Research in Economic History

Christopher Hanes has been Professor of Economics at the State University of New York at Binghamton (Binghamton University) since 2003. Most of his research has been in American macroeconomic history. His publications have appeared in journals including the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, the Journal of Economic History, and Explorations in Economic History.  Susan Wolcott is an Associate Professor in the Economics Department at Binghamton University. She primarily works on issues related to the colonial development of India. Her publications include “Why Nations Fail,” from the Journal of Economic History, 1999, and “Strikes in Colonial India,” published in the Industrial and Labor Relations Review 2008.

The six essays in this volume address topics in economic history. They explore the effect of changes in relative prices on the distribution of real household income in Denmark during the Great Depression; the importance of expository editorials in Business Week in spreading awareness of and gaining acceptance for Keynesian policies among US business elites; how the decision to join the military under changing economic conditions may lead to biased height measurements; the relationship between county-level votes for William Jennings Bryan vs. William McKinley in the 1896 election and county-level data of economic and demographic factors; the relationship between the Banque de France's policies and the interests of its shareholders and the myth that the bank was controlled by its large shareholders; and whether open fields reduced the risk faced by farmers in Sweden due to issues like heavy rains and droughts between 1715 and 1860.

• 1. Household-level Deflation Inequality in Denmark During the Great Depression; Kim Abildgren 2. Business Week, The Great Depression, and the Coming of Keynesianism to America; Ranjit S. Dighe  3. Theory and Diagnostics for Selection Biases in Historical Height Samples; Howard Bodenhorn, Timothy W. Guinnane, and Thomas A. Mroz 4. Populists at the Polls: Economic Factors in the U.S. Presidential Election of 1896; Barry Eichengreen, Michael Haines, Matthew Jaremski, and David Leblang 5. Banque de France's Shareholders (1800-1945); Arnaud Manas 6. Scattered Land, Scattered Risks? An empirical approach to the question of the open field system as a strategy for mitigating risk: the case of Scania, Sweden, c. 1750-1850; Lars Nyström