Among countries colonized by European powers during the past 500 years those that were relatively rich in 1500 are now relatively poor. We document this reversal using data on urbanization patterns and population density, which, we argue, proxy for economic prosperity. This reversal is...

Given fiscal constraints, how did colonial states allocate coercion within their territories? This paper proposes a new explanation for variation in colonial coercion: the extent of pre-colonial state consolidation. When the pre-colonial state achieved control over local society via capture of...

This paper explores the origins and effects of occupational licensing regulation in late nineteenth and early twentieth century America. Was licensing regulation introduced to limit competition in the market for professional services at the expense of efficiency? Or was licensing adopted to...

The United States led all other nations in the development of universal and publicly-funded secondary school education and much of the growth occurred from 1910 to 1940. The focus here is on the reasons for the high school movement' in American generally and why it occurred so early and swiftly...

This is the second of two papers that generate and analyze quantitative estimates of the development of English caselaw and associated legal ideas before the Industrial Revolution. In the first paper, we estimated a 100-topic structural topic model, named the topics, and showed how to interpret...

This paper develops an analytical framework for studying colonial investment from the perspective of neoclassical political economy. The distinguishing feature of colonial investment in this model is that the metropolitan government restricts the amount of investment in the colony in order to...

During the past 15 years employment and current dollar gross product continued to shift to the Service sector at about the same rate as in the early post-World War II period, while the Service sector's share of gross product in constant dollars remained relatively constant. Productivity (as...

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers, researchers, and journalists have made comparisons to World War II. In 1940, a group of top U.S. science administrators organized a major coordinated research effort to support the Allied war effort, including significant investments in...

Klappentext: Albanien 1989: Der letzte stalinistische Aussenposten in Europa, ein isoliertes Land, das man nur schwer besuchen und noch schwerer verlassen kann. Es herrschen Mangelwirtschaft, Geheimpolizei und das Proletariat. Der Kommunismus hat den Platz der Religion übernommen. Für die...