The Erie Canal was a mammoth public works project undertaken largely because the scope of the investment was beyond what a private firm could manage during the early 19th century. As with most public works, there were ample opportunities for public officials to realize private gains from the...

Although we cannot conceive of processes of economic growth that do not involve institutional change, in this essay we outline some reasons why one should be cautious about grounding a theory of growth on institutions. We emphasize how very different institutional structures have often been...

Over the last few years, colonialism, especially as pursued by Europeans, has enjoyed a revival in interest among both scholars and the general public. Although a number of new accounts cast colonial empires in a more favorable light than has generally been customary, others contend that...

Most analysis of how the distribution of political power affects the patterns of growth has been confined to the late-twentieth century. One problem associated with a focus on the modern record is that processes that take place over the long run are not examined. We may all agree that...

For those who think of Cleveland as a decaying rustbelt city, it may seem difficult to believe that this northern Ohio port was once a hotbed of high-tech startups, much like Silicon Valley today. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Cleveland played a leading role in the...

The first half of the nineteenth century was a critical juncture regarding the emergence of female participation in the market economy, the increase in the wage of females relative to that of adult males, and the evolution of large scale firms in both mechanized and non-mechanized industries. We...

We argue that the emergence of a well-developed market for patented technologies over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries facilitated the emergence of a group of highly specialized and productive inventors by making it possible for them to transfer to others responsibility for...

There are few more dramatic episodes in economic history than the displacement of the artisanal shop by the factory during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution as the predominant form of manufacturing organization. Despite the attention this development has received, however, the issues...

Scholars have attempted to explain geographic clustering in inventive activity by arguing that it is connected with clustering in production or new investment. They have offered three possible reasons for this link: because invention occurs as a result of learning by doing; because new...

That investment in human capital has made an important contribution to the increase of labor productivity and per capita income during the last several centuries is widely acknowledged. While much of the research on this issue has focused on education, many scholars have also directed attention...