The role of capital-labor relations in the transformation of inputs into output is central to the Marxian theory of capitalist development but is neglected by neoclassical theory. By comparing the development of cotton spinning in Britain and the U.S. in the last half of the nineteenth century, this paper analyzes the ways in which capital-labor relations affected the level and structure of wages, labor productivity, and choice of technique. This case study demonstrates the descriptive and predictive limitations of the neoclassical theory of choice of technique while at the same time pointing the way towards the development of a more incisive, and historically relevant, theory.

This paper offers a new interpretation of Canadian Prairie settlement during the “wheat boom” period. Rather than use a Nerlovian model on which most recent work has been based, I develop a method of simulating the extension of the feasible region of cultivation: the area on which farming is profitable. The model is applied to a wheat-growing district of Saskatchewan that experienced rapid settlement from 1898 to 1911. Comparisons of the actual area of cultivation with the simulated feasible region indicate that settlers responded quickly to changes in the profitability of wheat farming. I also find that the extension of rail lines and the increase in mean wheat yields accounts for nearly all of the increase in the feasible region.

Before the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 1933, several states established deposit guarantee funds. The key factor influencing the adoption of deposit insurance by a state was the structure of its banking industry. In states where small unit banks were dominant, there was strong support for guarantee funds to protect deposits; in other states there was more interest in branch banking. The failure to design the guarantee funds in accordance with sound principles of insurance brought about their demise and led to increased branch banking.

The market for joint stock shares in eighteenth-century England is often portrayed as an underdeveloped and flawed mechanism for resource allocation, which in turn is cited to explain the paucity of shares actually traded. This article questions that interpretation, both by inquiring whether the requisite institutions for a functional market were present, and by constructing a new time series of eighteenth-century share prices and exposing them to a test of the efficient markets hypothesis. Because the stock exchange is found to exhibit most of the conventionally defined characteristics of an effective market, the article concludes by outlining the case for skepticism with respect to a common theme in economic history: the idea that the purported superiority of market resource allocation over alternative non-market forms (in the absence of rigidities due to underdevelopment or government interference) is an unambiguous conclusion in every historical context.

Were intracity motor buses economically inferior to electric streetcars and electric buses in the late 1930s and l940s? The contention that they were has recently served as the basis for allegations that the decline of urban public transit was attributable, in large part, to an organized campaign intent on eliminating viable public transit. Aggregate data from trade sources allows a comparative cost and profit analysis of motor buses, electric buses, and electric streetcars for the years 1935–1950. The analysis supports the contention that motor buses were inferior. Questions regarding the applicability of criticisms of market foreclosure theory are also considered.

The lack of other data has made fiscally motivated house counts the main basis of pre-censal Irish population estimates in the past. The source is potentially treacherous: in this paper spatial autocorrelation analysis of house counts at the county level is used to monitor its reliability over time. The new house totals which emerge, coupled with new estimates of mean household size, yield a different picture of aggregate and provincial population change between 1700 and 1821 than suggested in Connell's classic work. The final section of the paper suggests an interpretation of population change consistent with our revised figures.

Some leading modern theories of exchange-rate determination are pitted against each other in explaining fundamental movements of the freely floating U.S. dollar in the foreign-exchange market during the greenback period, 1862–1878. A purchasing-power-parity theory augmented to incorporate interest-rate, and possibly income, effects provides the best explanation of the exchange rate. The standard works on the greenback period are subject to some amendments in light of the study.