The labor force participation rate of married women first declines and then rises as countries develop. Its þ-shape is revealed both across the process of economic development and through the histories of currently advanced countries. The initial decline in the participation rate is due to the...

We explore the savings behavior and saving rates of ordinary Americans through their accounts at the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society. the oldest mutual savings bank in the United States founded in 1816 to encourage thrift among the working poor. Our sample contains the 2.374 accounts opened in...

Two opposing views of the antebellum economy are tested. One is that aggregate economic activity was severely diminished and that unemployment was substantial and prolonged during several downturns. The alternative interpretation is that antebellum fluctuations were more apparent than real;...

Has economic progress increased the relative earnings of females to males over the long run? Evidence on trends in the earnings gap for the last four decades appears to run counter to this hypothesis. Numerous data sources are used in this paper to piece together a 170-year history of the...

Offering new research on strategic factors in the development of the nineteenth century American economy-labor, capital, and political structure-the contributors to this volume employ a methodology innovated by Robert W. Fogel, one of the leading pioneers of the "new economic history." Fogel's...

The history of coeducation in U.S. higher education is explored through an analysis of a database containing information on all institutions offering four-year undergraduate degrees that operated in 1897, 1924, 1934, or 1980, most of which still exist today. These data reveal surprises about the...

This paper investigates pricing by Japanese manufacturing firms in export and domestic markets. The paper reports equations explaining the margin between export prices in yen and domestic prices for a wide range of final goods including many of the electronic and transport products which have...

This paper investigates the importance of markup behavior in Japanese manufacturing. According to the evidence presented, Japanese firms have varied the markups of prices over marginal costs in order to limit the effects of exchange rate changes on output. This behavior is quite different from...