Transportation improvements in the nineteenth century loom large in the historiography of the profession during the twentieth century. This article describes the ongoing construction of a historical geographic information systems (GIS) transportation database designed to provide new insights into the impact of the transportation and communications revolution in the continental United States by providing evidence on the spatial dimensions of those changes over time. It also reviews some preliminary findings and reinterpretations based upon these data.

This article analyses a new series of prices and wages stretching back to 1827 for the provinces of the Habsburg Empire. These real wage series are the first continuous and consistent indicator of changing living standards in this part of Europe during industrialization. They show that while the living standards stagnated throughout the monarchy prior to 1850s, the West (unlike the East) was able to launch onto a path of continuous growth in the second half of the century. The empire experienced little convergence onto the living standards of its neighbors and even internally the convergence record is mixed.

Shipping costs between Europe and Asia were reduced by two-thirds between the 1770s and the 1820s. Copper sheathing and other technical improvements which allowed ships to make more frequent voyages over longer lifetimes accounted for part of the cost reduction. British hegemony in the Indian Ocean, which ended an eighteenth-century arms race, accounted for the rest by allowing the substitution of smaller ships which cost less to build and required fewer men per ton. These changes were at least as important as the elimination of monopoly profits in narrowing intercontinental price differentials during the early nineteenth century.

In early public land privatization, governments in New South Wales and Buenos Aires provided for de jure transfer of public lands. In New South Wales the government lost control; squatters rushed out unlawfully and seized de facto frontier claims. But in Buenos Aires privatization was accomplished by de jure transfers. Why did British settlers reject de jure transfers from a government, most able to secure property rights and rule of law, while settlers of the pampa frontier, where property-rights security was doubtful, complied with de jure transfers? We find that the revenue objective and violence on the frontier explain this puzzle.

Railways were integral to the development of the Indian economy before World War I. This article presents new estimates of total factor productivity (TFP) for railways from 1874 to 1912, which highlight the strong performance of this key industrial sector. Railway-industry TFP growth was substantial averaging 2.3 percent per year and generating a 2.7 percent social savings for the Indian economy. A combination of factors contributed to TFP growth including greater capacity utilization, technological change, and improvements in organization and governance. Railways had higher TFP growth than most sectors in India and compared favorably with TFP growth in other countries.

This article analyzes how Japan financed its World War II occupation of Southeast Asia, the market-purchased transfer of resources to Japan, and the monetary and inflation consequences of Japanese policies. Occupation was financed principally by printing large quantities of money. While some Southeast Asian countries had high inflation, hyperinflation hardly occurred because of a sustained transactions demand for money and because of Japan's strong enforcement of monetary monopoly. Highly specialized Southeast Asian economies and loss of Japanese merchant shipping limited resource extraction.

The success of fiscal centralization and military buildup in colonial Mexico contrasts with failed similar attempts elsewhere. Why did powerful elites comply with fiscal-military reforms in eighteenth-century Mexico? I argue that the Seven Years' War provided incentives for the Crown to centralize and elites to comply by accentuating the free rider problems inherent in the provision of military defense under fiscal fragmentation. Fiscal data and history document that reforms were more successful in regions more militarily vulnerable and where benefits were more aligned between the elites and the Crown. Centralization served the elites to commit to collective cooperation.

Using a new data set, this article presents new evidence on inequality in Latin America for the nineteenth century and studies the effects of factor endowments and trade on inequality. Recent research has highlighted the link between the colonial origins of inequality and its persistence in Latin America. We find that inequality varied substantially throughout the century and across the region. We identify the impact of changing factor endowments and trade on inequality using a simple theoretical framework. This work suggests that the role of initial colonial origins has been overemphasized as important changes took place during postcolonial times.

We examine the impact of the Great Depression on the share of votes for right-wing extremists in elections in the 1920s and 1930s. We confirm the existence of a link between political extremism and economic hard times as captured by growth or contraction of the economy. What mattered was not simply growth at the time of the election, but cumulative growth performance. The impact was greatest in countries with relatively short histories of democracy, with electoral systems that created low hurdles to parliamentary representation, and which had been on the losing side in World War I.

Between 1933 and 1973 the federal government funded the construction of over 1 million units of low-rent housing. Using county-level data, I find that communities with high densities of public housing had lower median family income, lower median property values, lower population density, and a higher percentage of families with low income in 1970. However, I find no negative effects of public housing in 1950 or 1960, implying that long-run negative effects only became apparent in the 1960s. The effects found in 1970 are partially due to a decline in human capital.

