Showing papers in "The Journal of Economic History in 2000"

Why "more work for mother?" Knowledge and household behavior, 1870-1945.

Abstract: It is widely agreed that the burden of housework in the industrialized West did not decrease as much as might be expected since 1880, and may have actually increased for long periods. The article proposes a new explanation: that increases in knowledge on the causes and transmission mechanisms of infectious diseases persuaded women that household members' health depended on the amount of housework carried out. The article traces the origin of this knowledge in the scientific developments of the nineteenth century and describes the mechanisms by which households were persuaded to allocate more time and resources to housework.

The Importance of Slavery and the Slave Trade to Industrializing Britain

Abstract: John Stuart Mill's comment that the British Caribbean was really a part of the British domestic economy, because almost all its trade was with British buyers and sellers, is used to make a new assessment of the importance of the eighteenth-century slave systems to British industrialization. If the value added and strategic linkages of the sugar industry are compared to those of other British industries, it is apparent that sugar cultivation and the slave trade were not particularly large, nor did they have stronger growth-inducing ties with the rest of the British economy.

Simulating the Two Views of the British Industrial Revolution

Abstract: The British Industrial Revolution coincided with the beginning of "modern" economic growth, meaning sustained increases in per capita income. Modem growth was clearly well underway in Britain by the middle ofthe nineteenth century. Population had been growing at an unprecedented rate for about a century, but real wages were not falling as in earlier demographic upswings; by mid-century, at least, they were increasing steadily. Half the population of this growing economy now lived in cities, the fastest growing of which mushroomed in the North and the Midlands to accommodate the new factories created by the technology of the age: spinning machinery, steam engines, and coal-based metallurgy. The male population had become largely industrial, with less than 30 percent remaining engaged in agriculture. The association between the Industrial Revolution and modem economic growth was so close in both time and place that causation seems obvious. We know, however, that industrialization and affluence are not always the same thing. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, indeed, the two were often inversely related. Many protoindustrial regions of early modem Europe, and perhaps New England as well, developed manufacturing as part of a Malthusian process of rising population encountering limited agricultural resources. Low implicit wages attracted industrial entrepreneurs, and

Revolution, Restoration, and Debt Repudiation: The Jacobite Threat to England's Institutions and Economic Growth

Abstract: This study provides an empirical test of North and Weingast's theory of British capital-market development after the Glorious Revolution. The evidence is consistent with the hypotheses that institutional innovation in the 1690s led to the dramatic growth in London capital markets, and that threats to these institutions caused financial turmoil. We also find the economic motivation for these innovations to be consistent with the work of Ekelund and Tollison.

History as reflected in capital markets: the case of World War II

Abstract: Historical events are reflected in asset prices. We analyze movements in the price of bonds issued by five European governments and traded on the Swiss bourse between 1928 and 1948, with special attention to the war years. Some war events that are generally considered crucial are clearly reflected in government bond prices. This holds, in particular, for the official outbreak of the war and changes in national sovereignty. But other events to which historians attach great importance are not reflected in bond prices, most prominently Germany's capitulation in 1945.

Those Who Left and Those Who Stayed Behind. Explaining Emigration from the Regions of Spain, 1880-1914

Abstract: Spain's contribution to the "New Emigration" differed from that of other Southern European countries in that it was oriented to Latin America far more than to the United States, in that it reached massive proportions only after 1900, and in that the various Spanish provinces varied greatly in their emigration rates. Differences in wealth, income, literacy, urbanization, and migratory tradition best explain these international and interprovincial differences. From the 1880s to the First World War more than 3 million Spaniards departed for foreign destinations. The majority ofthese emigrants settled in Latin America: in 1914 Spaniards were the largest immigrant group in Cuba, the second-largest in Argentina and Uruguay, and the third-largest in Brazil. Surprisingly, though, the case of Spain is missing from the classical studies on European emigration, an impoverishing oversight that this study will seek to redress. We will find many similarities with other "New Emigration" countries such as Italy and Portugal, but also important differences. Three of the most distinctive features of Spanish emigration are a constant and persistent orientation towards Latin American countries, an extremely high concentration of emigrants in the first decade of the twentieth century, and a large variance in emigration rates across regions. Was Spanish emigration different from other "New Emigration" countries? Did the low level of income per capita prevent higher rates of emigration from Spain? What accounts for the remarkable variation in emigration rates across regions, particularly the very modest emigration from the south, a region otherwise so similar to Italy's high-emigration Mezzogiorno? Did the differences across Spanish regions result from tradition and persistence, or from poverty and lack of information? These are the main questions addressed in this article. The first section surveys the main characteristics of Spanish emigration, and asks why it was focused on a few Latin American

