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Secure property rights are usually considered to be essential for sustained economic development. In England, it is debated whether property rights have been secure since the medieval period or if they were only established after the Glorious Revolution. In this context, the paper examines the Court of Wards, which from 1540 to 1646 administered the Crown's right to take custody of children and their lands when these were held by feudal-military tenures. The paper shows that wardship was a common occurrence, its exactions arbitrary but often heavy, and that it reduced the value of lands held by these tenures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an abstract of the paper `Government Debt and Private Capital Markets: England, 1727-1837,' by Gregory Clark, during the fifty-fifth annual meeting of the Economic History Association.

This paper investigates whether high borrowing costs deterred investment in sanitation infrastructure in late nineteenth-century Britain. Town Councils had to borrow to fund investment, with considerable variation in interest rates across towns and over time. Panel regressions, using annual data from more than 800 town councils, indicate that higher interest rates were associated with lower levels of infrastructure investment between 1887 and 1903. Instrumental variable regressions show that falling interest rates after 1887 stimulated investment and led to lower infant mortality. These findings suggest that Parliament could have expedited mortality decline by subsidizing loans or facilitating private borrowing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an abstract of the paper `Prices and Famine in Early Modern England: An Analysis of Tudor-Stuart Public Policy,' by Randall Nielsen, during the fifty-fifth annual meeting of the Economic History Association.

Presents an abstract of the paper `Institutional Change in Income Assistance: Fiscal Federalism During the Lancashire Cotton Famine,' by L. Lynne Kiesling, during the fifty-fifth annual meeting of the Economic History Association.

Presents an abstract of a conference paper on the public health externalities of private water-supply in London, England.

Cross sections of coal prices in England for 1695, 1795, and 1842 are used to infer transportation rates by sea, river, canal, and road. The effectiveness of monopolies, the degree of market integration, and the patterns of regional supply of each mining district are then established. The growth rates of productivity in sea, river, and road transport from 1695–1842 are computed and combined with a social savings assessment of canals to measure the overall growth in the productivity of shipping coal. Productivity growth was substantial but had a surprisingly limited impact on the geography of production and consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proposes an econometric model for estimating the price and output effect of the Limitation of the Vend, a mineowners' cartel in the coal trade of London, England during the 1770-1845 period. Effect of a formal regulation on the price of coal; Purpose of the Limitation.

Offers a look at the work of the Crown Agents for Colonies, an office in London, England responsible for the business affairs of British overseas territories in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Reorganization made to the office in 1858; Advantages and commissions given to Crown Agents; Number of loans issued since 1858; Other business interests.

Presents an abstract of a conference paper on institutional change and the development of road transportation in England from 1690 to 1840.

Presents a summary of a doctoral dissertation on the use of time in the eighteenth century with the concept of giving account for time use taken from Old Bailey, a court in England. Assumption that Londoners were very hard-working between 1750-1800; Availability of data from the `Old Bailey Sessions Papers'; Indepth look at the validity of the assumption.

Discusses studies made concerning the economic history in Europe. Effect of cartel on the demand and supply system of coal trade in London, England between 1770-1845; Discussion on demand elasticities; Line of reasoning advanced in the study of sharecropping growth in France between 1500 and 1700.

Reexamines theories previously advanced to explain slow adoption of ring spinning in Lancashire, England. Survey of the literature on the slow adoption of ring spinning; Insufficiency of the standard dichotomy between vertically integrated and vertically specialized firms; Conclusions.

Focuses on estimates of life expectation at birth in England during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Statistics on life expectation from 1851 to 1911; Factors affecting life expectation growth; Implications of the secular decline in infant mortality.

Discusses the role of profits in the slave trade and slavery in the British industrial revolution. Importance of profits in the explanation of economic development; Influence of the Keynesian revolution.

Explores the determinants of wealth for seventeenth-century Englishmen living in England and the United States. Approach for describing wealth differences among the regions; Claim toward the role of region to wealth determinant; Factors that have influence on wealth.

Examines the thesis of family limitation in pre-industrial England proposed by E.A. Wrigley on the basis of birth intervals evidence. Use of a simulation model of a stochastic reproductive system; Argument on Wrigley's hypothesis on the role of birth control.

Presents an abstract of a conference paper on rural-urban migration and socioeconomic mobility in England from 1851 to 1881.

