Market structure and the coal cartel in early nineteenth‐century England1

Using counterfactual competitive prices, the effect of the north‐east coal cartel on prices is estimated at 13–17 per cent between 1816 and 1845. Non‐cartel producers were highly responsive to price changes, and their threat to the cartel was made credible by market integration facilitated by canals. The spread of railways had little impact on the cartel's market power. Highly inelastic demand and responsive supply from other regions meant that deadweight losses from the cartel were insignificant throughout this period.     

The Public Works Loan Board and the growth of the state in nineteenth‐century England

The nineteenth‐century archive of the Public Works Loan Board (PWLB) has been overlooked by economic historians. Yet the archive reveals how the PWLB came to play a major part in the financing of new schools, water supplies and sewers in the 1870s. Ten thousand loan applications have been analysed to highlight the changing patterns of the PWLB's lending, while the 60 volumes of minutes indicate why the pattern changed. The analysis shows that in the 1870s there was a large rise in local infrastructure investment caused by the switch from permissive to compulsory public health and education legislation. At the same time, the PWLB became predominantly a low‐cost, rather than a market rate, lender. This change shows how MPs’ views developed as they became more sensitive to the impact of the local costs of parliamentary legislation. Overall, the activities of the PWLB illustrate the legislative and institutional changes that contributed significantly to the growth in the role and spending of the state.     

Explaining nineteenth‐century bilateralism: economic and political determinants of the Cobden–Chevalier network1

This study investigates the empirical determinants of the treaty network of the 1860s and 1870s. It makes use of three central theories about the determinants of Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) formation, considering economic fundamentals from neoclassical and ‘new’ trade theory, political‐economy variables, and international interaction due to trade diversion fears (dependence of later PTAs on former). These possible determinants are operationalized using a newly constructed dataset for bilateral cooperation and non‐cooperation among 13 European countries and the US. The results of logistic regression analysis show that the treaty network can be explained by a combination of ‘pure’ welfare‐oriented economic theory with political economy and international interaction models.     

Cottage industry,migration, and marriage in nineteenth‐century England

There has been considerable debate concerning the impact of the industrial employment of women upon their demographic behaviour in nineteenth‐century England. This article assesses the impact of employment in the cottage industry of straw plait and hat making in the county of Hertfordshire, comparing and contrasting districts where the industry was prominent with those where it was not. It is discovered that in 1851 the availability of straw industry employment encouraged earlier marriage, most notably in those parishes where the industry was particularly heavily concentrated, although overall levels of nuptiality and proportions ultimately marrying were similar in straw and non‐straw areas alike. By 1871, however, the skewed sex ratio that such employment produced among young adults served to offset this positive effect. As the industry waned in the later nineteenth century, the experience of different regions of the county converged, while throughout the period the data suggest that urban/rural contrasts and the suburbanization of London produced more stark contrasts in female marriage patterns than did the availability of cottage industry employment.     

Shipping and economic development in nineteenth‐century Ireland1

The tonnage of shipping entering and leaving Ireland grew rapidly from the late eighteenth century until the mid‐1870s, after which there was a distinct slowdown. The mid‐nineteenth century was notable for a five‐fold increase in shipping per capita, an indicator of the Irish economy’s increasing commercialization. The slowdown after 1870 would have been even greater without the industrial dynamism of Belfast, Ireland’s leading port from the 1880s. The early and rapid introduction of steamships from the 1820s made possible large‐scale exports of live animals and fresh eggs, products that would account for 60 per cent of agricultural exports and a quarter of total exports by 1910.     

Elites and the expansion of education in nineteenth‐century Sweden

A large literature emphasizes that elite capture of political institutions hampered the spread of mass schooling in the nineteenth and twentieth century. We collect new data on investments in elementary education and the distribution of voting rights for more than 2,000 local governments in nineteenth‐century Sweden and document that educational expenditure was higher where the distribution of political power was more unequal. In particular, areas governed by local landed elites—even those where a single landowner had de jure dictatorial powers—invested substantially more in mass schooling relative to areas where political power was more widely shared, or where it lay in the hands of capitalist elites. Our findings lend quantitative support to an earlier literature produced by economic and social historians which argues that landed elites advanced mass schooling as part of their historical role as patrons of the local community and as a response to the increasing proletarianization of the rural population, while also furthering our understanding of how Sweden maintained a high level of human capital despite its low level of economic development and restricted franchise in the nineteenth century.     

