We employ the conjectural approach to estimate the growth of GDP per capita for the colonies and states of the mid-Atlantic region (Del., NJ, NY and Penn). In contrast to previous studies of the region's growth that relied heavily on the performance of the export sector, the conjectural method...

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...

There were substantial fluctuations in the numbers of American overseas travelers, especially before World War II. These fluctuations in travel around the robust, long term upward trend are the focus of this paper. We first identify those fluctuations in the raw data and then try to explain the...

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...

Tourism today is an activity of substantial economic importance worldwide, and has been for some time. Tourism is also of substantial economic importance in the United States, sufficient to warrant the Bureau of Economic Analysis's establishing special accounts on travel and tourism. In this...

Economic historians of the eighteenth-century British mainland North American colonies have given considerable weight to the role of exports as a stimulus for economic growth. Yet their analyses have been handicapped by reliance on one or two time series to serve as indicators of broader changes...

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...

The Antebellum Puzzle' describes the situation of declining stature and rising mortality in the three decades prior to the American Civil War (1861-65). It is labeled a puzzle, since this period was one of rapid economic growth and development in the United States. Much of the debate regarding...

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...

We model the relationship between local agricultural surpluses, nutritional status, and height, and we test the hypothesis that adult height is positively correlated with the local production of nutrition in infancy. We test the hypothesis on two samples of Union Army recruits - one consisting...