The first comprehensive history of the transition from slavery to sharecropping, this major study draws on thousands of previously untapped sources and statistics to reconstruct the socioeconomic history of the antebellum plantation and the birth of the free black worker. Jaynes thoroughly...

We conduct the first quantitative assessment of federal college subsidies during the 1930s. Overlapping generation households invest in children's education to maximize multigenerational utility, and the government subsidizes college to maximize enrollment subject to a budget constraint and...