Showing papers in "The Journal of Economic History in 1973"
TL;DR: The authors view a social system as relying on techniques, rules, or customs to resolve conflicts that arise in the use of scarce resources rather than imagining that societies specify the particular uses to which resources will be put.
Abstract: Economics textbooks invariably describe the important economic choices that all societies must make by the following three questions: What goods are to be produced? How are these goods to be produced? Who is to get what is produced? This way of stating social choice problems is misleading. Economic organizations necessarily do resolve these issues in one fashion or another, but even the most centralized societies do not and cannot specify the answer to these questions in advance and in detail. It is more useful and nearer to the truth to view a social system as relying on techniques, rules, or customs to resolve conflicts that arise in the use of scarce resources rather than imagining that societies specify the particular uses to which resources will be put.
1,155 citations
TL;DR: The authors argued that sustained economic growth was made possible only by institutional changes which, themselves, were a consequence of the rise of the nationstate, and thus it is clear that a complete model of the economic growth of Europe will have to account for the rise the nation-state.
Abstract: The rise of the nation-state is assigned by most historians a central role in the economic growth of Europe. Most recently Douglass North and Robert Thomas have argued that sustained economic growth was made possible only by institutional changes which, themselves, were a consequence of the rise of the nationstate. Thus it is clear that a complete model of the economic growth of Europe will have to account for the rise of the nation-state. That is.the humble task of this paper.
247 citations
TL;DR: On the eve of the Civil War, southern per capita real income was eighty percent of northern real income as discussed by the authors, and it only slowly began to relatively advance after 1900, when Southern per capita income was but fifty-one percent of the national average in 1880.
Abstract: On the eve of the Civil War southern per capita real income was eighty percent of northern. Treating slaves as property, real income per free southerner was four percent greater and growing at the same rate as its northern counterpart. Southern per capita income was but fifty-one percent of the national average in 1880, and only slowly began to relatively advance after 1900.
164 citations
TL;DR: In the three months after his inauguration, Franklin Roosevelt proposed a veritable barrage of programs that were passed by Congress, programs which were to have a profound effect on the American economy as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In the three months after his inauguration—the now famous 100 days—Franklin Roosevelt proposed a veritable barrage of programs that were passed by Congress—programs which were to have a profound effect on the American economy. From this beginning sprang forth the economic policy of the 1930's which was aimed at returning the nation to prosperity and changing its social and economic structure. The programs were directed toward specific as well as general problems and affected differently the various geographic areas of the nation.
83 citations
70 citations
Abstract: The existence of property rights affects the allocation and distribution of economic resources. The exclusive rights to ownership and control over assets leads to a different level and pattern of economic activity than would occur if these assets remained unowned or “common property.” While property rights are frequently subject to various constraints imposed by law or custom, within these bounds owners are free to use their resources to achieve their desired ends. Resources may be sold in an exchange of property rights, rented for a specified time period in exchange for some quid pro quo, or employed (or kept idle) by the owner himself. The owner's welfare function will include the income (or other utility) derived from use of the resource, while, for purposes of measuring national income, the final consumption of the entire population would be included.
64 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the organization of southern agricultural enterprise in 1910, with special regard for the interrelations of race, land tenure conditions, and the allocation of resources, and found that the race of the farmers and the form of their land tenure had an effect on the determination of farm size.
Abstract: This paper investigates the organization of southern agricultural enterprise in 1910, with special regard for the interrelations of race, land tenure conditions, and the allocation of resources. After surveying the distribution of farmers and land among the major racial and tenure classes, I seek to answer two main questions. First, what determined the distribution of farm rental contracts between share-rent and fixed-rent forms, and did the tenant's race influence the form of rental contract he obtained? Second, what effect did the race of the farmers and the form of their land tenure have on the determination of farm size? A concluding section raises some further questions and briefly explores the difficult problem of discovering the effects of racism on the southern economy.
61 citations
TL;DR: Expropriation of private property by government is seldom found on the list of policies which have influenced the course of economic development in American history as mentioned in this paper. But for two reasons, I think, expropriation as an instrument of conscious resource allocation has failed to receive from historians the attention it deserves.
Abstract: Expropriation of private property by government is seldom found on the list of policies which have influenced the course of economic development in American history. To be sure, the once-vigorous myth of antebellum laisser-faire has been discarded; and it is no longer taken as a startling proposition that governmental interventions to promote and regulate the economy occurred regularly throughout the nineteenth century. But for two reasons, I think, expropriation as an instrument of conscious resource allocation has failed to receive from historians the attention it deserves.
