Using quantitative data on sectoral productivity and labor force shares, this paper assesses distribution's contribution to growth in aggregate output per worker between 1869 and 1992, speculates about performance during the prior two decades, and explores the implications and determinants of...

This paper delineates how the telegraph was used in the financial services sector in the United States, and considers the implications of this use for U.S. economic growth, New York Stock Exchange trading volume, and securities market regulation. The parallel implementation of two separate...

Between 1919 and 1946 bankruptcy rates in the U.S. traced out an inverted U-shaped curve, rising during the 1930s as income levels fell, and then plummeting during the Second World War in the face of both rising income and falling debt levels. This paper explores these relationships...

French optical telegraph represented a highly refined blend of software and hardware generating performance levels in long distance communication which were, given the limitations of the hardware, quite remarkable. Had the electromagnetic telegraph not become available, French optical...

The introduction and diffusion of what Alfred Chandler called modern business enterprise had a profound capital-saving impact on the American economy. Given the availability of the railroad and telegraph, purchasing more managerial labor services paid off principally via increased speed of...

The contribution to growth of telegraphic- as opposed to rail-speed transmission of financial asset and commodity price data remains unclear. With more certainty we can identify savings in the holdings of real capital-savings made possible by the use of the telegraph at the firm level to...

Over the 1919-1929 period, fluctuations in the value of stock trading on the New York Stock Exchange exercised statistically significant and economically important impacts on the demand to hold cash balances. The marked post-1925 rise in the volume and value of stock trading led to a measurable...

This paper addresses a general theoretical question - the appropriate specification of the transactions demand for money - as well as a particular historical question: what triggered the Great Depression? Theoretically, fluctuations in the volume and value of asset exchanges in secondary asset...

Aggregate economic activity was heavily influenced by the construction sector's expansion, collapse, and failure to revive during the interwar years. The 1920s building boom was the first to respond to the potential of the automobile and the last to be largely unplanned. Its uncoordinated...