Alexander J. Field

The Most Technologically Progressive Decade of the Century

There is now an emerging consensus that over the course of U.S. economic history, multifactor productivity grew fastest over a broad plateau between 1905 and 1966, and within that period, in the two decades following 1929. This paper argues that the bulk of the achieved productivity levels in 1948 had already been attained before full scale war mobilization in 1942. It was not principally the war that laid the foundation for postwar prosperity. It was technological progress across a broad frontier of the American economy during the 1930s.

Microeconomics, Norms, and Rationality

Norms established through the process of socialization, perhaps voluntarily accepted or affirmed, perhaps building on certain genetic predispositions, provide part of the framework within which individuals pursue their self interest. Intellectually defensible microeconomic analysis, in its competitive or game theoretic variant, can be undertaken only if this principle is recognized.

On the Explanation of Rules Using Rational Choice Models

The attempt to explain rule variation using rational choice models faces serious problems. An important range of phenomena, such as cooperation, cartels, and more generally the rules which organize economic activity, may need to be approached on a case-by-case basis. This necessitates the redevelopment of historical, institutional, and legal sensitivities to complement the analytical and statistical techniques emphasized in economics instruction.

Uncontrolled Land Development and the Duration of the Depression in the United States

Aggregate economic activity was heavily influenced by the construction sectors expansion, collapse, and failure to revive during the interwar years. The 1920s building boom was the first to respond to the potential of the automobile and the last to be largely unplanned. Its uncoordinated character slowed the growth of full employment output toward the end of the 1920s. The physical and legal detritus of unregulated land development posed continuing obstacles to recovery during the second half of the 1930s.

Sectoral Shift in Antebellum Massachusetts: A Reconsideration

The key to the development of manufacturing in antebellum Massachusetts is to be found not in newly available technological or organizational blueprints in the manufacturing sector, not in changes in tariff policies, and not in demand shifts (although all of these many have contributed to some extent to the growth of manufacturing), but rather in the history of New England agriculture, a history which led to drastic changes in the nature of supply schedules for manufacturing labor in the region. Technological change in the transport sector depressed relative earnings in New England agriculture. Although some were able to move west in response to the more favorable agricultural opportunities available, not all were able to do so, for a number of reasons. It was this less than perfect factor mobility that permitted the growth of a sizable manufacturing sector in antebellum Massachusetts and New England.

A New Interpretation of the Onset of the Great Depression

Over the 1919-1929 period, fluctuations in the value of stock trading on the New York Stock Exchange exercised statistically significant and economically important impacts on the demand to hold cash balances. The marked post-1925 rise in the volume and value of stock trading led to a measurable increase in the transactions demand to hold cash balances, an increase in demand not recognized or seriously discussed by individuals inside or outside of the system. Had it been recognized, it is unlikely that the Fed would have persisted in its antispeculative policies in 1928-1929, policies associated with rises in interest rates and the beginnings of a downturn in real activity in the second quarter of 1929.

Technological Change and U.S. Productivity Growth in the Interwar Years

Manufacturing was responsible for almost all - 83 percent - of the growth of total factor productivity in the U.S. private nonfarm economy between 1919 and 1929. During the Depression manufacturing TFP growth was not as uniformly distributed, and only half as rapid, accounting for only 48 percent of PNE TFP growth. Yet the overall growth of the residual between 1929 and 1941 was the highest of any comparable period in the twentieth century. This resulted from the combination of a still potent manufacturing contribution with advances in transportation, public utilities, and distribution, fueled in part by investments in public infrastructure.

The Magnetic Telegraph, Price and Quantity Data, and the New Management of Capital

The contribution to growth of telegraphic- as opposed to rail-speed transmission of financial asset and commodity price data remains unclear. With more certainty we can identify savings in the holdings of real capital-savings made possible by the use of the telegraph at the firm level to implement tight systems of logistical control.

Land Abundance, Interest/Profit Rates, and Nineteenth-Century American and British Technology

Virtually all sectors of the nineteenth-century American economy were less capital-intensive than their British counterparts. This resulted from persistently higher American interest/profit rates, due in turn to American land abundance. The paper adduces the evidence in support of these propositions, and explores their interrelationships through the use of a linear model inspired by the writings of David Ricardo.

The Future of Economic History

This essay considers the status of the new economic history from the vantage point of the mid-1980s. It discusses the historical and demographic factors that contributed to the golden age of academics in the United States (1957-1969), and how this, along with various intellectual factors, influenced the growth of Cliometrics. It argues that by the 1980s the subdiscipline had moved substantially beyond its initial self-identified status as an insurgency. The essay includes data on the production of first degrees as well as economics and history Ph.D.s from 1964 through 1981.