The development of American agricultural techniques in the period JL prior to 1800 may be thought of as occurring through the amalgamation of the techniques and resources of the Old World and the New. The first half of the nineteenth century, though dominated by the changes imposed by agricultural expansion on the frontier and by a growing urban population, featured also careful evaluation of the differences between American and European agriculture, a process that resulted in extensive but selected borrowings. The middle of the century witnessed declarations of American technical independence on the basis of equality and indeed superiority over Europe in some areas and the dominance of the idea that henceforth agricultural progress would depend on America's own exploration and experimentation.

In their comment Curran and Johnston raise two general points. They suggest (1) that my main conclusions are not substantiated by statistical tests of stability, and (2) that the specifications used in my analysis are inappropriate.

Let me summarize my reply. With regard to Curran and Johnston's statistical tests for the structural stability of my money model, there are three major points. First, in using the Chow test for structural stability the authors do not use the relevant statistical information to carry out the test, so the results they derive are not the appropriate test of the economic hypotheses. I on the other hand report and interpret the results of the relevant Chow test that uses the appropriate statistical information and lends support to my hypothesis that the Bank War altered the public's liquidity preference. Second, Curran and Johnston do not correctly analyze and interpret their own results. Actually, the implications of their own evidence support my original hypothesis that the Bank War caused a shift in the liquidity preference of the public. Third, although the Chow test is a statistical test for stability, in this case it is not a direct test of the economic question at hand; that is, it is a weak test. I therefore provide a more direct statistical F test that provides evidence to support my hypothesis that the Bank War caused the Panic of 1837 and that refutes the Temin hypothesis that the Bank War left monetary behavior unaffected.1 Furthermore, the empirical evidence demonstrates that banks were quite interest sensitive during the years prior to the Bank War and that the Bank War altered commercial bank behavior before 1837 in a manner that, coupled with the shift in the public's liquidity preference, culminated in the Panic of 1837.

Historians of medieval prices have relied very heavily on grain prices, which are abundant and easily available. In France, for example, there is an impressive run of biweekly figures from the grain market at Albi. A different category of data, that has not received much attention, concerns the cost of travel in fourteenth-century France.

The purpose of this article was to present the estimates of the urban and rural workforces derived from census data. These censusbased estimates present a fairly consistent pattern of change over time, and appear useful even in their present state. These estimates should be tested further against other time series so that we will eventually have a sound urban and rural workforce series with which to better analyze the process of structural change. The limited use to which these estimates were put in the present article yielded some interesting results, as well as some suggestions for further research.

In terms of the United States workforce, changes in the industrial distribution reflect predominantly the relative shift in population from rural to urban areas, and little change in the workforce structure of either area. Indeed, at the sectoral level, there appears to have been more change occurring in rural than in urban areas. On the other hand, within the service sector there was more erratic change occurring in the rural areas than in the cities, but the differences may be easily reconciled. The urban sector experienced a more rapid increase and greater variability in the participation rate than did the rural sector. The pattern of variability was compared with the known evidence on unemployment, and variation in the former appears explicable in terms of variation in the latter.

Industrial growth and chronic, in many cases severe, inflation are two salient features of the past-war economic history of the larger Latin American countries. There is general recognition that the two phenomena are related, at least in the sense that industry has been one of the major recipients of state subsidies and inflationary credit. But beyond this, analysis divides into the usual demand inflation and cost-push categories.

The extension of social insurance during the twentieth century did not translate into homogeneous pension provision. Using a new database, this article analyzes the evolution of pensions in the long run for a sample of welfare states. The convergence in old age benefits as a share of earnings is only found for all earnings levels between 1970 and 1990. The results also underline the role as determinants of pension policy of both domestic and external factors. In line with previous literature, income per capita and the share of old people are key drivers of pensions. However, the effect of globalization is negative, especially for low and medium earnings levels.

The Solow growth and the Heckscher-Ohlin trade models describe two competing processes through which regional incomes converge over time. Solow's model attributes rising productivity of labor to additional regional capital investments. Heckscher-Ohlin's trade model ascribes the relocation of high value industries to regions with low wage rates. On the other hand Paul Krugman expects incomes to diverge over time as regions with an initial advantage maintain it through ever increasing external economies of scale. The Solow and Heckscher-Ohlin models imply that incomes converge through the movement of high quality labor and capital and high value goods and services into low income regions respectively.