“rain follows the plow” and dryfarming doctrine: the climate information problem and homestead failure in the upper great plains, 1890–1925

Abstract: The weather-information problem faced by settlers of semi-arid regions of the Great Plains hindered their attempts to adapt their crops, techniques, and farm sizes. Episodes of homestead settlement and collapse in western Kansas in 1893–1894 and in eastern Montana in 1917–1921 are examined. A Bayesian learning model indicates how new climate information was incrementally incorporated to revise views of agricultural prospects. Primary data show homesteaders' lagged response to new drought information and illustrate drought's differential impact on small farms. Dryfarming doctrine, despite its optimistic claims, was an imperfect response to drought. Indeed, some dryfarming practices hastened homestead failure.“No one need be in doubt about the sharp change in climate that occurs somewhere between the 96th and 100th meridians. It can be felt on the lips and skin, observed in the characteristic plant and animal life, seen in the clarity and/or dustiness of the atmosphere, determined by measurements of rainfall and evaporation, tested by attempts at unaided agriculture. Practically every western traveler in the early years remarked the facts of aridity, though not all used the word ‘desert’. …”Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian, p. 399.

Education and Income in the Early Twentieth Century: Evidence from the Prairies

Abstract: We present the first estimates of the returns to years of schooling before 1940 using a large sample of individuals (from the 1915 Iowa State Census). The returns to a year of high school or college were substantial in 1915-about 11 percent for all males and in excess of 12 percent for young males. Education enabled individuals to enter lucrative white-collar jobs, but sizable educational wage differentials also existed within occupational groups. Returns were substantial even for those in farming. We find, using U.S. census data, that returns to education decreased between 1915 and 1940 and again during the 1940s. T he distribution of earings is substantially shaped by a race between technology and education.' There are times when technology forges ahead and the wage structure widens. At other times, education makes great strides and the distribution narrows. The first few decades of the twentieth century witnessed both changes. America moved decisively ahead in education by putting the majority of its youth through high school, a feat no other country would match for many decades to come. At the same time, there was enormously growing demand for skilled workers in the office and on production jobs.2 A considerable amount is now known about the increase in education among Americans in the twentieth century. But we know far less about the stock of educated Americans, occupations by education, the pecuniary retums to education, and the role of formal schooling in advancing productivity during the first half of the twentieth century. In large measure, our ignorance owes to data deficiencies. The 1940 U.S. population census was the first to inquire about education and earnings. This article remedies some of

Institutions, Reforms, and Country Risk: Lessons from Japanese Government Debt in the Meiji Era

Abstract: We investigate the effect of the establishment of modem institutions on the risk premium associated with Japanese government bonds traded in London between 1870 and 1914. While most institutional innovations failed to elicit an immediate market response, the adoption of the gold standard did significantly reduce the perceived risk associated with Japanese bonds. In addition, some geopolitical events, especially the military victory over Russia, improved Japan's debt capacity. We conclude that well-understood monetaly rules and military achievements matter more for foreign investors' perception of a country than do modem state institutions, at least in the short run. M /[uch has been written about the role of institutions in promoting economic growth. The establishment of a modem judicial, economic, governmental, and parliamentary structure can change the way a country is perceived by foreign investors, thus lowering the cost of foreign borrowing, facilitating capital inflow and thereby fostering growth. We will test this theory by correlating various political events of the Meiji period (1868 to 1912)-surely one of the most dramatic cases of institutional change in modern history with the risk premium associated with Japanese government debt traded in London. Most reforms, including the establishment of a central bank and the promulgation of a modem constitution, did little to affect the way Japan was perceived by British investors, at least in the short run. The only institutional reform that clearly led to an immediate improvement in Japan's "credit rating" was the adoption of the gold standard, which

Turning Points in the U.S. Civil War: A British Perspective

Abstract: WILLLAM 0. BROWN JR. AND RICHARD C. K. BURDEKIN This article examines the Confederate cotton bonds floated in Europe in March 1863 and traded on the London market. Over a27 March 1863 to 17 June 1865 sample we isolate two, nonreversed, "turning points" that follow news of Confederate defeat at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July 1863 and the fall of Atlanta in September 1864. The analysis suggests that the turning points important to Southern interests differ from those identified for the Northern side by Kristen Willard, Timothy Guinnane, and Harvey Rosen.! It seems that war news did not always have symmetric effects on North and South. It may appear somewhat startling that the Confederates should be able to borrow money in Europe while the Federal Government has been unable to obtain a shillingfrom that usually liberal and enterprising quarter But the... risk. .. of never beingpaid at all, in case the South should be sub- dued and re-annexed. . . is so slight that, of itself; it need not deter any man from sharing in an 8 per cent. loan.2 It is now greatly to be regretted that the rebel loan put on the market in England two years ago was not greater in amount .... [Following General] Lee 's surrender ... we may safely expect to hear by the next mail that most of the great Yorkshire and Lancashire cotton speculators have been sacrificed on the "Confederate cotton.