This article shows how asymmetric information shaped slavery by determining the likelihood of manumission. A theoretical model explains the need to offer positive incentives to slaves working in occupations characterized by a high degree of asymmetric information. As a result, masters freed (and, more generally, rewarded) slaves who performed well. The model's implications are then tested against the available evidence: both in Rome and in the Atlantic world, slaves with high asymmetric information tasks had greater chances of manumission. The analysis also sheds light on the master's choices of carrots versus sticks and of labor versus slavery.

The TVA has been applauded for its anti-malaria programs in the Southeast during the 1930s and 1940s. However, the TVA developed their anti-malaria programs because they created lakes suitable for mosquito breeding. To estimate the relationship between the TVA and malaria, I construct a county-level panel data from the Southeast United States. I find that the net effect of the TVA was to increase malaria rates following its construction. Using statistical life value estimates, I find that the hidden malaria cost of the TVA offset 24 percent of the fiscal stimulus multiplier generated by the TVA.

Building social tables in the tradition of Gregory King, we develop new estimates suggesting that between 1774 and 1800 American incomes fell in real per capita terms. The colonial South was richer than the North at the start, but was already beginning to lose its income lead by 1800. We also find that free American colonists had much more equal incomes than did households in England and Wales. The colonists had greater purchasing power than their English counterparts over all of the income ranks except in the top percent.

The Soviet dictatorship used secrecy to shield its processes from external scrutiny. A system of accounting for classified documentation assured the protection of secrets. The associated procedures resemble a turnover tax applied to government transactions. There is evidence of both compliance and evasion. The burden of secrecy was multiplied because the system was also secret and so had to account for itself. Unique documentation of a small regional bureaucracy, the Lithuania KGB, is exploited to yield an estimate of the burden. Measured against available benchmarks, the burden looks surprisingly heavy.

Previous studies of the U.S. Constitutional Convention have relied on votes recorded for the state blocs or a relatively small number of delegate votes. We construct a new data set covering delegate votes on over 600 substantive roll calls, and use the data in several ways. First, we estimate a single dimensional position for the delegates which reflects their overall voting patterns. Next, we explain these positions using a variety of delegate and constituent variables. Finally, we suggest a method for identifying state and floor medians, which can be used to predict equilibrium outcomes at the Convention.

This article analyzes the impact of employment institutions on Japanese-, British-, and Chinese-owned textile firms in China during the 1920s and 1930s. Despite Britain's domestic position as a world productivity leader, Japanese firms enjoyed a 70 percent productivity advantage over both British and Chinese competitors. The divergent performance of Japanese and British investments in China is explained by differences in management practice. Japanese firms had domestic experience with employment institutions similar to China's and applied labor management strategies that functioned well under these institutions. British firms lacked the institutional experience necessary to adapt management strategies to Chinese institutions.

This article analyzes the stability of bimetallism for countries operating in integrated bullion markets that enact different legal ratios. I articulate a new theoretical framework to demonstrate that two countries can both be bimetallic only if they coordinate their legal ratios. The theoretical framework is applied to the mid-eighteenth century when London's legal ratio was 3.8 percent higher than that of Amsterdam. I find that Amsterdam was effectively on the bimetallic standard, whereas London was on a de facto gold standard.

The late Victorian era was characterized by close links between politicians and firms in the United Kingdom, with up to half of all members of Parliament serving as company directors. We analyze 467 British companies over the period 1895 to 1904. An analysis of election results shows that the election of a new tech director is associated with a 2 percent to 2.5 percent increase in that firm's share price, whereas old tech firms were unaffected by the electoral fortunes of their directors. New technology firms with political directors were more likely to undertake seasoned issues of both equity and debt.

Roger de Piles (1635–1709) was a French art critic who decomposed the style and ability of 58 different artists into areas of composition, drawing, color, and expression, rating each artist on a 20-point scale in each category. Based on evidence from two data sets that together span from the mid-eighteenth century to the present, this article shows that De Piles' overall ratings have withstood the test of a very long period of time, with estimates indicating that the works of his higher-rated artists achieved both greater returns and higher critical acclaim than the works of his lower-rated artists.

With their legal personhood, permanent capital, transferable shares, separation of ownership and management, and limited liability, the Dutch and English colonial trading companies VOC and EIC are considered institutional breakthroughs. We analyze the VOC's business operations and financial policy and show that its novel corporate form owed less to foresight than to piecemeal engineering to remedy design flaws. The crucial feature of managerial limited liability was not, as previously thought, integral to that design, but emerged only after protracted experiments with various solutions to the company's financial bottlenecks. Legal form followed economic function, not the other way around.