1. A Concise History of America's Brewing Industry

This article gives a history of how the brewing industry in America formed and emerged. It breaks the sequence down into sets of years where landmark achievements were made. [Details...]

2. A History of Futures Trading in the United States

This article explains the futures market and the purposes and functions. It goes on to tell how it developed in the U.S. [Details...]

3. A History of the Bar Code

This article explains how the bar code was developed and its changing use throughout its invention. It also gives indications of possible future uses for the bar code. [Details...]

4. A History of the Standard of Living in the United States

Standard of living is often evaluated by people using the same criteria. This article discusses the standard of living in the United States mainly through the GDP and life expectancy. [Details...]

5. Advertising Bans in the United States

Freedom of expression has always ranked high on the American scale of values and fundamental rights. This essay addressed regulation of "commercial speech," which is defined as speech or messages that propose a commercial transaction. [Details...]

6. African Americans in the Twentieth Century

This article begins with an assessment of African Americans in the nineteenth century and describes the transitions that began to take place during the twentieth century to where they are today. [Details...]

7. Agricultural Tenures and Tithes

This article addresses agricultural land tenures, the arrangements under which farmers occupied farmland, which continues to be the subject of extensive study by agricultural historians and economists. [Details...]

8. Airline Deregulation

This encyclopedia entry explains how the United States Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 was a dramatic event in the history of economic policy. It was the first thorough dismantling of a comprehensive system of government control since the Supreme Court declared the National Recovery Act unconstitutional in 1935. [Details...]

9. Alcohol Prohibition

This article discusses the era of alcohol prohibition in the United States and the effects which were derived from it. [Details...]

10. An Economic History of New Zealand in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Living standards in New Zealand were among the highest in the world between the late nineteenth century and the 1960's. But New Zealand's economic growth was very sluggish between 1950 and the early 1990s, and most Western European countries, as well as several in East Asia, overtook New Zealand in terms of real per capita income. By the early 2000s, New Zealand's GDP per capita was in the bottom half of the developed world. [Details...]

11. An Economic History of Weather Forecasting

This article begins with the importance of weather forecasting for ships to its evolution and usefulness in today's economy. [Details...]

12. An Overview of the Economic History of Uruguay since the 1870s

This article describes Uruguay's early history and its economic performance in the long-run as well as its comparative performance. [Details...]

13. An Overview of the Great Depression

This article provides an overview of selected events and economic explanations of the interwar era. What follows is not intended to be a detailed and exhaustive review of the literature on the Great Depression, or of any one theory in particular. Rather, it will attempt to describe the "big picture" events and topics of interest. For the reader who wishes more extensive analysis and detail, references to additional materials are also included. [Details...]

14. Antebellum Banking in the United States

This article describes the evolution of banking in the United States beginning with the first legitimate commercial bank to its development within different regions of the country. [Details...]

15. Apprenticeship in the United States

This article describes apprenticeship in the United State by discussing the four periods of major apprenticeship changes and the challengs which defined those changes. [Details...]

16. Arthur Young

Arthur Young was widely regarded by his contemporaries as the leading agricultural writer of the time. This article gives a short biography of Arthur Young. [Details...]

17. Banking Panics in the US: 1873-1933

Prior to the passage of deposit insurance legislation in 1933 banking panics were a recurrent feature of U.S. banking history. Three phases of that panic experience can be identified depending upon the type of regulatory framework in place: the pre-Civil War era, the National Banking era, and the era of the Federal Reserve System. [Details...]

18. Banking in the Western U.S.

This article starts with the California gold rush and explains through the developments until after World War II. It discusses the failures and what has become our system today. [Details...]

19. Bankruptcy Law in the United States

This article describes the chronology of bankruptcy law in the United States beginning with a description of its origins. [Details...]

20. Bimetallism

A bimetallic monetary standard can be defined as one in which coins of two different metals are legal tender. Such standards were commonplace in Western economies throughout most of the last millennium, although their details differed. [Details...]

21. Carnegie, Andrew

Andrew Carnegie rose from poverty to become an industrial magnate, as well as a prolific and influential writer. This article explains Carnegie's life and accomplishments. [Details...]

