Unlike the case of many low-income countries, farm-level survey data show no major differences across farm sizes with regard to decision-making and economic efficiency. This similarity is attributed to the operation of efficient and competitive markets which households used effectively to offset imbalances in resource endowment. If this holds true from the 1880s to the 1930s, perhaps the benefits of commercialization were more evenly distributed than previously believed.

An analysis of grain prices from Zhili (Hebei) province in North China for the period from 1738 to 1911 demonstrates that while the province's local grain markets gradually fragmented, the provincial market as a whole simultaneously grew more closely integrated with external markets, first with Fengtian (Manchuria) and later with the Lower Yangzi region. The Qing state's food policies, the deterioration of transport routes, and the condition of rural markets provide a context for understanding these seemingly paradoxical trends.

Self-selection of converts is an under-studied explanation of inter-religion socioeconomic status (SES) differences. Inspired by this conjecture, I trace the Coptic-Muslim SES gap in Egypt to self-selection-on-SES during Egypt’s conversion from Coptic Christianity to Islam. Selection was driven by a poll tax on non-Muslims, imposed from 641 until 1856, which induced poorer Copts to convert to Islam leading Copts to shrink into a better-off minority. Using novel data sources, I document that high-tax districts in 641–1100 had in 1848–1868 relatively fewer Copts, but greater SES differentials. Group restrictions on apprenticeships and schooling led the initial selection to perpetuate.

The lack of other data has made fiscally motivated house counts the main basis of pre-censal Irish population estimates in the past. The source is potentially treacherous: in this paper spatial autocorrelation analysis of house counts at the county level is used to monitor its reliability over time. The new house totals which emerge, coupled with new estimates of mean household size, yield a different picture of aggregate and provincial population change between 1700 and 1821 than suggested in Connell's classic work. The final section of the paper suggests an interpretation of population change consistent with our revised figures.

The boll weevil spread across the South from 1892 to 1922 with devastating effect on cotton cultivation. The resulting shift away from this child labor–intensive crop lowered the opportunity cost of school attendance. We investigate the insect’s long-run effect on educational attainment using a sample of adults from the 1940 census linked back to their childhood census records. Both white and black children who were young (ages 4 to 9) when the weevil arrived saw increased educational attainment by 0.24 to 0.36 years. Our results demonstrate the potential for conflict between child labor in agriculture and educational attainment.

Earl J. Hamilton's multiple theses on the price revolution, the decline of Spain, and the birth of capitalism have all placed American silver (and gold) at the forefront. This essay supports Hamilton's emphasis on the impact of New World treasure on the decline of Castile, but from a different angle. Mining profits rather than the quantity of imports supported the empire. When the profits dwindled, as was inevitable, international superiority was begrudgingly surrendered to the emerging powers of the north.

Throughout the period 1871–1938, the average British worker was better off than the average German worker, but there were significant differences between major sectors. For the aggregate economy, the real wage gap was about the same as the labor productivity gap, but again there were important sectoral differences. Compared to their productivity, German industrial workers were poorly paid, whereas German agricultural and service sector employees were overpaid. This affected the competitiveness of the two countries in these sectors. There were also important differences in comparative real wages by skill level, affecting the extent of poverty.

The article employs a general equilibrium model to describe Italy's response to commodity and factor market integration during the expansion of the Roman Empire. This novel approach constructs a comprehensive story of the Italian economy that corroborates established developments and sheds light on controversial and unanswered questions. The success of the model supports arguments that Romans were rational economic actors and that the Roman economy was a well-integrated market system.

With passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, the institutional structure necessary to support an American market for bankers' acceptances was created. This article examines the development of the secondary market for bankers' acceptances during its first 20 years. It provides evidence that discount market liquidity increased dramatically during the 1920s and helped the dollar acceptance challenge the sterling bill as an important source of trade finance around the world. The Federal Reserve Banks played a key role by reducing the risk borne by private dealers and propelling the market to a high-liquidity equilibrium.The author thanks Mike Haupert, William Roberds, and Ellis Tallman for their useful comments and suggestions, and Susan Isaac for her excellent editorial assistance. All errors are the responsibility of the author.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Japan was just emerging from a long period of internal strife and was beginning to settle down under a centralized feudal system introduced by the newly established Tokugawa government. In the following period of peace, economic development was very rapid. Along with commercial development and the monetization of important sections of the economy, a system of credit institutions evolved, notably in Osaka, which by the end of the century was not inferior to those existing in Europe at that time. The financial innovations and developments of the first half of the century were systematized in the latter half, and the resulting credit system became an indispensable part of Japan's economic life. In particular it played an important part in facilitating the spurt in Japan's economic development which occurred roughly between 1690 and 1740.

