Previous studies of entry under New York's free banking law of 1838 have generated conflicting results. This article shows that different measures of entry lead to different conclusions about the competitive effects of the law. Measured by the entry of new banks, New York's free banking law led...

Although rates of interracial marriage are on the rise, we still know relatively little about the experiences of mixed-race adolescents. In this paper, we examine the identity and behavior of mixed-race (black and white) youth. We find that mixed-race youth adopt both types of behaviors -- those...

Few pieces of economic regulation are ubiquitous as usury limits. Similarly, few economic principles are as widely accepted as the belief that interference with freely contracted prices leads to market distortions, and many studies of financial markets find that usury limits negatively affect...

Williamson (1985) argues that individuals form firms with specific internal governance structures to mitigate certain types of opportunistic behavior that may inhibit efficient contracting between independent contractors. But once firms are established, the individuals that comprise them may...

One traditional and oft-repeated explanation of the political impetus behind free banking connects the rise of Jacksonian populism and a rejection of the privileges associated with corporate chartering. A second views free banking as an ill-informed inflationist, pro business response to the...

It is well known that children raised in poverty demonstrate lower academic achievement than children raised in affluence. This study extends previous studies in three ways. First, it estimates structural instead of reduced-form models of child academic attainment. Such structural models...

Historians of U.S. race relations typically portray southern whites as reluctant to recognize or act favorably upon complexion-based differences within the African American community. Historians contend that mixed-race African Americans (mulattoes) received few advantages as a result of their...

How law is interpreted and enforced at a particular historical moment reflects contemporary social concerns and prejudices. This paper investigates the nature of criminal sentencing in mid-nineteenth-century Pennsylvania. It finds that extralegal factors, namely place of conviction and several...

In this paper we test for the existence of compensating differentials for unemployment risk in an era before unemployment insurance. Using information gathered from manufacturing worker surveys conducted during the 1880s in New Jersey, we find that workers who faced higher probabilities of...

Recent banking theory holds that durable firm-bank relationships are valuable to both parties. Using contract-specific loan records of a nineteenth-century U.S. bank, this paper shows that firms that form extended relationships with banks receive three principal benefits. First, firms with...