This paper addresses whether government subsidies to two Canadian railroads built in the 1850s - the Grand Trunk and the Great Western - made economic sense. The historical literature suggests that these railroads, although privately unprofitable, were socially profitable. Through a careful...

The smallpox epidemic of 1781–82 in the Hudson Bay region is said to have devastated the native population, causing mortality of at least 50%. We reassess this claim using a four-pronged approach. First, we total smallpox deaths reported by two fur trading posts that were in the midst of the...

Pricing behavior at three Hudson's Bay Company trading posts is examined in terms of a model of long-run profit maximization of a depletable resource. At Fort Churchill, where the company acted as a monopsonist purchaser of furs from the Indians, rising European fur prices had little impact on...