The debate over whether political democracy is the least bad regime, as Churchill said, remains unresolved because history has been misread, and because statistical studies have chosen the wrong tests. This address reinterprets five key experiences to show how the institutional channels linking voice and growth are evolving with the economy. Until the early nineteenth century, the key institutional link was property-rights and contract enforcement. Since then, the human-investment channel has assumed an ever-greater role. Elite rule damages growth by underinvesting in egalitarian human capital, especially primary schooling, relative to historical norms for successful economies.This Presidential Address was delivered at the Economic History Association Annual Meeting, 12 October 2002, in St. Louis, Missouri.

New estimates of mean stature indicate declining heights in Northern Italy from 1730 to 1860, corroborating recent findings of a deterioration in per capita GDP and real wages—though possibly calling into question its severity. The level of heights in the 1830s is respectable in international comparison. Estimated geographic and occupational effects show the influence of the disease environment, malnutrition, and income. Declining living standards suggest a Malthusian interpretation of the economy, in which even a relatively flexible agricultural sector was not quite able to keep up with the growing pressure of population on resources.John Komlos arranged the collection of the data analyzed here and made them available to me. I am also indebted to him for ongoing discussions about anthropometrics and helpful comments on this article. I am grateful to Jörg Baten, Giovanni Federico, Paolo Malanima, Gianni Toniolo, and Vincent Tassenaar for reading and commenting on the article, and to three anonymous referees for their com-ments. An earlier version of the article was presented at the Seminar for Economic History, University of Munich.

Between 1830 and 1860 the United States experienced rapid economic growth but declining stature and rising mortality. Debate has centered on whether the American diet deteriorated in the mid-nineteenth century. Employing census and muster records, this article tests the hypotheses that adult height was positively correlated with local production of nutrients in early childhood and negatively correlated with local mortality conditions, urbanization, proximity to transport, and population mobility. Results indicate that antebellum economic growth was accompanied by an increasing nationalization and internationalization of the disease environment, which affected the health and longevity of the population.This article is based on two earlier papers presented at the conference “The Biological Standard of Living and Economic Development: Nutrition, Health, and Well-Being in Historical Perspective,” held at the University of Munich, Munich, Germany, 18–21 January 1997. They have been published in The Biological Standard of Living in Comparative Perspective edited by John Komlos and Jörg Baten (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1998), pp. 155–80 and 190–207. This research was funded in part by the National Institute of Aging (AG 10120) and by the National Science Foundation (#SBR-9408525). The authors wish to thank Brian A'Hearn, Markus Heintel, and Robert Fogel for data and Jörg Baten, Timothy Cuff, Richard Easterlin, Stanley Engerman, John Komlos, John Murray, Richard Steckel, Robert Whaples, and participants at the Economic History Seminar at the University of California at Berkeley, the Economics Seminar at the College of William and Mary, the NBER Summer Institute, and the Social Science Colloquium at Colgate University for valuable comments and suggestions on earlier versions. In addition two anonymous referees provided very useful suggestions. The late Robert Gallman also provided valuable comments at an early stage of the project. Part of this research was conducted by Craig while he was a German Marshall Fund Fellow at the Seminar fuer Wirtschaftsgeschichte at the University of Munich.

During the second millennium, the Middle East's commerce with Western Europe fell increasingly under European domination. Two factors played critical roles. First, the Islamic inheritance system, by raising the costs of dissolving a partnership following a partner's death, kept Middle Eastern commercial enterprises small and ephemeral. Second, certain European inheritance systems facilitated large and durable partnerships by reducing the likelihood of premature dissolution. The upshot is that European enterprises grew larger than those of the Islamic world. Moreover, while ever larger enterprises propelled further organizational transformations in Europe, persistently small enterprises inhibited economic modernization in the Middle East.For useful comments on previous drafts, I am indebted to Scott Altman, Murat Çizakça, Avner Greif, Eric Jones, Daniel Klerman, Naomi Lamoreaux, ôevket Pamuk, David Powers, Kenneth Sokoloff, Jan de Vries, Dean Williamson, and three anonymous referees. Excellent research assistance was provided by Hania Abou Al-Shamat, Iva Bozˆović, and Sung Han Tak.

