Simple Malthusian models remain an important tool for understanding pre-modern demographic systems and their connection to the economy. But most recent literature has lost sight of the institutional context for demographic behavior that lay at the heart of Malthus's own analysis. This paper...

We use the history of private limited liability companies (PLLCs) to challenge two pervasive assumptions in the literature: (1) Anglo-American legal institutions were better for economic development than continental Europe’s civil-law institutions; and (2) the corporation was the superior form...

The decline of human fertility that occurred in Europe and North America in the nineteenth century, and elsewhere in the twentieth century, remains a topic of debate largely because there is no accepted explanation for the event. Disagreement persists in part because researchers have rarely used...

Banks play a greater role in the German financial system than in the United States or Britain. Germany's large universal banks are admired by those who advocate bank deregulation in the United States. Others admire the universal banks for their supposed role in corporate governance and...

Economic enterprises face two, related, managerial problems: effective management of the enterprise's activities, and communicating to outsiders that the enterprise is in fact well-run. These problems were especially difficult in the credit cooperative movement that grew up in Germany in the...

Research on 'trust' now forms a prominent part of the research agenda in history and the social sciences. Although this research has generated useful insights, the idea of trust has been used so widely and loosely that it risks creating more confusion than clarity. This essay argues that to the...

The 1953 London Debt Agreement settled Germany's debts from the period between the two world wars, and allowed the country to re-establish its role in international capital markets. The Agreement wrote-down the overall debt by about 50 percent and gave the debtors a much longer period to repay....

Responsibility for the tremendous excess mortality associated with the Great Irish Famine of 1846-51 is a continuing topic of debate. One view blames an inadequate government response for much of the tragedy. These debates are hampered by a lack of detailed information on how well relief efforts...

The historical fertility transition is the process by which much of Europe and North America went from high to low fertility in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This transformation is central to recent accounts of long-run economic growth. Prior to the transition, women bore as many...