When tested against U.S. evidence back to the nineteenth century a straight-forward model of wealth accumulation contradicts the belief that “the rich are getting richer.” If the wealth owned by the top 1 percent of American families in 1922 had earned only a modest 8 percent yearly until 1953 then they (or their heirs) would have owned 98 percent of personal wealth—instead of an actual share of 28 percent. The erosion of top wealth groups also appears for 1953–1969, and for 1892 and the years following. The reasons for such erosion, inherent in the structure of U.S. families and of U.S. institutions, are discussed.

“The town has that sign of prosperity of new buildings, which never deceives,” wrote Arthur Young of Nantes in 1788. In fact, on the eve of the Revolution, Nantes—the infamous ville des négriers (city of the slavers)—was one of the richest cities in France and one of the most important ports in the kingdom. For almost a century Nantes had been the capital of the French slave trade, and by 1789 local merchants were investing almost 10 million L (livres) annually in the trade. Yet, in spite of the general activity, Nantes traders were experiencing difficulties with their business. Although a few slavers managed to create vast fortunes almost overnight, problems in France, the colonies, and Africa meant that most traders had to struggle to obtain even modest profits, from slaving. During the last decade of the old regime investments in the slave trade were usually no more profitable than investments in offices or land, although the trade alone offered the possibility, however, remote, of quick, vast profits.

To discuss economic activity in Russia of the eighteenth century is to deal with an economic and social order that antedates the age of industrialization. Industrial activity in Russia during the eighteenth century was carried on within the political framework of an autocratic state, with ill-defined norms of legal behavior, and against the background of a serf agriculture which reached its apogee during this very period. The state of the industrial arts was low in comparison with western European standards, and the use of waterpower as a motive force in manufactories was introduced in Russia by foreign entrepreneurs only in the seventeenth century. Against this background, the efforts by Peter the Great (reigned 1682–1725) to modernize Russia appear genuinely heroic. The demands of his policy forced the government to engage directly in a vast program of establishing new industries, of converting small handicraft workshops into large-scale manufactories, and of encouraging private entrepreneurs to follow the government's example.

On the basis of published accounts, internal rates of return and present values are computed for capital in general and for particular investors (French shareholders and the British and Egyptian governments) from construction to nationalization of the canal. Terminal values at the nationalization had to be imputed. Rates of return are compared with opportunity costs represented by the return on alternative investments. For capital generally, French shareholders, and the British government, rates of return were 8–9 percent against opportunity costs of 3–4 percent. For the Egyptian government, corresponding figures were 2–5 and 11 percent. American investment would not have been profitable.

During the late 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) developed a series of area descriptions with color-coded maps of cities that summarized mortgage lending risk. We analyze the maps to explain the oft-noted fact that black neighborhoods overwhelmingly received the lowest rating. Our results suggest that racial bias in the construction of the HOLC maps can explain at most 4 to 20 percent of the observed concentration of black households in the lowest-rated zones. We also provide evidence that the Federal Housing Administration had its own mapping strategies when evaluating mortgages and relied relatively little on the HOLC maps.

Research in finance is guided by powerful intuitions from models of efficient markets. However, researchers have uncovered a number of puzzles that are not explained by these models. Such anomalies include the excess volatility of stock prices, the closed-end mutual fund paradox, and the mean reversion in stock prices that produces predictable returns for long holding periods.1 Whereas financial economists all recognize the existence of these puzzles, they disagree about how they can be explained. Robert J. Shiller argues, for example, that efficient-markets models cannot hope to explain these anomalies and looks to alternatives that incorporate fads.2 In contrast, John H. Cochrane believes that the puzzles can be explained by improved models of fundamentals.3

Empirical evidence from the Third World on the impact of early industrialization on welfare has produced new ideas on relations between growth, distribution, and the quality of life. Historical welfare must also be reassessed with less emphasis on material living standards. Distribution should be more systematically analyzed, and quality of life indicators considered. By adopting the approach, historians will revitalize old debates and make these more relevant to issues in modern development studies. Historians also need to investigate welfare themes in recent and comparative history to a greater extent than hitherto, which requires closer integration between economic, social, and political history.

