An Annotated Bibliography
to accompany
History of the American Economy
By Gary Walton and Hugh Rockoff
(Nuttanan Wichitaksorn and Yoichi Ostubo helped compile this bibliography)
The bibliography begins with an overview of the basic sources of quantitative data. It then has detailed bibliographies for each chapter.
Sources of Data
Balke, Nathan S. and Robert J. Gordon. "The Estimation of Prewar Gross National Product: Methodology and New Evidence."The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 97, No. 1. (Feb., 1989), pp. 38-92.
[Provides figures for GNP going back to 1869.]
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System(U.S.).Banking and Monetary Statistics.Washington,D.C.: Board of Governors of the Federal ReserveSystem, 1943.
Berry, Thomas Senior. Production and Population since 1789. Richmond: Bostwick, 1988.
Bezanson, Ann, et al. Prices in Colonial Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,1935.
[A crucial source of price statistics for the colonial period].
Economic Report of the President 2009. U.S. Council ofEconomic Advisors.
[Published annually, the Economic Reports of the President are excellent sources of postwar data. The data are available in easily downloadable forms.]
Friedman, Milton, and Anna J. Schwartz.A Monetary History of the United States (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965).
———. MonetaryStatistics of the United States.Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1970.
———.Monetary Trends in the United States and the United Kingdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
[The second book by Friedman and Schwartz is the source for data on money. There are a few series, however, that are included only in the first and third volumes.]
Historical Statistics of the United States: Earliest Times to the Present, Millennial ed. Eds. Susan B. Carter ... [et al.]. New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2006.
[This is the basic source for historical data for the United States. There were previous editions in 1947, 1960, and the immediate predecessor, the bicentennial edition published in 1975.Typically, all the data included in earlier editions was included in the Millenial Edition. A few series, however, were not. The data in Historical Statistics is generally annual data; one observation for each year. Sometimes monthly data is included, and often, monthly or more frequent data is available in the sources cited in Historical Statistics.The data are available in easily downloadable forms that can be accessed through university libraries]
Jones, Alice Hanson. Wealth of a Nation to Be.New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1980.
[Unique data on American wealth on the eve of the Revolution based on probate records.]
Johnston, Louis D., and Samuel H. Williamson. “WhatWas the U.S.GDP Then?” Measuring Worth, 2008.
[This website provides basic historical data on prices, the cost of living, GDP, and related series; and it provides a useful calculator for putting historical prices into today’s money. There are also series for Great Britain and a few other countries.]
Kendrick, John W. Productivity Trends in the UnitedStates. Princeton, N.J.: PrincetonUniversity Press,1961.
Kuznets, Simon. “Changes in the National Incomes of the United States of America Since 1870.”Income and Wealth Series II. London: Bowes & Bowes, 1952.
[Kuznets was the second American to win the Nobel prize in economics, which he won for his development of national income accounting. Much of Kuznets's work has been incorporated in subsequent work and reported in Historical Statistics. But his penetrating discussions of the meaning of aggregate measues is still worth consulting.]
Lebergott, Stanley. Manpower in Economic Growth: The American Record since 1800. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.
[A source of many historical statistics on the labor force. It includes penetrating discussions of the meaning of the statisics. Many of these statistics can be found in downlaodable form in Historical Statistics.]
Maddison, Angus.Monitoring the World Economy 1820–1992.Paris Development Centre of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 1995.
[Angus Maddison has developed comparable historical GDP series for many countries. His work is always the starting point for economists who wish to make historical comparisons].
National Bureau of Economic Research,
[The National Bureau is one of the oldest and most prestigious economic think tanks. A committee of the National Bureau determines the generally accepted dates for the peaks and troughs of the business cycle. These dates, large amounts data collected by the National Bureau, and working papers written by associates of the National Bureau are available at its website.]
NationalCenter for Health Statistics, Division of Vital Statistics, Vital Statistics Data Available Online.
[Downloadable data on "vital statistics:" birth rates and death rates by age and other categories.]
Romer, Christina D. “The Prewar Business Cycle Reconsidered: New Estimates of Gross National Product, 1869–1908.” Journal of Political Economy 97 (February 1989): 1–37.
[Provides figures for GNP going back to 1869.]
Statistical Abstract of the United States.
[Published annually, this is one of the best sources of statistical data. Typically, data published in earlier editions was published in Historical Statistics. The Statistical Abstracts are one of the best sources for updating the series presented in Historical Statistics. The data can be downloaded from the Department of Census website. If the URL has changed look for the statistical abstract on a search engine.]
Selected References and Suggested Readingsby Chapter
Chapter 1
Growth, Welfare, and the American Economy
Alston, Lee J. “Institutions and Markets in History: Lessonsfor Central and Eastern Europe.” In Economic Transformation in East and Central Europe: Legacies from the Past and Policies for the Future, ed. DavidF. Good, 43–59. NewYork: Routledge, 1994.