Carefully constructed but fallible historical estimates of GDP and agricultural output inform our understanding of the preindustrial origins of economic growth. Here we review four recent attempts at estimating agricultural output and food availability in England and Wales at different points between the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution. We highlight their contrasting implications for trends in well-being and nutritional status over time. Building on these estimates, we propose our own tentative, compromise estimate of food availability. The compromise estimates are more coherent with our understanding of conditions before and during the Industrial Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

England's post-Reformation demographic regime has been characterized as “low pressure.” Yet the evidence hitherto for the presence of a preventive check, defined as the short-run response of marriage and births to variations in living standards, is rather weak. New evidence in this article strengthens the case for the preventive check in both medieval and early modern England. We invoke manorial data to argue the case for a preventive check on marriages in the Middle Ages. Our analysis of the post-1540 period, based on parish-level rather than aggregate data, finds evidence for a preventive check on marriages and births. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Gregory Clark argued in A Farewell to Alms that preindustrial societies, including England, were Malthusian. Day wages show incomes were trendless: as high in Europe in the medieval era as in 1800, even in England. The opposed view is that England and the Netherlands grew substantially from 1200 to 1800. Early day wages overestimate living standards. Here we show that preindustrial farm employment shares can be estimated from probate occupation reports. These imply only 60 percent employed in farming in England in 1560–1579 and 1653–1660, consistent with the high incomes indicated by wages. Day wages do measure preindustrial living standards. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Why was the Industrial Revolution British? In a recent article published in this Journal, Robert Allen argues that only in England was the price of labor relative to capital high enough to justify the adoption of the labor-saving technologies which characterized the Industrial Revolution. To support his argument, he uses the spinning jenny as a case study. The jenny was indeed an important labor-saving technology that was invented and widely adopted in England but not in France. Allen explains this fact by calculating the returns to adopting the jenny in each country: according to his calculations the jenny was profitable in England but not in France. The present note shows that Allen's conclusions rest on implausible profitability computations. In particular, Allen assumes that output remains constant after the adoption of the jenny while hours worked decrease dramatically. From a theoretical perspective, this is equivalent to an assumption that hours worked move inversely with the marginal product of labor. As soon as these restrictive assumptions are abandoned, the jenny turns out being profitable both in England and in France. Hence the mystery of the adoption of the jenny during the Industrial Revolution remains. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We examine the role of social and geographical networks in structuring entry into premodern London's skilled occupations. Newly digitized apprenticeship indenture records for 1600–1749 offer little evidence that personal ties strongly shaped apprentice recruitment. The typical London apprentices had no identifiable tie to their master through kin or place of origin. Migrant apprentices' fathers were generally outside the craft sector. The apprenticeship market was strikingly open: well-to-do families accessed a wide range of apprenticeships, and would-be apprentices could match ability and aptitude to opportunity. This fluidity aided human capital formation, with obvious implications for economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reexamines the economics of premodern apprenticeship in England. I present new data showing that a high proportion of apprenticeships in seventeenth-century London ended before the term of service was finished. I then propose a new account of how training costs and repayments were distributed over the apprenticeship contract such that neither master nor apprentice risked significant loss from early termination. This new account fits both the characteristics of premodem apprenticeship and what is known about the acquisition of skills in modem and premodern societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I provide a micro-level analysis of primary schooling in Victorian England. Using a new dataset of school-age males linked between the 1851 and 1881 population censuses, I examine the determinants of childhood school attendance and the impact of attendance on adult labor market outcomes. I find that schooling had a positive effect on adult occupational class and that the associated wage gains were likely to have outweighed the cost of schooling, However, this effect was small relative to father's class, and the effect of education on earnings appears to have been small relative to modern results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses train speeds in England and Wales 1843-1912. Trains were fast compared with coaches or walking, and the social saving of time saved grew over time to become over 10 percent of national income in 1912. Including fare savings as well, social savings were 14 percent of national income in 1912, with consumer surplus of 6 percent. Time savings dominated fare savings once railways became a new good: travel for the masses. Using the social savings-total factor productivity identity, we show that railways accounted for around a sixth of economy-wide productivity growth in this era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often suggested that an agricultural revolution, currently defined as a rise in the output of arable workers, was a necessary precursor to industrialization and improved living standards. This article provides the first direct measurement of arable workers' average labor productivity for pre-industrial England. Rates are assessed for those production conditions that it is thought resulted in the lowest agrarian labor productivity rates in the pre-industrial period: c.1300-1348. The rates for English workers before the Black Death either surpassed or met the literature's best estimates for English workers until 1800, well after industrialization was underway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an abstract of the doctoral dissertation 'Peasants, Productivity, and Profit in the Open Fields of England: A Study of Economic and Social Development.'