22. Child Labor during the British Industrial Revolution

This article examines the historical debate about child labor in Britain, Britain's political response to problems with child labor, quantitative evidence about child labor during the 1800's, and economic explanations of the practice of child labor. [Details...]

23. Common Agricultural Policy

This article examines Europe's Common Agricultural Policy as one of the most controversial farm policies of all time. It discusses the criticism during its period of operation and the radical reform proposals. [Details...]

24. Cotton Gin

The cotton gin developed by Eli Whitney in 1793 marked a major turning point in the economic history of the Southern United States. This article describes what came before Eli Whitney and his innovative design. [Details...]

25. Council of Economic Advisers

"The Council of Economic Advisers was established by the Employment Act of 1946 to provide the President with objective economic analysis and advice on the development and implementation of a wide range of domestic and international economic policy issues." This article examines the history, policies and evolving role and influence of the CEA. [Details...]

26. Credit in the Colonial American Economy

Credit was vital to the economy of colonial America and much of the individual prosperity and success in the colonies was due to credit. This article discusses all payment options as well as the nature of the repayment of credit in order to understand the role of credit in the eighteenth century. [Details...]

27. David Ricardo

David Ricardo (1772-1823) was one of the greatest theoretical economists of all time. This article describes Ricardo's life and his contributions to the economic community, including the theory of rent and the concept of comparative advantage. [Details...]

28. Deflation

Deflation is a persistent fall in some generally followed aggregate indicator of price movements, such as the consumer price index or the GDP deflator. This article examines the historical and contemporary worries about deflation, deflation in the Great Depression Era, the debt-deflation problem, and more concerning the labor market and today. [Details...]

29. Disaster and Recovery

Defeated in battle and ravaged by bombing in the course of World War II, Germany and Japan nevertheless made postwar recoveries that startled the world. Within ten years these nations were once again considerable economic powers. A decade later, each had not only regained prosperity but had also economically overtaken, in important respects, some of the war's victors. [Details...]

30. Drug Lag

The modern history of drug regulation in the United States has been marked by the simultaneous pursuit of two goals: safety and efficacy. This article describes this insight and provides evidence of cases where costs incurred due to lawsuits proved to be too much. [Details...]

31. Eastern Europe

This article describes how Eastern Europe is transforming its economic system by dismantling the remnants of the communist system and building market-oriented economies based on private ownership. [Details...]

32. Economic Histories of the Opium Trade

Because a lot has already been written on the opium trade in various parts of the world, this piece will focus on the history of the opium trade through the lens of the economic historian. In other words, it will address the question, "Why is opium of special interest to economic historians?" Following a brief background of the opium trade, a discussion of this question is provided with a focus on Asia and with references to more detailed and case-specific sources. [Details...]

33. Economic History of Hawai'i

The Hawaiian Islands are a cain of 132 islands, shoals, and reefs extending over 1,523 miles in the Northeast Pacific Ocean. This article gives a background of how Hawaii came to be inhabited, the unification of Hawaii and its population decline, the importance of sugar and immigration, and its economic integration with the United States. [Details...]

34. Economic History of Malaysia

This article discusses the importance of Malaysia as a case study in economic development. It is generally regarded as one of the most successful non-western countries to have achieved a relatively smooth transition to modern economic growth over the last century or so. [Details...]

35. Economic History of Portugal

This article begins with the roots of Portugal to give a bit of economic history. It starts with the early centuries until the Spanish rule in the eighteenth century and describes its economic evolution. [Details...]

36. Economic History of Premodern China

China has the longest continually recorded history in the premodern world. For economic historians, it makes sense to begin with the formation of China's national economy in the wake of China's unification in 221 BC under the Qin. The year 1800 AD coincides with the beginning of the end for China's premodern era, which was hastened by the First Opium War (1839-42). Hence, the time span of this article is two millennia. [Details...]

37. Economic History of Retirement in the United States

This article desribes the trends in U.S. retirement behavior and government pension plans, and explains trends in the retirement decision. [Details...]

