor in 1850, “and we will show you a rare bird, more rare by far than a successful gold hunter.” Despite this warning and dozens like it, thousands of investors ventured surplus or borrowed funds on frontier land throughout the nineteenth century. Many, in fact, jumped from one frontier to the next on the heels of government surveyors and land officers. Either these businessmen were gluttons for punishment, or speculating in government land was far more rewarding than some contemporaries were willing to admit.

The role of white servitude evolved in a similar way during the American colonial period in those West Indian and southern mainland colonies where slavery became quantitatively important. The change from primary reliance on bound white labor to the use of slaves occurred in two steps, with an initial transition from servants to slaves in unskilled field work, followed some time later by widespread training of blacks and substitution of slaves for servants in skilled occupations. The timing of the two steps can be explained as a function of the changing relative costs of indentured and slave labor in the markets for unskilled and skilled labor.

I use a rich new dataset of Louisiana slave records to answer long-standing questions about manumission. I examine who was manumitted, by whom, and whether manumittees paid prices above market for their freedom, shedding some light on the debate of the efficiency of slavery. Legal changes after the Louisiana Purchase allow us to conclude that manumission laws were quite important in determining the terms at which manumission agreements were struck: when slaves lost the right to sue for self-purchase at market price, there was a precipitous drop in the number of manumissions, while prices paid increased.

The advantage of having a tightly woven thesis to present to you is that it can be used in the introductory paper as a rug to be yanked violently from under my feet. If caution leads Professor Easterbrook “to remain, at least for the time being, in the informational camp,” it is obvious that only a total absence of caution would lead me, a professor of English, to venture before the leaders in the field of economic history in the role assigned to me today.

A downward trend in British coal-mining productivity was reversed between the world wars. Declining productivity before 1914 was accompanied by wide regional differences, especially at the coalface. Scotland attained the best overall. productivity, while coalface productivity was highest in Durham and Northumberland. Regional differences narrowed by the 1920s but re-emerged in the 1930s, as mines in the North Midlands outpaced the productivity gains made elsewhere. Only a multifaceted interpretation can explain these distinctive patterns—over time, between regions, and at different stages of the coal-mining operation.

Following Waterloo, managing French public finances represented a daunting task as the country had lost a substantial part of its population and territory and had to pay huge amounts as reparations to the victors. Despite this, in just ten years, France managed to issue substantial amounts of debt with a spread, compared to the British consol, falling from more than 400 to 100 basis points. We argue that the Duke of Wellington was key in creating an environment in which Baring had an incentive to lend to France and all actors had an incentive to see French debts reimbursed.

The difficulty sovereign actors face in making their promises credible is widely appreciated (e.g., North and Weingast 1989; Myerson 2008). In this article, I argue that the English repeatedly used institutions of monopoly brokerage to mediate trades between the sovereign (offering various promises) and subjects (offering revenues). Once set up—at different times in different markets—institutions of monopoly brokerage sparked substantial and abrupt growth in state revenues. Moreover, these revenue increases cannot be explained by changes in promise-holders’ ability to punish nonperformance, changes in the preferences of pivotal state decision makers, or changes in high constitutional structure alone.

Mauriac, and probably several thousand other Frenchmen, have remarked that what worried them most about the United States and Russia was not the respects in which these countries differed but rather that they were fundamentally so much alike. If Mauriac had studied the history of the land-grant colleges and universities, he might have concluded that they were both the most Russian-like and the most thoroughly American sector of our education. Where else could one find schools so materialistically oriented or so (almost) successfully Jacksonian? To look at their history and their impact on American economic life over the past century is to examine a roaringly optimistic and an almost frighteningly successful endeavor to create the men—and the women—for a mass economy.

Statistics on crop yields for the period 1268–1430 from 62 demesnes in the eastern half of Norfolk are used to demonstrate a new method of measuring arable productivity. The method takes into account seeding rates, the frequency of cropping, and the relative importance of the different crops grown, and it acknowledges the existence of different farming regions. Within eastern Norfolk two such regions are shown to have existed, which cut right across estate affiliations and had radically different productivities. The wider implications of these findings are then discussed.

