We argue that falling farm product prices, incomes, and spending may explain 10–30 percent of the 1930 U.S. output decline. Crop prices collapsed, reducing farmers’ incomes. And across U.S. states and Ohio counties, auto sales fell most in crop-growing areas. The large spending response may be explained by farmers’ indebtedness. Reasonable assumptions about the marginal propensity to spend of farmers relative to nonfarmers and the pass-through of farm prices to retail prices imply that the collapse of farm product prices in 1930 was a powerful propagation mechanism worsening the Depression.

The Cobden-Chevalier treaty of 1860 eliminated French import prohibitions and lowered tariffs between France and Great Britain. The policy change was largely unexpected and unusually free from direct lobbying. A series of commercial treaties with other nations followed. Post-1860, we find a significant rise in French intra-industry trade. Sectors that liberalized more experienced higher two-way trade. Our findings are consistent with the idea that trade liberalization led to “smooth adjustment” that avoided costly inter-sectoral re-allocations of factors.

We investigate how historical patterns of primary production influenced development across local economies in Argentina. Our identification strategy exploits exogenous variation in the composition of primary production induced by climatic features. We find that locations specializing in ranching had weaker linkages with other activities, higher concentration in land ownership, lower population density, and less immigration than cereal-producing areas. Over time, ranching localities continued to exhibit lower population density, and they experienced relatively sluggish industrialization. Ultimately, ranching specialization had large negative effects on long-run levels of income per capita and human capital.

This paper assesses the causal relationship between POW assignments and labor productivity for a vital sector of the German World War I economy, namely coal mining. Prisoners of war (POWs) provided significant labor. Combining data on all Ruhr mines with a treatment-effects approach, I find that POW employment alone accounted for 36 percent of the average POW-employing mine’s annual productivity decline over wartime. Estimates also suggest that the representative POW’s productivity averaged 32 percent of the representative regular miner’s productivity and that POWs’ contribution to wartime coal output amounted to 3.9 percent. Violence did not serve as a powerful work incentive.

How do different local policies in a federal system affect local land values, production, and sorting? We study the question exploiting a large historical policy change: U.S. Alcohol Prohibition in the early twentieth century. Comparing same- state early and late adopters of county dry laws in a difference-in-differences design, we find that early Prohibition adoption increased population and farm real estate values. Moreover, we find strong effects on farm productivity consistent with increased investment due to a land price channel. In equilibrium, the policy change disproportionately attracted immigrants and African-Americans.

This paper studies the evolution of mate preferences throughout the twentieth century in France. I digitized all the matrimonial ads published in France’s best-selling monthly magazine from 1928 to 1994. Using dictionary-based methods, I show that mate preferences were mostly stable during the Great Depression, WWII, and the ensuing economic boom. These preferences started transforming in the late 1960s when economic criteria were progressively replaced by personality criteria. The timing coincides with profound family and demographic changes in French society. These findings suggest that, in the search for a long-term partner, non-material needs have replaced material ones.

We test for integration of financial markets in China during 1920-1933 using a new dataset of domestic exchange rates. Our data concerns tael-denominated telegraphic transfers between Shanghai and nine other cities. We find that Chinese financial markets, as measured by the efficiency of silver-point arbitrage, were highly integrated among major commercial hubs in north and central China, but there was a lower level of integration for more remote cities in the south. Our paper presents the first comprehensive assessment of the efficiency of the Chinese silver standard and contributes to a revaluation of market performance during pre-communist China.

This paper considers the German principality of Hesse-Cassel in the 1850s, comparing inheritance institutions and landholding inequality for roughly a thousand mostly agricultural villages and towns. The principality lay between impartible northern Europe and the partible southwest. Inequality in landholding size is measured, showing an average Gini of 0.615 and substantial variation across communities. Places with relatively larger populations and ones that practiced impartible inheritance had mostly higher wealth inequality. The main result is that inheritance norms played a role in causing higher landholding inequality. Higher emigration rates in the impartible communities helped to alleviate landholding inequality.

Historical GDP estimates for China by Broadberry, Guan, and Li are problematic because of an implausible series for government expenditure. Revised estimates reduce GDP per capita, mainly during the Ming, by up to a third. Two peaks in income now stand out: the Song efflorescence and the years around 1700. If the latter peak is real, comparisons of the Yangzi delta with leading European countries show a Great Crossing in the Middle Ages, a Great Convergence in the seventeenth century, and a Great Divergence in the eighteenth. Otherwise, the Great Divergence may date from the sixteenth century.

Peter Solar highlights some shortcomings of our treatment of government spending. However, correcting for these shortcomings using data rather than assumptions confirms our principal findings. GDP per capita in the leading region of China remained around the same level as in the leading region of Europe until the eighteenth century before declining substantially during the Qing dynasty. The Great Divergence thus began around 1700, earlier than originally suggested by the California School, but later than implied by earlier writers. The new data do not support Solar’s novel chronology with its Great Crossing, Great Convergence and Greater Divergence.