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 examined this view by measuring biological living standards and find the opposite. The height of the male Hangryu Deceased, who died on the street but whose bodies were not claimed, increased by 1.1 cm from the 1880s to the 1910s. This also implies that free trade rather than new institutions might matter more for economic growth during the colonial era.

This study aims at enhancing our understanding of how industrial conditions affect the choice of a firm's ownership structure. The Providence/Attleboro area was a center of jewelry production during the nineteenth century. Because of the differentiated nature of the product, the Providence/Attleboro jewelers needed to promote their products among the wholesalers in distant markets. These geographical and industrial conditions motivated the entrepreneurs to organize partnerships for ameliorating informational asymmetries and for mobilizing the capital required to achieve economies of scale in sales and production.