Atack, Jeremy. “Long-Term Trends in Productivity.” In The State of Humanity, ed. Julian L. Simon. Boston: Basil Blackwell, 1995, 161–170.
Avery, Dennis. “The World’s Rising Food Productivity.” In The State of Humanity, ed. Julian L. Simon. Boston: Basil Blackwell, 1995, 379–393.
Black, Dan A., Seth Sanders, and Lowell Taylor. “The Economic Reward for Studying Economics.” Economic Inquiry 41 (3), (July 2003): 365–377.
Blank, Rebecca M. “Trends in Poverty in the United States.” In The State of Humanity, ed. Julian L. Simon. Boston: Basil Blackwell, 1995, 231–240.
Burnette, Joyce and Joel Mokyr. “The Standard of Living Through the Ages.” In The State of Humanity, ed. Julian L. Simon. Boston: Basil Blackwell, 1995, 135–148.
Cox, W. Michael and Richard Alm. “By Our Own Bootstraps:Economic Opportunityand the Dynamics of Income Distribution.” Dallas: Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, 1995.
______. “Time Well Spent: The Declining Real Cost ofLiving in America.” Dallas: Federal Reserve Bank ofDallas, 1997.
[The authors examine the cost in terms of hours working that it takes to buy goods such as a loaf of bread – an informative way to look at economic progress.]
Churchill, Winston S. A History of the English Speaking People. Vols 1–4. New York: Dorset Press, 1956.
Fogel, Robert W. “Nutrition and the Decline in Mortality since 1700: Some Preliminary Findings.” In Long-Term Factors in American Economic Growth, eds. Stanley L. Engerman and Robert E. Gallman, 439-555.Chicago: University of Chicago Press (for theNational Bureau of Economic Research), 1986.
______. “Economic Growth, Population Theory, and Physiology: The Bearing of Long-Term Processes on the Making of Economic Policy.” The American Economic Review 84 (1994): 369–395.
______. “The Contribution of Improved Nutrition to the Decline of Mortality Rates in Europe and America.” In The State of Humanity, ed. Julian L. Simon. Boston: Basil Blackwell, 1995, 61–71.
______. “Catching Up with the Economy.” The American Economic Review 89 (1999): 1–21.
______.The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversityPress, 2004.
[Robert Fogel, who one the Nobel Prize in economics in 1993, is one of the world’s preeminent experts on historical relationships among nutrition, medicine, and economic development. His work should be consulted by any student contemplating research on these issues.]
Haines, Michael R. “Disease and Health through the Ages.” In The State of Humanity, ed. Julian L. Simon. Boston: Basil Blackwell, 1995, 51–60.
Harberger, Arnold C. “A Vision of the Growth Process.” The American Economic Review 88 (1998): 1–32.
Hume, David. “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations.”In Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, ed.Eugene F. Miller (first published 1742). Indianapolis,Ind.: Liberty Fund, Inc, 1987.
Johnston, Louis D., and Samuel H. Williamson. “WhatWas the U.S.GDP Then?” Measuring Worth, 2008.
Kennedy, Paul. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. New York: Random House, 1987.
Lee, J., and W. Feng, “Malthusian Models and Chinese Realities: The Chinese Demographic System, 1700-2000.” Population and Development Review 25 (1999): 33–65.
Lindert, Peter H. and Jeffery G. Williamson. “The Long-Term Course of American Inequality: 1647–1969.” In The State of Humanity, ed. Julian L. Simon. Boston: Basil Blackwell, 1995, 188–195.
Maddison, Angus.Monitoring the World Economy 1820–1992.Paris Development Centre of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 1995.Updated 2007.
McCloskey, Donald N. “Does the Past Have UsefulEconomics?” Journal of Economic Literature 14(1976): 434–461.
NationalCenter for Health Statistics. Vital Statistics ofthe United States.Hyattsville, Md.: NationalCenterfor Health Statistics, Department of Health, Education,and Welfare, selected years.
North, Douglass C. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1990.
Preston, S. H. “Human Mortality throughout History and Prehistory.” In The State of Humanity, ed. Julian L. Simon. Boston: Basil Blackwell, 30–36.
Rockoff, Hugh. “Indirect Price Increases and RealWages in World War II.” Explorations in Economic History 15 (1978): 407–420.
______. Drastic Measures: A History of Wage and Price Controls in the United States.New York:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1984.
Rector, Robert. “Increasing Returns and Long-Run Growth.” Journal of Political Economy 94(5),(October 1986), 1002–1037.
______. “Endogenous Technological Change.” Journal of Political Economy 98(5), (October 1990), S71–S102.
______. “The Origins of Endogenous Growth.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 8(1), (Winter 1994), 3–22.