38. Economic History of Tractors in the United States

The farm tractor is one of the most important and easily recognizable technological components of modern agriculture in the United States. Its development in the first half of the twentieth century fundamentally changed the nature of farm work, significantly altered the structure of rural America, and freed up millions of workers to be absorbed into the rapidly growing manufacturing and service sectors of the country. The tractor represents an important application of the internal combustion engine, rivaling the automobile and the truck in its economic impact. [Details...]

39. Economic Interests and the Adoption of the United States Constitution

This article examines how our Founding Fathers designed the Constitution, examining findings on the political and economic factors behind the provisions included in the Constitution and its ratification. The article discusses the views of Charles Beard and his critics and focuses on recent quantitative findings that explain the making of the Constitution. These findings suggest that personal interests of the Founding Fathers, as well as constituents' interests, played an important role in drafting the Constitution. They also suggest that economic and other interests played important roles at the ratifying conventions. [Details...]

40. Economy of England at the Time of the Norman Conquest

The Domesday Survey of 1086 provides high quality and detailed information on the inputs, outputs and tax assessments of most English estates. This article describes how the data have been used to reconstruct the eleventh-century Domesday economy. By exploiting modern economic theory and statistical methods the reconstruction has led to a radically different assessment of the way in which the Domesday economy and fiscal system were organized. [Details...]

41. English Poor Laws

For nearly three centuries, the Poor Law constituted "a welfare state in miniature," relieving the elderly, widows, children, the sick, the disabled, and the unemployed and underemployed (Blaug 1964). This essay will outline the changing role played by the Poor Law, focusing on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. [Details...]

42. European Economic Community

This article displays the European Economic Community as the most prominent example of a free trade area and what economists call a customs union. [Details...]

43. Fair Housing Laws

This article begins with fair housing's origins and operations and goes on to describe its impact and extension. [Details...]

44. Federal Reserve System

The historical origins of the Federal Reserve System can be traced to chronic currency problems in the nineteenth century. In response to the Panic of 1907, Congress created the National Monetary Commission charged with the mission of reforming the currency system. It soon became clear that some type of central banking institution would emerge from the Commissions deliberations, albeit one operating within the context of a gold standard. This article focuses on the key questions: What type of central bank? Would it be a centralized one, or a populist, decentralized one? [Details...]

45. Fertility and Mortality in the United States

Every modern, economically developed nation has experienced the demographic transition from high to low levels of fertility and mortality. America is no exception. But America was also distinctive. First, its fertility transition began in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century at the latest. Second, the fertility rate in America commenced its sustained decline long before that of mortality. Third, both these processes were influenced by America's very high level of net in-migration and also by the significant population redistribution to frontier areas and later to cities, towns, and suburbs. [Details...]

46. Fire Insurance in the United States

This article explains the rationale and development for fire insurance. It gives a table of the various companies within the different states and the year of formation. Graphs depict fire losses and other variables. [Details...]

47. Fraternal Sickness Insurance

This article explains the types of fraternal orders that existed in the late nineteenth and early twentietch centuries and the types of insurance they offered, explains how friendly societies worked to provide sickness insurance as a reasonable price by overcoming the adverse selection and moral hazard problems, while facing problems of risk diversification, and closes by examining historians' assessments of the importance and adequacy of fraternal sickness insurance. [Details...]

48. From GATT to WTO: The Evolution of an Obscure Agency to One Perceived as Obstructing Democracy

In the 1940s, working with the British government, the United States developed two innovations to expand and govern trade among nations. These mechanisms were called the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the ITO (International Trade Organization). This articles explains those mechanisms as well as the evolution of the World Trade Organization (WTO). [Details...]

49. German Economic "Miracle"

After World War II the German economy lay in shambles. This article describes the economic condition before and during the war and how only ten years after the war people began talking about the German economic miracle. [Details...]

50. Gold Standard

The periods in which the gold standard flourished, the groupings of countries under the gold standard, and the dates during which individual countries adhered to this standard are delineated in the first section. Then characteristics of the gold standard, and implications for the money supply of a country on the standard are outlined. [Details...]

51. Gresham's Law

This article compares some modern interpretations of Gresham's Law and regards some as legitimate and others as entirely unwarranted. [Details...]

52. Harold Adams Innis

This article explains Harold Adam Innis' role in the economic community and the contributions that he made to it. [Details...]

