Economics 129: American Economic History
J-L
Rosenthal (jlr at hss.caltech.edu) Bunche 133.
T-TH:
9:10:30
Rather
than teach American economic history as a list of topic through time, we will
look at the record of American economic performance through two lense: Technical change and financial development. You can
all read a text book, but you have analytical skills that should make a
conversation more interesting around topics that are more technical (both in
content and form)
The
reading assign are research articles. Should you want more background you can
consult two text books (Attack and Passel “a new economic view of economic
history” or Walton and Rokoff, History of the American Economy) or the
Cambridge Economic History of the U.S all of which are on reserve.
If
you have data questions, the Historical Statistics of the U.S. are a wonderful
on line resource
http://hsus.cambridge.org/HSUSWeb/HSUSEntryServlet.
Each
class will be organized as follows, we will discuss the assigned reading during
the first half hour, you are encouraged to seek out
connections across the readings (both those assigned for the day and those that
we have seen before). In the second half of the section I will lecture on the
material to come.
Work
expectation
Reading:
each class meeting has one or two readings. You must complete at least of these
and respond to the relevant queries. This task should require an hour or an
hour and half of your time.
Writing:
To insure that you are able to participate, you must turn in a paragraph of
writing with each class, on one of the readings for the day. It must answer one
of the questions for that day.
Complete set of reading questions
Examinations:
beyond the class assignments , there will be a mid term (handed out a the end of
the section of technology) and a final at the end of the class.
READING LIST
Introduction
to Growth over the long term.
Day
1: Introduction to growth
No
reading
Day
2: Markets and Inequality
Engerman,
Stanley, and Kenneth Sokoloff, 1997. Factor
Endowments: Institutions, and Differential Paths of Growth
Among New World Economies: A View from Economic Historians of the
United States,” in S. Haber ed. How Latin
America Fell Behind: Essays on the Economic Histories of Brazil and Mexico,
1800-1914.
Abramovitz,
Moses, and Paul David, 2000, American
Macroeconomic in the Era of Knowledge-Based Progress: The Long-Run Perspective,
Chapter 1 Vol. 3 of Engerman and Gallman,
eds. The Cambridge Economic
History of the United States.
Day
3: Social Savings
Fogel,
Robert: “Notes on
the Social Saving Controversy “ The Journal of Economic History
Vol. 39, No. 1, (Mar., 1979), pp. 1-54,
Summerhill,
William, 2005, Big Social Savings in a Small Laggard Economy:
Railroad-Led Growth in Brazil. The Journal of Economic History.
Technological
change
A.
Agricultural productivity and Biological technology
Fogel, Robert, and Engerman Stanley, 1977. Explaining the
Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture in the Antebellum South. The American Economic Review, Vol. 67, No. 3 pp. 275-296
Day
2: Animals and Public Policy
Gary
Libecap. The
Rise of the Chicago Packers and the Origins of Meat Inspection and Antitrust,
Economic Inquiry, April 1992.
B.
Technology as embodied in machines
Day
1: Speed
Landes,
David, 1979, Watchmaking:
A Case Study in Enterprise and Change The Business History Review, Vol.
53, No. 1, (Spring, 1979), pp. 1-39.
C.
Technical change, skills and education
Day
1: Learning by markets
Ross Thomson,
forthcoming, Chapters
2 and 8 of Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age: Technological Innovation in
the United States, 1790 to 1865.
Sokoloff,
Kenneth. 1984 “Was
the Transition from the Artisanal Shop to the Non-mechanized Factory Associated
with Gains in productivity?” Volume 21,(4),
pp.351-382.
Day
2: Education, Skills and race
Goldin
Claudia, 2001. The Human-Capital
Century and American Leadership: Virtues of the Past” Journal of Economic History, Vol
61 (2) 263-92.
Whatley, Warren C.,1990. “Getting a
Foot in the Door: "Learning," State Dependence, and the Racial
Integration of Firms” The Journal of Economic History,
Vol. 50, , pp. 43-66
D. Patents and the market for ideas
Day 1: The market for Ideas
Sokoloff, Kenneth L. and B. Zorina Khan, 1990. “The
Democratization of Invention During Early Industrialization: Evidence from the
United States, 1790-1846” The Journal of Economic History,
Vol. 50 (2):363-378.
