Generally, the historical literature presents the period from 1817 to 1851 in Lower Canada (modern day Québec) as one of negative economic growth. This period also coincides with the rise of free banking in the colony. In this paper we propose to study the effects of free banking on economic...

Coase's publication of “The Lighthouse in Economics” (1974) sparked a polarizing debate over his claim that government intervention is not necessary for the existence of a private lighthouse market. The purpose of this paper is to reframe this debate by asking the following question: why was...

A new consumer price index for Canada, 1870-1913 is constructed, which includes prices for clothing and household furnishings which were missing in previous Canadian price indexes for this period. This is important because these neglected components accounted for 10 to 15 per cent of consumers'...

What role does government play in the provision of public goods? Economists have used the lighthouse as an empirical example to illustrate the extent to which the private provision of public goods is possible. This inquiry, however, has neglected the private provision of lightships. We...

In this article, we offer a revision to the top income share series produced by Piketty and Saez (2003) for the United States, focusing upon the period prior to and including the Second World War. The inequality estimates for these years form the left-side of a century-long U-curve that has...

This study creates estimates of GDP per capita for Canada from 1688 to 1790 in order to evaluate Canadian growth before the 19th century and generate international comparisons of living standards. These estimates show that Canada experienced little growth during the period and growth reversals...