Showing papers by "Peter H. Lindert published in 1980"

English Occupations, 1670–1811

Abstract: There are times when researchers must struggle through the weeds and pass up the easier roads chosen by Crane's wayfarer. Such a time has come for research on the growth and structure of the English economy before and during the Industrial Revolution. Our rational preference for the easier roads has caused us to apply increasing amounts of our abundant analytical cleverness to an endowment of empirical raw materials that has grown relatively slowly. But the Law of Diminishing Returns applies to historical research as well as to other activities, and the relatively generous inputs of analysis have lowered their marginal returns and created a condition of raw material scarcity. The returns to hacking through the archival weeds for new raw materials now seem high.

Long-Term Trends in American Wealth Inequality

Abstract: Seventeenth and eighteenth century America saw relatively egalitarian and stable aggregate wealth concentration. During the first half of the nineteenth century, in contrast, there was a marked rise in wealth concentration. The period from the Civil War to the Great Depression was also one of stability in wealth concentration, but it was characterized by substantially greater inequality than had prevailed in the colonial era. During the second quarter of the twentieth century, wealth inequality again decreased so that inequality of wealth-holding today resembles what it was on the eve of the Declaration of Independence. Those who would argue, therefore, that the degree of wealth inequality i s some sort of eternal constant will be uncomfortable with the Williamson-Lindert findings.