Synopses & Reviews
Volume 22 of Research in Economic History contains six papers. Three are on agriculture and two on macro issues related to the Great Depression. A concluding paper examines trends in interstate migration in the United States.
Fred Pryor begins the volume with a provocative exploration of the degree to which the Neolithic revolution was in fact revolutionary. Pryor argues for a considerably lesser break with the past than has been commonly asserted. He maintains, in particular, that hunter-gatherer methods of procuring subsistence persisted alongside a continuum of agricultural practices. His evidence is drawn largely from records of surviving hunter-gatherer societies.
Moving forward 10 millennia, Gregory Clark provides details of his construction of an annual price series for English net agricultural output from 1209 to 1914. Clark incorporates fresh archival material with existing published series, using consistent methods to build and aggregate 26 component series.
In the third paper on farming, Giovanni Federico estimates world agricultural production from 1800 to 1938. He concludes that output grew more rapidly than population, and did so on all continents, although more rapidly in countries of Western settlement and in Eastern Europe than in Asia or in Western Europe. Federico also finds that output grew faster before World War One than in the inter-war years, and resulted over time in an increase in the share of livestock products.
Continuing into the twentieth century, we have two papers on the Great Depression. First, Barry Eichengreen and Kris Mitchener explore the degree to which the seeds of economic downturn were sown during the 1920s, particularly through excessive credit creation. The authors develop quantitative measures of credit expansion and ask how well these indicators account for uneveness in the twenties expansion as well as the depth and severity of the depression in individual countries. They complement this macro analysis with sectoral studies of real estate, consumer durables, and high-tech sectors.
Jakob Madsen's contribution is also based on an examination of depression macro history in a number of countries, but his focus is on output and labor rather than credit markets. he explores the perennial questions of how sticky were wages and prices and whether such stickiness played a significant casual role in the rise of unemployment. Contrary to many models that assume or assert that prices are inherently more flexible than nominal wages, Madsen finds the reverse: prices adjusted slowly to changes in nominal wages, and this stickiness played a role in propagating economic depression.
Finally, Josh Rosenbloom and Bill Sundstrom explore changing rates of interstate migration by examining individual-level data from population censuses available in the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS). Their central finding is that propensities to migrate within the United States have traced out a U-shaped pattern, tending to fall between 1850 and 1900 and then, during the twentieth century, rising until around 1970.
Synopsis
This volume of Research in Economic History includes eight papers. Five were submitted through regular channels and three papers which were solicited at the conference Toward a Global History of Prices and Wages. Following is Nonnenmachers study of the early years of the telegraph industry in the United States. The third paper is Herranz-Loncans estimates of the growth of the Spanish infrastructure between 1844 and 1935. Then there are two papers based on microeconomic data. The first is the investigation by James, Palumbo and Thomas of late nineteenth century saving among working class families in the United States. The second is Murrays study of the operation of pioneering sickness insurance schemes in several European countries between 1895 and 1908. Finally, the three papers from the conference. In the first of these papers, Pamuk studies trends in urban construction workers wages in the Eastern Mediterranean over almost a millennium. The following paper by Bassino and Ma examines wages of Japanese unskilled workers between 1741 and 1913. In the final paper, Ward and Devereux present estimates of the relative income of the United Kingdom in comparison with that of the United States for 1831, 1839, 1849, 1859 and 1869.
Synopsis
Presents a study of the early years of the telegraph industry in the United States, estimates of the growth of the Spanish infrastructure between 1844 and 1935, and more. This book contains papers based on microeconomic data, on an investigation of late nineteenth century saving among working class families in the United States, and more.
Table of Contents
aph industry (T. Nonnenmacher). 3. The Spanish infrastructure stock, 1844-1935 (A. Herranz-Loncán). 4. Have American workers always been low savers? Patterns of accumulation among working households, 1885-1910. (J.A. James, M.G. Palumbo, M. Thomas). 5. Worker absenteeism under voluntary and compulsory sickness insurance: continental Europe, 1885-1908 (J.E. Murray). 6. Urban real wages around the Eastern Mediterranean in comparative perspective, 1100-2000 (S. Pamuk). 7. Japanese unskilled wages in international perspective, 1741-1913 (J.-P. Bassino, D. Ma). 8. Relative British and American income levels during the first industrial revolution (M. Ward, J. Devereux).