______. “New Goods, Old Theory, and the Welfare Costs of Trade Restrictions.” Journal of Developmental Economics 43(1), (February 1994), 5–38.
______. “How “Poor” Are America’s Poor?” In The State of Humanity,” ed., Julian L. Simon. Boston: Basil Blackwell, 1995, 241–256.
Rosenberg, Nathan, and L. E. Birdzell, Jr. How the West Grew Rich.New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1986.
Schumpeter, Joseph A. The Theory of Economic Development. Cambridge: HarvardUniversityPress, 1934.
Simon, Julian L. and Rebecca Boggs. “Trends in the Quantities of Education—USA and Elsewhere.” In The State of Humanity, ed. Julian L. Simon. Boston: Basil Blackwell, 1995, 208–223
Siniecki, Jan. “Impediments to Institutional Change inthe Former Soviet System.” In Empirical Studies in Institutional Change, eds. Lee J. Alston, Thrainn Eggertsson,and Douglass C. North, 35–59. New York:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1996.
United Nations Development Program. Human Development Report1999. New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1999.
U.S. Census Bureau. “The Changing Shape of the Nation’sIncome Distribution, 1747–2001.”
U.S. Census Bureau. “Mean Income Received by EachFifth and Top 5 Percent of Families (All Races) 1966–2001.”
f03.html.
U.S. Department of Commerce. U.S. Life Tables, 1890,1901, and 1901–1910. Washington, D.C.: U.S. GovernmentPrinting Office, 1921.
U.S. Department of Commerce. Statistical Abstract.Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce,1978.
U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of EconomicAnalysis. “U.S. Real GDP Per Capita (Year 2000Dollars).”
World Resources Institute and United Nations Development Program. Human Development Report. New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1999.
Wright, Gavin. “History and the Future of Economics.” In Economic History and the Modern Economists, ed. William N. Parker. New York: Blackwell, 1986.
Wrigley, E. A., and R. S. Schofield. The Population History of England, 1541–1871: A Reconstruction. Cambridge: HarvardUniversity Press, 1981.
Zakaria, Farred. The Future of Freedom. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003.
Chapter 2
Founding the Colonies
Alston, Lee J., and Morton O. Shapiro. “Inheritance Laws Across the Colonies: Causes and Consequences.” Journal of Economic History 44 (1984): 277–287.
Anderson, Terry, ed. Property Rights and Indian Economics:The Political Economy Forum. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992.
Anderson, Terry, and Robert P. Thomas. “White Population, Labor Force, and Extensive Growth of the New England Economy in the Seventeenth Century.” Journal of Economic History 33 (1973): 634–667.
______. “The Growth of Population and Labor Force in the 17th-Century Chesapeake.” Explorations in Economic History 15 (1978): 290–312.
Andrews, Charles M. The Colonial Period of American History. New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1934.
Bancroft, George. History of the United States of America from the Discovery of the Continent, 6 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1879.
Barrington, Linda, ed. The Other Side of the Frontier. Boulder: Westview, 1999.
Boorstin, Daniel. The Americans: The Colonial Experience. New York:Vintage Books, 1958.
Bradford, William. Of PlymouthPlantation. New York: Capricorn Books, 1962.
Bruce, Philip A. Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1896.
Bruchey, Stuart. The Roots of American Economic Growth 1607–1861: An Essay in Social Causation.London: HutchinsonUniversity Library, 1965.
Curtin, Philip. The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969.
Denevan, William, ed. The Native Population of theAmericans in 1492, 2nd ed. Madison: University ofWisconsin Press, 1992.
Earle, Carville. The Evolution of a Tidewater Settlement System: All Hallow’s Parish, 1650–1783. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.
Engerman, Stanley L., and Kenneth L. Sokoloff. “FactorEndowments, Institutions, and Differential Paths ofGrowth Among New World Economics:A ViewFrom Economic Historians of the United States.”In How Did Latin America Fall Behind? ed. StephenHaber. Palo Alto, Calif.: StanfordUniversity Press,1996.
Ekirch, A. Roger, Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718–1775. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1990.
Fogel, Robert, and Stanley Engerman. Chapter 1 in Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974.
Franklin, Benjamin. “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind.” Philadelphia, 1751. In The Papers of Ben Franklin, ed. Leonard Laberee. New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1961.
Galenson, David W. “Immigration and the Colonial Labor System: An Analysis of the Length of Indenture.” Explorations in Economic History 14 (1977): 361–377.
______. “British Servants and the Colonial Indenture System in the Eighteenth Century.” Journal of Southern History 44 (1978): 41–66.
______.“The Market Evaluation of Human Capital: The Case of Indentured Servitude.” Journal of Political Economy 89 (1981): 446–467.
