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Showing 1 – 33 of 33 results.
Self-published

Careworn: The Economic History of Caring Labor (ICPSR 199041)

Released/updated on: 2024-03-16
Time period: 1270-01-01--1870-01-01
Economists ignore caring labor since most is provided unpaid.  Disregard is unjust, theoretically indefensible, and probably misleading.   Valuation requires estimates of time spent and the replacement or opportunity costs of that time.  I use the maintenance costs of British workers, costs which cover both the material inputs into upkeep and the domestic services needed to turn commodities into livings, to isolate the costs of paid domestic labor. I then impute the value of unpaid domestic labor from these market equivalents, and aggregate across households without domestic servants. Historically, unpaid domestic labor represented c. 20 per cent of total income, a contribution that suggests the need to revise some standard narratives.
Self-published

Data and code for "The Electric Telegraph, News Coverage and Political Participation" (ICPSR 214861)

Released/updated on: 2025-01-05
Geographic coverage: United States
Time period: 1840-01-01--1852-01-01
This paper uses newly digitized data on the growth of the telegraph network in America during 1840–1852 to study the impacts of the electric telegraph on national elections. Exploiting the expansion of the telegraph network in a difference-in-difference approach, I find that access to telegraphed news from Washington significantly increased voter turnout in national elections. Newspapers facilitated the dissemination of national news to local areas. Text analysis on historical newspapers shows that the improved access to news from Washington led local newspapers to cover more national political news, including coverage of Congress, the presidency, and sectional divisions involving slavery.



Self-published

The distribution of land in Luxembourg (1766–1872): Family-level wealth persistence in the midst of institutional change (ICPSR 195987)

Released/updated on: 2023-12-22
Geographic coverage: Luxembourg
Time period: 1766-01-01--1872-01-01
This is the replication package for "The distribution of land in Luxembourg (1766–1872): Family-level wealth persistence in the midst of institutional change". The paper analyses family-level wealth inequality and social mobility in Dudelange (Luxembourg) over five generations between 1766 and 1872, a period that saw the end of feudal social relations. While the integration of Luxembourg into the French revolutionary regime produced a reduction in the Gini coefficient for the ownership of land, the social mobility analysis reveals a relative stability of family positions within the land-wealth distribution throughout the period. This shows that family-level transmission mechanisms limit social mobility and strongly advantage those with ancestors owning property wealth, even when there are significant changes in the organization of property relations.
Self-published

Droughts, Conflict, and the Importance of Democratic Legitimacy: Evidence from Pre-Industrial Europe (ICPSR 206441)

Released/updated on: 2024-06-22
Time period: 0900-01-01--1799-12-31
This research shows that droughts are robustly associated with city-level unrest in Europe over the years 900 to 1800 CE. This relationship is non-linear, with disproportionately greater increases in the probability of a conflict among droughts in the upper tail of the severity distribution. Elected city governments are relatively immune from drought-induced conflict, while those based on representation by burghers or guilds are not. These results suggest that local governments are key for maintaining social stability during economic shocks, and are most successful when they have a greater degree of democratic legitimacy.
Self-published

Economic inequality in preindustrial Germany, ca. 1300 - 1850 (ICPSR 144241)

Released/updated on: 2021-07-01
Geographic coverage: Germany
Time period: 1300-01-01--1800-01-01
This article provides an overview of wealth inequality in Germany during 1300-1850, introducing a novel database. We document four alternating phases of inequality decline and growth. The Black Death (1347-1352) led to inequality decline, until about 1450. Thereafter, inequality rose steadily. The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) and the 1627-1629 plague triggered a second phase of inequality reduction. This distinguishes Germany from other European areas where inequality grew monotonically. Inequality growth resumed from about 1700, well before the Industrial Revolution. Our findings offer new material to current debates on the determinants of inequality change in western societies, past and present




Self-published

Economic Uncertainty and Divisive Politics: Evidence from the dos Españas (ICPSR 186621)

Released/updated on: 2023-03-16
Geographic coverage: Spain
Time period: 1905-01-01--1945-01-01
This is the replication package for "Economic Uncertainty and Divisive Politics: Evidence from the dos Españas" (Sandra García-Uribe, Hannes Mueller, and Carlos Sanz), Journal of Economic History, 2023.

