This paper considers the institutional arrangements and labor market forces that interacted in the construction of America's transcontinental railroad. The demand for Chinese laborers on the transcontinental railroad was a product of a complex set of relationships, including the transaction...

The Perpetual Emigrating Fund was a 19th century form of indentured migration that assisted European immigrants to America's Great Basin. Immigrants signed future contracts against their Great Basin labor to repay migration loans. The Fund encountered high monitoring costs to enforce contracts...

The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in the economic history literature. Moreover, a number of core findings are widely agreed upon. There are still some populations, places, and times, however, for which anthropometric evidence remains limited. One...

A limited amount of research has been done on the body mass index values of 19th century Americans. This paper uses Texas prison records to demonstrate that, in contrast to today's distributions, most BMI values were in the normal range. Only 21.5% and 1.2% of the population was overweight or...

The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in the economic literature. While much is known about nineteenth century Southern black legal and material conditions, less is known about how their nineteenth century biological conditions were related to...

Using 19th century state prison records, this study contrasts the biological standard of living of comparable US African-American and white females during a period of relatively rapid economic development. White females were consistently taller than black females by about 1.5 cm (0.6 in.)....