Companies in Victorian Britain operated in a laissez-faire legal environment from the perspective of outside investors, implying that such investors were not protected by the legal system. This paper seeks to identify the alternative mechanisms which outside shareholders used to protect...

The United States has a long and ongoing history of racial inequality. This paper surveys the literature on one aspect of that history: long-run trends in racial differences in health. We focus on standard measures such as infant mortality and life expectancy but also consider the available data...

Structural transformation is a key indicator of economic development. This paper reconstructs and examines spatial patterns of the occupational structure in pre-unification Italy, combining direct observations and urbanization rates. In 1861, the agricultural labour share was higher in Southern...

Wealthy philanthropic individuals operating within private law have been largely absent from the historical justice narrative of states in transition and, consequently, from normative discussion regarding the justification of their actions under the auspices of the market. This Article seeks to...

The present study shows that in sub-Saharan Africa, besides some individual characteristics (including gender, age, education, marital status, place of residence and the wealth index), the colonial and socio-economic history of an individual’s living country significantly determines his/her...

Recent research has documented a positive relationship between tariffs and growth in the late nineteenth century. Such a correlation does not establish a causal relationship between tariffs and growth, but it is tempting to view the correlation as constituting evidence that protectionist or...

We identify the existence of a racial gap in housing returns that is an order of magnitude larger than disparities arising from housing costs alone. The returns gap is driven almost entirely by differences in distressed home sales (i.e. foreclosures and short sales). Black and Hispanic...

Were high import tariffs somehow related to the strong U.S. economic growth during the late nineteenth century? This paper examines this frequently mentioned but controversial question and investigates the channels by which tariffs could have promoted growth during this period. The paper shows...

When they are used together, economic history and new growth theory give a more complete picture of technological change than either can give on its own. An empirical strategy for studying growth that does not use historical evidence is likely to degenerate into sterile model testing exercises....