Scholars still disagree about why nineteenth-century Britain adopted the factory system. Traditional historians emphasize the scale requirements of new technology; radical economists stress the possibilities that factory production held for worker exploitation; other economists and economic historians argue that the factory system was preferred because of its superior transaction-cost properties. This paper tests these competing hypotheses by examining the technological and organizational developments in the British silk industry. It concludes that in this Industry technological factors were primarily responsible for the adoption of the factory system.

Strange as it seems, the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff might have had an expansionary effect on the U.S. economy. Basic macroeconomic principles indicate that the direct effect of a tariff increase is expansionary. This expansionary effect might be offset by retaliatory increases in foreign tariffs. Barry Eichengreen has recently questioned whether significant retaliation to Smoot-Hawley occurred. This article demonstrates that the tariff increases enacted during 1930 in Canada—the largest trading partner of the United States—were in direct response to Smoot-Hawley. The conventional wisdom that Smoot-Hawley hurt the U.S. economy may be right after all.

Historians disagree about whether geographic mobility on the frontier reflected economic hardship or opportunity because of the inability to observe the outcomes of non-persisters. This article uses a new sample of frontier families linked between the 1860, 1870, and 1880 U.S. censuses to study mobility and wealth accumulation. Using the incidence of Confederate guerilla warfare in frontier counties to generate exogenous migration, I find the effect of persistence on wealth accumulation is insignificant. Also, young, blue-collar, and landless families—those with the highest net benefits of migration—were the most likely to move. These findings reflect widespread economic opportunity on the frontier.

We examine Cuban GDP over time and across space. We find that Cuba was once a prosperous middle-income economy. On the eve of the revolution, incomes were 50 to 60 percent of European levels. They were among the highest in Latin America at about 30 percent of the United States. In relative terms, Cuba was richer earlier on. Income per capita during the 1920s was in striking distance of Western Europe and the Southern United States. After the revolution, Cuba slipped down the world income distribution. Current levels of income per capita appear below their pre-revolutionary peaks.

The Anglo-Irish Economic War of 1932 to 1938 was eventually settled on terms highly favorable to the Irish. This article uses a computational general equilibrium model of the interwar Irish economy to argue that the welfare costs of the war were not so great as has been thought, and that the dispute helped de Valera electorally. These considerations help explain the eventual Irish “victory” in the Economic War.

In 1805–1882, Egypt embarked on one of the earliest state industrialization programs. Using a new data source, the Egyptian nineteenth-century population censuses, I examine the impact of the program on the long-standing inter-religious human capital differentials, which were in favor of Christians. I find that there were inter-religious differentials in reaping the benefits (or losses) of industrialization. The first state industrialization wave was “de-skilling” among Muslims but “up-skilling” among Christians, while the second wave was “up-skilling” for both groups. I interpret the results within Lawrence F. Katz and Robert A. Margo (2013) framework of technical change.

This study is based on the manuscript accounts of the Madrid Treasury for 1784– 1807. It confirms the customary view of an inexorable descent into bankruptcy, but also shows why this situation arose. A detailed analysis of receipts demonstrates the importance of colonial revenues and the stability of traditional income sources. In wartime, such as repeatedly plagued the country, the former was jeopardized and the latter proved too inelastic to respond to rising demand. On balance, the inescapable conclusion is that Spain was a limited fiscal entity which could not meet the challenge of a revolutionary era without breaking decisively with the restrictive structures of the Old Regime.

Much of the controversy over Mercantilist policies has focused on the relevance of political exigencies as against economic principles. Some economists have also attempted to evaluate Mercantilist policies in terms of the difference between various short-run and long-run adjustments. By contrast, the concern here has been with some purely economic but rather basic characteristics of the Mercantilist age. I have attempted to explain Mercantilist policies by the actual pattern of the specie flow, the characteristics of some of the commodity trade, the nature and limitation of foreign investment, and in terms of the existing monetary systems.

What accounts for the “epochal” changes in capital formation shares and capital goods' prices during the 1860's? The pages following document an epochal rise in American gross saving rates centered on the Civil War decade. They also establish a symmetrical episodic shift in the relative price of manufactured durable investment goods. Not only did the American investment share in GNP rise dramatically (and permanently) between the 1850's and 1870's, but the relative price of capital goods declined sharply over the same period. This relative price change was pronounced and it was never again repeated in a subsequent century of development.