The rapid growth of deposits in New York over the late nineteenth century is often attributed to the release of pent-up demand for transactions services. I advance a complementary explanation that emphasizes the market for bank shares. The stock market was important because it generated quotations that signaled depositors about the condition of individual banks as innovations in banking practices allowed confidence to grow. A new database of prices, dividends, and balance sheet items for traded banks and a series of dynamic panel models show that fluctuations in bank prices influenced the course of the expansion.

The formation of the Jewish national home in Palestine provides an opportunity to examine the economics of an unusual “nation building”: the planning and making of a national existence without a state. The revival of Jewish nationality in Palestine started in the late nineteenth century with the first immigration motivated by national ideology (Alia Rishona) and with, the establishment of the World Zionist Organization (1897), whose goal was to create a Jewish political entity and ultimately a state. It was not, however, until the end of World War I that the revival achieved momentum. The Balfour Declaration (November 1917) proclaiming Britain's intention to promote the formation of a Jewish national home in Palestine and the establishment of the British mandate in Palestine after the war provided the supportive political environment for the renewal of Jewish nation building. Moreover, both the League of Nations (which officially granted Britain the mandate) and the British government recognized the Zionist Organization as the legitimate representative of world Jewry and as the leading body of the emerging Jewish community in Palestine for matters concerning the national home. This gave the Zionist Organization an international legitimacy to add to its legitimacy among Jews as a quasi-governmental institution for the purpose of re-establishing their national existence.

Among the other excellent and extraordinary gifts that God has given to human kind is the knowledge of the motion of the spheres, the course of the planets and stars, and of the climatic zones under which is placed this marvelous world machine. With this knowledge we furrow that very great element, the water, and betake ourselves into almost any part of the world that we wish, with the same facility as if there were in the wide ocean a fixed road showing signs of its use, and a through highway.

Economic historians have been aware for some time of the questionable nature of some of the tonnage figures given for the ships of the English colonies in the Western Hemisphere in the eighteenth century. Several authors who have written on colonial shipbuilding or colonial trade have noted the authoritative declaration of Thomas Irving which was laid before the House of Commons in 1792 and have tried to take his evidence into account in their own investigations. Irving, who from 1767 to 1774 had held the dual position of Inspector General of Imports and Exports and Register of Shipping in North America, stated that while he was in office North American vessels had been consistently registered at two-thirds of their real tonnage. He urged that this deduction be repaired and real tonnage re-established before any attempt be made to compare statistics from that time with those of a later period. Other scholars have either chosen not to notice Irving's claim or have discounted it as of moot significance. Such ambivalence is understandable, for Irving's assertion is narrowly based, confused, and misleading. Still, the sweeping scope of his charge and the even broader testimony of some of his contemporaries who have both agreed with him and expanded upon him have combined to leave the precise nature of all colonial tonnage figures in serious doubt. Given the renewed interest in tonnage measure and the growing trend toward the use of compiled tonnage statistics as a rough and ready measure of trade, it becomes important to resolve this doubt.

The transformation of the Cotton South after the Civil War involved distinct regional developments. Regional analysis of crop production in Reconstruction Georgia, for example, identifies different patterns of specialization in cotton in the Cotton Belt and Upcountry counties. It also reveals an overlooked aspect of Reconstruction, the integration of Upcountry farmers into the cotton economy. The spread of cotton culture into the Upcountry followed the construction of an internal marketing and transportation system in Georgia in the 1870s which was related to and was part of the formation of a national market in the postbellum United States.

English growth experience from the 1860's to the 1890's has been the source of continued research and debate. Judged by the recent contributions of McCloskey, the intensity of the debate has diminished little over the past seventy-five years. The period has long been identified in the literature as the “Great Depression.” It has been well established that the decades up to 1896 were characterized by declining general price levels, declining nominal interest rates, and serious retardation in aggregate real output growth. These are not merely figments of historical research since they were subjects of contemporary observation as well.

The opinion that spice prices rose in Europe in the century before 1492 and that that had something to do with Europe's oceanic expansion is remarkably persistent, in spite of the blow delivered to it by A. H. Lybyer more than a half-century ago. A distinct drop, however, in the price of spices, and particularly of pepper, between the decades 1420-1430 and 1440-1450 is indicated by a recent study of Antwerp prices, which thus reinforces the suggestion of older scattered figures from Navarre, England, and Klosterneuburg (Vienna). Pepper fell about 50 percent in that interval and did not return to its former high level until after 1498. In view of Venice's preeminent position in the trade in those decades, Venice is the obvious place to look for the source of a decline of prices generally in the West. Wholesale prices of pepper at Venice, 1363-1510, drawn mainly from diaries, merchants' account books, and letters, are shown in the accompanying Table 1. This explains the fall in prices in northern and western Europe. After selling at between 83 and 157 ducats per cargo in 1411-1426, pepper prices at Venice fell to 50 in 1432 and drifted lower in the 1440's and 1470's, occasionally even going below 40. Rarely did the price rise above 55 ducats a cargo until the interruption of Venetian voyages by the war with the Ottoman Turks in 1499.

Estimates of interstate migration after 1815 and before 1860 for white, U.S.-born adults are presented. The estimates come from a sample of military bounty land warrant recipients who served in the War of 1812 and show that a majority of veterans spent their adult lives in the same state. The limited amount of interstate movement did conform to traditional descriptions of an east-west pattern. I also consider the social basis for interstate migration.

