Based on findings in Massachusetts probate records, 1650–1753, this paper argues that the average value of consumer goods among farmers and other rural inhabitants in that colony did not decline over the course of the colonial period but fluctuated around an average value little different from that for an equivalent segment of the population at risk in Maryland at the turn of the eighteenth century. Similar findings by Jackson Turner Main for.colonial Connecticut extend this absence of trend to a wider area of New England and to the years immediately preceding the American Revolution.

This article explores the determinants of wealth for seventeenth-century Englishmen living in three very different environments—Worcestershire, East London, and Tidewater, Virginia. Wealth differences among these regions can be described in terms of the particular mix of occupational status groups, age groups, and literates each possessed. When all of these variables are accounted for, region becomes an insignificant determinant of wealth. Occupational status, predictably, had the primary influence on wealth, but the system, through provisions for age and education, also made definite allowances for the ability to use and consume resources efficiently.

An analysis of over 10,000 loans made by a major credit source in Keene, New Hampshire, from 1832 to 1897 is presented. The data sources are unique and include information on property ownership and wealth, occupation, involvement in businesses, age, and connections with the credit source. As time passed more funds were lent to borrowers out of the city and county, lending was used to support many new industrial and other enterprises, as well as for infrastructural and social capital investments. Many loans were made to individuals and businesses with close ties to the source of credit.

The development of rationality in economic life, according to Werner Sombart and Max Weber, is one of the most important aspects of modern economic history. Gradually, religious and ethical considerations lose dieir influence in commercial behavior; finally, in the nineteenth century, economic judgment proceeds on the basis of its own logic. Business is liberated from noneconomic sanctions.

There has been some dispute about the impact of New Deal policies on the business climate. Some historians have argued that the New Deal frightened business, and others that it encouraged business. This paper analyzes the impact of the New Deal on business investment by looking at the response of investment to the outcome of the 1934, 1936, and 1938 elections, as well as the passage of certain New Deal legislation. The data reject the hypothesis that the New Deal frightened off business investment.

The paper examines the spread of sharecropping that followed a wave of investment in agriculture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France. Using results from the modern theory of share contracts, it argues that sharecropping was a means of risk sharing that favored both landlords and tenants. Although the evidence used in this paper comes from France, the results may well apply to other areas of early modern Europe.

The power of the Medici as a banking house, and their weakness also, become clearer when we examine the source of their funds. The main problem is whether the Medici bank operated mainly with the money invested by the partners or whether most of the operating capital was supplied from outside sources. It would be easy to settle this question if some balance sheets of the Medici bank were still available. As none have come down to us, another method of approach has to be used.

Contrary to earlier assertions, the historical data for Britain do confirm a (lagged) crowding-out effect during the Industrial Revolution. Heavy government borrowing after 1793 for the wars with France raised interest rates. These results are confirmed with nominal-interest-rate equations rather than with real-rate equations, which impose restrictive assumptions about the adjustment of nominal rates to inflation expectations. We see no reason to abandon the neoclassical, factor- allocation model of saving and investment in favor of a theory asserting that firms accumulate capital for investment independently of household saving decisions.

Peter A. Schenck, Surveyor of Customs and Inspector of Revenue for the Port of New York, must have felt slightly exhilarated when he left his office on the evening of December 30, 1807. He had that day wielded for the first time the two-edged sword placed in his hands by Congress for the destruction of British maritime arrogance. Nay more, he had struck at least seven times, by seizing that number of shipments of British goods which had arrived in two vessels ten days before. In a few days Nathan Sanford, the District Attorney, would file seven separate libels in the Federal District Court on behalf of the United States vs. twenty-two bales of woolen cloth, two cases of hats, eight boxes linen cloth, sixteen boxes of linens, one case of woolen hosiery, two cases of plated ware, and two boxes of woolen hosiery. The goods would doubtless be condemned, for Sanford was a clever lawyer and the district judge was not, like the fellow up in Massachusetts, unfriendly to Jeffersonian policies. Later the United States marshal, Peter Curtenius, would have them sold by auction outside the Tontine Coffee House; the court and marshal's costs—totaling about $120 in each case—would be paid, and the balance, where there was any, would be shared equally between the customs staff and the Treasury. If this process could be repeated often enough, John Bull might soon be willing to come to terms.