Cities,market integration,and going to sea: stunting and the standard of living in early nineteenth‐century England and Wales1

A new source, 1840s Admiralty seamen's tickets, is used to explore three anthropometric issues. First, did being born in a city, with its associated disamenities, lead to stunting? Second, did being born near a city, whose markets sucked away foodstuffs, lead to stunting? Third, did child labour lead to stunting? We find that only those born in very large cities suffered a level of stunting that contemporaries could have observed. Being born near a city, which gave parents opportunities to trade away family calories, and perhaps increased exposure to disease, did not cause stunting. Britain was a well‐integrated market; all families, whatever their locations, had options to trade and faced similar disease environments. Finally, although adults who had gone to sea young were shorter than those who did not enlist until fully grown, going to sea did not stunt. Instead, plentiful food at sea attracted stunted adolescents, who reversed most of their stunting as a result. But child labour at sea was different from other forms of children's work because wages were largely hypothecated to the child as food and shelter onboard. In contrast, where wages were paid to the child or his parents in cash, they became submerged in the household economy and their benefits were shared with other family members.     

Incentives,technology and the shift to year‐round dairying in late nineteenth‐century Denmark1

This article uses monthly trade data to document the decline in the seasonality in Danish butter exports that occurred from the 1880s onwards. This decline contrasted with steady or increasing seasonality elsewhere. Monthly butter prices in Britain, Denmark, and Ireland show that the incentives to shift into winter dairying were particularly high in the 1880s and 1890s; however, this cannot on its own explain the Danish shift, since our price data show that farmers elsewhere faced winter premia that were every bit as high as the Danish premia. The crucial factor in Denmark was the generation of empirical knowledge by the private and public sectors systematically analysing empirical evidence; the rapid diffusion of this knowledge in a highly educated society via lectures, exhibitions, written materials, and by institutions such as the new cooperative sector; and a willingness to absorb this knowledge by profit‐maximizing farmers.     

The price of improvements: agrarian contracts and agrarian development in nineteenth‐century eastern Spain1

Fixed‐rent contracts do not free landlords from the need to supervise the land if it is of high value and fragile fertility, nor do they free them from the costs of monitoring farmers if they are poor peasants prone to fall into arrears. In such cases, however, compensation for improvements will encourage tenants to farm with care and act as a bond against non‐payment of rent. This article studies the repercussions of these kinds of situations by analysing what happened in nineteenth‐century Valencia, where being the owners of the improvements led to tenants eventually becoming the owners of the land.     

‘Crooks,thieves, and receivers’: transaction costs in nineteenth‐century industrial Birmingham1

The existence of cooperation and trust between competing economic agents is taken for granted by much of the literature on industrial districts. This article explores the structure of the Birmingham jewellery‐making district and the problems created by the opportunistic behaviour of many of its members. Archival sources show that the district was plagued by endemic dishonesty and that proximity did not generate trust and cooperation. The absence of barriers to entry into the trade created a district where social sanctions could not be used to reduce moral hazard. All these factors threatened to destroy the district during the crisis of the 1880s. The article shows how firms joined together to create the Birmingham Jewellers Association, to establish and enforce ‘rules of the game’, with the aim of reducing transaction costs.     

Just add milk: a productivity analysis of the revolutionary changes in nineteenth‐century Danish dairying

The late nineteenth‐century Danish agricultural revolution saw the modernization and growth of the dairy industry. Denmark rapidly caught up with the leading economies, and Danish dairying led the world in terms of productivity. Uniquely in a world perspective, high quality micro‐level data exist documenting this episode. These allow the use of the tool of modern agricultural economists, stochastic frontier analysis, to estimate production functions for milk and thus find the determinants of these productivity and efficiency advances. This article identifies the contribution of modernization through specific new technologies and practices.     

