Private wealth of the inhabitants of three regions and of the Thirteen American Colonies as a whole, in 1774, estimated from a statistical sample of probate inventories and supplementary data, is the focus. The author's prior interest in consumption and levels of living led to these innovative estimates which supplement national wealth estimates for the United States in later centuries. Levels of wealth compared on a per capita basis with other times and places, as well as wealth inequalities among regions and among individuals, and rates of growth in real wealth per capita are all considered. Some complexities of intertemporal and interspatial wealth comparisons are indicated, in particular the implications of the striking North-South differences in 1774 with their fateful implications for the American dilemma.

A general transaction cost framework is developed to analyze the costs of exchange and the role of government in the costs of exchange. Three general types of exchange are specified: personal exchange, exchange without third-party enforcement, and exchange with third-party enforcement. The framework is then employed to analyze government and the costs of exchange in history.

Previous studies of the political business cycle have examined time series data to determine whether a pattern of pre-election boom and post-election slump exists. The studies do not investigate the behavior and mechanisms by which a politician may effectuate a political business cycle. We focus on one time period, 1969 to 1972, and conclude that President Nixon's personality and operating environment explain why he manipulated the economy for political gain. The mechanisms he utilized to improve macroeconomic conditions before the 1972 election include monetary policy, fiscal policy, and wage-price controls.

We examine in this paper both the causes and consequences of inheritance laws in the colonies. We argue that the continuation of intestate inheritance laws over the colonial period was due in part to their compatibility with economic efficiency. In the North, multigeniture helped motivate family labor, whereas the passive acceptance of the British inheritance system of primogeniture in the South rested on its promotion of large plantations that could capture economies of scale. In terms of effects, a strong bequest motive in the colonies adopting multigeniture reduced the variability in demographic experiences across colonies with different inheritance systems.

The first systematic estimates of mortality on immigrant ships are presented in the paper. From passenger lists of immigrant arrivals, a sample of 1077 ships that arrived at New York between 1836 and 1853 was obtained and analyzed. Immigrants died at a rate of about 10 per thousand boarded per month with a significantly higher rate for 1849. Mortality was found to vary by sex, port of origin, and season of arrival. No significant variation was found between mortality and the following variables: crowding, nationality of the immigrant, and year of arrival.

New data on mortality and voyage length in the nineteenth-century slave trade make possible further testing of hypotheses on why slaves died during the middle passage. Mortality rates (defined as death per slaves embarked/voyage length in days × 1000) were higher in the nineteenth century than in earlier centuries and varied markedly between regions of embarkation. In the high mortality regions, all ships in the sample appeared to have experienced a higher death rate, suggesting that epidemics were not of prime importance. Mortality rates do not appear to have fluctuated very much during the voyage nor does the slaves–per–ton variable have much explanatory power. The major explanation is probably endemic disease.

This paper uses a simple economic model of contract choice to explain the growth of sharecropping in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France—a topic that figures in much of the social and economic history of the period. The theory turns out to fit both qualitative and quantitative evidence, and although the results are as yet only preliminary, the theory does provide a better account of the spread of sharecropping than the explanations upon which early modern historians have tended to rely.

An econometric model is here used to estimate the price and output effect of the Limitation of the Vend, a mineowners' cartel. It is found that when a formal regulation existed the price of coal rose significantly in the London market, whereas there was little output effect. The price effect was relatively small, however, especially when compared to the per unit tax on coal. Although the cartel was deemed to be successful, the existence of substantial monopoly profits was questioned.

France's canal age was largely the outgrowth of the plan proposed by François Becquey, the state administrator who orchestrated a successful campaign to convince influential Frenchmen that a nationwide canal network was one of the essential tasks of their generation. As Becquey originally conceived his plan, canal building would directly contribute to economic growth and help foster a spirit of business enterprise. In the end he had to settle for a scheme under which the government paid a steep price to a handful of financial consortia for the right to assume all the risks and costs of building and operating the system itself.