59 citations
TL;DR: In the last few years, the controversy over the economic history of slavery has centered about two positions. as mentioned in this paper argued that the slave mode of production was fundamentally antagonistic to the bourgeois mode and that the conflicts between the two systems doomed slavery to a nineteenth-century grave.
Abstract: In the last few years, the controversy over the economic history of slavery has centered about two positions. On the one hand, Genovese has argued that the slave mode of production was fundamentally antagonistic to the bourgeois mode and that the conflicts between the two systems doomed slavery to a nineteenth-century grave. On the other hand, Conrad and Meyer spawned many studies which, on the whole, denied that any specifically economic difficulties resulted from the fact that the American south was based on slave labor. Against Genovese's original claim that “the material basis of the planters' power was giving way,” the statistical evidence indicated that the profits of the slave plantation were as high as those on non-slave business investments, and that the diffusion of technological changes was rapid enough to cause a rate of productivity increase equal to that of all but the most rapidly growing sectors of the free economy. Sheer volume supplemented the elegance of the early discussion and our knowledge of the slave economy expanded considerably.
48 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss various emancipation plans: those actually enacted in various slave societies; those discussed by legislators who debated slave and antislave proposals; and those which, being purely fictional, have become part of counterfactual history.
Abstract: This paper illuminates one particular aspect of the theme of this session, property rights in man. It will deal with various emancipation plans: those actually enacted in various slave societies; those discussed by legislators who debated slave and antislave proposals; and those which, being purely fictional, have become part of counterfactual history.
47 citations
TL;DR: In the second half of the nineteenth century important technological changes in shipping and shipbuilding resulted in the practical disappearance of an important shipbuilding industry in North America and the concentration of most of the world's shipbuilding in Britain this paper.
Abstract: During the second half of the nineteenth century important technological changes in shipping and shipbuilding resulted in the practical disappearance of an important shipbuilding industry in North America and the concentration of most of the world's shipbuilding in Britain. This shift of shipbuilding activity was quite clearly the result of the adoption of metal in place of wood as the structural material in shipbuilding. The adoption of metal was a slow process and the old and new techniques coexisted for decades. By the mid-1850's, British shipbuilders had developed the building of iron ships to a routine process and further improved their techniques in the following decades, but wooden shipbuilding in North America remained an important industry until the mid-1880's.
TL;DR: In this article, a theoretical framework for analyzing the economic history of the Tokugawa economy has been proposed, with a focus on the economic causes of the rapid Japanese industrialization.
Abstract: Increasing our knowledge of Tokugawa economic history is important for a better understanding of the causes of the rapid Japanese industrialization which followed, but as yet no attempt has been made to provide a theoretical framework with which to analyze the Tokugawa economy. The cost of neglecting to work out a new economic history of Tokugawa Japan is high. Many Western historians, economic as well as others, continue to make use of findings and interpretations provided by Japanese economic historians, most of whom are Marxist in their ideological and methodological orientations. Presented with the force of ideological conviction and repeated in book after book, the Marxist view of Tokugawa economic history is so deeply rooted in Japanese literature that it can claim many followers who make use of its interpretations and views without suspecting the ideological and methodological framework upon which they rest. Another increasingly serious cost is that many of the research findings contributed recently by a few Western scholars and a small group of Japanese economic historians continue to remain disjointed findings in search of an analytical framework which can accommodate them into a meaningful whole.
TL;DR: Corporate farming is not new in the United States as discussed by the authors and the companies of "gentlemen adventurers" setting out in the seventeenth century to establish settlements in the New World were not corporations in a modern sense, but in organizational form and motivation they bear a striking resemblance to corporation farming ventures of recent decades.
Abstract: Corporate farming is not new in the United States. The companies of “gentlemen adventurers” setting out in the seventeenth century to establish settlements in the New World were not corporations in a modern sense, but in organizational form and motivation they bear a striking resemblance to corporation farming ventures of recent decades. The twin lures of short-run profits and long-run capital gains have been major forces in shaping land use patterns and institutional structures throughout America's history. For over 300 years repeated efforts were made to use large scale organizational forms to reap these rewards in agriculture. Up to 1950 the record was one of almost consistent failure.
