Winemaking firms in California and southern France are organized quite differently. In this dissertation, I describe and analyze the economic changes and the structure of capabilities that make vinification cooperatives appropriate in southern France but not in California. I apply recent...

The Connecticut River Valley (CRV) industrialized early, yet lacked nearly all of the factors that apparently underlay the successful industrialization of eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island and the Philadelphia region. Lamoreaux's model of bank insider lending was applied to explain this...

In December 1917, Woodrow Wilson issued an executive order exerting operational control over the railroads of the United States. During the year previous, the railroad system had collapsed, unable to either supply freight cars to shippers, or clear a backlog of cars in the Northeast. Traditional...

This dissertation charts intellectual changes in the way work is valued--both politically and socially--from the 1930s to the present day. It employs both historical and interepretivist methodologies in order to examine the instantiation of a public vision of work during the work relief programs...

This dissertation uses Fortune magazine to explore the relationship between professional corporate managers after 1920 and the cultural impulses of urban modernism which helped define them and their institutions. Fortune 's reporting, photography and design is part of the larger story of...

In answer to the long-standing question, what kinds of knowledge and skills should economics majors master, Lee Hansen has advocated a proficiencies approach. According to this approach, the teaching and learning of economics undergraduates should be based on the attainment of (six) specified...

The authors assess the impact of foreign graduate teaching associates (GTAs) on undergraduate economics instruction where the standard language for the majority of students is English. They find little evidence that foreign GTAs adversely affect grades in economics principles courses or...

Most states have adopted high school economics standards, but implementation efforts face two hurdles: evidence indicates that five or six college-level economics courses are needed for high school economics teachers and that stand-alone high school economics classes are more effective than...

Most studies of the determinants of understanding in economics focus on performance in a single course or standardized exam. Taking advantage of a large data set available at the U.S. Naval Academy (USNA), the authors examined the performance of economics majors over an entire curriculum. They...