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This paper assembles heating fuel prices for the U.S. state of Vermont, from the colonial era to the present, in order to test whether energy fuel prices and energy service prices have diverged over this time period. Prior authors have reported evidence of a significant difference between long run energy fuel prices and energy service prices. However, this is the first analysis to pose this question beginning in the context of colonial America. In accord with earlier work focused in the U.K. the paper reports a significant divergence in fuel and service prices. In this setting real heating fuel prices increased over the 220 year time period by a factor of between 15 and 20. In contrast, heating service prices increased by a factor of two. Expressed in labor units, heating service prices have fallen in Vermont by 25%, while fuel prices were essentially flat. Finally, over this two century time period in Vermont and the U.K., the rate of change in service prices expressed in labor units is remarkably similar: − 1.1% and − 0.9%, per annum, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reexamines the first viable and a still leading explanation for mid-twentieth century baby booms: Richard Easterlin's relative income hypothesis. He suggested that when incomes are higher than material aspirations (formed in childhood), birth rates would rise. This paper uses microeconomic data to formulate a measure of an individual's relative income. The use of microeconomic data allows the researcher to control for both state fixed effects and cohort fixed effects, both have been absent in previous examinations of Easterlin's hypothesis. The results of the empirical analysis are consistent with Easterlin's assertion that relative income influenced fertility decisions, although the effect operates only through childhood income. When the estimated effects are contextualized, they explain 12% of the U.S. baby boom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Theories of cartel stability assume detection is uncertain, but also unambiguous. Recent empirical studies find that cartel agreements are contractually incomplete. If so, whether an action constitutes violation may be ambiguous. While theory emphasizes the ineffectiveness of agreements that are not fully specified ex ante, recent research shows that stable cartels may often renegotiate terms to eliminate loopholes caused by incompleteness. Naturally, renegotiations can lead to breakdowns, but sometimes threats of breakdown are resolved. This paper examines the strategy adopted by Cuban negotiators to resolve a near breakdown in the International Sugar Agreement of 1931. Cuba made a threat of retaliation credible by using a strategy of brinkmanship. The paper contributes to recent empirical work, such as Levenstein [Explorations in Economic History 33 (1996) 107; Journal of Industrial Economics 45 (2) (1997) 117] and Genesove and Mullin [American Economic Review 91 (3) (2001) 379], which uses the economics of organization to interpret cartel behavior. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Many people believe that the early development of sovereign debt depended on institutions, but there are two very different ways of presenting this narrative and two very different conclusions one might draw for sovereign debt today. According to the first, this was an impartial story involving executive constraints, shared governance, increased monitoring, and increased transparency — in other words things that sound unambiguously good. According to the second narrative this was a story of distributive politics. States had the best access to credit when institutions gave government creditors privileged access to decision making while restricting the influence of those who paid the taxes to reimburse debts. This was a situation where institutions fostered commitment, but at a cost, and sometimes they may not even have been welfare enhancing. In this paper I present evidence from seven centuries of European history, and I suggest that available data support the distributive politics interpretation. I then draw implications for how we think about the politics of sovereign debt today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic historians have long been aware of many forms of bias that could lead to spurious causal inferences. However, our approach to these biases has been muddled at times by dealing with each bias separately and by confusion about the sources of bias and how to mitigate them. This paper shows how the methodology of directed acyclical graphs (DAGs) formulated by Pearl (2009) and particularly the concept of collider bias can provide economic historians with a unified approach to managing a wide range of biases that can distort causal inference. I present ten examples of collider bias drawn from economic history research, focussing mainly on examples where the authors were able to overcome or mitigate the bias. Thus, the paper addresses how to diagnose collider bias and also strategies for managing it. The paper also shows that quasi-random experimental designs are rarely able to overcome collider bias. Although all of these biases were understood by economic historians before, conceptualising them as collider bias will improve economic historians' understanding of the limitations of particular sources and help us develop better research designs in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the Great Depression, the Canadian government embarked on a stunning reversal in its commercial policy. A key element of its response was the promotion of intra-imperial trade at the Imperial Economic Conference of 1932. This paper addresses whether or not Canada was able to defy gravity and divert trade flows towards other signatories at Ottawa. The results suggest that the conference was a failure from this perspective. Potential sources of this failure include unreasonable expectations about the likely reductions in trade costs and a neglect of key considerations related to certainty and credibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Training through apprenticeship provided the main mechanism for occupational human capital formation in pre-industrial England. This paper demonstrates how training premiums (fees) complemented the formal legal framework surrounding apprenticeship to secure training contracts. Premiums varied in response to scarcity rents, the expected productivity of masters and apprentices, and served as compensation for the anticipated risk of default. In most trades premiums were small enough to allow access to apprenticeship training for youths from modest families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses demographic data drawn from Wrigley et al.'s (1997) family reconstitutions of 26 English parishes to adjust Allen's (2001) real wages to the changing demography of early modem England. Using parity progression ratios (a fertility measure) and age specific mortality for children and parents, model families are predicted in two reference periods 1650-1700 and 1750-1800. These models yield two levels of interesting results. At the individual family level, we can measure how different families' real