A novel series of interest rates paid by the Corporation of London shows that interest rates in London declined by 350 basis points during the seventeenth century. The decline followed a similar pattern in Europe. Records from the Corporation’s archive provide evidence ...

I use new evidence from servant contracts, 1610–1890, to estimate male farm wages and the length of the work year in Japan. I show Japanese laborers were surprisingly poor and could only sustain 2–3 adults relative to 7 adults for the English. Japanese wages were the lo...

I use newly-developed data on Africa to estimate the effects of the international slave trades (circa 1500–1850) on the institutional structures of African economies and societies (circa 1900). I find that: (1) societies in slave catchment zones adopted slavery to defen...

Abundant land and strong property rights are conventionally viewed as key factors underpinning U.S. economic development success. This view relies on the “Pristine Myth” of an empty undeveloped land, but the abundant land of North America was already made productive and...

This study reveals the operation of the triangular settlement system for Asia’s silver absorption over the 1850s–60s, which contributed to the stabilization of the pre-1870 global monetary system. First, we demonstrate that the triangular settlement system among Britain...

We use data from marriage records in Murcia, Spain, in the eighteenth century to study the role of women in social mobility in the pre-modern era. Our measure of social standing is identification as a don or doña, an honorific denoting high, though not necessarily noble...

This paper documents the persistence of Southern slave owners in political power after the American Civil War. Using data from Texas, we show that former slave owners made up more than half of all state legislators until the late 1890s. Legislators with slave-owning bac...

This article provides an overview of wealth inequality in Germany during 1300–1850, introducing a novel database. We document four alternating phases of inequality decline and growth. The Black Death (1347–1352) led to inequality decline, until about 1450. Thereafter, i...