It may seem odd to disinter an economic theory—in this instance, William Stanley Jevons's claim that sunspots caused macroeconomic fluctuations—which no one now believes or much cares about. In fact, my purpose is not to scoff at a dead theory, but to use it as a pretext to discuss the following issues: economic historians often have suggested a dichotomy between a premodem and industrial macroeconomy, with the premodern economy largely at the mercy of weather and other natural phenomena; the dichotomy is rooted in early neoclassical economic theory (here restricting ourselves to Jevons); there is little historical evidence that premodern macro fluctuations were caused by natural disturbances, such as the weather (here restricting ourselves to the case of England); and the above three theses have some interesting implications for the way economic policy is conceived, both then and now.

The slowness with which British firms adopted Scientific Management and Fordism has often been noted.The paper argues that in Britain, management had difficulty controlling labor effort norms after 1870. The state intervened to resolve the issue and in the process became a major proponent of industrial democracy. It is argued that the early interest in industrial democracy retarded the adoption of American methods that assumed a greater degree of managerial control over factory organization.

The paper traces the development of Keynes's views of free trade and protection and their relationship to British economic policy from 1922 to 1946.

“Is there anything that a tariff could do which an earthquake could not do better?”

This paper re–examines the naval reserve oil leases issued by Interior Secretary Fall in 1922 that led to the Teapot Dome controversy. The analysis shows that the leases were the only efficient oil rights arrangement on federal lands through 1930. They were superior to either the naval oil storage policy practiced prior to 1922 or to the general leasing practices found on other federal land. Nevertheless, they were attacked by conservation groups and small oil firms and cancelled in 1922. To explain the opposition to the leases, this paper examines interagency and interest group rivalries for control of federal land. During the period preceding Teapot Dome, the federal government began withholding title to vast tracts of land, and issues of agency jurisdiction and interest group access had not been resolved. The paper concludes that Teapot Dome had little to do with oil conservation and more to do with settling jurisdictional disputes over federal land. The Teapot Dome controversy led to the establishment of the Federal Oil Conservation Board.

The California Marine Research Committee was established by the state legislature in 1947 in response to the catastrophic failure of the Pacific Coast sardine fishery. Scientists, state and federal resource-managment officials, and industry leaders put aside long–standing differences of viewpoint to launch a uniquely comprehensive, multidisciplinary research effort. This paper, based on newly opened archival materials, analyzes the founding and early work of the agency. How a stalemate occurred that delayed a consensus on policy recommendations and had the practical effect of continuing virtually unregulated sardine fishing is explained. The article illustrates the institutional development of post–war “Big Science” as a major actor in the policy process and analyzes the mobilization of public agencies to cope with complex environmental issues in resource–extractive industries.

Recent problems in the performance of the American steel industry have prompted a number of calls for an “industrial policy” for this sector. Before any such programs of public intervention can be considered, however, it would behoove public policymakers to examine why the industry fell into its present state of decline. This paper, an abstract of a longer study, analyzes the relations of business and government in American steel from 1945 to 1960, and concludes that public policies had as much to do with subsequent industry decline as did other factors previously delineated by scholars.

The classical political economists, especially James Mill, had a major role in shaping British land tax policy in India. Only in Bombay Presidency did the men who administered the land tax share Mill's view of rent as the legitimate and appropriate source of revenue for government expenditure. These men created a land tax of considerable complexity in their desire to collect only a part of the rent from each field and thereby to foster economic development in the region. Even with their cadastral survey completed, however, they were compelled to use circumstantial evidence to determine whether any particular level of taxation was less than or greater than the rent. Agriculture in the Deccan and the Karnatak did improve after the implementation of the survey and settlement system, but available evidence suggests that rising prices for agricultural goods may have been as or more important than careful adherence to the finer points of Ricardian rent theory.

This paper attempts to answer three questions. How much did agricultural research contribute to agricultural growth in British India? Was its limited impact due to too little investment or inefficient allocation of research resources? Could more research have led to a “Green Revolution” in foodgrain production? Available data indicate that the impact of research was small and that more should have been invested in research. The evidence suggests, however, that larger investments in foodgrain research would not have resulted in a Green Revolution in British India.