Between 1928 and 1960 U.S. cotton production experienced a revolution with average yields roughly tripling while the quality of the crop increased significantly. This article analyzes the key institutional and scientific developments that facilitated the revolution in biological technologies, pointing to the importance of two government programs—the one-variety community movement and the Smith-Doxey Act—as catalysts for change. The story displays two phenomena germane to the recent literature: an important real-world example of Akerlof's lemons model and a case in which inventors, during an early phase of the product cycle, encouraged consumers to copy and disseminate their intellectual property.We would like to thank Shelby Baker, Dick Bassett, Fred Bourland, J. Jerome Boyd, David L. Carlton, Peter Coclanis, Harry B. Collins, John Constantine, Tom Culp, Early C. Ewing Jr., Deborah K. Fitzgerald, Janet Hudson, Susana Iranzo, Hal Lewis, Gary Libecap, Shelagh Mackay, C. W. Manning, Leslie Maulhardt, William Meredith, Robert Margo, Massimo Morelli, Larry Nelson, Carl Pray, Gene Seigler, Macon Steele, Nancy Virts, Henry Webb, Gavin Wright, and two anonymous referees for their comments and assistance. Julian Alston played an especially important role in shaping our analysis. We also benefited from the comments of the seminar participants at the Triangle Economic History Workshop, the University of Mississippi, Harvard University, the Spring 2002 All-UC Group in Economic History Conference at Scripps College, and the 2003 Meetings of the American Historical Association. Work on this article was facilitated by a fellowship granted by the International Centre for Economic Research (ICER) in Turin, Italy.

This study investigates the relationship between income and fertility in Nuits-Saint-Georges, a small Burgundian town. Nuits offers a rich location to study fertility because of its broad range of occupations, income, and literacy. I constructed a data set that linked fertility through 1792 for couples married between 1744 and 1779 with fiscal records tracking the families' tax payments. Controlling for occupation and literacy, my principle findings were that wealthier families had more births, changes in fertility were positively correlated with increases in income over the life cycle, and marital fertility in Nuits steadily declined over the latter eighteenth century.The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views of the Federal Trade Commission or any individual Commissioner. This article is part of a thesis written under the supervision of Jean-Laurent Rosenthal. The author would like to thank Jean-LaurentRosenthal, Kathleen McGarry, Duncan Thomas, Pia Orrenius, Rosemary Hyson, George Deltas, Aileen Thompson, Shawn Ulrick, three anonymous referees, and two editors at this JOURNAL for many helpful comments. All remaining errors are mine.

The first order of business for the new Congress under the Constitution of 1787 was raising revenue to fund the government's operation and to service the public debt. On 8 April 1789, two days after the first Congress achieved a quorum, James Madison introduced a proposal to levy duties on imported goods. This tariff proposal became one of the first pieces of legislation passed by Congress and was signed by President George Washington on 4 July 1789.The author thanks the National Science Foundation for providing partial research support.

How Economics Became a Mathematical Science. By E. Roy Weintraub. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. Pp. xiii, 313. $54.95, cloth; $18.95, paper.

Reliable data are an indispensable tool in accurately evaluating the evolution of an economy.This dissertation was completed in 2002 at the Department of Economics, Duke University, under the supervision of Michelle Connoly. In reality, economists, much like archeologists, are routinely forced to interpret past events from the statistical artifacts at hand. Because contemporary federal agencies and private organizations infrequently collected economic statistics, definitive facts on the nineteenth-century U.S. business cycle are sparse. Indeed, the notorious void of macroeconomic data for the pre­Civil War period led to Paul David's apt naming of the first half of the nineteenth century as America's “statistical dark age.”David, “New Light.” The reason is simply the deficiency of comprehensive yet reliable annual macroeconomic data for the entire nineteenth century.

SESSION 1A: CONTRACTS, COMMUNITIES, AND THE STATE IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE

SESSION 1B: INSTITUTIONS, PROPERTY RIGHTS, AND THE ENVIRONMENT

SESSION 2A: HUMAN CAPITAL AND SCHOOLING

SESSION 2B: NETWORKS, PATENT RIGHTS, AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

2002 ECONOMIC HISTORY ASSOCIATION MEETINGS

2003 ECONOMIC HISTORY ASSOCIATION MEETINGS 19–21 SEPTEMBER 2003

ECONOMIC HISTORY SOCIETY ANNUAL CONFERENCE CALL FOR ACADEMIC PAPERS

EHA SESSIONS AT THE ALLIED SOCIAL SCIENCES ASSOCIATION ANNUAL MEETING