wages changed over the family life cycle as additional children were born. At the aggregate level, we can predict thousands of families using Monte Carlo simulation, creating a realistic distribution of median family real wages in the economy. There are two main findings. First, pregnancy and lactation do not create cyclical effects in the family's income. Instead, most families' welfare ratios decline steadily across the family life cycle until children begin to leave the household, increasing the welfare ratios. Second, Allen's real wages understate or match the median of the predicted demography-adjusted distributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new econometric model for analysing population growth at the village and town level. It develops and applies a theory of the equilibrium distribution of population over space. The theory emphasises geographical fundamentals, such as rivers as transport corridors, and soil types that govern agricultural specialisation; also institutional factors such as town government, market charters and the concentration of land ownership. Nineteenth century Oxfordshire is used as a case study, but the method can also be applied at a multi-county and national level. The results show that the development of railways in nineteenth-century Oxfordshire accelerated a long-term shake-out in the market system, whereby rural markets disappeared and urban markets grew. This shake-out had significant implications for population growth at the local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 19th century, the Spanish economy went through the early stages of the industrialisation process. This process developed in parallel to the growing market integration of goods and factors as a result of the liberal reforms and the construction of the railway network, with the subsequent fall in transport costs. In that period, there were major changes in the pattern of industrial location across Spain, with an increasing spatial concentration of industrial activities between the 1850s and the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and a deeper regional specialisation. What were the forces behind these changes? On the theoretical side, the Heckscher-Ohlin model suggests that the spatial distribution of economic activity is determined by comparative advantage due to factor endowments. In turn, New Economic Geography models show the existence of a bell-shaped relationship between the process of market integration and the degree of concentration of industrial activity in the territory. This paper examines empirically the determinants of industrial location in Spain between 1856 and 1929 estimating a model that nests both Heckscher-Ohlin and NEG factors and tests the relative strength of these forces, since they are not mutually exclusive and might be at work simultaneously. The analysis of the results shows that both comparative advantage and NEG-type mechanisms were determinant drivers of industrial location in Spain, although their relative strength changed over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper answers the following question. If returns from smuggling cotton and contraband through the blockade of Confederate ports during the American Civil War were significantly lower than earnings from alternative investments, why did private firms so quickly adopt costly purpose-built steam ships in the face of the strengthening Northern blockade? First, we note that the rate of diffusion of steam ships, specially designed to run the blockade significantly exceeded any reported for innovations from the late 19th or early 20th century. Second, we correct an error in Stanley Lebergott's (1981) seminal work and conclude that that returns to infamous steamer, the Banshee (I) of 700% to be quite plausible. This finding of high returns is confirmed by two other historical sources, which have not been previously used. Additionally, we calculate that investors in the one of the leading blockade running firms, known as the Bee Company, earned in excess of 86% return on their investment, over double the profits previously reported. Finally, we demonstrate that adoption of purpose-built ships, significantly decreased the arrival rate of capture, thus increasing expected profits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign influence on South China increasingly disrupted the economy from the late eighteenth century. Many scholars believe the standard of living fell, while others point to positive gains from increased integration with the world economy. The paper estimates the secular trend in the average height of the southern Chinese in the nineteenth century based on data from prison registers in colonial Australia. Contrary to the pessimist view, height began to decline obviously only from the 1850s, a product of the dislocation effects of revolts and rebellions. At 163–164cm, the Chinese were of similar stature to the military conscripts of some European countries in the early-to-mid nineteenth century. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper examines the role of mechanical refrigeration in seasonality and structural change in the U.S. hog–corn cycle, 1870–1940. This period covers an era in which the widespread adoption of mechanical refrigeration greatly affected the ability to store and transport perishable commodities. These developments in turn altered the seasonal production and price structure for many commodities, including pork. We use a new class of time series models, time-varying smooth transition autoregressions (TV-STARs), to document both the structural change and the nonlinear features observed in seasonal patterns for the U.S. hog–corn price relationship during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper analyzes the role of political rent-seeking in New Deal expenditures focusing on the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). Unlike other New Deal agencies, the RFC was not financed by government appropriations, it devolved assistance decisions, and primarily offered loans rather than grants. Although the RFC was subject to pressures for political favor during the Great Depression, the geographic distribution of RFC funds across states is not associated with standard political measures used to examine rent-seeking behavior in other studies of the New Deal. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper explores the political economy of anti-discrimination legislation during the ascendancy of the Civil Rights Movement. It traces the diffusion of state-level fair employment laws and evaluates the relative importance of various demographic, political, and economic factors in promoting such legislation. Activism by Jewish organizations, the NAACP, and unions (particularly the CIO) were key factors in securing the adoption of fair employment legislation. Less unemployment, a larger Catholic population, more competitive political systems, and Democratic governorships appear to have been less important. Predicted times for the adoption of fair employment laws by the southern states underscore the necessity of federal intervention to establish legal protection from job market discrimination. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]