53. Health Insurance in the United States

This article describes the development of the U.S. health insurance system and its growth in the twentieth century. It examines the roles of important factors including medical technology, hospitals and physicians, and government policy culminating in the development of Medicare and Medicaid. [Details...]

54. Historical Anthropometrics

This article provides a brief background of the field including a history of human body measurement and analysis and a description of the biological foundations for historical anthropometrics, and describes the current state of the field and future directions. [Details...]

55. Historical Political Business Cycles in the United States

The notion that incumbents will alter the economic environment for their short-term political gain at the expense of long-term economic stability is referred to as generating a political business cycle. This article details the history of this notion by using past president's policies as examples. [Details...]

56. History of Food and Drug Regulation in the United States

Throughout history, governments have regulated food and drug products. In general, the focus of this regulation has been on ensuring the quality and safety of food and drugs. This article expands upon this to detail the history of this particular regulation. [Details...]

57. History of Labor Turnover in the U.S.

Labor turnover measures the movement of workers in and out of employment with a particular firm. This article explains how the rise of large scale firms in the late nineteenth century and the decreasing importance of agricultural employment meant that a growing number of workers were employed by firms. It was only in this context that interest in measuring labor turnover and understanding its causes began. [Details...]

58. History of Property Taxes in the United States

The growth of the property tax in America was closely related to economic and political conditions on the frontier. This article describes how in pre-commercial agricultural areas the property tax was a feasible source of local government revenue and equal taxation of wealth was consistent with the prevailing equalitarian ideology. [Details...]

59. History of Workplace Safety in the United States, 1880-1970

This article explains the dangers of certain jobs such as mining, manufacturing, and railroad working to examine the history of workplace safety in the United States from 1880-1970. [Details...]

60. History of the U.S. Telegraph Industry

The electric telegraph was one of the first telecommunications technologies of the industrial age. This article explains its invention and development throughout the years and at the end gives a timeline of those events. [Details...]

61. Hours of Work in U.S. History

This article presents estimates of the length of the historical workweek in the U.S., describes the history of the shorter-hours "movement," and examines the forces that drove the workweek's decline over time. [Details...]

62. Immigration to the United States

This article focuses on the basic data sources available, the variation in the volume over time, the reasons immigration occurred, nativism and U.S. immigration policy, the characteristics of the immigrant stream, the effects on the United States economy, and the experience of immigrants in the U.S. labor market. [Details...]

63. Industrial Revolution and the Standard of Living

This article explains how the industrial revolution, the transformation of technological process, education, and an increasing capital stock, caused a sustained rise in real income per person in England and, as its effects spread, the rest of the world. [Details...]

64. International Shipping Cartels

The international shipping industry has been characterized by a remarkable degree of collusion for more than a century. This article shows the attempts at collusion and the government's role and responsibility. [Details...]

65. Ireland's Great Famine

This article describes the Great Irish Famine from 1846-1852 by explaining its causes, the direct effects of the famine, and the post-famine adjustment. [Details...]

66. Japan and the Myth of MITI

This article explains Japan's seemingly miraculous economic growth in the post WWII era by looking at the major factors in this case. [Details...]

67. Japanese Industrialization and Economic Growth

This article explains Japan's development through industrialization through four distinctive features: the proto-industrial base, invesment-led growth, total factor productivity growth, and dualism. [Details...]

68. Labor Unions in the United States

This article explores the nature and development of labor unions in the United States. It reviews the growth and recent decline of the American labor movement and makes comparisons with the experience of foreign labor unions to clarify particular aspects of the history of labor unions in the United States. [Details...]

69. Life Insurance in the United States through World War I

This article examines the beginnings of life insurance policies with Presbyterian Synods in Philadelphia and the Corporation for Relief or Poor and Distressed Widows in New York. It also examines mutuality, the civil war, the Armstrong Committee Investigation, and continued growth in the early twentieth century. [Details...]

70. Manufactured and Natural Gas Industry

The historical gas industry includes two chemically distinct flammable gasses. These are natural gas and several variations of manufactured coal gas. Both are explained in more detail throughout the course of the article. [Details...]