TL;DR: This paper explored the sources of this rapid national growth by assembling and analyzing previously unutilized regional data on production and hectares of major field crops and identified the southern diffusion of mixed farming as the change in the productive process which may account for the French agricultural revolution.
Abstract: The literature on French economic history generally dates the onset of the agricultural revolution in France from the midnineteenth century. However, the available empirical evidence on national agricultural trends, brought together in 1961 by Toutain, shows that the rapid, sustained growth in both total and per capita agricultural production comes earlier, during the period from 1815–24 to 1865–74. This article explores the sources of this rapid national growth by assembling and analyzing previously unutilized regional data on production and hectares of major field crops. The southern diffusion of mixed farming is identified as the change in the productive process which may account for the French agricultural revolution.
TL;DR: The anonymous author of the opening quotation was merely expressing, in characteristically metaphorical terms, a widely-held view that was to persist for years among southern reformers as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: No source of agricultural distress in the post-bellum South was more frequently alluded to by nineteenth-century observers than the “overproduction” of cotton. The anonymous author of the opening quotation was merely expressing, in characteristically metaphorical terms, a widely-held view that was to persist for years among southern reformers. Even writers who conceded the peculiar advantages for cotton culture derived from the South's climate and soils often argued nevertheless that crop diversification was the order of the day.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explain the process at work in Europe which led up to the surge of British industrial expansion at the end of the eighteenth century as the result of three distinct, partially related, converging forces: public policies induced by the endemic international struggle for power; the expansion of international commerce and of the world trading area; and the complex impact of the scientific revolution.
Abstract: This article is an essay in both historical synthesis and in the theory of growth. It seeks to explain the process at work in Europe which led up to the surge of British industrial expansion at the end of the eighteenth century as the result of three distinct, partially related, converging forces: public policies induced by the endemic international struggle for power; the expansion of international commerce and of the world trading area; and the complex impact of the scientific revolution. This historical view is then related to the concept of the preconditions for take-off and take-off, as well as to the case of increasing returns.
TL;DR: The Coinage Act of February 21, 1853 supported Johnson's thesis that historically fiduciary money has been substituted for commodity-money in response to the interaction of scarcity of the latter and ingenuity in devising the former as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The circumstances resulting in the Coinage Act of February 21, 1853 support Harry Johnson's thesis that historically fiduciary money has been substituted “for commodity-money in response to the interaction of scarcity of the latter and ingenuity in devising the former.” The Act of 1853 replaced bimetallism in the U.S. with a Composite Legal Tender System composed of a subsidiary small silver coinage adjunct to a de facto gold standard. After 1853 bimetallism remained only as a legal fiction which was finally terminated twenty years later.
TL;DR: 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 as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: 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.
TL;DR: In this paper, a short survey of the quantitative information on the trends of the real variables, monetary developments and their impact on economic activity are studied, and the authors make an attempt at a critical evaluation of the trade, monetary and fiscal policies of the Russian government in this period.
Abstract: Students of Russia's first phase of industrialization concentrate on the real aspects of growth—the growth of population, production, and the change in industrial structure. In this they follow the traditional approach to economic history, which usually emphasizes the real variables of the growth process at the expense of the money variables. I do not propose to question the assumption that the study of the production aspect of an economy is a sine qua non of the analysis of industrialization. Yet the exclusion of factors that affect aggregate demand may lead to a failure to observe some important dimensions of growth. In any case, the relevance of money in Russia's first “Industrial Revolution,” which was underway in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, was considerable. Therefore, in what follows, I concentrate on the monetary developments and policies of this period. After a short survey of the quantitative information on the trends of the real variables, monetary developments and their impact on economic activity are studied. I then treat Russia's foreign trade and balance of payments and their links to monetary phenomena, and finally, make an attempt at a critical evaluation of the trade, monetary and fiscal policies of the Russian government in this period.
TL;DR: The political and economic institutions of the Dutch Republic puzzle the historian as discussed by the authors, with elements suggesting a tantalizing precociousness and elements which hearken to the medieval past; the Republic was the creation of a revolution; it can be identified as the first European state to throw off a monarchical regime and bring a bourgeois social class to full political power.
