In this article we document Canada’s trade policy response to late nineteenth and early twentieth century globalization by linking newly digitized annual productspecific data on the value of Canadian imports and duties paid from 1870–1913, to establishment-specific production and location information drawn from the manuscripts of the 1871 industrial census. We find evidence of a highly selective move towards protectionism following the adoption of the National Policy in 1879. Changes in the Canadian tariff schedule narrowly targeted manufactured import products that had close substitutes produced by relatively large, urban, politically influential domestic manufacturers.

During the past few years new measures of growth have begun to emerge for the colonial period in American history which allow us to understand more fully the pace and pattern of long-run economic growth. This essay summarizes what we know about colonial growth and discusses rates of growth during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After summarizing previous work on the subject, the paper estimates eighteenth-century agricultural productivity in one New England county. Data on total wealth, livestock, crops, land, and agricultural capital are generated from estate inventories. A consumer price index for the period also is constructed. From these data it appears that the seventeenth century experienced growth comparable to modern times, whereas the eighteenth century was a bleak period in our history. Although real wealth per inventory grew at a rate of 0.5 percent per year during the eighteenth century, agricultural productivity declined at a rate of 0.8 percent.

Why was the Industrial Revolution British? In a recent article published in this Journal, Robert Allen argues that only in England was the price of labor relative to capital high enough to justify the adoption of the labor-saving technologies which characterized the Industrial Revolution.1 To support his argument, he uses the spinning jenny as a case study. The jenny was indeed an important labor-saving technology that was invented and widely adopted in England but not in France. Allen explains this fact by calculating the returns to adopting the jenny in each country: according to his calculations the jenny was profitable in England but not in France.

The present note shows that Allen's conclusions rest on implausible profitability computations. In particular, Allen assumes that output remains constant after the adoption of the jenny while hours worked decrease dramatically. From a theoretical perspective, this is equivalent to an assumption that hours worked move inversely with the marginal product of labor. As soon as these restrictive assumptions are abandoned, the jenny turns out being profitable both in England and in France. Hence the mystery of the adoption of the jenny during the Industrial Revolution remains.

This article asks: why were crop failures (dearths) so frequent in western India between 1870 and 1920, and why did dearth decreasingly result in famine, that is, in severe elevation of mortality and in major disruptions of the agricultural sector. It is concluded that deficient rainfall caused the crop failures and that after 1900 increasedtrade in agricultural products and increased demand for labor, coupled with increased credit and relief services from government, significantly reduced the probability that a crop failure could result in widespread famine.

This article contributes to the debate on relative levels of living in the early modern world by estimating the income and probable range of income growth in Bengal before European colonization. The exercise yields two conclusions, (a) average income in Bengal was significantly smaller than that in contemporary Western Europe, and (b) there is insufficient basis to infer either growth or decline in average income in the eighteenth century.

What role the railroad played and how changes in transportstimulated American economic advance, while puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture. And such questions never lacked for conjecture. But recent studies have given a rigorous and brilliant cast to that inquiry, if not a totally novel one. An older tradition was shaped by the historian's desire to see economic change “as it was,” by his recognition that every happening was indispensable to the actual course of history. The newer focus, on history “as it was not,” reflects a belief that in economic affairs, as in those of the heart, desire will find its object—or a sufficiently close substitute. It i s difficult for the economist to view any historic innovation as revolutionary or to equate technological novelty with economic importance. It is an easy step to use comparative statics; to measure history “as it was not”; and thereby to define economic importance.

This article examines the effect of state-level legal innovations governing labor disputes in the late 1800s. This was a period of legal ferment in which worker organizations and employers actively lobbied state governments for changes in the rules governing labor disputes. Cross-state heterogeneity in the legal environment provides an unusual opportunity to investigate the effects of these laws. We use a unique data set with information on 12,965 strikes to show that most of these law changes had surprisingly little effect on strike incidence or outcomes. Important exceptions were maximum hours laws and the use of injunctions.

According to the articles of association forming the Medici partnerships, the purpose of the banco in Florence and of the branches abroad was “to deal in exchange and in merchandise with the help of God and good fortune.” When we ask just what is meant by dealings in exchange and in merchandise, we are led to examine how the Medici raised the funds with which they operated, to study their role as fiscal agents of the papacy and lessees of the Tolfa alum mines, to consider the technique they used in international banking, and to look into the reasons for their failure. The Medici did not innovate in international banking, they followed existing business practice; but their records are an extremely valuable source of information, if only for the sake of comparison. Let us begin by finding out what is meant by dealings in exchange and then tackle the other problems.

We study the effect of political uncertainty on economic outcomes using the case of Huey Long's tenure as governor and senator of Louisiana during the Great Depression. Based on primary sources, we construct two well-established measures of uncertainty specifically for Louisiana: stock price volatility and newspaper mentions of terms related to “uncertainty” and the economy. Combining these uncertainty measures with employment data from the Census of Manufactures, we attempt to identify the effects of political uncertainty using the state of Mississippi as a control group. We find little support for a negative effect from political uncertainty in Huey Long's Louisiana.

