This paper reassesses and extends Hawke’s passenger railway social savings for England and Wales. Better estimates of coach costs and evidence that third class passengers would otherwise have walked reduce Hawke’s social savings by two-thirds. We calculate railway speeds, and the amount and...

This paper uses newly available census evidence to portray changes in labour market outcomes in Canada between 1891 and 1911. Multiple census cross-sections allow for the documentation of how the location, occupation, and earnings of Canadian and foreign-born cohorts changed over time. The...

One of the many miracles of Victorian Britain’s market economy was that it worked most efficiently when it was left to regulate itself – or at least, this is what the great majority of Victorians believed. The prevailing economic orthodoxy throughout the nineteenth century assumed, following...

This study uses two samples of linked adult males to examine wealth accumulation by region and occupation between 1850 and 1870. Consistent with past research, the findings here show that wealth accumulation was substantial in the South in the 1850s and stagnant in the 1860s. The findings also...

Economic historians explaining the divergent economic path in North and South America over time focus on the post-independence period in the former British or Spanish colonies. Their institutional explanation for Latin American economic backwardness is anchored in the political disorder that...