An issue of continuing interest in Canadian economic history is the lag between the formulation of policies directed toward settling the prairies and the appearance of any significant agricultural population. Proposals to develop the region preceded the union of the British North American colonies in 1867. By 1872 the first Homestead Act had been passed and a commitment made to construct a transcontinental railway linking the western provinces to Central Canada. Yet except for a brief speculative boom in the early 1880's, occasioned by the CPR reaching Winnipeg, the rate of settlement remained well below expectations. Homestead entries averaged under 3,000 from 1874 to 1896, and in many years there were nearly as many cancellations as new entries. In the same period adjacent American lands were filling up, in large part with emigrant Canadians. Settlement of the Dakotas, beginning in 1870 but depressed from 1873 to 1878, boomed from 1879 to 1886. Over the thirty years from 1870 to 1900 an estimated 120,000 Canadians chose the American prairies over the Canadian.

Perhaps no single element involved with the rapid assumption of economic power by the federal government was more important than the passage of the income tax, the means by which the increasing role of government was financed. We explain the political and economic interests that came together to successfully pass the income tax, and we provide extensive empirical evidence regarding the determinants of the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Much interest andthe economic progress made in Taiwan since the end of World attention have been recently focused onWar II. A major factor in Taiwan's postwar economic development is that the island already possessed a progressive and productive agricultural sector when it was returned to Chinese rule in 1945. The transformation of Taiwan's agriculture was the major accomplishment of the Japanese Colonial Administration. When Japan acquired Taiwan in 1895, its agriculture was stagnant and its peasants were engaged almost exclusively in subsistence farming. To enable Taiwan to make a contribution to Japan's efforts at industrialization, the Colonial Government was given the task of rationalizing and modernizing Taiwan's agriculture. Taiwan was to be integrated with the Japanese economy to provide a food surplus to help maintain the Japanese laborers diverted from agricultural to industrial activities. Foreign exchange that Japan would otherwise have spent on food imports would be used to finance more strategic imports. More explicitly, the Japanese had two objectives: to increase Taiwan's agricultural output and to divert the increase away from agriculture in Taiwan without committing an equivalent transfer of production value to agriculture in Taiwan.

The State of Israel was established in the midst of a war for its survival, and its population doubled within three years by mass immigration. The Israeli governments opted for a system of far-reaching and direct intervention in the economy as a means of winning the war, meeting basic consumption needs, and sustaining a high investment ratio. The circumstances and ideological premises of this policy are discussed, and the major problems of evaluation spelled out.

We gather a new database to conduct the first historically informed study of the importance of liquidity and credit for government bonds between 1880 and 1910. We argue that colonial and sovereign debt markets were segmented owing to differences in underlying information asymmetries. The result was heterogeneous pricing of colonial and sovereign debt, and different market microstructures and clienteles, themselves influenced by political, institutional, and financial arrangements. We find that sovereign spreads mainly reflected credit risks, while colonial spreads mainly reflected liquidity risks. Liquidity premia were economically large and significant, contributing between 10 percent and 39 percent of colonial spreads. These findings help understanding why the seemingly dry subject of colonial illiquidity inspired passionate disputes and ground-breaking reforms of financial imperial institutions.

The structural retardation hypothesis locates the source of stagnation in French agriculture primarily within agriculture — inthe economic, political, and sociological consequences of a peasant system of agricultural production. It is argued in this paper that the poor performance of French agriculture from the 1870s to the 1940s is to be found in the limited opportunities for agricultural growth provided by the French economy. Evidence suggests that the slow growth in demand for agricultural output, the slow growth in demand for labor by the non-agricultural sector, and the limited investment in the institutional infrastructure to support agricultural development were the primary sources of stagnation.

In this paper, I will discuss three classic problems in economic history. I label them “classic” because they are problems of general interest that share the central characteristic of classic problems: an extensive literature has not led to general agreement. They are taken from the literature on the history of the United States because of the wealth of data and secondary material on this country's history, but they all have their analogues or reflections in European history. They are the problems of labor scarcity in America, the depression of the 1930's (which Americans call the Great Depression), and the deflation of the late nineteenth century (which the British call the Great Depression).