Derives estimates of male labor input during the Industrial Revolution based on witnesses' accounts from the North of England and London, England. Method of converting witnesses' activities into estimates of labor input and derive confidence intervals; Increase in per capita consumption during the period; Decline in leisure activities.

Evaluates the extent of common rights to land in England during 1475 to 1839, treating charity land as a sample. Percentage of land under common use in 1600; Description of commons during the period; Government policy on property rights.

Examines the wage book of a Derbyshire farm in England to determine the employment patterns of male and female day-laborers for the years 1772 to 1775 and 1831 to 1845. Innovations in agriculture that occurred in the period; Seasonal and sexual pattern of employment in the farm; Speculation that seasonal and sexual shifts in the demand for labor have brought changes in animal husbandry that followed enclosure.

Examines the growth of the capital market in London, England, before and immediately after the Glorious Revolution, using a 30 year series of share transactions of two joint-stock companies. Argument that the London's experience with the open capital was due to learning by private individuals and goldsmith bankers; Information on the Royal African Company (1972) and the Hudson's Bay Company.

Opinion. Responds to a review article written by professor Gregory Clark, which reviewed the book `Agricultural Rent in England, 1690-1914,' by M.E. Turner, J.V. Beckett and B. Afton, which dealt with a study of rents between 1690 and 1914. Method used to conduct study; Statistical information provided; Criticisms against the review by the authors;

Presents information as it pertains to common property rights, efficiency and institutional change in English agriculture, arguing for a resolution to the change. Details on the common field system in England; Factors responsible for the inefficiency of the common field system in England; Views associated with rent increases linked to the common field system.

Compares the evolution of manufacturing and the development of cottage industries in the United States and England. Seasonality as an important variable; Indepth look at female involvement within the cottage industry; Inclusion of statistical information to support the industry's performance.

Discusses infant mortality and living standards of English workers during the Industrial Revolution. Interpretation of mortality results; Death seasonality of infants; Effect of population density and climatic variation.

Questions the validity of the Cambridge Group's argument that the English population in the latter half of the 18th-century grew due to rise in fertility. Development of an alternative chronology and explanation of the demographic transition in England; Methodologies the Cambridge Group used in demographic work; History of mortality; Reasons for the decline in adult mortality.

Presents an investigation on the patent and invention from 1711 to 1850 in several English industries. Details on the leading technological hypotheses; Growth of productivity during the English industrial revolution.

Presents a study on the constitutional arrangements governing 17th century England. Political factors underpinning the economic growth of England; Benefits of social institutions.

Presents a study that used comparative tontine history to illustrate the differing evolution of public finance in France and England from 1688 to 1789. Comparison on the use of tontines by the two countries; Factor that contributed to the political attitudes of life annuitants during the fiscal crisis of the late 1780s; Development of a funded public debt in England.

Features a study on the implication of sexual division of labor on economic development in 19th century England. Discussion on gender roles; Details of the employment of women; Views on segregated employment.

Examines the Lancashire cotton spinning in the heyday of laissez-faire capitalism in England during the 19th century. Issues on labor market in the country; Implications of the need to maintain long-term attachments on wage and employment adjustment.

Examines the relative efficiency of farming in open fields or enclosures in England. Yield and output of principal grain crops in 1795 to 1801; Implications to total agricultural productivity.

Examines the economic role played by poor relief in early nineteenth century England. Use of three-equation model; Cross-parish variations in per capita relief expenditures, agricultural laborers' annual wage income and unemployment rates; Relation of relief expenditure to crop mix; Political power of labor-hiring farmers.

Presents an analysis of the relations between taxable peasant wealth and regional marketing geography in England during the middle ages. Cash-cropping patterns for different grains and livestock; Selectivity of market involvement; Strategies used to contain vulnerability.

Analyzes the relationship between manorial resources and income in England by employing statistical techniques. Grounds for rejecting the traditional interpretation of the relationship; Reconstruction of the English economy of 1086.

Examines the demise of the wool trade in Gloucestershire, England in the English Industrial Revolution. Why Gloucester clothiers used steam power selectively; What accounted for the failure of mills with large engines; What accounted for the failure of mills with small engines.

Explains a chronology of invention in farming, based on patent data, for England between 1611 and 1850. What determined the timing of some inventions; Impact of the output market for food.

Examines the economic history in 17th century England. Changes in the seasonality of weddings; Timing of market integration and regional specialization; Correlation between wedding and regional specialization.

Investigates governmental involvement in the provision of elementary education in nineteenth-century England by estimating the rate of return to literacy. Rate of return to male literacy before government involvement; Contribution to national income of correcting any initial underinvestment in literacy.