Clearinghouse Membership and Deposit Contraction during the Panic of 1907

Abstract: Was clearinghouse membership akey factormitigatingwithdrawals from intermediaries during the Panic of 1907? Analyzing balance-sheet information on institutions in New York and Chicago, we fmd evidence that clearinghouse members had smaller contractions in demand deposits than did nonmembers. New York City trusts, isolated from the clearinghouse, were subject to heightened perceptions of risk, and suffered large-scale withdrawals because they were outside of the clearinghouse and therefore much less prepared to withstand large-scale depositor runs. We suggest that this aspect of the Panic of 1907 helped to forge support for the creation of a U.S. central bank. A ccess to the local clearinghouse during the Panic of 1907 appears to be the striking difference separating the institutions that suffered large deposit withdrawals and those that experienced lesser withdrawals. The contrast in depositor behavior was most dramatic between Chicago and New

The Geography of Invention in the American Glass Industry, 1870–1925

Abstract: Geographic clustering in inventive activity has often been attributed to clustering in production. For the glass industiy, we find that despite a general association between location of invention and production, there were significant deviations. Centers of production were not always centers of invention, and some of the most inventive areas, such as southern New England, had very limited production. We hypothesize that the growth of a market for technology facilitated a geographic division of labor between invention and commercial exploitation and stimulated inventive activity in places where there were institutions capable of mediating among inventors, suppliers of capital, and firms seeking new technologies.

Diets versus diseases: the anthropometrics of slave children.

Abstract: What were the living standards of American slaves? According to Robert W. Fogel and Stanley Engerman in their monumental study, Time on the Cross, the material standard of living of slaves compared favorably with that of other nineteenth-century agricultural laborers. More recently, utilizing anthropometric data that allow them to construct ageheight profiles for slaves, economic historians have cast doubts upon this view as it applies to particular age cohorts. They question the validity of the earlier assessment of living standards as it applies to slave newborns, infants, and children.

A Tale of “Benevolent” Governments: Private Credit Markets, Public Finance, and the Role of Jewish Lenders in Medieval and Renaissance Italy

Abstract: This article illustrates the impact of Jewish lenders on private credit markets and public finance in medieval and Renaissance Italian towns. In Tuscan private credit markets, Jewish lending helped households to smooth consumption, buy working capital, and provide dowries for daughters. Jewish lenders also helped the public fmances of the communes in which they resided. This article shows that public-finance considerations affected the choice of the interest-rate ceiling Jews were allowed to charge. In many instances, the communes raised the interest-rate ceiling for Jewish lenders in order to tax or borrow the proceeds.

Good Offices: Intermediation by Corporate Bodies in Early Modern French Public Finance

Abstract: The old-regime monarchy, particularly during the reign of Louis XIV, did much of its borrowing through the mediation of privileged corporate bodies that sought lenders on the private market and then acted as guarantors against royal default. After comparing the creditors of various privileged bodies and considering the reasons why some were more successful than others in attracting a wide circle of creditors, this study argues for a reconsideration of the constitutional-absolutist dichotomy in the historiography of the early modern financial revolution.

The Standardization of Track Gauge on North American Railways, 1830–1890

Abstract: Early North American railways chose different track gauges partly on the basis of differing engineering traditions and partly for mutual compatibility. The resulting dynamic process produced nine district common-guage regions by the 1860s. Growing demand for interregional traffic and increasing among railways yielded incentives to resolve this diversity, and the specific regional pattern of gauges led to selection pf 4'8.5” as the continental standard. The case offers support for aspects of differing views on the role of path dependence in determining features of the economy.