Lamoreaux,
Naomi R., Kenneth L. Sokoloff, and Dhanoos Sutthiphisal, 2008 “The Reorganization of Inventive Activity in the
United States in the Early Twentieth Century”
Day
2: Patents and the creation of knowledge
Lo
Shih-Tse and Dhanoos Sutthiphisal, "Crossover
Inventions and Knowledge Diffusion of General Purpose Technologies? Evidence
from the Electrical Technology" (with Shih-tse
Lo) NBER Working
Paper No. 14043, May 2008
Khan
Zorina, 2008. Premium
Inventions: Patents and Prizes as Incentive Mechanisms in Britain and the
United States, 1750-1930.
MIDTERM
Financial
development
Lecture
a. Financial markets in
international perspective
Day 1: Capital
markets
Davis, Lance and
Robert Cull “International Capital Mouvements, Domestic Capital Markets, and
American Economic Growth, 1820-1914,” Chapter 16 Vol. 2 of Engerman and
Gallman, eds. The Cambridge Economic
History of the United States.
Rajan,
Raghuram and Luigi Zingales,
The Great Reversals: The Politics of Financial Development in the 20th
Century" (joint with R.) Journal of Financial Economics, Vol.
69 Issue 1, 5-50 , July 2003.
Day 2: Banks
Stephen Haber. Industrial Concentration and the Capital Markets: A Comparative Study of Brazil, Mexico, and the United States, 1830-1930.” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Sep., 1991), pp. 559-580.
Naomi R Lamoreaux, Banks,
Kinship, and Economic Development: The New England Case.” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 46, No. 3
(Sep., 1986), pp. 647-667
b. Financing
Growth and Crises
Day 1: Mortgages and Crises
Kenneth Snowden:
"The Evolution of Interregional Mortgage Lending, 1870‑1940: The
Life Insurance-Mortgage Company Connection. In Coordination and
Information: Historical Perspectives on the Organization of Enterprise,
Univ. of Chicago, 1995, 209-47.
Kenneth Snowden: The Spatial Character of Housing Depression in the 1930s.”
Day 2 Watching over the Capitalists
J Bradford DeLong, 1995. “Did J-P Morgan add Value?” Coordination and
Information: Historical Perspectives on the Organization of Enterprise,
Univ. of Chicago, 1995, 209-47.
Lamoreaux,
Naomi and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, “Corporate
Governance and the Plight of Minority Shareholders in the United States before
the Great Depression.” In E. Glazer and C.
Goldin eds. Corruption and Reform:
Lessons from America’s History. University of Chicago
Press. 2006, 125-152.
C. The political
Economy of Financial market Regulation
Day 1: Banks
Sylla, Richard, 1969.
Federal Policy, Banking Market
Structure, and Capital Mobilization in the United States, 1863-1913. The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 29, No. 4
(Dec., 1969), pp. 657-686.
Rajan, Raghuram G., and Rodney Ramcharan 2008, Landed Interests And Financial Underdevelopment In The United States. NBER working paper
Day 2: Firms and
Markets
Hilt, Eric, 2007, When did Ownership Separate from Control? Corporate Governance in the Early Nineteenth Century:. Journal of Economic History 68, no. 3 (September 2008): 645-685. (GOT TO JOURNAL THROUGH LIBRARY)
Becht, Marco and J.
Bradford DeLong “Why Has There Been So Little Blockholding in America?” Text; Figures,
Day
3: The capital market
Mary O’Sullivan, “Living With the US Financial System: The Experiences Of General Electric And Westinghouse Electric In The Last Century.” Business history review 2006
Musacchio,
Aldo, 2008. Can Civil Law Countries Get Good Institutions? Lessons from the
History of Credit and Bond Markets in Brazil” The Journal of Economic History , Volume 68,
Issue 01,
March 2008, pp 80-108. (GOT TO JOURNAL
THROUGH LIBRARY)
Pope,
Clayne, “Measuring the Distribution of Well-Being”
2003
Piketty, Thomas and Saez Emmanuel, "Income Inequality
in the United States, 1913-1998" Quarterly Journal of Economics,
118(1), 2003, 1-39
Frydman,
Carola and Raven Saks, 2008. “Executive Compensation:
A New View from a Long-Run Perspective, 1936-2005” mimeo