The theory of interventionism argues that government interventions are inherently destabilizing, which in turn helps explain the growth of government. I argue that the theory of interventionism is also useful for explaining the process of economic growth. At first, an intervention reduces living...

This paper uses the price and wage data contained in the 1831 census of Lower Canada to provide regional estimates of disparities in living standards within Quebec in 1831. Combining these data with price data for the colony as a whole, we compare living standards in Quebec with those of...

We argue that the system of seigneurial tenure used in the province of Quebec until the mid-nineteenth centurya system which allowed significant market power in the establishment of plants, factories and mills, combined with restrictions on the mobility of the labor force within each seigneurial...

In this paper we study Malthusian pressures in a frontier economy. Using the empirical data on the real prices and demographic variables from 1688 to 1860 for Quebec and Montreal, we test for the existence of Malthusian pressures. Bearing in mind the particularities of frontier economies and the...

We examine the role of demographic change for regional convergence in living standards in Canada. Due to economies of scale within a family, decreasing household size has an impact on convergence in living standards, while per capita income convergence remains unaffected. We find that, by...

This paper aims to explain differences in infant mortality across the colony of Quebec, known in the 1850s as Canada East, by institutional settings. Areas settled under French laws (known as seigneurial law) implied important transfers from peasants to landlords through private taxes and...