We examine the geography of cotton textiles in Britain in 1838 to test claims about why the industry came to be so heavily concentrated in Lancashire. Our analysis considers both first and second nature aspects of geography including the availability of water power, humidity, coal prices, market access, and sunk costs. We show that some of these characteristics have substantial explanatory power. Moreover, we exploit the change from water to steam power to show that the persistent effect of first nature characteristics on industry location can be explained by a combination of sunk costs and agglomeration effects.

We use plant-level data from the Census of Manufactures to study collusion in the United States macaroni industry during the Great Depression. The National Industrial Recovery Act was passed in 1933 to promote recovery through industry coordination of economic activity. While there is no change in the price-cost margin after the law is passed, a variety of markers of anti-competitive conduct suggest that collusion indeed increased. Prices became less responsive to changes in cost, the dispersion of prices decreased, and the persistence in prices increased.

World War II temporarily halted the rise in high school and college graduation rates. This article shows that manpower mobilization for World War II decreased educational attainment among high school-age females during the early 1940s, reduced employment and earnings, and altered decisions regarding family formation. I then provide evidence that women in this cohort returned to school in later life and relate these findings to the “quiet revolution” taking place as women learned about the benefits of school and work over the second half of the twentieth century.

“Education has been ever in the nation's service. But in these days of total war that service has a new significance. ‘You're in the Army now’ is no cliché–it is an expression of national necessity.”1

During the nineteenth century, the U.S. birthrate fell by half. While previous economic literature has emphasized demand-side explanations for this decline, many of these arguments are confounded by changes in the supply of technologies to control fertility. I exploit the introduction of state laws governing American women's access to abortion to measure the effect of changes in the supply of fertility technologies on the number of children born. I estimate an increase in the birthrate of 4 to 15 percent when abortion is restricted. I also explore the legal characteristics and political economy of these laws.

Railroads in late nineteenth-century Japan are credited with facilitating factor mobility as well as access to human and financial capital, but their impact on firms has been unclear. Using a prefecture-level panel data set and a difference-in-differences model that exploits the temporal and spatial variation of railroad expansion, I investigate the relationship between railways and increased firm activity. Rail access led to higher average firm capitalization, particularly in manufacturing, and more populated and less accessible areas gained disproportionately more firms. By widening markets and allowing for agglomeration economies, Japanese railways promoted capital investment and more efficient resource allocation.

This study establishes long-term trends in the purchasing power of the wages of unskilled workers and develops estimates for GDP per capita for medieval Egypt and Iraq. Wages were heavily influenced by two long-lasting demographic shocks, the Justinian Plague and the Black Death and the slow population recovery that followed. As a result, they remained above the subsistence minimum for most of the medieval era. We also argue that the environment of high wages that emerged after the Justinian Plague contributed to the Golden Age of Islam by creating demand for higher income goods.

We examine the impact of rigorous trade suppression during 1550–1567 on the sharp rise of piracy in this period of Ming China. By analyzing a uniquely constructed historical data set, we find that the enforcement of a “sea (trade) ban” policy led to a rise in pirate attacks that was 1.3 times greater among the coastal prefectures more suitable for silk manufactures—our proxy for greater trade potential. Our study illuminates the conflicts in which China subsequently engaged with the Western powers, conflicts that eventually resulted in the forced abandonment of its long upheld autarkic principle.

We approach the issue of the economic effects of democracy by examining which expectations investors held about the effect of democratization in the Kingdom of Saxony in 1896 and 1909. We do this by linking their investment behavior on the Berlin Stock Exchange to political events in Saxony. Here the electoral law was changed twice: In 1896 a very restrictive franchise was introduced, which was abolished in 1909 and replaced by a more democratic electoral law. Our study reveals that the Berlin Stock Exchange reacted to political changes and elections in Saxony. This is an important finding since historical research has claimed that the increased democratization in the German Kaiserreich measured in a larger participation of the population was not accompanied by a larger political influence of the parliaments. Furthermore we can show that for capital owners the possible negative effects seemed to outweigh possible positive effects of democratization. This is the first time that it has been possible to provide quantitative evidence for such antidemocratic sentiments.

This article investigates structural change in Argentina between 1935 and 1960, a period of rapid industrialization and of relative decline of the agricultural sector. We use a dynamic three-sector computable general equilibrium model of the period to analyze the effects of the policies of import-substituting industrialization (ISI), and changing factor endowments, on the structure of the economy. We find that the declining land-labor ratio was more important than ISI in explaining relative stagnation in agriculture. ISI gave a substantial boost to manufacturing, but primarily at the expense of non-traded services, rather than of agriculture.

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 Zollverein was arguably the most important free trade agreement of the nineteenth century. Although 1834 is the official date of the Zollverein's establishment, member states joined in a non-random sequence over several decades because the benefits of becoming a member increased, both as the size of the union increased, and as membership in the union became increasingly important for accessing foreign markets. We incorporate the endogenous effects of accession into an estimate of the economic impact of the Zollverein customs union. Our estimated effects are several times larger than simple estimates that do not take these effects into account.

This study establishes long-term trends in the purchasing power of the wages of unskilled workers and develops estimates for GDP per capita for medieval Egypt and Iraq. Wages were heavily influenced by two long-lasting demographic shocks, the Justinian Plague and the Black Death and the slow population recovery that followed. As a result, they remained above the subsistence minimum for most of the medieval era. We also argue that the environment of high wages that emerged after the Justinian Plague contributed to the Golden Age of Islam by creating demand for higher income goods.

Since its publication in 1974, Andrew Watson's article “The Arab Agricultural Revolution and Its Diffusion, 700–1100,” has been used and cited widely by historians and archaeologists, many working in fields far removed from Watson's. This essay explores the nature of Watson's impact and attempts to explain it.