71. Mechanical Cotton Picker

Until World War II, the Cotton South remained poor, backward, and un-mechanized. With minor exceptions, most tasks -- plowing, cultivating, and finally harvesting cotton -- were done by hand. The mechanical cotton picker played an indispensable role in the transition from the prewar South of over-population, sharecropping, and hand labor to the capital-intensive agriculture of the postwar South. [Details...]

72. Monetary Unions

This article defines monetary unions, discusses its advantages and disadvantages, explains its history in the nineteenth century, and gives examples of success stories. [Details...]

73. Money and Finance in the Confederate States of America

This article discusses money and finance in the Confederate States of America by focusing on revenue sources, inflation, and debt operations abroad. [Details...]

74. Money in the American Colonies

This article explores money in the American Colonies by examining the various means of payments as well as describing controveries of the time. [Details...]

75. Monopsony in American Labor Markets

This article explains monopsony by using examples of various professions such as athletes, teachers and nurses, University professors, coal miners, and more. [Details...]

76. Morris Plan Banks

This article explains how Morris Plan banks were at the forefront of an explosion of consumer credit that started at the beginning of the second decade of the twentieth century and how they became the prominent institution for providing consumer credit to the poor through the 1920s. [Details...]

77. Natural Gas Regulation

Natural gas is methane in underground deposits, produced by the same geological processes as oil. The regulation over the years has changed dramatically from a lot to more lenience in the recent years. [Details...]

78. OPEC

Few people are aware of it today, but OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) was formed in response to the U.S. imposition of import quotas on oil. OPEC is a cartel: a group of producers that attempts to restrict output in order to keep prices higher than the competitive level. [Details...]

79. Origins of Commercial Banking in the United States, 1781-1830

Early U.S. commercial banks were for-profit business firms, usually structured as joint-stock companies. As financial intermediaries, commercial banks pooled the wealth of a large number of savers and lent fractions of that pool to a diverse group of enterprising business firms. [Details...]

80. Path Dependence

Several of the most prominent path-dependent features of the economy are technical standards, such as the "QWERTY" standard typewriter (and computer) keyboard and the "standard gauge" of railway track -- i.e., the width between the rails. The case of QWERTY has been particularly controversial and is discusses in this article. [Details...]

81. Perestroika

This article describes the events leading up to Gorbachev's Perestroika, or restructuring, of the economic structure of Russia and his plans for implementation. [Details...]

82. Public Sector Pensions in the United States

This article gives a brief introduction into the history of pensions then goes on to discuss early military pensions with a breakdown of Ancient Rome, Europe, and the United States. [Details...]

83. Reconstruction Finance Corporation

This article explains the history of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, how it operated during the Hoover administration and during the New Deal, as well as WWII and the final years until 1953. [Details...]

84. Research and Development

Research and development is the creation of knowledge to be used in products or processes. This article answers the questions of whether private R&D is productive, government R&D is productive, and whether R&D is worthy of special treatment. [Details...]

85. Riskless Society

This articles discusses a riskless society by displaying tables of life expectancy, causes of death, mortality death rates, and annual fatality rates. [Details...]

86. Rural Electrification Administration

The advent of the electric industry in the 1880s ushered forward a rapidly expanding domestic market in the United States. This article describes the origins of this phenomenon and the outcomes for today. [Details...]

87. Savings and Loan Industry (U.S.)

The savings and loan industry is the leading source of institutional finance for residential home mortgages in America. This article discusses the origins and the history thus far of this industry. [Details...]

88. Slavery in the United States

This article examines slavery in the United States by discussing the spread of slavery in the U.S., the insitutional framework, the legal status of slaves and blacks, the rights and responsibilities of slave masters, markets and prices, and profitibality, efficiency, and exploitation. [Details...]

89. Smoot-Hawley Tariff

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 was the subject of enormous controversy at the time of its passage and remains one of the most notorious pieces of legislation in the history of the United States. This article explains why it caused controversy and is still referred to today. [Details...]

90. The 1929 Stock Market Crash

This article examines the causes of the 1929 stock market crash by critiquing some arguments and supporting a preferred set of conclusions. [Details...]

91. The Bus Industry in the United States

This article surveys the history of a branch of modern transportation that has been almost completely ignored -- the history of motorized buses. [Details...]

