The central theme of this book is the interplay of women's employment and the macro-economy in postwar Germany and Japan. David Kucera introduces the distinction between two possible types of flexibility in the labor market. The first occurs in the absence of interference with the market mechanism from laws or institutions. This flexibility may reduce unemployment and increase the response time to shocks, at the cost of low wages and insufficient training. In the second type of flexibility, a buffer group provides this flexibility, while core workers are protected from the vagaries of the market and receive training and high wages. Kucera argues that by using women as a buffer group to protect men, Japan is able at a macro-level to reap the benefits of both the “low-road” and “high-road” approaches. Bolstering this argument, and showing that Germany pursues instead the simpler “high-road” strategy, is the most important aim of the book.

Once upon his discussiona time, oraroundso it seems, outstandingthe historiographerworks by leading could professors. Perhaps in some fields of scholarship the time still lingers, but not in recent American economic history. A quick glance at studies applying to the twentieth century that have appeared since World War II shows a large array of books that vary in merit but include few outstanding works. Furthermore, the majority of both the more or less important books have been written by people who, to the best of my knowledge, would not call themselves economic historians.

This article examines the economic and noneconomic factors that influenced the migration decisions of antebellum Southern households. It appears that nonslaveowners were neither pushed to inferior locations nor did they move independently of the economic consequences. For slaveowners, the observed links between locational choice and the economic characteristics of locations are weaker. The proportion of whites in a location's population was positively associated with the choice of a location for the nonslaveowners. This association was not found for any other group.

Two propositions are suggested by a preliminary examination of the marketing of brass and brass products a century ago: first, that the manufacturer's quest for a near-monopoly market through product differentiation is not a new development; second, that this very quest of the manufacturer for near-monopoly has been the life blood of manufacturing progress.

This article uses data on regional output and imports to examine the relationship between imports and regional growth in the Northeast. The tariff rates, both nominal and effective, are considered as evidence of national policy that may have benefited this particular region. The findings are that particular industries do benefit from tariff protection, but their location is due to regional resource advantages.