Abstract: The political and economic institutions of the Dutch Republic puzzle the historian. Closely juxtaposed are elements suggesting a tantalizing precociousness and elements which hearken to the medieval past. The Republic was the creation of a revolution; it can be identified as the first European state to throw off a monarchical regime and bring a bourgeois social class to full political power. On the other hand, the foremost motive behind this rebellion was the resistance of medieval, municipal particularism to governmental centralization—to modernization, if you will.
TL;DR: In the early days after the Civil War, southern landowners attempted to preserve the plantation system by offering to hire the newly freed ex-slaves on an annual contract for wages as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Immediately after the Civil War, southern landowners attempted to preserve the plantation system by offering to hire the newly freed ex-slaves on an annual contract for wages. However, serious problems soon developed. Foremost among these were difficulties engendered by views of white landlords and white overseers regarding the performance of the free black labor. Because they insisted that blacks were incapable of working productively without strict controls and corporal punishment, the landlords were convinced that only the workgang-overseer organization of the slave regime would be feasible. Many freedmen, quite naturally, were reluctant to work under conditions approximating those of slavery. Perhaps the landlord who would have preferred to hire wage labor might have succeeded had he been willing to offer higher wages. However, his views of black productivity inhibited him from doing so, and this approach was soon abandoned.
TL;DR: The history of economic history in Britain can be divided into three stages: economic history I (EH I), economic history II (EH II) and economic history III (EH III).
Abstract: This paper is concerned with the old economic history which developed in Britain before World War I. It would be more appropriate to call it “the very old economic history,” to distinguish it from “the old economic history” of the inter-war years and beyond, and “the new economic history,” a fragile offshoot of American enterprise only now being propagated successfully. To avoid terminological clumsiness, and to indicate clearly that the history of economic history in Britain divides into three stages, I will refer throughout this paper to Economic History I (EH I), Economic History II (EH II) and Economic History III (EH III), stages which divide chronologically at 1910–1920 and 1960–1970, and which are characterized by quite distinctive methodological features. My particular aim will be to show that EH I seems to the economist, and to the new economic historian, to be modern in content and method compared with EH II. In particular EH I had a major interest in the conditions of freedom and restraint, especially those embodied in legal institutions controlling property rights, which limited individual economic action, and devoted much effort to investigating the origins of property rights and the development of custom and law as they affected property rights. EH I, also, was more strongly motivated than EH II, both because of a belief in the power of “the historical method” for the understanding and analysis of social processes, and of participation in the great socio-economic debates of the day, especially that which attempted to define the role of the state in economic life. In contrast, EH II seems to have had no particular methodological bias, and, although often politically motivated, was not involved in contemporary debate or in the determination of current policy.
TL;DR: The traditional economic history of the 1920's emphasizes the importance of changes in the structure of the American economy, and it is argued that three structural changes (monopoly power, technical change, and income distribution) tainted the prosperity of the twenties.
Abstract: 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.
TL;DR: Gerschenkron's research on industrialization in Europe suggests that both the timing and character of growth may have conditioned the institutional structure of nineteenth-century industrializers as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Alexander Gerschenkron's research on industrialization in Europe suggests that both the timing and character of growth may have conditioned the institutional structure of nineteenth-century industrializers. He argues that: …the more backward a country's economy, the greater was the part played by specialized institutional factors designed to increase the supply of capital to nascent industries and, in addition, to provide them with less decentralized and better informed entrepreneurial guidance; the more backward the country, the more pronounced was the coerciveness and comprehensiveness of those factors.
TL;DR: In a systematic review of past meetings Shep found that most of our past meetings have been devoted to making suggestions for research (mostly to be undertaken by others), to delineating the broad 'tasks' of economic history, to defending the kind of work in which the speaker has been engaged, and to advocating some particular methodology in our discipline as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: When I began to prepare this talk, I recalled that the first such address I ever listened to helped persuade me to become an economic historian. It was Herbert Heaton's delightful “The Making of an Economic Historian,” which began with a bit of elegant doggerel. If a discipline could produce such an address, I decided that this association was certainly worth joining. But alas, I was optimistic. I was to hear more erudite presidential addresses but few so witty and informative. Nearly all these rituals, in this association or others, have followed the traditional recipe so well summarized by Shepard Clough. In a systematic review of our past meetings Shep found that “most of our presidential addresses have been devoted to making suggestions for research (mostly to be undertaken by others), to delineating the broad ‘tasks’ of economic history, to defending the kind of work in which the speaker has been engaged, and to advocating some particular methodology in our discipline.” Mine is no exception.