In this paper we shall try to do three things: first, to describe the economic conditions which prevailed before the arrival of Commodore Perry; second, to survey the economic policy of the Shogunate and the Meiji Government in responding to the impact of the opening up of the country; and third, to make a few general comments on some selected aspects of Japan's economic development between 1859, when three Japanese ports were opened to foreign trade, and 1894, when the Sino-Japanese War broke out. The latter date is chosen because it fairly clearly marks off the beginning of the rapid development of the modern sector of the Japanese economy.

During the course of U.S. economic development, the institutions used to organize agricultural labor have undergone interesting and sometimes puzzling transformations. The transitions from wage contracting to tenancy observed in the post-bellum South and in nineteenth-century Iowa have been studied extensively.2 This paper evaluates the relatively neglected transition from wage labor to tenancy that occurred in the California fruit orchards during the period 1900–1910.3 Before 1903 Chinese and Japanese orchard workers were organized via the padrone system of wage labor, but in an abrupt series of events there ensued a shift into tenancy so dramatic that by 1909 contemporary observers noted that virtually all orchards were under tenant control. The fact that the new tenants were recent Japanese immigrants prompted investigations by the Immigration Commission as well as other agencies so that this particular shift into tenancy is documented in greater detail than those occurring in the South and in Iowa.

The only official measure of overall Soviet munitions output in World War II, first published in 1965, was based on changes in values, not volumes, and grossly understates change in the level of real Soviet war production. Subsequently published official data on production of ground and air munitions in physical units, supplemented by information about real spending on naval munitions, provide foundations for a new index. During the war the USSR produced more munitions than Great Britain or Germany, but much less than the United States.

This paper examines the failures or in some cases near-failures of financial institutions that started the 12 most severe peacetime financial panics in the United States, beginning with the Panic of 1819 and ending with the Panic of 2008. The following generalizations were true in most cases, although not in all. (1) Panics were triggered by a short series of failures or near-failures; (2) many of the failing institutions were what we would now call shadow banks; (3) typically, the source of trouble was an excessive investment in real estate; and (4) typically, they had outstanding reputations for trustworthiness, prudence, and financial acumen—before they failed. It appears that in these respects the Panic of 2008 was an old-school panic.

[a panic] occurs when a succession of unexpected failures has created in the mercantile, and sometimes also in the non-mercantile public a general distrust in each other’s solvency; disposing every one not only to refuse fresh credit, except on very onerous terms, but to call in, if possible all credit which he has already given.

—John Stuart Mill

All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.

—Peter Pan

Religious communities are important providers of social insurance. We show that risk associated with oil dependence facilitated the proliferation of religious communities throughout the U.S. South during the twentieth century. Known oil abundance predicts higher rates of church membership, which are not driven by selective migration or local economic development. Consistent with a social insurance channel, greater oil price volatility increases effects, while greater access to credit, state-level social insurance, and private insurance crowd out effects. Religious communities limit spillovers of oil price shocks across sectors, reducing increases in unemployment following a negative shock by about 30 percent.

The United State has experienced tremendous improvements in its standard of living over the past hundred years, as have most nations in the developed world.This dissertation was completed at Ohio State University under the supervision of Richard Steckel. We now accept as necessities many things that our grandparents would have considered to be luxuries; we also enjoy countless goods, devices, and services completely unknown a century ago. Far fewer workers are required to produce the necessities of life that we now consume, and therefore an increasing number of us have time to devote to leisure activities, such as entertainment and recreation.