This article proposes a reinterpretation of the failure of interwar British productivity levels to match those of the United States. We argue that key elements in poor British productivity performance included inadequate human capital, a bargaining environment that allowed workers to maintain restrictive practices, and collusive agreements that limited the exit of inefficient firms. We suggest that weaknesses in the structure of British firms pointed out by Chandler and his followers have been overemphasized and that more attention should be given to the role of the market environment in determining the conduct of business.

Although the American cotton textile industry was heavily protected, most commentators, following Frank Taussig's lead, have concluded that indigenous technological advance made large branches of the industry internationally competitive by the 1830s. The prices of equivalent fabrics in Britain and America in the late 1840s and 1850s challenge that conclusion. “Domestic” fabrics, in which American mills had supposedly become competitive, cost 20 percent more in America. Critical reexamination of other evidence—cost comparisons from the 1830s and American exports—supports the conclusion that an unprotected American industry could not have competed.

Studies of postbellum financial markets have shown that the United States was not served by an integrated short-term capital market until the turn of the twentieth century. Until recently the data necessary for the study of a similar phenomenon in the antebellum period have not been available. This article reports several new regional interest rate series for the antebellum era that show that antebellum credit markets were more integrated than postbellum markets.

The Bank Panic of 1907 was one of the most severe financial crises in the United States before the Great Depression. Although contemporaries realized that the panic in New York City was centered at trust companies, subsequent research has relied heavily on national bank data. Balance sheet data for trust companies and state banks as well as call reports of national banks indicate that the contraction of loans and deposits in New York City during the panic was confined to the trust companies.

In 1942 the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve agreed to keep the interest rate on long-term government bonds below a ceiling of 2.5 percent. Assuming rational expectations, the ceiling on long-term interest rates can be viewed as a government commitment to low long-run inflation. The Fed also agreed to buy and sell short-term government bonds at a below-market rate of 3/8 percent. This policy did not result in long-run inflation because it was narrowly confined to 3-month Treasury bills.

Economic historians have stressed the importance of households and household formation but have devoted little attention to the process of leaving home. Leaving home in Ireland is important because of households' role in post-Famine demographic patterns. A matched Irish manuscript census sample for 1901 and 1911 shows that Irish males left home later than females. Statistical tests show that much of this reflects an Irish inheritance system that led many males never to leave home. Other economic forces, such as labor market opportunities, often had opposite impacts on males and females.

Wage gaps between farm and city are used to assess whether industrialization in late nineteenth-century France was choked off by peasants' alleged reluctance to move. If industry suffered due to labor scarcity, wage gaps should have been large and rising. It turns out that the wage gap, when adjusted for costs of living and computed as an average of 20 regional wage gaps, was nil in 1852 and about 25 percent in 1892. Thus wage gaps were rising but were far smaller throughout the late nineteenth century than they were in England during similar stages of industrialization.