This collection of twelve essays is based on the premise that a better understanding of the economic development process can be gained by studying the history of those countries that have experienced long-term economic success, in this case the United States during the nineteenth century - that...

We construct decadal estimates of GDP per capita for the colonies and states of the Mid-Atlantic region between 1720 and 1800. They show that the region likely achieved modest improvements in per capita GDP over this period despite a number of demographic factors that tended to slow the pace of...

There were substantial fluctuations in the number of American overseas travelers, especially before World War Two. These fluctuations in travel around the long-term upward trend are the focus of this paper. We first identify those fluctuations in the data and then try to explain the patterns. We...

For the past generation scholars have emphasized that the Lower South was one of the most economically successful regions of British mainland North America, and perhaps the most successful. Planters, the primary economic actors, made extensive use of slave labor and created a successful...

We model the relationship between local agricultural surpluses, nutritional status, and height, and we test the hypothesis that adult height is positively correlated with the local production of nutrition in infancy. We test the hypothesis on two samples of Union Army recruits - one consisting...