The Economic Development of the Thirteen Continental Colonies, 1720 to 1775

Egnal, Marc

doi:10.2307/1921562

Cited by 33 publications

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“…2 See, for example, Egnal (1975), Kulikoff (1986), McCusker and Menard (1985), Carr et al (1991), Mancall andWeiss (1999), andMcCusker (2000), and the sources cited there.…”

Section: Endnotes To Main Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

American Incomes before and after the Revolution

Lindert

Williamson

2011

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Building social tables in the tradition of Gregory King, we develop new estimates suggesting that between 1774 and 1800 American incomes fell in real per capita terms. The colonial South was richer than the North at the start, but was already beginning to lose its income lead by 1800. We also find that free American colonists had much more equal incomes than did households in England and Wales. The colonists also had greater purchasing power than their English counterparts over all of the income ranks except in the top few percent. I. Early American Growth and Inequality DebatesAmerican economic historians need fresh information on the income levels that prevailed at the end of the colonial era and the dawn of independence in order to understand this country's growth process and its evolving social structure. This need keeps arising whenever we try to cast back from today to the late colonial period, or to project ahead from early colonial years, or to view American incomes in trans-Atlantic perspective.The debate that tries to back-cast American growth from 1840 has centered around Paul David's classic 1967 article on "New Estimates, Controlled Conjectures", a descriptive label that should apply to this paper as well. David, Robert Gallman, Thomas Weiss, and others centered their plausible conjectures on the division of the economy into large sectors, each with its own labor force and labor productivity growth. All of these competing estimates have been Economic growth across the colonial era defines more contested territory. Some have seen only extensive growth: that is, stagnant productivity, with only population growth and land settlement, and without gains in average living standards. Others have seen evidence of intensive growth: that is, considerable productivity growth, some emphasizing seventeenthcentury emergence from initial hardship and mortality, and others emphasizing gains across the middle of the eighteenth century. This debate has also been hampered by lack of knowledge about labor inputs and occupational structure, and by the roughness of any estimates of productivity growth within such sectors as agriculture or shipping. Maddison's beliefs need to be reconciled with the fact that North America attracted a significant net emigration from the Mother Country and that colonial and republican population growth was much faster here. In the light of current research on the Great Divergence, on the history of European incomes, and on the continued use of the Maddison world income estimates, we think the time is ripe to add data from the American side to compare with the new estimates for Europe.We can now offer new estimates based on more archival data than were available to earlier researchers. The harvest is offered as an "open-source" presentation of our detailed data and procedures on the internet, for both negative and positive reasons. The negative reason is that many scholars might resist accepting some new estimates based on vulnerable primary data, wishing to offer their own estimate...

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“…2 See, for example, Egnal (1975), Kulikoff (1986), McCusker and Menard (1985), Carr et al (1991), Mancall andWeiss (1999), andMcCusker (2000), and the sources cited there.…”

Section: Endnotes To Main Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

American Incomes before and after the Revolution

Lindert

Williamson

2011

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“…Maddison's beliefs need to be reconciled with the fact that North America attracted a significant net emigration from the 1 The debate over growth rates from 1790 or 1800 to 1840 is well represented by David (1967David ( , 1996, Gallman (1992Gallman ( , 1999, and Weiss (1992Weiss ( , 1993Weiss ( , 1994. 2 See, for example, Egnal (1975), Kulikoff (1986), McCusker and Menard (1985), Carr, Menard, and Walsh (1991), Mancall andWeiss (1999), andMcCusker (2000), and the sources cited there. mother country and that colonial and republican population growth was much faster here.…”

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American Incomes Before and After the Revolution

Lindert¹,

Williamson

2013

J. Econ. Hist.

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“…160-76) to evaluate the general trend of living standards in Nova Scotia from 1832 to 1872. American economic historians such as Marc Egnal (1975) and John McCusker and Russell Menard (1991) have also used imports in the prerevolutionary American colonies to evaluate the trend in living standards on the grounds that a rising colonial standard of living created a "demand for greater quantities of refined 16 Using industrial production measures, Davis (2004) found that the 1837 and 1873 recessions were in fact very mild in spite of pronounced reductions in prices. In a subsequent article (2006), he pointed out that the dominant chronology of recessions and expansions, which was based on price movements, overstated the volatility of the business cycle.…”

Section: Other Evidence In Favor Of the Revisionist Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Was Economic Growth Likely in Lower Canada?

Bédard

Geloso

2016

SSRN Journal

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Generally, the historical literature presents the period from 1817 to 1851 in Lower Canada (the modern-day province of Quebec) as one of negative economic growth. In this paper, we question this narrative by pointing to the rise of free banking during the period, which supports a case for increases in per capita income. Using the equation of exchange, we propose that given the increase in the stock of money and the reduction in the general price level, the case for a fall in per capita income is tenuous. We present complementary evidence suggesting that growth was positive.

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The Economic Development of the Thirteen Continental Colonies, 1720 to 1775

Cited by 33 publications

References 0 publications

American Incomes before and after the Revolution

American Incomes before and after the Revolution

American Incomes Before and After the Revolution

Was Economic Growth Likely in Lower Canada?

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