Modern secondary education and economic performance: the introduction of the Gewerbeschule and Realschule in nineteenth‐century Bavaria†

Do new school types focusing on practical and business‐related knowledge lead to increased economic performance? To analyse this question, this article examines the introduction of two types of modern secondary education, the Gewerbeschule and its successor, the Realschule, in nineteenth‐century Bavaria. Since the opening of these schools is arguably endogenous—as it was mainly the large, prosperous cities that opened one—the estimated treatment effect capturing the economic influence of the Gewerbeschule/Realschule will lead to biased results. To alleviate this bias, propensity score matching is adopted to compare relatively similar counties with and without these schools. Using historical county‐level data on tax revenues, business formations, employment structure, and patent holdings, ordinary least squares regression analysis shows that the opening of a modern secondary school is in general positively associated with economic performance several years later.     

The biological standard of living in early nineteenth‐century West Africa: new anthropometric evidence for northern Ghana and Burkina Faso1

West Africans are on average shorter than Europeans today. Whether this was already the case at the end of the Atlantic slave trade is an important question for the history of nutrition and physical welfare. We present the first study of changing heights for people born mostly in what are now northern Ghana and Burkina Faso during the early nineteenth century. The dataset, not used before for anthropometry, documents men born between 1800 and 1849. Mostly purchased from slave owners, they were recruited into the Dutch army to serve in the Dutch East Indies. We find that height development was stagnant between 1800 and 1830 and deteriorated strongly during the 1840s. In international comparison and after taking selectivity issues into account, these Ghanaian and Burkinabe recruits were notably shorter than north‐western Europeans but not shorter than southern Europeans during this period.     

Gentlemen and shopkeepers: supplying the country house in eighteenth‐century England

The country house is well recognized as a site of elite patronage, an important vehicle of social and political ambition, and a statement of power and taste. Yet we know relatively little about the networks of supply and purchasing patterns of rural elites, or about how their practices related to broader changes in material culture. Drawing on a large sample of bills and receipts of the Leigh family of Stoneleigh in Warwickshire, this article recreates the processes through which the material culture of the family home was constructed. These reveal London as the source for many high‐quality goods, although the pattern of supply was not a simple dichotomy of local–everyday and metropolitan–luxury purchases. They also show the large number of shopkeepers patronized as the Leighs spread their purchases through choice, convenience, and expediency. Relating this to wider conceptions of consumption, the Leighs emerge as engaging in layered and sometimes conflicting consumer cultures. They were concerned with fashion as novelty and a marker of rank; but they also valued traditional markers of status. Social distinction was achieved through a continued emphasis on title and lineage as much as fashion or taste—value systems that were unavailable to the middling sorts.     

Gender,productivity, and the nature of work and pay: evidence from the late nineteenth‐century tobacco industry

Women have typically been paid less than men throughout history. We investigate earnings in Swedish cigar making around 1900. Strength was unimportant, yet the gender wage gap was large. Differences in characteristics, such as age and experience, and different jobs within firms, account for two‐thirds of the gap overall, and the entire gap for piece‐rate workers. Firms were as willing to employ women as men in the better‐paying piece‐rate section, and women were willing to take those jobs. In contrast, discrimination was extensive in the time‐rate section. Men in this section benefited from greater outside opportunities and customary wages elsewhere. Theory holds that labour market discrimination will reduce profitability, and make firm survival harder, a proposition that has never been tested historically. We find that cigar firms that feminized their workforces most extensively were most likely to survive. Product market competition prevented firms employing (overpaid) men to any great extent. We argue that economic historians must interpret industry‐specific gender wage differentials in the context of workers' outside opportunities, and in the context of product markets, which can—and in this case did—limit firms' room for manoeuvre.     

Prices and production: agricultural supply response in fourteenth‐century England

This article challenges the growing consensus in the literature that medieval manorial managers were price responsive in their production decisions. Using prices of and acreages planted with wheat, barley, and oats on manors held by the bishop of Winchester from 1325 to 1370, price elasticities of supply are estimated for each grain in aggregate and on each particular manor. Aggregate price elasticities of supply for wheat, barley, and oats were rarely statistically significant and when significant were very low compared with elasticities estimated for developing and developed countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The low levels of agricultural supply response in fourteenth‐century England suggest that commercialization was not as dominant in the medieval economy as has been argued. Thus, structural changes in the economy, such as the leasing of demesnes, the growth of wage labour, and the end of villeinage, may have been more important than price fluctuations in driving long‐run economic change after the Black Death. Likewise, a shift from low price responsiveness to higher price responsiveness could have been an important part of the capitalist transformation of agriculture in the early modern period.