The Uniform Small Loan Law (USLL) was the Russell Sage Foundation’s primary device for fighting what it viewed as the scourge of high-rate lending to poor people in the first half of the twentieth century. The USLL created a new class of lenders who could make small loans at interest rates...

Why did Victorian Britain invest so much capital abroad? We collect over 500,000 monthly returns of British and foreign securities trading in London and the United States between 1866 and 1907. These heretofore-unknown data allow us to better quantify the historical benefits of international...

The variance in the logarithms of per capita GDP in purchasing power-parity prices increased in the world form 1960 to 1968 and decreased since the mid 170s. In the later period the convergence in intercountry incomes more than offset any increase in within country inequality. Approximately...