<jats:p>This article analyzes a newly constructed individual level dataset of every English death and probate from 1892–1992. This analysis shows that the twentieth century’s “Great Equalization” of wealth stalled in mid-century. The probate rate, which captures the pro...

<jats:p>The Cold War triggered the appearance of U.S.-sponsored re-distributive policies in Latin America with the goal of decreasing the influence of the Soviet Union. We study how organized groups of workers increased the intensity of one of the largest programs of th...

<jats:p>Will technical change spur conflicts in the labor market? In this study, we examine electricity adoption in Sweden during the first decades of the twentieth century. Exploiting that proximity to hydropowered plants shaped the electricity network independently of...

<jats:p>In the eighteenth century, Haiti was the world’s leading sugar producer, but when cane surged in the Caribbean in the early twentieth century, Haiti produced none. Instead, the land sat idle while workers emigrated to work on sugar plantations. I examine the hyp...

<jats:p>After several hundred years of a closed-door policy, Korea finally opened its ports in 1876. Historians have traditionally claimed that the port-opening was coerced by foreign countries, deteriorated the Korean economy, and led to Korea becoming a colony. We exa...

This article analyzes the revolutionary impact the tractor had on rural America and examines the economic, technological, and institutional factors governing the machine's diff-usion. Our simultaneous-equation regression model helps decipher the complex relationship bet...

<jats:p>The 1933 Ukrainian famine killed as many as 2.6 million people out of a population of 32 million. Historians offer three main explanations: weather, economic policies, genocide. This paper documents that (1) available data do not support weather as the main expl...