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44 results

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  • 15 - Native Americans and exchange:

  • Edited by Larry Neal, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Jeffrey G. Williamson, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Capitalism
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    23 January 2014, pp 455-490

  • Summary

    This chapter assesses the Chinese economic history before the late nineteenth-century development of capitalist firms and markets transforming China's economy. It makes a distinction between economic growth as a general category and industrialization as a more specific species of economic growth. The social organization of agricultural production was based on family farming across varied ecological conditions. Improved technologies of tilling, sowing, fertilizing, weeding, and harvesting spread across the empire after the third century. To understand the institutions that promoted a flourishing commercial economy across and beyond the vast spaces of China's agrarian empire, the chapter looks more closely at how production and exchange were organized. It is difficult to create metrics for early modern era legal practices that are judged by economic effects, but the growth of the porcelain, tea, and silk trades to Europe and colonial America suggest that the Chinese institutional nexus for foreign trade did not stifle exchange in a consequential fashion.

  • Accounting for the Traffic in Africans: Transport Costs on Slaving Voyages

  • David Eltis, Frank D. Lewis, Kimberly McIntyre
  • Journal:
    The Journal of Economic History / Volume 70 / Issue 4 / December 2010
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    01 December 2010, pp. 940-963
    Print publication:
    December 2010

  • Relying mainly on the manuscript records of the Royal African Company, we explore the factors that contributed to the large gap between slave prices in Africa and the Caribbean. Twenty-two voyages from the mid-1680s are analyzed. These were conducted with hired ships and the payments to the shipowners and captains were recorded. In addition to transport costs, mortality and morbidity had a big effect on slave prices; while the earnings from the trade in gold and ivory had a moderating influence. The effect of mortality and transport costs on slave prices during the eighteenth century is also explored.

Human Capital and Institutions
  • A Long-Run View
  • Edited by David Eltis, Frank D. Lewis, Kenneth L. Sokoloff
  • Published online:
    22 December 2009
    Print publication:
    17 August 2009
  • Human Capital and Institutions is concerned with human capital in its many dimensions and brings to the fore the role of political, social, and economic institutions in human capital formation and economic growth. Written by leading economic historians, including pioneers in historical research on human capital, the chapters in this text offer a broad-based view of human capital in economic development. The issues they address range from nutrition in pre-modern societies to twentieth-century advances in medical care; from the social institutions that provided temporary relief to workers in the middle and lower ranges of the wage scale to the factors that affected the performance of those who reached the pinnacle in business and art; and from political systems that stifled the advance of literacy to those that promoted public and higher education. Just as human capital has been a key to economic growth, so has the emergence of appropriate institutions been a key to the growth of human capital.

Slavery in the Development of the Americas
  • Edited by David Eltis, Frank D. Lewis, Kenneth L. Sokoloff
  • Published online:
    18 August 2009
    Print publication:
    29 March 2004
  • Slavery in the Development of the Americas brings together work from leading historians and economic historians of slavery. The essays cover various aspects of slavery and the role of slavery in the development of the southern United States, Brazil, Cuba, the French and Dutch Caribbean, and elsewhere in the Americas. Some essays explore the emergence of the slave system, and others provide important insights about the operation of specific slave economics. There are reviews of slave markets and prices, and discussions of the efficiency and distributional aspects of slavery. Perspectives are brought on the transition from slavery and subsequent adjustments, and the volume contains the work of prominent scholars, many of whom have been pioneers in the study of slavery in the Americas.

  • Introduction

  • Edited by David Eltis, Emory University, Atlanta, Frank D. Lewis, Kenneth L. Sokoloff, University of California, Los Angeles
  • Book:
    Human Capital and Institutions
    Published online:
    22 December 2009
    Print publication:
    17 August 2009, pp 1-8

  • Summary

    Stanley Engerman and Kenneth Sokoloff have been leaders in renewing interest in institutions and their impact on economic development. The papers in this volume are concerned with human capital in its many dimensions, and bring to fore the role of political, social, and economic institutions in human capital formation and economic growth. The papers address a broad range of issues, from nutrition in pre-modern societies to twentieth-century advances in medical care, from the institutions that concerned workers in the middle and lower ranges of the wage scale to the factors that affected the performance of those who reached the pinnacle in business and art, and from political systems that stifled the advance of literacy to those that promoted public and higher education. Just as human capital has been a key to economic growth, so has the emergence of appropriate institutions been a key to human capital formation. It is this theme that underlies the papers in this volume.

    Along with Stan Engerman, Robert Fogel pioneered the use of anthropometric evidence to study economic growth, and helped expand our view of human capital. Formal schooling, apprenticeship programs, specialized job training in the workplace, and learning-by-doing all raise productivity, but other forms of human capital investment are also important. The notion that health and physical size and strength can affect labor productivity is not new, but Fogel has brought these forms of human capital to center stage.

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