This paper describes the first step in a larger project to build up regional estimates of economic growth before 1800 in the parts of North America that became the United States. In it we employ the method of conjectural estimation to develop new estimates of the rate of economic growth in the...

Based on data from several samples of probate inventories we construct and analyze a time series of slave prices for South Carolina from 1722 to 1809. These estimates reveal that prices fluctuated without trend prior to the 1760s and then began to rise rapidly, more than doubling by the early...

Using data from samples of probate inventories we construct a series of slave prices for Low Country South Carolina and Georgia covering the period 1722-1815. Using these data we examine variations in slave prices by age and sex, as well as geographic variations between and within the two...

Agriculture dominated the economy of eighteenth-century British America, and the pace of agricultural productivity advance was the primary determinant of the rate of economic growth. In this paper we offer new measures of agricultural productivity advance in the Lower South between 1720 and...

For the past generation scholars have emphasized that the Lower South was one of the most economically successful regions of British mainland North America, and perhaps the most successful. Planters, the primary economic actors, made extensive use of slave labor and created a successful...

The nineteenth century was a period of expansion and transformation of American agriculture. While much is known about the process, the exact pace and timing of agricultural productivity change is still unresolved. The traditional view is one of continued progress in which output and...

The current view of U.S. economic growth before 1860 is based on the conjectural estimates of output made by Paul David (1967). This paper sets forth new estimates of the farm labor force for the period 1800 to 1860 and uses them to revise those conjectures about growth of per capita output. An...

This paper sets forth new estimates of the farm labor force covering the period 1820 to 1860, for the United States and the major geographic regions. At the national level, the new figures are noticeably different from the previous estimates. In particular, the new estimates lower the 1820 farm...

During the first half of of the nineteenth century the United States emerged as a major producer of cotton textiles. This paper argues that the expansion of domestic textile production is best understood as a path- dependent process that was initiated by the proetction provided by the Embargo...

This paper provides an account of the complex changes taking place within New England in the years from 1880 to 1940. After 1880, technological changes and market shifts undermined the sources of comparative advantage that had promoted the concentration of textile and footwear production within...