Douglass C. North’s The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790-1860 Revisited

1977 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 248-257
Author(s):  
Stanley L. Engerman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Approach ◽  
Empirical Testing ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Right

Douglass North’s The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790-1860, while not the most controversial of the works of “new economic historians” in the 1960s, was among the first and was probably the most widely used of any of these in undergraduate history courses. In addition to its widespread use—possibly the first introduction of many history students to an economic approach to their subject—it framed, if not originated, a number of hypotheses about the process of American economic growth and about various specific relationships which have been and remain the basis of empirical work. In examining its importance the question is not just whether on certain specific points North was right, but also whether the book generated important hypotheses for empirical testing. In these latter regards here clearly was an important book, and, while it may seem to be incomplete or to fail on some specific issues, we should add that even now it is often unclear what the “right” answers might be.

scholarly journals The great Chinese transformation: cynicism and the future of the world (article two)

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
Grzegorz W. Kolodko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chinese Economy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Chinese Characteristics ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Right ◽  
Supranational Level

The huge leap made by the Chinese economy over the past four decades as a result of market reforms and openness to the world is causing fear in some and anxiety in others. Questions arise as to whether China’s economic success is solid and whether economic growth will be followed by political expansion. China makes extensive use of globalization and is therefore interested in continuing it. At the same time, China wants to give it new features and specific Chinese characteristics. This is met with reluctance by the current global hegemon, the United States, all the more so as there are fears that China may promote its original political and economic system, "cynicism", abroad. However, the world is still big enough to accommodate us all. Potentially, not necessarily. For this to happen, we need the right policies, which in the future must also include better coordination at the supranational level.

From American Exceptionalism to the Great Compression

2021 ◽  
pp. 323-350
Author(s):  
Jon D. Wisman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
World War ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
First Time

The United States was an anomaly, beginning without clear class distinctions and with substantial egalitarian sentiment. Inexpensive land meant workers who were not enslaved were relatively free. However, as the frontier closed and industrialization took off after the Civil War, inequality soared and workers increasingly lost control over their workplaces. Worker agitation led to improved living standards, but gains were limited by the persuasiveness of the elite’s ideology. The hardships of the Great Depression, however, significantly delegitimated the elite’s ideology, resulting in substantially decreased inequality between the 1930s and 1970s. Robust economic growth following World War II and workers’ greater political power permitted unparalleled improvements in working-class living standards. By the 1960s, for the first time in history, a generation came of age without fear of dire material privation, generating among many of the young a dramatic change in values and attitudes, privileging social justice and self-realization over material concerns.

Economic Growth and Poverty in the United States

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
John P. Formby ◽  
Gary A. Hoover ◽  
Hoseong Kim
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
Time Series ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Expansion ◽  
Gini Coefficients ◽  
Income Gap ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
New Time

This paper estimates the income gap rations and Gini coefficients of poor Americans and combines them with official U.S. government poverty statistics to create a new time series of Sen indices of poverty. The effects of growth and other determinants of aggregate poverty are investigated for the period of 1961-1996. Holding other determinants of poverty constant, the results indicate that economic growth affects the Sen index and official U.S. government poverty statistics in essentially the same manner across time. The long economic expansion following the recession of 1981-1982 had much smaller poverty reducing effects than the expansion of the 1960s.

Labor Monopsony in the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 11-29
Author(s):  
Eric A. Posner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
Market Power ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
The United States ◽  
Market Concentration ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Low Wages

Most labor markets are monopsonistic, meaning that employers have market power and can suppress wages below the competitive rate. Among the various sources of market power is concentration: the usually small number of employers who compete to offer a type of job to workers. At one time, economists assumed that labor markets were competitive, and largely ignored the phenomenon of labor market concentration. Recent empirical work, relying on newly available databases, has established that labor market concentration is a serious problem in the United States and may account for a wide range of pathologies, including low wages, inequality, and stagnant economic growth.

Rules, Rulers, and the “Right Kind” of Competition

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime Schultz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Physical Educators ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Women's Sport ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
Sport Skills ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Right ◽  
United States Olympic Committee

This chapter discusses how women physical educators began to reevaluate their collective position against intercollegiate, commercial, and hypercompetitive sports for their students. Particular attention is given to a series of National Institutes on Girls' Sports, jointly sponsored by the Division for Girls and Women's Sports (DGWS) and the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) that took place during the 1960s. At these clinics, educators, recreation leaders, and other interested parties learned the necessary tools to teach sport skills to their respective charges and to encourage them to engage in “the right kind of competition.” The emergent groundswell of support was an important antecedent to the subsequent developments in women's sport.

Alliance for Progress

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen G. Rabe
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
Assistance Program ◽  
Alliance For Progress ◽  
The 1960S

