Is the top tail of wealth a set of fixed individuals or is there substantial turnover? We estimate upper-tail wealth dynamics during the Gilded Age and beyond, a time of rapid wealth accumulation and concentration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Using various wealth proxies and data...

We examine the social construction of race during the United States' Reconstruction Era, a critical juncture between slavery and Jim Crow segregation. We show that people with the same detailed skin tone, recorded by the Freedman's Bank (1865-1874), were more likely racialized as White or...

PART I: Overview Introduction 1. Theories on social spending and the Welfare State Part II: Social Protection Before the Welfare State 2. The Scope of Poor Relief and Self-Help: from the mid-19th century to the 1930s 2. Appendix Part III: The Construction of the Welfare State 3. Backwardness,...

"Whether loving or hating it, many visualize capitalism as an unstoppable juggernaut. For those of us who would defeat it, we must identify its weaknesses. Fortunately, Marx and Engels' writings on "crisis" reveal them. They show how its endless imposition of exploitative and alienating work...

A turbulent take-off : the early years of Chile's LAN Airline, 1929-1938 -- The Chilean industrialization project and the consolidation of LAN, 1938-1952 -- The state airline and the first liberalization of the air transport market, 1952-1958 -- The consolidation of LAN in a changing political...