作者:Claremont Colleges; Pomona College
摘要:The period 1861 to 1920 witnessed sharp price convergence in British Indian grain markets. Previous research attributed this to the construction of railways. But tests examining price differences between districts provide surprisingly weak support for that hypothesis. Railways mattered, but seem capable of explaining only about 20 percent of the decline in price dispersion. One explanation may be that India was a partially integrated economy at the time of railroad expansion. Lines connecting ...
作者:University of South Carolina System; University of South Carolina Upstate
摘要:This article examines barriers that impeded the accumulation of land by African Americans in the postbellum South with a new data set of real estate transactions from 1880 Tennessee. We find that rates of purchase by African Americans differed little between plantation and non-plantation regions. We also find that parcels sold in plantation regions were relatively small, suggesting that African American accumulation of land was not hindered by plantation owners refusing to subdivide their prop...
作者:Harvard University
摘要:Why did independent inventors account for over half of U.S. patents by 1930 and more than three times the number granted to R&D firms? Using new data on patents and historical patent citations, I show that independents supplied high-quality innovations to a geographically broad market for ideas. Those close to large urban centers developed some of the most significant technological advances. Demand for independent inventions remained high during the growth of the corporate economy as firms con...
作者:California Institute of Technology