On March 13, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced the Alliance for Progress, an economic assistance program to promote political democracy, economic growth, and social justice in Latin America. The United States and Latin American nations formally agreed to the alliance at a conference held in August 1961, at Punta del Este, Uruguay. U.S. delegates promised that Latin America would receive over twenty billion dollars in public and private capital from the United States and international lending authorities during the 1960s. The money would arrive in the form of grants, loans, and direct private investments. When combined with an expected eighty billion dollars in internal investment, this new money was projected to stimulate an economic growth rate of not less than 2.5 percent a year. This economic growth would facilitate significant improvements in employment, and in rates of infant mortality, life expectancy, and literacy rates. In agreeing to the alliance, Latin American leaders pledged to work for equality and social justice by promoting agrarian reform and progressive income taxes. The Kennedy administration developed this so-called Marshall Plan for Latin America because it judged the region susceptible to social revolution and communism. Fidel Castro had transformed the Cuban Revolution into a strident anti-American movement and had allied his nation with the Soviet Union. U.S. officials feared that the lower classes of Latin America, mired in poverty and injustice, might follow similarly radical leaders. Alliance programs delivered outside capital to the region, but the Alliance for Progress failed to transform Latin America. During the 1960s, Latin American economies performed poorly, usually falling below the 2.5 percent target. The region witnessed few improvements in health, education, or welfare. Latin American societies remained unfair and authoritarian. Sixteen extra-constitutional changes of government repeatedly unsettled the region. The Alliance for Progress fell short of its goals for several reasons. Latin America had formidable obstacles to change: elites resisted land reform, equitable tax systems, and social programs; new credits often brought greater indebtedness rather than growth; and the Marshall Plan experience served as a poor guide to solving the problems of a region that was far different from Western Europe. The United States also acted ambiguously, calling for democratic progress and social justice, but worried that Communists would take advantage of the instability caused by progressive change. Further, Washington provided wholehearted support only to those Latin American governments and organizations that pursued fervent anticommunist policies.

The Pressures of Growth

1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan G. Norton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
Chief Executive Officers ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Chief Executive ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Environmental Goals ◽  
Executive Officers ◽  
The Right

Critics of environmentalism have often charged that the movement is “elitist.” By this is meant, among other complaints, that environmentalists are mainly members of the middle and upper classes who have achieved a comfortable level of economic well-being and who want to “lock up” natural resources, discourage economic growth, and withhold upwardly mobile job opportunities from less privileged economic groups in the society. Environmentalists, of course, dispute this criticism, arguing that it is unsupported by any reasonable interpretation of either environmentalists’ goals or the socioeconomic data. Nevertheless, the criticism strikes a sensitive nerve. It is interesting that the charge is directed at environmentalists, a majority of whom are liberals or progressives, both from the right, which claims environmental regulations choke off economic opportunities, and from the left, which argues that skirmishes over resource policy represent just one more episode in the ongoing war between the classes. What is undeniable is that the growth issue is the most difficult one facing environmentalists today. Here is a real dilemma. If environmentalists embrace economic growth in America, they apparently embrace endless sprawl, boom towns, high energy use, degradation of watersheds and wetlands, more chemicals—evils without end. If they oppose growth, however, they appear to favor unemployment, reduced wages, and economic stagnation. About growth, the dilemma encourages ambivalence and waffling: In 1977, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund published The Unfinished Agenda: The Citizen’s Guide to Environmental Issues, which emphasized a need for “a major transformation in human values” and argued that the United States has “enjoyed a development that is no longer possible for most [nations].” The United States must, the report urges, aid in “the transition from abundance to scarcity” and provide examples of how, “in a ‘Conserver Society,’ quality of life can be preserved (and, for many, increased) in an era of scarcity.” In the years since the Reagan antiregulatory revolution, however, environmentalists have also emphasized the importance of economic growth in achieving environmental goals. In a 1985 agenda document (environmentalists love to compose agendas), the Group of Ten (chief executive officers of ten leading environmental organizations) said: “Continued economic growth is essential.

Having Their Say, Leaving Their Mark

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-153
Author(s):  
Adolphus G. Belk ◽  
Robert C. Smith ◽  
Sherri L. Wallace
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Black People ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Adverse Conditions ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Independent Organization

In general, the founders of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists were “movement people.” Powerful agents of socialization such as the uprisings of the 1960s molded them into scholars with tremendous resolve to tackle systemic inequalities in the political science discipline. In forming NCOBPS as an independent organization, many sought to develop a Black perspective in political science to push the boundaries of knowledge and to use that scholarship to ameliorate the adverse conditions confronting Black people in the United States and around the globe. This paper utilizes historical documents, speeches, interviews, and other scholarly works to detail the lasting contributions of the founders and Black political scientists to the discipline, paying particular attention to their scholarship, teaching, mentoring, and civic engagement. It finds that while political science is much improved as a result of their efforts, there is still work to do if their goals are to be achieved.

Lending to the Borrower from Hell

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mauricio Drelichman ◽  
Hans-Joachim Voth
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
Risk Sharing ◽  
The United States ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
Loan Contracts ◽  
The Right ◽  
Intelligent Model ◽  
New Evidence

Why do lenders time and again loan money to sovereign borrowers who promptly go bankrupt? When can this type of lending work? As the United States and many European nations struggle with mountains of debt, historical precedents can offer valuable insights. This book looks at one famous case—the debts and defaults of Philip II of Spain. Ruling over one of the largest and most powerful empires in history, King Philip defaulted four times. Yet he never lost access to capital markets and could borrow again within a year or two of each default. Exploring the shrewd reasoning of the lenders who continued to offer money, the book analyzes the lessons from this historical example. Using detailed new evidence collected from sixteenth-century archives, the book examines the incentives and returns of lenders. It provides powerful evidence that in the right situations, lenders not only survive despite defaults—they thrive. It also demonstrates that debt markets cope well, despite massive fluctuations in expenditure and revenue, when lending functions like insurance. The book unearths unique sixteenth-century loan contracts that offered highly effective risk sharing between the king and his lenders, with payment obligations reduced in bad times. A fascinating story of finance and empire, this book offers an intelligent model for keeping economies safe in times of sovereign debt crises and defaults.

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