The Tsarist government played an important and fateful role in the development of the relationship between workers and employers in the early stages of Russian industrialization. Although the general character of this role is well known to historians, further study and reexamination of Tsarist labor policy, in the light of the contemporary concern with economic development, is invited by the Soviet publication in recent years of documentary evidence on nineteenth century labor problems. An attempt will be made in this article to integrate some of the new evidence with data from earlier sources in an analysis of the methods used by the Tsarist government to cope with the problem posed by internal government of industry in an era of growing labor unrest. It will focus on the period between the Emancipation and the 1905 Revolution. Russia did not become an industrial state during this period, but industry made enough progress to bring the country face to face with the modern labor problem. It was a period in which social and economic relations, rooted in feudal traditions, began to undergo significant changes in response to industrial growth. Labor unrest and protest are one of the chief symptoms of the problems inherent in this socio-economic readjustment. To understand the Tsarist approach to these problems it will be necessary to begin with a brief outline of the social milieu of Russian industrialization and of the governmental attitude toward industrial discipline and unrest before the Emancipation. The second section of the article covers the period between the Emancipation and the mideighties, during which the government did not formally regulate the internal order of the factory but was not unconcerned with the relations between employers and workers. The third section covers the period after 1886, when the internal factory order was subject to formal regulation and official inspection.

It is widely believed that one of the main causes of productivity decline in British coalmining in the late nineteenth century was that when wage rates increased, miners responded by reducing work effort and/or attendance. However, previous empirical studies have conflated behavioral responses with correlations between coal-seam quality and wage rates. Using individual panel data from a single mine, I show that the short-run wage elasticity of worker effort was in fact positive. The true elasticity of attendance is less clear, but there is no support for the idea that absenteeism increased when wage rates rose.

The traditional economic history of the 1920's emphasizes the importance of changes in the structure of the American economy. It is argued that three structural changes—monopoly power, technical change, and income distribution—tainted the prosperity of the twenties. The main features of this explanation are easily summarized. Rapid advances in technology reduced the costs of producing output. At the same time corporate monopoly power was increasing thereby restricting the tendency for output prices to fall. In the presence of weak labor unions, the interaction of technical change and monopoly power had the result of increasing “profits” relative to “wages.” The shift in the distribution of income not only favored owners of capital but it also created an imbalance between investment and consumption. Consumption expenditures could not keep pace with investment expenditures and this tendency towards underconsumption, in turn, was one reason for the onset of the Great Depression.

Unfortunately, what follows does not answer the title question—although I conclude that the preponderance of current evidence answers yes, that economic burden did spark the Revolution. Rather, what follows elaborates the ingredients required for a definitive answer and, as a by-product, illuminates why the historical treatment of the origins of the American Revolution remains a muddle.

The countries of non-Russian “Communist Eastern Europe” present the economic historian with a fascinating field for study. This opportunity has, judging from English-language journals at least, largely gone unexploited. Moreover, although Eastern Europe remained a predominantly agrarian region up to the most recent times, the existing literature concentrates heavily on finance, trade, and industry. It is in the hope of contributing to the discussion of Eastern European economic history, most particularly some of its agricultural aspects, that this article has been written.

This article shows that democracy in Weimar Germany was eroded by the political legacy of WWI. Using novel data on WWI veterans and an election panel from 1893–1933, I find that former soldiers are associated with a sizeable, persistent, and momentous shift in political preferences from left to right. I provide suggestive evidence that war participation made veterans highly receptive to nationalism and Anti-Communism. This alienated them from leftwing parties and drove the majority toward the political right. Contrary to historical accounts, veterans’ shifts in political preferences cannot be explained by exposure to violence or other polarizing post-war events.

The most curious of the detractors of classical economics said it was the work of Scots, Jews, and subversives. The charges were meant to turn back the movement toward the free market, but there was some truth in them. Classical economics did begin in Scotland, Ricardo was Jewish, it was the policy of the Parliamentary Radicals, and it did threaten some major institutions. The paper describes how and to what effect these facts were used by men who each for his own reason did not like the market.

