This paper aims to provide an economic explanation of the pace and causes of the diffusion of the mechanical reaper in Ontario, 1850–1870. The analysis is based on Paul David's diffusion model, extended by the introduction of the size distribution of farms. The model is able to capture the reaper's S-shaped diffusion path. The major explanatory variable is improvements in reaper design, followed in importance by increased scale of operations and changes in factor prices. A third finding is that the effect of change in one of the three explanatory variables depends on the level of the other variables.

In a recent article in this Journal, Howard Bodenhorn made a remarkable suggestion: “Antebellum financial markets may have outperformed those of the post–Civil War period.” According to Bodenhorn, antebellum capital markets displayed notable integration, as indicated by movements in short-term (60–day) interest rate data for important commercial centers east of the Mississippi. When considered in light of Lance Davis's work, suggesting poor integration of credit markets immediately after the Civil War and only gradual integration thereafter, we believe economic historians will find Bodenhorn's hypothesis provocative—even startling. We found the hypothesis so suggestive that we attempted to replicate Bodenhorn's analysis—a process that generated both “bad news” and “good news.” The “bad news” is that we believe the evidence Bodenhorn provided for his hypothesis is weak or irrelevant. The “good news” is that the data Bodenhorn generated support the integration hypothesis more strongly than even Bodenhorn suggested.

Existing output series that cover both the antebellum and postbellum periods are inconsistent and unsuitable for comparing cyclical patterns across the nineteenth century. More consistent data show that output in cyclically sensitive sectors was no less, and probably more, volatile before the War Between the States than after it.

In the eighteenth century, industry, though still a minor factor in the total economy of the Habsburg monarchy—over 80 per cent of the people lived on the land—was the object of special attention from statesmen and theorists. To them industry connoted progress and showed great promise of being the handmaiden to the evolving power of the modern state. The great teacher in this respect was Colbert, and since the late seventeenth century the rulers of the Habsburg monarchy, as those of other states, had at least paid lip service to his ideas. The static nature of society, however, all too often prevented them from putting Colbert's mercantilist principles into practice.

We use a genealogical data base to question the idea that the frontier was a “safety valve” for Americans in the years of the founding of the republic. Our findings about the relative wealth of members of nine families show how the frontier affected their migration patterns. We find that it was the middle class, not the poor, who seemed to make best use of the opportunity of the frontier.

The question whether business, or capitalism, has been a force for peace or for war has been one of some historical interest. Before 1914 there were few to challenge the thesis of the great liberal-capitalist ideologists—Comte, Spencer, Fiske, to name only outstanding specimens —that the triumph of free enterprise meant the end of war, or its progressive decline; that the businessman would make a world in which the arts of peace permanently displaced those of war. But after the World War there naturally arose schools which sought to establish that capitalism carried within itself the seeds of ferocious wars. The thinking of a disillusioned generation was powerfully influenced in this direction. The loosely drawn but vehement indictment of capitalism as partner of Mars can be read in such typical pieces of the ʼ30s as H. N. Brailsford's Property or Peace (New York: Covici, Friede, 1934) and C. H. Grattan's Preface to Chaos (New York: Dodge Publishing Co., 1936). But these Marxist theories have been subjected to devastating criticism.

Protection of a domestic manufacturing industry to encourage its expansion through import substitution is equivalent (in the absence of equal protection for agriculture) to a “tax” on agriculture to support the development of the industrial sector. To call this policy of biasing the intersectoral terms of trade to favor industry a typical strategy of underdeveloped countries would be, if anything, to understate its universality. The arguments for and against such a strategy are well known, and an approximation of the benefits to the industrial sector can be gleaned from the national accounts of many countries. What remains hidden in the accounts, however, is the cost to the agricultural sector as a result of its being forced to trade at less favorable terms of trade than those provided by the world market. The purpose of this paper is to work out a simple methodology for measuring this cost and then to attempt an estimate of the cost in a particular case.

The subject of unemployment in general came into its own in the age of mercantilism. Mercantilist authors saw in unemployed who might be set to work a source of additional economic power. The subject of accessibility to employment, though always of concern to social philosophers, commanded greater attention as the medieval economy gave place to the modern.

This article reopens the classic debate about the relationship between the city and the countryside in medieval/Renaissance Italy. It examines city-countryside relations in Siena in the second half of the fourteenth century and compares them with what we know of Siena≈s northern neighbor, Florence. It argues that Sienese policy was moderate and even-handed and, despite similar pressures, less harsh than that of the Florentines. The difference is explained by the fact that Siena was economically far less potent and thus ever mindful that its own fate was intrinsically linked with that of the countryside.

The Economic History Association is an interdisciplinary organization of widely varying interests. The Association has several times considered the relationships between Economic Theory and Economic History, but it has paid little attention to that between the applied field of Business Administration and Economic History. It is appropriate to do so now because significant special interests have arisen within and around Economic History in recent years which have been of particular interest to students of Business Administration. I refer to the studies in Business History, Entrepreneurial History, Economic Development, and Innovation. Like Economic History, Business Administration is interdisciplinary, at least in part, and relies considerably, though at the applied level, on the same fundamental social sciences that interest economic historians. Also we have seen an outpouring of histories of individual enterprises, as American business, once more proud of its accomplishments and increasingly conscious of the value of public relations, has sat for its portrait. At the same time, in the field of Business Administration there has been a growing recognition of the importance of the long-range view in appraising administration, and of the use of the social sciences to improve its quality. It therefore is time to attempt some integration of these strands of thought.

The slowness with which British firms adopted Scientific Management and Fordism has often been noted.The paper argues that in Britain, management had difficulty controlling labor effort norms after 1870. The state intervened to resolve the issue and in the process became a major proponent of industrial democracy. It is argued that the early interest in industrial democracy retarded the adoption of American methods that assumed a greater degree of managerial control over factory organization.

We analyze patterns of informal information exchange by the English East India Company’s captains to assess the role of relational and institutional governance systems and uncertainty in encouraging information exchange. Using archival data from the emerging early-modern global trade network, we show that uncertainty drove information exchange. Relational-based contract enforcement mechanisms such as small group exchange were largely absent, and increasing institutional strength was associated with decreasing rates of information exchange. The results suggest that opportunity and demand were more important determinants of information exchange than the emergence of formal and informal governance systems.

We study trade in Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain, and show that the countries of the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy trade significantly more with one another after 1989 than predicted by a standard gravity model. Cultural trading capital, established under Habsburg rule and maintained in the period of the Iron Curtain, seems to have survived over four decades of separation and gives an initial boost to trade. This surplus trade disappeared rapidly after 1990 as countries rearranged themselves with the new geopolitical circumstances. We document the rate of decay of these forces.

We calculate the natural rate of unemployment in 1909 by first estimating equations for the incidence and time lost in unemployment on a pooled dataset integrating the manuscript sample of the 1910 census and state BLS surveys and then simulating a counterfactual unemployment rate as if the economy had been on trend that year with business-cycle effects neutralized. Following a similar procedure for the 1960s, we find the natural rate in the earlier period to have been substantially higher. The demise of casual unskilled labor, or floaters, seems to have been an important contributory factor.

This article shows that democracy in Weimar Germany was eroded by the political legacy of WWI. Using novel data on WWI veterans and an election panel from 1893–1933, I find that former soldiers are associated with a sizeable, persistent, and momentous shift in political preferences from left to right. I provide suggestive evidence that war participation made veterans highly receptive to nationalism and Anti-Communism. This alienated them from leftwing parties and drove the majority toward the political right. Contrary to historical accounts, veterans’ shifts in political preferences cannot be explained by exposure to violence or other polarizing post-war events.