Many scholars are concerned with why the U.S. and Canada have been so much more successful over time than other New World economies. Since all New World societies enjoyed high levels of product per capita early in their histories, the divergence in paths can be traced back to the achievement of...

In this paper we compare the performance of the U.S. and Canadian banking systems from 1870-1925 in terms of stability and efficiency. In an earlier study we found that the Canadian banking system, based on nationwide branch banking, dominated the U.S. system, based on unit banking, on both...

Immigrants who arrived in the U.S. before the Civil War were less likely to reside in locations with high immigrant concentrations as their time in the U.S. increased. This is contrary to the experience of recent immigrants who show no decrease in concentration after arrival. The reduced...

This paper utilizes household-level budget data from the 1889/90 United States Commissioner of Labor survey to estimate the full Almost Ideal Demand System with demographic and other covariates. Price data were obtained from the Aldrich Report of 1892. The purpose is to make better use of the...

The Antebellum Puzzle' describes the situation of declining stature and pos mortality in the three decades prior to the American Civil War (1861-65). It is this period was one of rapid economic growth and development in the United State the debate has centered on whether the American diet, both...

The United States is often taken to be the exemplar of the benefits of a monetary union. Since 1788 Americans, with the exception of the Civil War years, have been able to buy and sell goods, travel, and invest within a vast area without ever having to be concerned about changes in exchange...

In October 1993, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics to Robert William Fogel and Douglass Cecil North `for having renewed research in economic history.' The Academy noted that `they were pioneers in the branch of economic history that has been called the...

The substantial shifts in the sectoral and geographic location of economic activity that took place in the late nineteenth-century United States required the reallocation of large quantities of labor. This paper examines the response of labor market institutions to the challenges of unbalanced...

Microeconomic evidence reveals that the incidence and duration of unemployment in the 1930s varied significantly within the labor force. Long-term unemployment, which was especially high by historical standards, may have been exacerbated by federal relief policies