This chapter reviews key literature studying the effects of wars on minority and underrepresented groups in U.S. labor markets in the 20th century. These labor markets, characterized by historically pervasive barriers to entry into certain occupations and industries, promotions, and fair pay for...

We consider the distribution of economic activity within a country in light of three leading theories - increasing returns, random growth, and locational fundamentals. To do so, we examine the distribution of regional population in Japan from the Stone Age to the modern era. We also consider the...

Among countries colonized by European powers during the past 500 years those that were relatively rich in 1500 are now relatively poor. We document this reversal using data on urbanization patterns and population density, which, we argue, proxy for economic prosperity. This reversal is...

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...

Studies of early U.S. growth traditionally have emphasized real-sector explanations for an acceleration that by many accounts became detectable between 1815 and 1840. Interestingly, the establishment of the nation's basic financial structure predated by three decades the canals, railroads, and...

The American university was shaped in a formative period from 1890 to 1940 long before the rise of federal funding, the G.I. Bill, and mass higher education. Both the scale and scope of institutions of higher education were greatly increased, the research university blossomed, states vastly...

The United States led all other nations in the development of universal and publicly-funded secondary school education and much of the growth occurred from 1910 to 1940. The focus here is on the reasons for the high school movement' in American generally and why it occurred so early and swiftly...

This paper summarizes the development of private annuity markets in the United States. Annuities constituted a small share of the U.S. insurance market until the 1930s, when two developments contributed to their growth. First, concerns about the stability of the financial system drove investors...