Manufacturing was responsible for almost all - 83 percent - of the growth of total factor productivity in the U.S. private nonfarm economy between 1919 and 1929. During the Depression manufacturing TFP growth was not as uniformly distributed, and only half as rapid, accounting for only 48...

In several articles published in the 1990s, de Long and Summers argued that investment in producer durables had a high propensity to generate externalities in using industries, resulting in a systematic and substantial divergence between its social and private return. They maintained, moreover,...

This paper considers the productivity impact on the U.S. economy of the period of war mobilization and demobilization lasting from 1941 to 1948. Optimists have pointed to learning by doing in military production and spinoffs from military R and D as the basis for asserting a substantial positive...

Volume 21 of Research in Economic History is a substantial contribution in several respects. Its heft reflects the continuing increase in quality submissions to this series, which invites (although it does not require) authors to take advantage of less stringent space limitations than is...

In the tradition of the new economic history, this collection includes seven carefully researched papers blending systematic empirical research with consideration of broader theoretical and analytical issues

Exports and the economy of the lower south region, 1720-1770 / Peter C. Mancall, Joshua L. Rosenbloom, and Thomas Weiss -- Quarterly data on the categories and causes of bank distress during the Great Depression, 1929-1933 / Gary Richardson -- On English pygmies and giants : the physical stature...

Introduction / Alexander J. Field -- A Soviet quasi-market for inventions : jet propulsion, 1932-1946 / Mark Harrison -- Network quality in the early telegraph industry / Tomas Nonnenmacher -- The Spanish infrastructure stock, 18441935 / Alfonso Herranz-Lonc(c)Øan -- Have American workers...

Introduction / Alexander J. Field -- From foraging to farming : the so-called "neolithic revolution" / Frederic L. Pryor -- The growth of world agricultural production, 1800-1938 / Giovanni Federico -- The Great Depression as a credit boom gone wrong / Barry Eichengreen, Kris J. Mitchener -- The...

Technological breakthroughs and productivity growth / Harald Edquist, Magnus Henrekson -- New national bank loan rate estimates, 1887-1975 / Scott A. Redenius -- The net effect of railroads on stature in the postbellum period / Ebru Guven Solakoglu -- Growth in a protected environment :...