This article examines the Crusade against outrelief to determine why poor law unions endorsed it. Although initiated by the central government, the Crusade could reduce union costs because very few of those denied outrelief would enter the workhouse. As the tax burden on wealthier and more influential ratepayers rose, guardians had more interest in cutting expenditure. An increase in effective rateable value permitted improvement of workhouse facilities and the restriction of outrelief, even to the deserving poor.

The Upcountry of the Lower South was located on the periphery of the antebellum cotton economy, but some of its subregions were integrated into the market system in the 1850s. An analysis of sample counties in the Georgia Upcountry demonstrates that the spread of market production into the western half of the region depended on local development which created opportunities for diversified market production and increased household wealth through capital gains on improvements. The absence of market development in the eastern half of the region, in contrast, limited the wealth of farm households, reinforcing their economic isolation.

This article challenges the traditional view of French industry—that small, inefficient family firms retarded France's economic growth—by examining data for the French textile and flour milling industries taken from the industry census of 1861–1865. The evidence suggests that the average size of French firms suited the economic and technological conditions of the day. The industries studied exhibit constant returns to scale over a wide output range. France would not seem likely to have gained much from larger firms. This is consistent with revisionist contentions that French industry was as rational as that of other nations.

Substantial regional differentials in mortgage rates persisted throughout the postbellum period. I find that these differentials reflected not only variations in lending risk, but also the costs incurred in transferring funds between markets and unexplained regional premia. The results are consistent with the traditional interpretation that capital markets were at least partially segmented throughout the late nineteenth century. The effects on home and farm mortgage rates in the South and West were substantial and suggest that market segmentation could have had a substantial impact on the regional pattern of urbanization as well as agricultural development.

Between 1905 and 1915, as state price regulation became widespread, electric utilities in the United States faced severe competition. The primary source of electricity for industry then was not utilities but self-generation by the user in an “isolated plant.” The demand-charge rate structure first became widespread during this period. The demand-charge rate structure has been interpreted as a misapplication of the peak-load pricing principle, a view which has made its popularity a puzzle. Instead it was adopted as a sophisticated mechanism which institutionalized profit-maximizing price discrimination given the competition from isolated plants.

Unlike the case of many low-income countries, farm-level survey data show no major differences across farm sizes with regard to decision-making and economic efficiency. This similarity is attributed to the operation of efficient and competitive markets which households used effectively to offset imbalances in resource endowment. If this holds true from the 1880s to the 1930s, perhaps the benefits of commercialization were more evenly distributed than previously believed.

International, rather than domestic, causes of both the Bank Holiday of 1933 and the calm in the banking system that followed are emphasized here. New information on gold losses by the New York Federal Reserve, rather than domestic currency hoarding, serve to explain the Bank Holiday's specific timing. Expectations that Roosevelt would devalue the dollar stimulated much of the gold loss. I also argue that Roosevelt's restrictions on gold holdings and foreign exchange dealings and his devaluation of the dollar by 60 percent were more important to the stability of the banking system after the Bank Holiday than was deposit insurance.