______. White Servitude in Colonial America. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1981.
______.“The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas: An Economic Analysis.”Journal of Economic History 44 (1984): 1–26.
______.“The Settlement and Growth of the Colonies: Population, Labor, and Economic Development.” In The Cambridge Economic History of the United States,Vol. I, eds. Stanley L. Engerman and Robert E. Gallman. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1996, 135–207.
Gemery, Henry. “Emigration from the British Isles to the New World, 1630–1700.” In Research in Economic History, Vol. 5, ed. Paul Uselding. New York: Johnson, 1980, 179–232.
Graven, Philip. “Family Structure in Seventeenth CenturyAndover, Massachusetts.” William and MaryQuarterly (April 1966): 234–256.
Grubb, Farley. “The End of European Immigrant Servitude in the United States: An Economic Analysis of Market Collapse 1772–1835.” Journal of Economic History 54 (1994): 794–824.
______. “Colonial Labor Markets and the Length of Indenture: Further Evidence.” Explorations in Economic History 24 (1987): 101–106.
Grubb, Farley, and Tony Stitt. “Immigrant Servant Labor: Their Occupational and Geographic Distribution in the Late Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic Economy.” Social Science History 9 (1985): 249–275.
———. “The Incidence of Servitude in Trans-Atlantic Migration, 1771–1804.” Explorations in Economic History 22 (1985): 316–339.
______.“The Market for Indentured Immigrants: Evidence on the Efficiency of Forward-Labor Contracting in Philadelphia, 1745–1773.” Journal of Economic History 45 (1985): 855–868.
______.“Redemptioner Immigration to Pennsylvania: Evidence on Contract Choice and Profitability.” Journal of Economic History 46 (1986): 407–418.
______. “The Liverpool Emigrant Servant Trade and the Transition to Slave Labor in the Chesapeake, 1697–1707: Market Adjustments to War.” Explorations in Economic History 31 (1994): 376–405.
Hanes, Christopher. “Turnover Cost and the Distribution of Slave Labor in Anglo-America.” Journal of Economic History 56 (1966): 307–329.
Heavener, Robert. “Indentured Servitude: The Philadelphia Market, 1771–1773.” Journal of Economic History 38 (1978): 701–713.
Higgs, Robert, and Louis Stettler. “Colonial New England Demography: A Sampling Approach.” William and Mary Quarterly 27, no. 2 (1970): 282–294.
Hughes, Jonathan R. T. “William Penn and the Holy Experiment.” Chapter 2 in The Vital Few: American Economic History and Its Protagonists. New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1973 (reprint).
Jones, E. L. “The European Background.” In The Cambridge Economic History of the United States, Vol. I, eds. Stanley L. Engerman and Robert E. Gallman. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1996, 95–133.
Kulikoff, Allan. “A ‘Prolifick’ People: Black Population Growth in the Chesapeake Colonies, 1700–1790.” Southern Studies (1977): 391–428.
Lemon, James. The Best Poor Man’s Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania.Baltimore: JohnsHopkinsUniversity Press, 1972.
Mann, Charles. “1491.” The Atlantic Monthly 289, no. 3(March 2002): 41–53.
McCusker, John J., and Russell Menard. The Economy of British America 1607–1789. Chapel Hill: Universityof North Carolina Press, 1985.
Menard, Russell.“From Servants to Slaves: The Transformation of the Chesapeake Labor System.” Southern Studies (1977): 355–390.
Morgan, Edmund S. The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth-Century New England.New York: Harper & Row, 1966.
———. “The First American Boom: Virginia 1618 to 1630.” William and Mary Quarterly 28 (1971).
———. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. New York: Norton, 1975.
Morison, Samuel E. The Oxford History of the American People. New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1964.
Morris, Richard. Government and Labor in Early America. New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1946.
Nash, Gary. Red,White, and Black: The Peoples of Early America. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1974.
North, Douglass C., and R. P. Thomas. The Rise of the Western World. New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1973.
Perkins, Edwin J. Chapter 1 in The Economy of Colonial America, 2d ed. New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1988.
Potter, Jim. “The Growth of Population in America, 1700–1860.” In Population in History: Essays in Historical Demography, eds. D. V. Glass and B. E. C. Eaversley. Chicago: Aldine, 1960.
Powell, SumnerC.PuritanVillage:The Formation of a New EnglandTown. Middletown, Conn.: WesleyanUniversity Press, 1963.
Rink, Oliver. Holland on the Hudson: An Economic and Social History of New York. Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 1986.
Roback, Jennifer. “Exchange Sovereignty, and Indian-Anglo Relations.” In Property Rights and Indian Economies: The Political Economy Forum, ed. Terry Anderson. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992.
Rosenberg, Nathan, and L. E. Birdzell, Jr. Chapter 3 in How the West Grew Rich. New York: Basic Books, 1986.