This working paper provides a business history perspective on debates about the Great Divergence, the rise of the gap in incomes between the West and the Rest, and the more recent Great Convergence, which has seen a narrowing of that gap. The literature on the timing and causes of the Great...

N.S.B. Gras, the father of Business History in the United States, argued that the era of mercantile capitalism was defined by the figure of the “sedentary merchant,” who managed his business from home, using correspondence and intermediaries, in contrast to the earlier “traveling...

Ayash and Rastad (2017) express several concerns about our 2014 analysis of private equity buyouts. We welcome their interest in our work but think their criticisms are off the mark. Some of their claims reflect a misunderstanding of the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) and...