92. The Company Town

This article explains the company town as an economic institution that was part of the market for labor. It discusses company towns as primarily existing in areas associated with the coal industry and discusses the labor struggles associated with it. [Details...]

93. The Depression of 1893

This article describes economic developments in the decades leading up to the depression; the performance of the economy during the 1890's; domestic and international causes of depression; and political and social responses to the depression. [Details...]

94. The Dust Bowl

The Dust Bowl was a coincidence of drought, severe wind erosion, and economic depression that occurred on the Southern and Central Great Plains during the 1930s. This article discusses rountine dust storms, how the 1930s were different, and the New Deal's response to the dilemma. [Details...]

95. The Dutch Economy in the Golden Age (16th - 17th Centuries)

This article describes the economy of the Netherlands up to the Sixteenth Century and discusses Dutch agriculture, fishing, textile, and other industries. [Details...]

96. The Economic History of Indonesia

This article begins with some basic facts, discusses important aspects of Indonesian economic history, and gives a chronology of that history. [Details...]

97. The Economic History of Korea

This article discusses the economic history of Korea with respect to three distinct periods: 1) the period of Malthusian stagnation up to 1910, when Japan annexed Korea; 2) the colonial period from 1910-45, when the country embarked upon modern economic growth; and 3) the post colonial decades, when living standards improved rapidly in South Korea, while North Korea returned to the world of disease and starvation. [Details...]

98. The Economic History of Major League Baseball

This is a lengthy article detailing the origins of baseball and the demand that erupted for it. [Details...]

99. The Economic History of Norway

This article splits the economic history of Norway into two major phases- before and after the nation gained its independence in 1814. [Details...]

100. The Economic History of Taiwan

This article describes the aboriginal economy and goes on to discuss Taiwan's economy when under various other country's rule. [Details...]

101. The Economic History of the Fur Trade: 1670 to 1870

A commercial fur trade in North America grew out of the early contact between Indians and European fisherman who were netting cod on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland and on the Bay of Gaspe near Quebec. [Details...]

102. The Economics of the American Revolutionary War

This article discusses the economic causes of the Revolutionary War, the beginnings of the revolution, and the formation of a national government. [Details...]

103. The Economics of the Civil War

This article focuses on the economic causes of the Civil war, the costs of the war, the problem of financing the war, and a re-examination of the Hacker-Beard thesis that the war was a turning point in American economic history. [Details...]

104. The Economy of Ancient Greece

This article will set out the types of evidence available for studying the Greek economy, to describe briefly the long-running debate about the ancient Greek economy and the most widely accepted model of it, and to present a basic view of the various sectors of the ancient Greek economy during the three major phases of its history. [Details...]

105. The First Bank of the United States

This article breaks the first bank into 3 parts: the birth of the bank, the life of the bank, and the death of the bank. [Details...]

106. The Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922

This article begins with reference to the Emergency Tariff Act of 1921, then goes on to discusse the Fordney-McCumber Tariff. The article then compares Fordney-McCumber, Payne-Aldrich, and Underwood-Simmons, and discusses the Fordney-McCumber Tariff with respect to American agriculture and International retaliation. [Details...]

107. The Glorious Revolution of 1688

The Glorious Revolution was when William of Orange took the English throne from James II in 1688. This article gives a historical overview of the event, and discusses tensions, the new constitution and its credibility as well as fiscal credibility, and the financial consequences. [Details...]

108. The History of the Aerospace Industry

The aerospace industry ranks among the world's largest manufacturing industries in terms of people employed and value of output. Yet even beyond its shear size, the aerospace industry was one of the defining industries of the twentieth century. [Details...]

109. The History of the International Tea Market, 1850-1945

This article discusses the demand and supply for tea as well as the formation of tea cartels. [Details...]

110. The History of the Radio Industry in the United States to 1940

In this article the beginnings of radio is described and how after 1920 large corporations began to dominate the industry. [Details...]

111. The International Natural Rubber Market, 1870-1930

Natural rubber was first used by the indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin for a variety of purposes. This article describes its uses and the labor structures which emerged to extract rubber for commercial purposes. [Details...]