Between the years 1860 and 1913 approximately twelve million people took passage from the United Kingdom to extra-European countries. The bulk of the migration stream (about 125,000 people per year) was directed toward the United States; it is this movement of population that is the subject of our article. The flow of individuals from the United Kingdom to the United States in this period ranged from 38,000 in 1861 to 202,000 in 1887 with marked cyclical fluctuations. For example, in 1873 the flow was 167,000 and by 1877 it was only 45,000. Variations of this magnitude pose the interesting intellectual question of whether or not they can be explained. This is not a new question; there are frequent references in the literature to the possible causes of this movement and the emigration from the United Kingdom that it implies. Studies focus on various economic influences on emigration. There is little in this period in the socio-political environment of the United Kingdom that would prompt individuals to emigrate in order to flee intolerable religious or political persecution.

This article reexamines theories previously advanced to explain Lancashire's slow adoption of ring spinning. New cost estimates show that although additional transport costs and technical complementarities reduced ring adoption rates, these supply-side constraints were not dominant. Instead what mattered most were demand-side factors. Lancashire produced far more fine yarns than other countries, and this yarn was better spun on mules. Furthermore, Lancashire had a sizeable export trade in yarn, a market again more suited to mule spinning. Low ring adoption rates were thus a rational response to demand patterns dominated by high-quality goods.

A Major theme in the historiography of American slavery is the analysis of the slave plantation as a capitalist market oriented enterprise. Much of the controversy surrounding the work of such scholars as Stanley Elkins, Kenneth Stampp and Eugene Genovese stems from differing views of the interaction of commercial capitalism with the ancient institution of slavery. A recurrent topic in this literature is the impact of the profit motive and competitive market conditions on the relationship between master and slave. A major concern is the extent these capitalist incentives may have motivated the master to either brutalize or ameliorate the conditions of the slave's existence.

We wish to thank the following who read earlier drafts of this paper and made useful suggestions and criticisms: Professors Jerry Fastrup, George Jensen, Roger Ransom, Richard Roseman, and an anonymous referee. This study is part of a larger project, “The Optimal Accumulation and Utilization of Slaves” (forthcoming), which extends both static and dynamic neoclassical models of the firm to cases involving slavery.

Empirical studies of delegate voting at the Constitutional Convention have relied on the same 16 roll call votes. This article re-examines various assumptions used in the collection of these data. We first create a baseline regression. We then consider the effect of dropping delegates not in attendance, re-inferring the votes from primary sources, examining various subsamples of the roll calls, and reconstructing constituency variables to include state districts. Our findings suggest that personal interests were indeed important for decision making at the Constitutional Convention, but constituent interests were less important than previously claimed.

By analyzing a newly compiled data set of interest rates on public annuities in early modern Italy, this article finds that the cost of borrowing fell in spite of growing debts and stagnating fiscal revenues. Feudalism and clerical interference increased the cost of borrowing, while parliaments, wars, and centralized fiscal institutions mattered little. The constitutional representation of creditors may have meant significant markups for republican oligarchs. These results cast doubts on the claim that the growth of absolutism was at the root of Italy's economic decline.

The cross-sectional and secular variations in the fertility of the white population in pre-Civil War Ohio are analyzed with special regard to the role of population pressure in conditioning these patterns and trends. Other factors, such as urbanization, education, cultural heritage, and the sex ratio, all of which are often cited as major explanatory variables during the demographic transition are also introduced. Although each of these variables is shown to have some impact, none can account for more than a minor proportion of the Variance in human fertility. It appears that the major force affecting both inter-county fertility and the secular trend for the state was the Variation in the degree of population pressure as measured by the average assessed value of an acre of non-urban land.

In a notable article published in 1955, Robert A. Lively analyzed the body of new writing on “the role of government in the antebellum economy.” In it he coined the term, “The American System,” to describe the characteristic pattern of “public support for business development” or government “partnership with enterprise.” The greater part of the literature covered dealt with the government promotion of canals and railroads, and he credited the writers with achieving “the rescue of the internal improvements movement from the political historian.” Another bench mark is provided by the appearance in 1969 of the fourth edition of Edward C. Kirkland's History of American Economic Life. The revision devotes attention to the new trends that have appeared in the writing of economic history since the first edition in 1932, and Kirkland declares that the one that interested him the most was “the increasing attention to the interrelationships between government and economic activity.” His chapter on “Internal Improvements and Domestic Commerce” makes full use of the research on the role of governments in the promotion of canals and railroads but ends with the judgment that recent writers have tended to overstate the supposed social gains and to disregard the traditional but still valid concern with the financial losses. Meanwhile, Albert Fishlow, in his admirable book, American Railroads and the Transformation of the Ante-Bellum Economy, had challenged the writers on the American System on a number of issues, including the commonly accepted theory that railroads were built ahead of demand. His critique is summarized in the following statement: “the recent useful destruction of the myth of ideological laissez faire must not give rise to the equally erroneous impression of all-embracing, and essential, public promotion.”

Bank notes were the largest component of the antebellum money supply despite losses as high as 5 percent in some years. Using a comprehensive bank-level panel of note discounts in New York City and Philadelphia, I explain this contradiction by showing that the secondary market reduced losses by accurately discounting notes based on their individual risk of default. Note discounts were almost exclusively sensitive to those factors which increased a bank's probability of default: specie suspensions, falling bond prices, and undiversified portfolios. Thus, by accounting for a bank's composition and environment, the market protected noteholders and allowed notes to circulate throughout the economy.