Do factor endowments explain serfdom? Domar (1970) conjectured that high land-labor ratios caused serfdom by increasing incentives to coerce labor. But historical evidence is mixed and quantitative analyses are lacking. Using the Acemoglu-Wolitzky (2011) framework and controlling for political...

This article presents an analysis of occupational structure, a key component of the ‘Little Divergence’, in an eastern‐central European economy under the second serfdom, using data on 6,983 Bohemian villages in 1654. Non‐agricultural activity was lower than in western Europe, but varied...

This paper analyzes the rural-urban migration of families in the Bohemian region of Pilsen in 1900. Using a new 1300-family dataset from the 1900 population census I examine the role of children‘s education in rural-urban migration. I find that families migrated to the city such that the...

This paper constructs an estimate of the total personal income for every U.S state in 1880, 1890, 1900, and 1910. The series includes new figures for 1890 and 1910, and updated figures for 1880 and 1900, which were originally estimated by Richard Easterlin more than fifty years ago. The...

We provide annual estimates of GDP for England between 1270 and 1700 and for Great Britain between 1700 and 1870, constructed from the output side. The GDP data are combined with population estimates to calculate GDP per capita. We find English per capita income growth of 0.20 per cent per annum...

This paper investigates the ability of the new economic geography to explain the persistence of the manufacturing belt in the United States around the turn of the 20th century using a model which subsumes both market-potential and factor-endowment arguments. The results show that market...