The paper examines the spread of sharecropping that followed a wave of investment in agriculture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France. Using results from the modern theory of share contracts, it argues that sharecropping was a means of risk sharing that favored both landlords and tenants. Although the evidence used in this paper comes from France, the results may well apply to other areas of early modern Europe.

Girls far outnumbered boys in American high schools at the turn of the century. Despite the fact that women on average spent far fewer years than men in the paid labor force, we argue that a high school education was a better investment for girls than for boys. This was because formal education offered the only opportunity for girls to obtain job-related skills, whereas it was but one of many such opportunities for boys.

Differences in the school and work experience of young girls and boys are explained by factors related to the demand for household production including the presence of young children, boarders and lodgers, and home ownership. Gender based differences in job characteristics and hourly earnings associated with occupational segregation contributed to the observed pattern of higher schooling investment by girls and earlier work experience by boys.

This multiple regression study of women's and men's wages in New Jersey and Pennsylvania manufacturing finds that the average pay gap has changed in favor of women from 1900–1950 in several industries and in the aggregate. Technological homogenization of jobs is suggested as a possible explanation of gender-based wage convergence. An overall framework of forces and relations of production is outlined, and future work on this newly introduced body of data is suggested.

This paper re-examines the changing structure of Canadian agriculture over the period between Confederation and the beginning of the “wheat boom.” A pattern of changes is found that differs in some respects from the long-received accounts. The shift from wheat to mixed farming was accomplished by an earlier date than is usually supposed, and domestic demand is due more emphasis, relative to export demand, than it is usually given.

This paper attempts to document and account for cost savings on North American small-grain prairie farms in the early twentieth century. Costs of production are analyzed using the ex post price and yield data abundantly available. Cost conjectures are developed and compared with scattered farm data that itemize inputs and reveal some aspects of farming technique. Total costs per acre, despite year to year fluctuations, appear to have fallen gradually over the entire period consistent with a comprehensive and continuous learning process, rather than only suddenly in the late 1920s when there was a marked increase in the sales of gasoline-powered farm machinery.

This paper rejects the traditional interpretation that farmers shifted from wheat to mixed farming in eastern North America because of changes in relative costs. It argues instead that they shifted because mixed farming involved less risk. We test the proposition that farmers were willing to give up a larger expected income in wheat production for a smaller but more stable income in mixed farming. The results are consistent with our hypothesis.