This paper employs the techniques of legal history to explore the relationship between the rise of big business and the size of the American market. It emphasizes law as a determinant of market size, and it analyzes judicial construction of the Constitution's commerce clause over time to delineate the role of integrated corporations in generating legal change. Specifically, the paper suggests that if the American market is defined as a free-trade unit, enlargement of the market was a result of, rather than a prerequisite for, the post-Civil War revolution in business organization.

The article sketches the history of Swedish commercial banking from 1656 until World War I, with special attention to the post-1850 period. Emphasis is placed on the relationships between economic growth and banking. International comparisons based on the quantitative measures developed by Rondo Cameron and Raymond Goldsmith are made. It is concluded that at all stages of its early industrialization Sweden had a remarkably large and efficient banking system. This, in turn, was largely the result of the general population's long experience with banking and paper money and their generally high levels of literacy and education.

The response of American merchants to the opportunities of neutral trade after 1793 was not limited to expanding the volume of their operations. Semi-annual reports on shipping submitted by American consuls to the Department of State provide a uniquely rich source of evidence about mercantile decisions. Analysis of the evidence from the port of Leghorn, Italy, between 1798 and 1820 reveals the growing productivity of American shipping and the characteristics of America's re-export trade to southern Europe.

In the 1770s Philadelphia had a well developed indentured servant market which served the city and the surrounding region. This market had many attributes of rational labor and physical capital markets and provided a means for financing migration and education. This study is of indenture records which include prices, term lengths, employer-provided amenities, and servant attributes to test hypotheses based on a rational buyer model. Results indicate that in response to the riskiness of a servant, the buyer used indexes of servant productivity and reliability; that the servant paid for amenities offered by the master, such as general education; and that there was a seasonal pattern of prices corresponding to seasonal activities of agriculture.

The structural retardation hypothesis locates the source of stagnation in French agriculture primarily within agriculture — inthe economic, political, and sociological consequences of a peasant system of agricultural production. It is argued in this paper that the poor performance of French agriculture from the 1870s to the 1940s is to be found in the limited opportunities for agricultural growth provided by the French economy. Evidence suggests that the slow growth in demand for agricultural output, the slow growth in demand for labor by the non-agricultural sector, and the limited investment in the institutional infrastructure to support agricultural development were the primary sources of stagnation.