112. The Marshall Plan, 1948-1951

The Marshall Plan was aimed at help the economies of Western Europe between 1948 and 1951. This article focuses on the competing interpretations of the effects of the Marshall Plan. [Details...]

113. The National Recovery Administration

This article outlines the history of the National Recovery Administration, one of the most important and controversial agencies in Roosevelt's New Deal. It discusses the agency's "codes of fair competition" under which antitrust law exemptions could be granted in exchange for adoption of minimum wages, problems some industries encountered in their subsequent attempts to fix prices under the codes, and the macroeconomic effects of the program. [Details...]

114. The Panic of 1907

The Panic of 1907 was the last and most severe of the bank panics that plagued the National Banking Era of the United States. This article discusses what caused the panic, the panic at the trust companies, the connection to the stock market, and why there were runs on the trust companies. [Details...]

115. The Protestant Ethic Thesis

This article summarizes German sociologist Max Weber's formulation, considers criticisms of Weber's thesis, and reviews evidence of linkages between cultural values and economic growth. [Details...]

116. The Roots of American Industrialization, 1790-1860

This article describes synergy between agriculture and manufacturing, manufactures which were produced for large market areas, the impact of transportation improvements, manufactures of Eastern and national markets, and the American manufacturing belt. [Details...]

117. The U.S. Economy in the 1920s

This article descibes the many things such as cars, traveling, electrical improvements, etc. which made the 1920's a distinct decade in its own right. [Details...]

118. The US Coal Industry in the Nineteenth Century

The coal industry was a major foundation for American industrialization in the nineteenth century. As a fuel source, coal provided a cheap and efficient source of power for steam engines, furnaces, and forges across the United States. [Details...]

119. The United States Public Debt, 1861 to 1975

This short study examines the public debt between the Civil War and the Budget Control Act, the period in which the foundations of our present public debt of over $7 trillion were laid. [Details...]

120. The Works Progress Administration

This article begins with the Great Depression and the New Deal, discusses WPA projects and procedures and the distribution of WPA funds. [Details...]

121. Third World Debt

This article describes the history of third world debt and how it grew in the seventies and discusses to whom the debt is owed. [Details...]

122. Thomas Robert Malthus

This article gives a brief decsription on Malthus's prediction that the population would be unable to feed itself in a certain matter of time. [Details...]

123. Trucking Deregulation

The federal government has been regulating prices and competition in interstate transportation ever since Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to oversee the railroad industry in 1887. This article describes the costs and regulations and the successes of deregulation. [Details...]

124. Turnpikes and Toll Roads in Nineteenth-Century America

This article describes how turnpikes demonstrated how nineteenth-century Americans integrate elements of modern corporation-with its emphasis on profit-taking residual claimants- with non-pecuniary motivations such as use and esteem. [Details...]

125. US Banking History, Civil War to World War II

This article describes how the National Banking era was ushered in by the passage of the National Currency (later renamed the National Banking) Acts of 1863 and 1864. The Acts marked a decisive change in the monetary system, confirmed a quarter-century-old trend in bank chartering arrangements, and also played a role in financing the Civil War. [Details...]

126. Urban Mass Transit In The United States

In the United States mass transit has, for the most part, meant some kind of local bus or rail service, and it is on these modes that this article focuses. [Details...]

127. Usury

The question of when and if money can be lent at interest for a guaranteed return is one of the oldest moral and economic problems in Western Civilization. This article describes how by the early modern period the concept of usury began to be secularized, but the issue of what usury is and when it occurs is still causing disputes in modern legal and theological systems. [Details...]

128. Women Workers in the British Industrial Revolution

Historians disagree about whether the British Industrial Revolution (1760-1830) was beneficial for women. However, this article focuses on how the Industrial Revolution was a time of important changes in the way that women worked. [Details...]

129. Workers' Compensation

This article discusses the origins of worker's compensation and trends in worker's compensation over the past century. [Details...]

130. http://www.economics.unimelb.edu.au/rdixon/wlaw.html

This document deals with the following topics: the relevance of Walras Law for macroeconomic (and especially unemployment) theory; who was Walras?; an intuitive (and a formal) proof of Walras Law; Walras Law and disequilibrium states; Walras versus Keynes: Notional c.f. Effective Demands. [Details...]

