This paper explores the pattern of agricultural productivity across 19th century Prussia to gain new insights on the causes of the ÒLittle DivergenceÓ between European regions. We argue that access to urban demand was the dominant factor explaining the gradient of agricultural productivity as...

We examine the geography of cotton textiles in Britain in 1838 to test claims about why the industry came to be so heavily concentrated in Lancashire. Our analysis considers both first and second nature aspects of geography including the availability of water power, humidity, coal prices, market...

Geography made rural society in the south-east of England unequal. Economies of scale in grain growing created a farmer elite and many landless labourers. In the pastoral north-west, in contrast, family farms dominated, with few hired labourers and modest income disparities. Engerman and...

We consider the relative contributions of changing technology and institutions for economic growth through the investigation of a natural experiment in history: the almost simultaneous introduction of the automatic cream separator and the cooperative ownership form in the Danish dairy industry...

Long-range market integration is an essential component of globalization but it is still comparatively under-researched. The conventional wisdom relies heavily on the case of Atlantic trade in the period after 1870. This paper covers also the Indian Ocean and extends the period under...

This paper presents a new picture of the labor market effects of technological change in pre-WWII United States. I show that, similar to the recent computerization episode, the electrification of the manufacturing sector led to a "hollowing out" of the skill distribution whereby workers in the...

Very few empirical studies have analyzed the labor market performance of internal migrants in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Using a new dataset, this article examines the occupational attainment of migrants, mostly internal migrants, in the city of Barcelona. We find that, in...