Volumes, prices, and composition of Hungarian trade are analyzed, focussing on the effects of association with Austria in a political and customs union in a time of increasing protectionism. The author concludes that the relative improvement in terms of trade with Austria compared to overall trade was an incomplete amelioration of a strong pre-existing pro-Austrian bias in the tariff system. Tariff policy strongly favored both countries' traditional exports, with the consequence that the structure of trade with Austria changed little, while that with the outside world was dramatically altered. Hungary's efforts at quasi-independence, especially with respect to import substitution in manufactures at Austrian expense, were essentially ineffective. The text and appendices contain numerous tables and descriptions of trade for important commodities and commodity groups.

Since the beginning of the world-wide depression of the 1930's thewritings of J. M. Keynes have furnished the chief stimulus for serious discussion of economic policy and economic theory. There is implicit in the Keynesian position an interpretation of capitalism strikingly similar to that of P. J. Proudhon, the French socialist of the nineteenth century. Yet whatever similarities there are between the economic ideas of Keynes and Proudhon must be explained by time-separated reaction to more or less comparable problems. The only formal linkage between the two theorists would be their relations to Silvio Gesell, the stamped-money reformer. Keynes expresses admiration for the fundamentals of Gesell's work, and Gesell in turn avows himself a disciple of Proudhon. Keynes's agreement with Gesell is not confined to matters of technical theory, but extends also to the social premises of the work of that “strange, unduly neglected prophet…whose work contains flashes of deep insight and who only just failed to reach down to the essence of the matter.”He characterizes Gesell's work as “anti-Marxian socialism,” asserting that “the future will learn more from the spirit of Gesell than from that of Marx.” Since Marx made a bitter attack on Proudhon, and since Gesell declares himself a disciple of Proudhon, Keynes's references to the superiority of Gesell over Marx suggest important relations between Proudhon and Keynes.

The importance of tariff protection in the U.S. cotton textile industry is examined quantitatively for the period around 1833. In sharp contradiction to past writings it is found that the industry was almost entirely dependent on protection.

The notion that an “Atlantic Economy” developed in the nineteenth century does not depend simply on the large movements of capital and labor from Britain to the United States. For there were movements of comparable magnitude to other areas. If the economic relations of Britain and North America are to be regarded as distinctive, it is principally because of the reciprocal movement of investment and growth in the two areas. The argument is that the periods of most rapid growth and intensive use of resources in the two economies were inversely related to each other, and that this alternation was established because there existed a common stock of resources, so that when one area drew rapidly on this stock it was at the expense of the other. At one time, investment in buildings and equipment in the United States was particularly rapid, and there was a heavy movement of migrants to America; in Britain the stream of migrants from the countryside was diverted from the industrial districts, and building and home investment were relatively depressed, but the vigorous demand for exports facilitated the flow of funds abroad. In the next period, the position was reversed; development slackened in the United States, and there was a revival of domestic investment in Britain. This, as Phelps-Brown has said, “is the pattern of the Atlantic Economy, dividing a common fund of incremental energies between its regions in varying proportions from time to time. Whether a house is built in Oldham depends on and is decided by whether a house goes up in Oklahoma.”

Despite the attention given by scholars to the military-industrial complex few studies have attempted to pinpoint and explain its origin. In this paper we argue that the coalescing of business, military, and political interest groups in support of a military build-up in the United States during peacetime occurred in the years between the Civil War and World War I. It was during this period that we observe the roots of institutional arrangements between the military and industry for the purpose of large-scale weapons acquisitions.

Italy's rapid industrial growth, which began in the mid-1890's, was preceded and accompanied by important developments in her financial institutions, including in particular the establishment of several industrial credit banks on the German model. The role of such banks in French and German industrial growth before 1914 has been the subject of considerable study. It is the purpose of this article to examine the effects of these banks on the rate and direction of Italian development between 1894 and 1914, and to consider the relation between their near-monopoly of industrial credit and the emergence of concentration of ownership and control in the new and rapidly growing sectors of the industrial structure.

Since agricultural history first acquired independent status it has been carried forward without much theoretical direction. So much research has been done in the field, however, that possibly a tentative general theory for further work may now be advanced. To be useful, an historical hypothesis should probably center on some common denominator of human experience. One possible common denominator is that all men are located within, or are a certain definite distance from metropolitan unit. All those who live within a certain given zone around the metropolis have at least one common experience: they are all some specific distance from the metropolis. Furthermore, for any given group of people this one common experience may have shaped many of their ideas and actions. Since human events take place in time and space, a theory based primarily on these dimensions might be at least roughly applicable to most history.

The economic development and decline of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Castile has been the subject of considerable research in the last few years, and it has long been assumed that the rise of Madrid played an important role in dislocating the economy of the region. Yet little direct attention has been paid to the actual processes whereby a distinctive type of urban growth, the development of a political capital, undermined the relationship between town and country which was the basis of the economic activity of sixteenth-century Castile. The rapid growth of Madrid, in fact, coincides with the equally spectacular decline of Toledo, the largest urban center in the region until 1600. The interaction between the two cities, and between the urban sector and the countryside, during the period of prolonged economic stress at the close of the sixteenth century, helps to explain the severity of the crisis which Spain experienced in the seventeenth century.