This article exploits two newspaper archives to track economic policy uncertainty in Spain in 1905-1945. We find that the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936 was anticipated by a striking upward level shift of uncertainty in both newspapers. We study the reasons for this shift through a natural language processing method which allows us to leverage expert opinion to track specific issues in our newspaper archives. We find a strong empirical link between increasing uncertainty and the rise of divisive political issues like socio-economic conflict. This holds even when exploiting content differences between the two newspapers in our corpus.

Please, use the Readme.txt file with the full description of the replication package.
Self-published

Empirical Materials for "The Persistence of the Harvest in Medieval England" (ICPSR 110461)

Released/updated on: 2019-06-29
Time period: 1211-01-01--1349-01-01, 1211-01-01--1349-01-01
This is a replication package for "the Persistence of the Harvest in Medieval England."

Notes for replicating results from “The Persistence of the Harvest in Medieval England.”


The two data files contain yields per acre and per seed, the rest of the control variables are the same for both files. Format is STATA data file.

File 1: yieldsperacre.dta
File 2: yieldperseed.dta

File 1 is used to produce Panel A for most tables (i.e., those tables having two panels), file 2 produces Panel B for most tables. 

List of variables in data files:
  • yldw: wheat yields (per seed or acre) with date stub
  • yldo: oat yields (per seed or acre) with date stub
  • yldb: barley yields (per seed or acre) with date stub
  • sow: typical sow rates for wheat by period
  • sowo: typical sow rates for oats by period
  • sow: typical sow rates for barley by period
  • ani: typical # of draft animals by manor by period
  • acres: mean acres sown by period by manor
  • sheep: typical # of sheep by manor by period
  • precip: measured precipitation by year
  • preciptr: 30 year moving average of precipitation
  • temp: measured temperature by year
  • tempr: 30 year moving average of temperature
  • dpop: change in manor’s population density over period
  • pop: population level in period
  • dis: distance of manor to London
  • croptype: code for crop mix, from Campbell
  • hustype: code for husbandry, from Campbell
  • farmtype: code for farming strategy, from Campbell
  • soiltype: code for soil make up, geology of manor, from Campbell
The provided STATA *.do files are listed by the relevant table or figure in the text that they produce. Each do-file uses either data file 1 or data file 2 depending on which panel of the relevant table is produced. To use the do file replace wd with your relevant data and working directory. All of the do files contain redundant code, they can be used for “stand alone” analysis in addition to producing the relevant table/figure. 
Self-published

Hanes United States 1920s-1930s (ICPSR 119452)

Released/updated on: 2020-05-14
Geographic coverage: United States
Time period: 1919-01-01--1939-01-01
This is the data archive and replication information for an article in the Journal of Economic History, "Explaining Anomalous Wage Inflation in the 1930s U.S.," by Christopher Hanes
Self-published

Internal Borders and Population Geography in the Unification of Italy (ICPSR 169082)

Released/updated on: 2022-04-29
Geographic coverage: Italy
Time period: 1828-01-01--1871-12-31
This is the replication package for the paper "Internal Borders and Population Geography in the Unification of Italy"

Please cite the paper if using these data.

The statistical analysis was conducted using Stata. To render transparencies in graphs, Stata 15 or higher is needed. The following user-written packages are also required for the analysis: semipar and estout.