131. American Currency Exhibit

This tutorial contains many images of American currency, going as far back as 1776. Eras represented by these images include: Independence; Westward Expansion; Civil War; Industrial Revolution; Metal Standards; National Stability; and World Standard. [Details...]

132. The Story of Money

A tutorial with many pictures of money in its various forms over time. Sections include: Barter; Common products as money; Value in use, value in exchange; Money simplifies trade; Money takes many shapes; Early coins; Paper money; Banking evolves; Commerce in the colonies; Early American money; After the Revolution; U.S. banks and money; The Civil War era; Progress and problems; The Fed and afterwards; Price stability: Goal of the Fed [Details...]

133. EH.Net

EH.Net operates the Economic History Services fileserver and several electronic discussion lists to provide resources and promote communication among scholars in economic history and related fields. [Details...]

134. Economic Growth in East Asia

Over the past three decades remarkable economic growth has occured in East Asia. This policy forum will examine key features of economic growth in eight East Asian economies: Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan/China, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia. This forum will also focus on some central ideas of growth theory. Tools and concepts from growth theory provide important insights into the East Asian experience. This experience, in turn, also provides new insights into the process of economic growth. One goal of this forum is to confront growth theory with an important example of economic growth, and in doing so promote understanding of both growth theory and an outstanding growth experience. [Details...]

135. Enterprise Restructuring in the former Soviet Union

Citizens of the countries of the former Soviet Union (FSU) have recognized the potential benefits, observed in many different cultures and societies around the world, of private, market-driven enterprises. For more than half a century enterprises in the FSU have been subject to comprehensive state ownership and central planning. Prices and financing were typically of little concern to enterprise management, while workers did not have to worry about job security and received a wide range of social benefits through enterprises. While moving toward private, market-driven enterprises offers great promise for an improved standard of living for the average person, such a transition represents a fundamental social, psychological, and economic challenge. [Details...]

136. Factory Workers in the British Industrial Revolution

This site details factory workers in the British Industrial Revolution with an emphasis on how factory work greatly affected the life experiences of men and especially women and children. [Details...]

137. History of Money - from Ancient Times to the Present Day

Monetary history in context from the dawn of civilization to the beginning of the twenty first century, based on the definitive book on the subject. This site contains a chronology, by Glyn and Roy Davies and a collection of essays written by Roy Davies on various themes using information based on the book. [Details...]

138. Mexican Economic Crisis, December 1994

This site explores the Mexican Economic Crisis through reviews and summaries, links to facts and background, and displaying statistical tables. [Details...]

139. Unemployment in Eastern and Central Europe

Unemployment, once unknown and illegal in the formerly communist regimes in eastern and central Europe, has become a significant social and economic phenomenon. The rise in unemployment rates has been large but varied across countries. The transition from centrally planned economies to market-oriented economies has produced significant reductions in employment in the state sector as consumer-driven incentives begin to influence industrial structure. Reductions in employment in the state sector were partially offset by reductions in labor force particpation. Differences in the decline in labor force participation among countries led to significant differences in the relationship between unemployment growth and contraction in employment. However, the decline in labor force participation seems to be concentrated in the early stages of the transition, and in the future declining labor force participation is not likely to play as significant a role in dampening the growth of unemployment. [Details...]

140. Business Cycle Theory

A collection of articles providing a comprehensive coverage of the business cycle theory. The topics covered are Cycles: Some Empirical Issues, Climate Theories of the Cycle, Over-Investment Theories: the Continental tradition, Psychological and Lead/Lag Theories: the Anglo-American tradition, Monetary Theories of the Cycle, Underconsumption Theories, and Shock-Based Theories of the Cycle. [Details...]

141. Edgeworthian Exchange

A collection of articles providing a comprehensive coverage of the Edgeworthian Exchange. The following topics are covered: Edgeworth's Indeterminacy of Contract, Determinacy Restored, Edgeworth's Conjecture, Monopoly Pricing and Contracts, The Continuum Economy, Imperfect Curiosa, The Non-Standard Economy, Core Convergence, Adjustment Processes, and Coalitional Exchange. [Details...]