The case for government involvement in the provision of elementary education in nineteenth-century England is assessed by presenting estimates of the rate of return to literacy. Before government involvement, the estimated rate of return to male literacy was considerably above the return on most alternative investments in the English economy. The differential narrowed with the onset of government involvement. The evidence is much weaker for any initial underinvestment in female literacy. The contribution to national income from correcting any initial underinvestment in literacy appears to have been modest.

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 imposed a binding minimum wage on the southern seamless hosiery and lumber industries. However, the process of adjusting to the new minimum differed across the two industries. Seamless hosiery firms substituted capital for labor and converted or replaced old machinery. Southern lumber firms employed fewer workers relative to northern and western firms, however, changes in their resource base and war-related government purchases prevented an absolute decrease in employment levels. Numerous southern lumber firms continued to pay less than minimum rates by illegally evading the act or taking advantage of the intra-stage exemption.

This paper deals with the relation between statistical analysis as applied in economic inquiry and history as written or interpreted by economic historians. Although both these branches of economic study derive from the same body of raw materials of inquiry—the recordable past and present of economic society—each has developed in comparative isolation from the other. Statistical economists have failed to utilize adequately the contributions that economic historians have made to our knowledge of the past; and historians have rarely employed either the analytical tools or the basic theoretical hypotheses of statistical research. It is the thesis of this essay that such failure to effect a close interrelation between historical approach and statistical analysis needs to be corrected in the light of the final goal of economic study.

This article reviews Mancur Olson’s ideas concerning the impact of institutions on growth rates and national competitive performance. We suggest that Olson’s “ideal typical” methodology limits the usefulness of his approach and that institutional structures and strategies can be dependent variables. In comparing the performance of three European countries in the postwar period, we argue (contrary to strict Olsonian principles) that changing market and political environments helped to determine the kind of institutional forms that emerged. We question the weight that Olson places on the role of institutional structures and strategies on long-run economic performance.

Since the appearance of Gerschenkron's 1955 paper, economic historians have discussed extensively the industrial transformation of Italy from 1896 to 1908, which Gerschenkron claimed was the period of Italy's first big or great “spurt.” Those discussions, however, have been in terms of national aggregates. This article attempts to create instead a regional view of Italian industrialization for this period. My analysis of regional output for two benchmark years suggests there were three regional patterns of industrialization.

An econometric model is here used to estimate the price and output effect of the Limitation of the Vend, a mineowners' cartel. It is found that when a formal regulation existed the price of coal rose significantly in the London market, whereas there was little output effect. The price effect was relatively small, however, especially when compared to the per unit tax on coal. Although the cartel was deemed to be successful, the existence of substantial monopoly profits was questioned.

This study is part of a continuing effort to document and date the emergence of a market economy in rural Massachusetts. It uses a probate data base to test for evidence of increased portfolio liquidity, decreased transactions costs, and the appearance of developmental institutional change. A regional capital market, so critical for the industrialization of New England, is found to have emerged in the early 1780s.

International productivity comparisons are often plagued by discrepancies between benchmark estimates and time series extrapolations. Broadberry and Burhop present both types of evidence for the Anglo-German comparison. For their preferred data, they find only a minimal German productivity lead prior to World War I, while use of a revised industrial output series for Germany by Ritschl leads to implausible results. This article presents further time series revisions and substantial corrections to the Broadberry and Burhop benchmark estimate. Results strongly suggest a considerable German productivity lead over Britain prior to World War I, which eroded during and after the war.

The discovery of vast oil fields in Texas after 1901 encouraged competition in an industry previously dominated by Standard Oil of New Jersey. The manner in which the state of Texas enforced its antitrust and corporation laws hastened the growth of several major new oil companies, most notably Gulf Oil and The Texas Company, by constraining the activities of Standard in the new fields. In so doing, these Texas laws shaped the transition from near monopoly to near oligopoly in the oil industry. Such beneficial results of state laws were, however, largely accidental, since weaknesses in the government's capacity to monitor changes in the burgeoning industry undermined its ability to define and implement systematic regulatory policies. Problems of adjustment that accompanied government's early efforts to regulate market structure in oil have continued to hamper subsequent efforts to regulate other aspects of the industry's operations.

Around 1900, an extraordinary number of stillbirths appeared in Japan's statistical yearbooks. This article investigates possible biological explanations but concludes that Japan's anomalous stillbirth rates were primarily the result of the deliberate misreporting of infanticides and abortions. On the basis of an international comparison spanning five centuries, it estimates that between 1886 and 1940, Japanese parents filed between 1.7 and 2.8 million false stillbirth reports.