In recent decades the United States has experienced a pronounced widening of its wage structure. For the most part, analysis of the recent rise in wage inequality has taken place with the benefits of hindsight?that is, without placing recent changes in the wage structure in historical context....

Data from the manuscript census of manufacturing are used to estimate the effects of the length of the working day on output and wages. We find that the elasticity of output with respect to daily hours worked was positive but less than one - implying diminishing returns to increases in working...

In the United States today the academic field of economic history is much closer to economics than it is to history in terms of professional behavior, a stylized fact that I call the “integration of economic history into economics”. I document this using two types of evidence – use of...