Self-published

Job tenure and unskilled workers before the Industrial Revolution: St Paul’s Cathedral 1672-1748 (ICPSR 182784)

Released/updated on: 2022-11-04
Geographic coverage: England, United Kingdom
Time period: 1672-01-01--1748-01-01
How were unskilled workers selected and hired in preindustrial labour markets? We exploit records from the rebuilding of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London (1672–1748) to analyze the hiring and employment history of over one thousand general building labourers, the benchmark category of ‘unskilled’ workers in long-run wage series. Despite volatile demand, St. Paul’s created a stable workforce by rewarding the tenure of long-standing workers. More senior workers received more days of work each month, preference when jobs were scarce, and the opportunity to earn additional income. We find the cathedral’s strategy consistent with reducing hiring frictions and turnover costs.
Self-published

The Labor Intensive Path: Servant Wage Dataset (ICPSR 147081)

Released/updated on: 2021-08-09
Geographic coverage: Japan
Time period: 1600-01-01--1889-01-01
This is the replication package for the paper "The Labor Intensive Path". It includes all of the original data and code required to replicate all tables within the paper. Detailed descriptions are available within the Read Me text file.
When using the data, please cite the paper "The Labor Intensive Path" which will be publised on the Journal of Economic History (volume and number not yet determined).
Self-published

Like Father Like Son? Intergenerational Immobility in England, 1851-1911 (ICPSR 195292)

Released/updated on: 2023-11-24
Geographic coverage: England, United Kingdom
Time period: 1851-01-01--1911-01-01
This is the replication package for "Like Father Like Son? Intergenerational Immobility in England, 1851-1911" in the Journal of Economic History.

Abstract of the paper:
This paper uses a new linked sample constructed from full-count census data of 1851-1911 to revise estimates of intergenerational occupational mobility in England. I find that conventional estimates of intergenerational elasticities are attenuated by classical measurement error and severely underestimate the extent of father-son association in socioeconomic status. Instrumenting one measure of the father’s outcome with a second measure of the father’s outcome raises the intergenerational elasticities (β) of occupational status from 0.4 to 0.6-0.7. Victorian England was therefore a society of limited social mobility. The long-run evolution and international comparisons of social mobility in England are discussed.
Self-published

Lottery-Based Elections, Power Monopolization, and Urban Development: The Case of Swiss City-States, 1666-1794 (ICPSR 208361)

Released/updated on: 2024-08-14
Geographic coverage: Switzerland
Time period: 1666-01-01--1794-01-01
Early modern urban parliaments suffered an increasing monopolization of political power that hampered urban development. To combat power monopolization, some Swiss city-states reformed their election system by randomly selecting political representatives from a pre-elected pool of candidates. We implement a difference-in-differences design and find that lottery-based election systems improved the equality of distribution of political seats within parliaments. Lottery-based elections also had positive effects on trade tax revenues, trade volumes, and infrastructure expenditures. We explain this finding by showing that lottery-based election systems fostered the election of merchants to top political positions.
Self-published

Marketing and Pricing Risk in Marine Insurance in Sixteenth-Century Antwerp data (ICPSR 100774)

Released/updated on: 2017-06-22
Time period: 1562-01-01--1563-01-01
Drawing on a set of insurance contracts brokered in Antwerp in 1562–1563, we demonstrate that by that time Antwerp hosted a sophisticated, large, and international market for marine insurance in which small and large traders could acquire and sell insurance, backed by the intermediation of a large broker, Juan Henriquez who functioned as an open-access institution. Using information from Henriquez’s ledgers which was also available to underwriters, we find that insurance premiums reflected the underlying risk and that agents were able to determine the effect of different contract parameters.
Self-published

Market integration from the Black Death to the First World War (ICPSR 129221)

Released/updated on: 2020-12-18
Time period: 1348-01-01--1913-01-01
This is the replication package for the paper 'European Goods Market Integration in the Very Long Run: From the Black Death to the First World War', Journal of Economic History. Drawing on extensive new evidence, this paper argues that price convergence across European wheat markets was a largely pre-modern phenomenon, starting as early as the late 15th century and, interruptions notwithstanding, continuing into the mid-19th century. The last quarter of the 19th century was characterized by divergence as trade policy decisions came to dominate technical change. The ‘Little Divergence’ between North-Western Europe and the rest of the continent shows up in the price data from about 1600. Market efficiency began to improve in the early 16th century and was as uneven over time as convergence in prices. This, the paper argues, was an outcome of differential institutional change and non-synchronous diffusion of systems of information transmission across space.



