Our 2017 article in this Journal stresses the pitfalls of using choice-based samples in economic history. A prominent example is the literature addressing the so-called antebellum puzzle. Heights researchers claim that Americans grew shorter in the first half of the nineteenth century, a period of robust economic growth. We argue that this result relies on choice-based samples. Without knowing the process that led to inclusion in the sample, researchers cannot properly estimate conditional mean heights. We proposed a diagnostic that can detect, but not correct for, selection bias. Komlos and A’Hearn’s interpretation of our analysis confuses diagnosis with cure. We dispute their view that selection bias has been appreciated in the heights literature.

This article examines the impact of the 1850 Austro-Hungarian customs union on production land-use outcomes. Using newly digitized data from the Second Military Survey of the Habsburg Monarchy, we apply a spatial discontinuity design to estimate the impact of trade liberalization on land use. We find that the customs union increased cropland area by 8 percent per year in Hungary between 1850 and 1855, while forestland area decreased by 6 percent. We provide suggestive evidence that this result is not confounded by the emancipation of the serfs, population growth, or technological change in agriculture.

The growth of American governments in the twentieth century included large increases in funds for social insurance and public assistance. Social insurance has increased far more than public assistance, so “rise in the social insurance state” is a far better description of the century than “rise in the welfare state.” The United States has increased total spending in these areas as much or more as have European countries, but the U.S. spending has relied less heavily on government programs. In the U.S. states largely determine the benefits for many of the public assistance and social insurance programs, leading to large variation in the benefits across the country. I develop estimates of these benefits across time and place and compare them to the poverty line, manufacturing earnings and benefits, state per capita incomes in the US, as well as GDP per capita in countries throughout the world.

Landschaften were cooperative mortgage associations that emerged in Prussia after the Seven Years War (1756–1763) to support the Prussian landed nobility. Landschaften issued covered mortgage bonds, called Pfandbriefe, which helped re-capitalize the Prussian estates. Relying on mortgage data for 554 estates, this article provides a detailed look at one of these institutions—the Landschaft of East Prussia. The article offers insights into the self-selection of participants and the distribution of credit. It also gives a quantitative assessment of the economic effects of the Landschaften with respect to ownership patterns and estate size.

Building on a large sample of elderly French individuals, we evaluate the resources that were available to the old. We find that a considerable percentage of the French population did not have sufficient assets to live off of when aged. We compare the savings behaviors of pensioners and non-pensioners at a time when only a small part of the labor force was entitled to a pension. We show that pensioners were better able to accumulate wealth than were non-pensioners, even when we take into account their occupation and inherited wealth.

“Oh! La misère des vieux sans pain, des vieux sans espoir, sans enfants, sans argent, sans rien autre chose que la mort devant eux, y pensons-nous? Y pensons-nous, aux vieux affamés des mansardes? Pensons-nous aux larmes de ces yeux ternes qui furent brillants, émus et joyeux, jadis?”1

Guy de Maupassant

After beginning as a kind of outdoor poor relief, long-term indenture of poor children evolved into a specialized form of craft apprenticeship. Analysis of indenture terms indicates that relationships between end payments (“freedom dues”) and education and training clauses varied by region. In Boston, education and training clauses were associated negatively with freedom-dues clauses, but in Rhode Island and Charleston the relationship was positive. Variation in freedom dues to suit the needs of the master or overseer of the poor, without reference to the worker-child's own interests, resulted from the child's lack of advocacy during contract formation.

This article deals with agricultural innovation in early nineteenth-century France. The core of the argument advanced is that the diffusion of the new intensive mixed husbandry in northern France was delayed by the slow growth in demand for meat and dairy products before 1840, which reduced the advantages to be gained from adopting forage-intensive crop rotations. Because the climate of southern France precluded large-scale adoption of the northern varieties of mixed husbandry, this study confines itself to the part of France lying north of the Loire, and east of the Breton peninsula. This region contained 39 percent of France's people in 1840, raised 48 percent of its wheat and 64 percent of its fodder, and produced more than 75 percent of the value of its animal production. It was already the most industrialized and wealthy section of the country.

Present-day economic historians display an uneasy feeling that medieval gilds have enjoyed much more attention than they deserve. Professor Heckscher compares them unfavorably with later gilds, Professor Gras grudges them credit for anything save the keeping of records to mislead historians, and the authors of a recent textbook almost apologize for pausing to describe them. In general, this reaction from former attitudes reflects a shift of interest from the interpretation of economic policy to other problems that now appear more fundamental. We have a quantity of information about gild policies, but it leaves us uncertain whether or not the gilds were of any real importance in the history of economic development.