The Political Economy of Early Southern Unionism: Race, Politics, and Labor in the South, 1880–1953

Abstract: Southern unions were the weak link in the American labor movement, organizing a smaller share of the labor force than did unions in the northern states or in Europe. Structural conditions, including a racially divided rural population, obstructed southern unionization. The South's distinctive political system also blocked unionization. A strict racial code compelling whites to support the Democratic Party and the disfranchisement of southern blacks and many working-class whites combined to create a one-party political system that allowed southern politicians to ignore labor's demands. Unconstrained by working-class voters, southern politicians facilitated strikebreaking and favored employers against unions.

The Law and Labor Strife in the United States, 1881–1894

Abstract: This article examines the effects of state-level legal innovations governing labor disputes in the late 1 800s. This was a period of legal ferment in which worker organizations and employers actively lobbied state governments for changes in the rules governing labordisputes. Cross-state heterogeneity inthe legal environment provides an unusual opportunity to investigate the effects of these laws. We use a unique data set with information on 12,965 strikes to show that most of these law changes had surprisingly little effect on strike incidence or outcomes. Important exceptions were maximum hours laws and the use of injunctions. Evaluating the role of the legal envlronment in shaping economic outcomes is often difficult, because of either the lack of microlevel data or the absence of sufficient heterogeneity in laws across jurisdictions. These problems are most severe in recent data, because confidentiality rules limit the availability of data and the imposition of federal law standardizes the legal environment across states. Studies using historical data have overcome these difficulties in examinations of the impact of maximum hours laws, compulsory school attendance laws, banking regulations, mortgage foreclosure moratoria, and regulation of natural resources.' Surprisingly, the same historical approach has not been applied to one of the most contentious areas of legislative intervention in the economy: the regulation of disputes between workers and employers. In this article, we

Women and the “Second Serfdom”: Evidence from Early Modern Bohemia

Abstract: This article investigates women's position in early modem Bohemia by focusing on female household headship, which was very low by European standards. Empirical analysis suggests that the factors hypothesized in the literature as influencing female economic independence in preindustrial Europe had little effect in Bohemia. Instead, it appears that the decline in female headship between 1591 and 1722 was a consequence of the growing power of landlords under the “second serfdom.” Not only did landlords eject female heads as poor fiscal risks, but landlord decisions were also manipulated by village communities and individual serfs for their own ends.

The Transatlantic Market for British Convict Labor

Abstract: Convicts account for at least one-quarter of British migration to mid-eighteenth-century America. Their transportation to and disposal in America was essentially an experiment in privatizing post-trial criminal justice. A model of this trade is developed that yields testable implications regarding the relative distributional moments of convict auction prices, the size of shipper profits, and how convicts were selected for transportation.

Diets Versus Diseases in the Anthropometrics of Slave Children: A Reply

Abstract: Having labored for many years in the fields of slavery research, I have learned to appreciate the challenges and complexities of the subject. My work has led me to change my assumptions and opinions on several questions, and the comment by Philip Coelho and Robert McGuire requires me to revisit my thoughts on explanations for the remarkable catch-up growth of American slaves.' After tabulating this catch-up growth from slave manifests in the early 1980s, I was highly skeptical, if not entirely disbelieving. Young slaves were incredibly small, and the average catch-up of about four inches was amazingly large, if not unprecedented in historical and contemporary populations. My reservations were reinforced by an extensive literature on slave health, which never debated whether child malniutrition might have been followed by significant growth recovery. Indeed, all participants in the energized debate over health and diets surrounding Time on the Cross assumed that children and adults faired relatively the same.2 If taken at face value, moreover, the vast catch-up growth raised a host of questions about slaveowner motivations, management practices, the operation of the slave family, and the aftermath of slavery. It took some time to sort through alternative scenarios before attempting to publish results several years later. At first, I discounted the height data as wrong or biased. Ultimately I discarded the incredibly small heights below age three, as biased downward relative to modern standards, because most of the measurements were probably taken while the children were lying down.3 I wondered about compositional biases: perhaps most of the children originated from areas where slaves were small, while adults were shipped from areas where slaves were much taller. But the catch-up phenomenon also held within regions of shipment. I also pondered the "lemons" problem, in which traders may have preferred to buy and sell short children but tall workers. An extensive examination of possible trader preferences and shipping biases by John Komlos, Jonathan Pritchett, and Herman Freudenberger shows that if such biases existed, they had little effect on the relative heights of children and adults.4

African-American Economic Mobility in the 1940s: A Portrait from the Palmer Survey

Abstract: I use retrospective work histories from a unique dataset to follow workers in six cities through occupational, industrial, and geographic moves, thereby characterizing aspects of black economic mobility during the 1940s that cannot be viewed through the Census data. Relatively few migrants were drawn directly from the southern agricultural sector. Black occupational upgrades were larger than white upgrades on average but black upgrades were smaller than those of observationally similar whites.