After beginning as a kind of outdoor poor relief, long-term indenture of poor children evolved into a specialized form of craft apprenticeship. Analysis of indenture terms indicates that relationships between end payments (“freedom dues”) and education and training clauses varied by region. In Boston, education and training clauses were associated negatively with freedom-dues clauses, but in Rhode Island and Charleston the relationship was positive. Variation in freedom dues to suit the needs of the master or overseer of the poor, without reference to the worker-child's own interests, resulted from the child's lack of advocacy during contract formation.

Landschaften were cooperative mortgage associations that emerged in Prussia after the Seven Years War (1756–1763) to support the Prussian landed nobility. Landschaften issued covered mortgage bonds, called Pfandbriefe, which helped re-capitalize the Prussian estates. Relying on mortgage data for 554 estates, this article provides a detailed look at one of these institutions—the Landschaft of East Prussia. The article offers insights into the self-selection of participants and the distribution of credit. It also gives a quantitative assessment of the economic effects of the Landschaften with respect to ownership patterns and estate size.

The war between Britain and France, extending over some twenty two years down to 1815, lies across the great formative period of modern Western society. Like all of its kind, the war may be regarded from two points of view: First, it altered the societies involved in it, as fighting needs conflicted with peaceable ones; second, it affected the nexus which binds countries together—trade and its financing.

The role of culture in economic development is experiencing renewed interest among scholars. This study proposes high intercultural transactions costs as a reason for the enduring scarcity of modem capital and technology in poor countries and conducts a statistical test based on the premise that cultural diffusion reduces these costs. The stock of direct investment in poor countries at the end of the colonial era is shown, as predicted, to be directly correlated with the diffusion of Westem culture in the European empires and elsewhere.

The contract construction industry today represents one of the most important sectors of the American economy. Total new construction in recent decades has accounted for nearly one-half of the Gross Private Domestic Investment, while non-farm residential building alone accounts for nearly one-quarter of GPDI.

The growth of American governments in the twentieth century included large increases in funds for social insurance and public assistance. Social insurance has increased far more than public assistance, so “rise in the social insurance state” is a far better description of the century than “rise in the welfare state.” The United States has increased total spending in these areas as much or more as have European countries, but the U.S. spending has relied less heavily on government programs. In the U.S. states largely determine the benefits for many of the public assistance and social insurance programs, leading to large variation in the benefits across the country. I develop estimates of these benefits across time and place and compare them to the poverty line, manufacturing earnings and benefits, state per capita incomes in the US, as well as GDP per capita in countries throughout the world.

New evidence based on census data indicates that output per agricultural worker grew faster between 1860 and 1870 than during any other decade of the nineteenth century. Although this evidence seems to support the traditional view that the Civil War was a catalyst for an increasingly productive agricultural sector, we contend that this apparent robust performance results from a measurement problem that afflicts census-based labor force series. An alternative estimate of labor force performance during the decade reveals the importance of increased labor inputs of women and children, in numbers, effort, and—especially—time.

Present-day economic historians display an uneasy feeling that medieval gilds have enjoyed much more attention than they deserve. Professor Heckscher compares them unfavorably with later gilds, Professor Gras grudges them credit for anything save the keeping of records to mislead historians, and the authors of a recent textbook almost apologize for pausing to describe them. In general, this reaction from former attitudes reflects a shift of interest from the interpretation of economic policy to other problems that now appear more fundamental. We have a quantity of information about gild policies, but it leaves us uncertain whether or not the gilds were of any real importance in the history of economic development.

Requirements for a subsistence standard of living and for higher levels in the colonial period changed with marital status. A man's income, his personal wealth, his consumption goods, and for farmers their land, had to increase with marriage and as children multiplied, though the old man might end as he began, dependent on other members of the family. In order to judge the proportion of men at different levels of wealth, and to measure inequality, the historian must construct a series of tables using all available measures of wealth for each stage in the life cycle.

This article describes and measures how the Bank of Amsterdam supplied a successful fiat money in a world of specie by offering the unlimited repo of large coins at a near-zero rate. Our data from 1736 to 1791 finds that such liberal access led to volatile loan levels and that the Bank responded with sterilization by means of open market operations. In this way, the Bank held its money stock at a roughly constant level and helped stabilize its value. Profit was another part of the Bank’s policy framework, and the pursuit of seigniorage eventually compromised stabilization.