Indians depleted the beaver, yet we do not understand why. We analyzed the pattern and determinants of beaver exploitation in the hinterlands of three Hudson's Bay Company posts. Simulating beaver population, we found declining beaver stock within each hinterland, but overharvesting in only two. Central to this process was the Company reaction to French competition. Managers raised prices in the Albany and York hinterlands, and in response the Indians increased their harvests. Churchill, which did not experience French competition, had more stable fur prices and showed no evidence of overexploitation of the beaver.

Antebellum judges played crucial roles in resolving conflicts between slaveowners and common-carrier owners. Because courts could easily quantify the value of a slave's life, they were quicker to compensate slaveowners for slaves injured or killed by a common carrier than to award damages to an injured free person or his estate. Yet judges also had to craft rules governing the behavior of the slave property itself. By the 1860s, Southern courts had established law that encouraged parties with legal standing to act efficiently. Strikingly, tort doctrines developed in slave cases foreshadowed the evolution of law for free accident victims.

New evidence based on census data indicates that output per agricultural worker grew faster between 1860 and 1870 than during any other decade of the nineteenth century. Although this evidence seems to support the traditional view that the Civil War was a catalyst for an increasingly productive agricultural sector, we contend that this apparent robust performance results from a measurement problem that afflicts census-based labor force series. An alternative estimate of labor force performance during the decade reveals the importance of increased labor inputs of women and children, in numbers, effort, and—especially—time.

In contrast to historical accounts of the boom and crash of the 1929 stock market, recent econometric studies have concluded that there were no bubbles in the American stock market over the past one hundred years. Examining the pricing of loans to stock brokers, we find information on the lenders' perceptions of the future course of stock prices in 1929. From this market, we extract an estimate of the bubble in stock prices. This bubble component contributes significantly to explain stock price behavior, even though standard cointegration tests suggest that there was no bubble in the market.

This article examines the determinants of emigration from post-Famine Ireland. As Irish real wages rose relative to those in destination countries, the emigration rate fell. We argue, from time series analysis, that much of the secular fall in the rate can be explained by that narrowing of the wage gap. County-level, cross-sectional analysis of emigration rates indicates that poverty and low wages, large family size, and limited opportunities to acquire smallholdings all contributed to high rates of emigration. Changes in those variables over time reflect the rise in living standards, consistent with time series evidence.

The textbook explanation for Britain's high unemployment in the 1920s is that the return to gold at $4.86 left the currency overvalued. Recent estimates suggest that an 11 percent devaluation would have eliminated roughly half the unemployment in 1925. This article questions the validity of that conclusion. It measures the power of exchange rate devaluations to decrease unemployment in the context of sectorally distinct labor markets. The results suggest that though a devaluation would have been helpful, eliminating half of 1925's unemployment would have required one much greater than 11 percent and would have caused significant price pressures.

This article discusses the changing living standards among the Korean masses under Japanese rule. Farm income per household, agricultural real wages, and per capita calorie intake from staple foods declined. On the other hand primary school enrollment, literacy, and survival rates rose, and average stature at least did not decrease. Arguing that literacy rates, survival rates, and average stature are variables more directly related to living conditions than the others, this article concludes that the Korean masses' standards of living rose between colonization and 1940. Still, any summary assessment depends on the weights assigned to different 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.