Aside from their studies of the iron industry, historians have given relatively little attention to the non-household manufacturing industries of colonial America—perhaps, many would say, for the very good reason that there was not much activity along these lines before the conjuncture of the American and the Industrial Revolutions. Yet there were manufactures that reached significant volumes for those times. One of these was the colonial shipbuilding industry which not only provided most of the vessels that carried North American commerce with the West Indies and the Old World but also provided the capital starved colonies with a significant export. In spite of its importance this trade has not received much attention from modern economic historians, including those who deal with the balance of payments. One reason is, perhaps, that the British government in the eighteenth century did not consider colonial built ships as foreign in any sense and did not regard their transfer to metropolitan ownership as “imports.” Thus the values of such transfers were not included in the Inspector-General's accounts of imports from the colonies nor were any other records kept of them, except for the ship-by-ship entries in the Registries of Shipping (which for the most part have not survived).

We construct an individual-level data set of partnership contracts in late-nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro to study the determinants of contract terms. Partners with limited liability contributed more capital and received lower draws for private expenses and lower profit shares than their unlimited partners. Unlimited partners in turn received higher-powered incentives when they contracted with limited partners than when they contracted with unlimited partners. A reform that changed the relative bargaining power further improved the terms of unlimited partners in limited firms. These findings highlight the roles of risk, incentives, and bargaining power in shaping contracts.

It is commonly thought that income distribution among people became more concentrated after the Civil War and that this direction continued until the turn of the century. We can look methodically at the income tax distributions from the Civil War period and compare them directly with the distributions arising from the income tax after 1912. We also have some data from the abortive income tax of 1894. After examining the various blocks of evidence, the conclusion will be made that inequality among upper-income groups did not increase during this period. It is necessary to emphasize that the present investigation is one of income and not of wealth. It might have been possible for the nonhuman wealth distribution among people to remain constant or to increase in inequality while the personal income distribution was decreasing in inequality.

This multiple regression study of male and female wages in the clothing and textile industries finds that the standardized pay gap has changed against women from 1910 to 1970. The cross-section study of wages in 1909-1910 finds a very small residual in favor of men; but when the English-speaking variable is interpreted as screening many able women (but not men) from manufacturing, the residual shifts to one slightly favoring women. The cross-section study of pay in substantially the same industry group during 1969 finds very substantial residuals in favor of men after standardizing earnings. Hypotheses suggested for explaining these contrary findings include a decline in women's investment in human capital relative to that of men, and changing government and union tax and benefit patterns that discriminate against female investment in human capital.

The purpose of the following observations on serfdom in Western and Eastern Europe is to call attention to some of the problems, in part methodological ones, that arise in attempts to analyze the system of serfdom as a social institution in space and time.

This study uses supply and demand analysis to interpret the expansion of Canadian newsprint production and exports after World War I. Canada and the United States played complementary roles in this expansion, and by 1930, 90 percent of Canadian production based on relatively abundant natural resources went to satisfy U.S. demand. At the same time, U. S. tariffs against Canadian newsprint were relaxed, and Canadian provinces imposed a manufacturing condition on Canadian pulp and paper producers prohibiting the export of pulpwood cut from Crown lands. The analysis shows that the growth of U.S. demand and Canadian supply conditions can account for almost all the Canadian newsprint expansion, whereas policy initiatives generated at most two years of growth.

There is some speculation that there was more economic egalitarianism in the United States among free men in the period from 1776 to 1790 than there was at any time in the following seventy years until the abolition of slavery. One would like to believe the speculation since it is known that there was extensive inequality of wealth in I860 and one would like to believe that the formation of the nation took place within a context of economic equality. This would be produced from a condition where aggregate wealth is shared fairly equally rather than being owned by a few. Let us give this ideal, this proposition relating to wealthholding for the Revolutionary era from 1776 to 1790, a title of romantic equality.

Land was the resource that nineteenth-century America possessed in greatest abundance. A large part of the land was initially in the public domain and was transferred to private ownership in the course of the century. Land policy, therefore, had the potential for creating significant and long lasting effects on the American economy—on the rate of settlement of the West, the distribution of income, the rate of economic growth. A substantial body of literature, much of it severely critical, has developed concerning the economic effects of nineteenth-century American land policy. Unfortunately, the criticisms often rest primarily on tales of corruption and thievery, rather than on economic analysis. Certainly many of the stories are true, but they represent an insufficient basis for evaluating the economic effects of land policy. A detailed economic analysis of individual policies is required.

Were intracity motor buses economically inferior to electric streetcars and electric buses in the late 1930s and l940s? The contention that they were has recently served as the basis for allegations that the decline of urban public transit was attributable, in large part, to an organized campaign intent on eliminating viable public transit. Aggregate data from trade sources allows a comparative cost and profit analysis of motor buses, electric buses, and electric streetcars for the years 1935–1950. The analysis supports the contention that motor buses were inferior. Questions regarding the applicability of criticisms of market foreclosure theory are also considered.

Analysis of British capital market operations before 1914 has focused on institutional and investor behavior without fully considering entrepreneurial conduct. Consequently, those who argue that industrial performance was impaired because capital flows were obstructed by information blockages have overlooked the role company owners could play in shaping communication lines. The fund-raising techniques used by shipowners reveal that private capital attracted through preferential communication channels supported the rise of large-scale enterprise. Founders were not motivated by supply constraints, nor did they forego profits to retain control. Rather, shipowners created asymmetric information flows to attract resources and shape institutional development.