Requirements for a subsistence standard of living and for higher levels in the colonial period changed with marital status. A man's income, his personal wealth, his consumption goods, and for farmers their land, had to increase with marriage and as children multiplied, though the old man might end as he began, dependent on other members of the family. In order to judge the proportion of men at different levels of wealth, and to measure inequality, the historian must construct a series of tables using all available measures of wealth for each stage in the life cycle.

Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and into the early part of the twentieth, American agriculture was expanding and improving under the influence of growing demand, the westward movement, mechanization of farm operations, and scientific farming developments. Under these influences, yields and labor productivity in field crops generally increased. Until recently, however, little has been known about the course of productivity change in specific agricultural activities during the nineteenth century. Dairy production was an important component of the American farm economy, accounting for about 16 percent of U.S. farm output at the beginning of the twentieth century and approximately 14 percent of gross income from farm production in 1910. Changes in dairy yields during the period 1850–1910 have been analyzed previously. The purpose of this article is to estimate labor input time, to measure the change in average labor productivity in U.S. dairy farming, and to examine the economic implications of this change, thus extending the analysis to another component of the dairy production function. The necessary data were estimated with techniques that utilized available fragmentary data in conjunction with information in literary material.

The most curious of the detractors of classical economics said it was the work of Scots, Jews, and subversives. The charges were meant to turn back the movement toward the free market, but there was some truth in them. Classical economics did begin in Scotland, Ricardo was Jewish, it was the policy of the Parliamentary Radicals, and it did threaten some major institutions. The paper describes how and to what effect these facts were used by men who each for his own reason did not like the market.

In several recently published works Richard A. Easterlin has shown that per capita incomes as measured in current dollars have tended to converge over time. In this paper the per capita income estimates have been adjusted for interregional differences in prices. In adjusting the regional per capita income estimates for interregional differences in both urban and rural-urban prices it was found that no significant differences occurred in either the levels of differences or in the rates of convergence from the original estimates. In addition, no significant correlation was found between interregional per capita incomes and price levels.

Analyses of the cultural factors supporting modernization and development have moved along a continuum from the clear-cut formulations of Parsons, Schumpeter, and Weber to the paradoxical assertions of contemporary scholars. The failure of countries like Argentina to achieve sustained development after spectacular starts has contributed to the confusion. This study examines two popular cultural explanations for such developmental problems, and finds them both wanting. Men-doza's experience suggests the need to adjust development programs to local cultural exigencies, rather than the reverse, as most analysts have argued. A four-part sequence to this effect is presented.

This article investigates the decline in turnover of manufacturing workers in the United States that occurred in the 1920s. Three labor-supply explanations are evaluated using aggregate data on manufacturing workers and case studies of four manufacturing firms. The labor-supply analysis does not yield a satisfying explanation of the decline in quit rates of manufacturing workers. The suggestion is made that an examination of firms' employment policies is necessary to explain why workers were quitting their jobs less frequently.

The role of culture in economic development is experiencing renewed interest among scholars. This study proposes high intercultural transactions costs as a reason for the enduring scarcity of modem capital and technology in poor countries and conducts a statistical test based on the premise that cultural diffusion reduces these costs. The stock of direct investment in poor countries at the end of the colonial era is shown, as predicted, to be directly correlated with the diffusion of Westem culture in the European empires and elsewhere.

The failure of the Canadian Northern Railway is analyzed with a model of optimal capital structure drawn from finance theory. Ex ante bankruptcy probabilities, which are computed on the basis of different assumptions about investors' expectations, range from 40 to 90 percent; and our best estimate is about 70 percent. These high probabilities were a consequence of loan guarantees provided to the Canadian Northern by the federal and provincial governments. The guarantees induced the railway's promoters to undertake an ex ante unprofitable project and to finance that project almost exclusively with debt.

The war between Britain and France, extending over some twenty two years down to 1815, lies across the great formative period of modern Western society. Like all of its kind, the war may be regarded from two points of view: First, it altered the societies involved in it, as fighting needs conflicted with peaceable ones; second, it affected the nexus which binds countries together—trade and its financing.

New evidence based on census data indicates that output per agricultural worker grew faster between 1860 and 1870 than during any other decade of the nineteenth century. Although this evidence seems to support the traditional view that the Civil War was a catalyst for an increasingly productive agricultural sector, we contend that this apparent robust performance results from a measurement problem that afflicts census-based labor force series. An alternative estimate of labor force performance during the decade reveals the importance of increased labor inputs of women and children, in numbers, effort, and—especially—time.