The material progress of an area, large or small, depends upon its adaptability in facing up to the continuous pressures exerted the world economy. What determines such flexibility remains as yet, despite recent research on this matter, an open question. This investigation of the Aachen-area woolen trades provides no new answer. All it pretends to do is to stress those strategic aspects of the institutional setting which, by their influence upon demand and supply conditions, point to some of the issues that might have relevance for an understanding of this important problem.

The relationship between long-term trends in foreign trade and long-term trends in income has long been a source of fascinating speculation for scholars. As early as 1821, Robert Torrens observed that “as the several nations of the world advance in wealth and population, the commercial intercourse between them must gradually become less important and beneficial.” He believed that trade was founded on the exchange of manufactures for foodstuffs and materials; as land became scarcer as a result of population growth, the basis for trade would disappear.

Investigation of Florentine legislation concerning the practice of usury in the fourteenth century leads the researcher to the conclusion that a general theory cannot be constructed unless more facts are made known. It is to be hoped that an exposition of factual data will lead to an inquiry into those “shades and nuances” of meaning that are symptomatic of historical change. I do not believe that the present state of knowledge on this problem allows more than a descriptive historical approach, followed by a suggestion of possible levels of understanding and strategies of further inquiry. There are many reasons for taking this position. First, the documents available to the researcher are less than adequate for the formulation of a general theory. To cite only one instance, the judicial records of the period before 1343 were burned in the revolution of that year. Second, case histories of those individuals cited by the court or the councils as usurers have not been written. Finally, the Consulte, which contain the opinions of the advisory councils of the Priorate, do not aid the researcher in understanding the motives that animated the passage of legislation. With these limitations firmly in mind, I should like to present certain facts that I suspect can be understood only dimly within die framework of our present knowledge of Florentine life in the Trecento. One further disclaimer must be made: this paper does not purport to consider the state of juridical consciousness nor the legalistic matrix that provided the framework in which the events narrated took place.

An early long-running federal social policy experiment was the preferential hiring of American Indians at agencies, reserations, and shools. This government employment was designed to accelerate the assimilation of the natives and to reduce their resistance to education and economic change. Instead, the program inadvertently created a form of dependency. This ironic outcome was due to the power of the natives to shape the policy according to their needs and values.

Handloom weaving with a mixture of wool and cotton yarn was common in late nineteenth-century Canada. The hand technology survived using industrial inputs and part-time female labor whose opportunity cost was relatively low in rural areas. The demand for homespun was income-sensitive and reinforced by the cold Canadian climate. The patterns of weaving by men and women differed, but both produced for the market in addition to home consumption. Cloth constituted a significant share of farm production, especially in low-income areas.

Much has been written concerning the fraudulent and coercive practices that frequently attended the importation of contract laborers into the United States during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In an effort to eliminate these abuses, a great deal of publicity was given to these unsavory practices. In contrast, there is a dearth of documentary evidence on cases in which a contract arrangement was mutually advantageous to both the contract laborer and the employer. Yet there must have been many such instances.

Between 1236 and 1240 the king's estate steward Walter de Burgo improved the productivity of about forty royal manors by systematically increasing agricultural investment to levels four to five times the medieval average. On estates where he managed the inland directly, de Burgo improved the quality of the draft animals and spent large sums on marling, smother crops, and on the purchase of foreign seed. Within four years he raised the net value of these manors 70 percent, thus demonstrating the direct link which could exist between investment levels and productivity in medieval agriculture.

This article examines the causes and variation of language standardization across European ethnic groups from a historical perspective. Although language has long garnered interest in the study of ethnicity and nationalism, how language becomes standardized has yet to be offered. In this article, I argue that the acquisition of the printing press is critical to explaining the occurrence and variation of standardization. Using the first publication of vernacular dictionaries as a proxy for standardization, I present a systematic investigation of the standardization process for 171 ethnic groups in Europe from 1400–2000 ce. Empirical tests come from an original data set that collects information on political, economic, and social dimensions. Findings from event history models show that (1) printing press adoption is positively and significantly correlated with vernacular dictionaries; and (2) early adopters are more likely to standardize vernaculars than latecomers.