The Decline of Apprenticeship in North America: Evidence from Montreal

Abstract: Apprenticeship was, at one time, the foremost means of acquiring skill in North America and Europe. Today it is rare in North America for reasons that are not well understood. I draw on the population of apprentice contracts signed in Montreal over a 50-year period to pinpoint the start of the decline and explore its origins. I find that the decline began around 1815. During its first phase masters responded to greater difficulties in contract enforcement. A direct effect of the rise of larger establishments on the market for apprentices appears later, in the late 1820s and 1830s.

Did Late Nineteenth Century U.S. Tariffs Promote Infant Industries? Evidence from the Tinplate Industry

Abstract: Did late-nineteenth-century U.S. tariffs promote infant industries? After earlier failures, the tinplate industry became established and flourished after receiving protection with the 1890 McKinley tariff. Treating producers' entry and exit decisions as endogenous, a probability model is estimated to determine the conditions under which domestic tinplate production will occur. Counterfactual simulations indicate that, without the McKinley duties, domestic tinplate production would have arisen about a decade later as U.S. iron and steel input prices converged with those in Britain. Although the tariff accelerated the industry's development, welfare calculations suggest that protection does not pass a cost-benefit test. T he United States rapidly industrialized in the late nineteenth century and, around the turn of the century, became not just a net exporter of manufactured goods for the first time, but the world's leading producer of such goods. This industrial expansion occurred during a period of high import tariffs, raising the question of whether protection contributed to the U.S. success in manufacturing by fostering the growth of infant industries. Agreeing with those who later found it difficult to rule out a possible beneficial role of tariffs during this period, Frank Taussig stated that "there is aprimafacie case for the protectionist,-again an apparent confirmation of the validity of the young industries argument,-from the nature and extent of the industrial development during the last two decades of the nineteenth century."' Taussig remained agnostic, however, because he recognized that the impact of protection can be determined only by answering a counterfactual question about how an industry would have developed in the absence of the tariff. This counterfactual is particularly important in considering the iron and steel industry, in which the strongest candidates for examples of "successful" protection have tended to be. America's abundance of natural re

The First Bank of the United States and the Securities Market Crash of 1792

Abstract: In 1791 the $10 million capitalization of the First Bank of the United States was vastly greater than the combined capital of all other banks. The Bank had an enormous impact on the economy within two months of opening its doors for business by flooding the market with its discounts and banknotes and then sharply reversing course and curtailing liquidity. Although the added liquidity initially helped push a rising securities market higher, the subsequent drain caused the first U.S. securities market crash by forcing speculators to sell their stocks. Several reasons are analyzed for the Bank's credit restriction.

Nativism and the End of the Mass Migration of the 1840s and 1850s

Abstract: In 1855 the volume of immigration to the United States dropped precipitously, signaling the end of the first mass migration of Europeans. Although other work blames the decline on an economic depression, the outbreak of the Crimean War, or the improvement of conditions in Europe, this article argues that the rise ofnativism was the initiating cause of the decline. This result is important because it affects our view of the factors that have cyclical effects on the volume of immigration. In 1855 the volume of European immigration to the United States was less than half as large as in 1854. This decline marked the end of the first mass migration of Europeans to the United States, a flow that peaked in 1854 at over 428,000 individuals; in that year, immigration added 1.41 percent to the population, a rate that has never been surpassed (Figure 1). The causes of the unprecedented increase in volume in the years up to 1854 are well understood.' The reasons for the huge decline in 1855 are, however, not as clear. This article argues that the rise in and success of the nativism movement of the early 1 850s was the primary reason that immigrant volume fell in 1855, though improved conditions in Europe played a supporting role. This claim is controversial because most previous discussions of the volume decline view nativism as one of four explanations, and often not the most important factor. The other three explanations are a presumed economic downturn that occurred in 1854, a rise in shipping prices associated with the outbreak of the Crimean War, and changed local conditions in Europe. This article argues that the other three factors do not adequately fit-and that the rise and success of nativism does fit-a variety of empirical characteristics of the fall in immigration in 1855. Having a proper understanding of the reasons for the decline in immigration in 1855 is important for two reasons. First, the decline had political implications for the United States. The late 1 840s saw the breakup of the Whig Party. The election success of the nativist Know-Nothing Party in 1854 showed that it, rather than an anti-slave-expansion party, was poised