Self-published

The price and welfare consequences of the British Sugar Act of 1846 (ICPSR 210541)

Released/updated on: 2024-11-08
Geographic coverage: United Kingdom
Time period: 1840-01-01--1853-12-01
This is a replication kit for the paper "The price and welfare consequences of the British Sugar Act of 1846", as published in the Journal of Economic History.
Self-published

Replication: Chankrajang Vechbanyongratana Canals and Orchards (ICPSR 118241)

Released/updated on: 2020-03-15
Geographic coverage: Bangkok, Bangkok, Thailand
Time period: 1884-01-01--1889-01-01
This is the replication package for: "Canals and Orchards: The Impact of Transport Network Access on Agricultural Productivity in Nineteenth-century Bangkok." We assess the impact of access to Bangkok's nineteenth-century canal network on orchard productivity using a new dataset constructed from 1880s orchard land deeds. We find that properties located adjacent to canals, which were built for purposes exogenous to orchard production, had significantly higher labor productivity than those located inland. Gaining direct access to canals led to productivity improvements through better access to markets, which in turn enhanced cultivators' welfare. We conclude, based on a method developed by Oster (2019), that unobserved selection bias is negligible, allowing for the positive impact of canal access to be interpreted as causal.
Self-published

Replication for "The cream of the crop? geography networks and Irish migrant selection" (Journal of Economic History) (ICPSR 107544)

Released/updated on: 2018-11-30
Geographic coverage: United States, Ireland
Time period: 1900-01-01--1911-01-01
This is the replication package for "The cream of the crop? geography networks and Irish migrant selection" (Journal of Economic History). 

Summary: During the Age of Mass Migration (1850-1913), Ireland had a higher emigration rate than any other major migrant sending country. This paper examines how emigrants from Ireland compared to the people they left behind. Irish emigrants were disproportionately drawn from poorer farming and less literature households (negatively selected), and this negative selection was exacerbated by high emigration from communities with established migrant networks.
Self-published

Replication Materials: Private Benefits, Public Vices: Railways and Logrolling in the Nineteenth-Century British Parliament. (ICPSR 147641)

Released/updated on: 2021-08-24
Time period: 1845-01-01--1848-01-01
This is the replication package for "Private Benefits, Public Vices: Railways and Logrolling in the Nineteenth-Century British Parliament". Please refer to the README file for details on the data and code necessary to replicate the figures and tables contained in the paper.
 The repository also contains a copy of the online appendix with additional results and further description of the variables and coding used in the paper.
Self-published

[Replication package for] Reconstructing history: Using language to estimate religious spread (ICPSR 233003)

Released/updated on: 2025-06-17
This is the replication package for "Reconstructing history: Using language to estimate religious spread" Forthcoming in the Journal of Economic History, December 2025 issue.

We introduce a data-driven approach to use language to reconstruct history, and apply the methodology to estimate the geographic origins of religious spread. To validate the approach, we use language data to estimate origins of Islam and Buddhism to within 500km of their true (and uncontested) origins. We then apply the methodology to the more complex (and contested) cases of Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism. We show that language-based estimates, in these cases, are significantly more aligned with the origin of scripture than to the origin of the religion.
Self-published

Replication: The Gender Wage Gap in Early Modern Toledo, 1550-1650 (ICPSR 117426)

Released/updated on: 2020-01-27
Geographic coverage: Toledo, Castille-La Mancha, Spain
Time period: 1550-01-01--1650-01-01
This is the data file and replication package for "The Gender Wage Gap in Early Modern Toledo, 1550-1650", by Mauricio Drelichman and David Gonzalez Agudo. It is provided as a single MS Excel file containing the raw data as collected from the relevant archives, all secondary source data used in the article, and the relevant computation worksheets.
Self-published

Sectarian Competition and the Market Provision of Human Capital (ICPSR 183101)

Released/updated on: 2022-11-19
Geographic coverage: United States
Time period: 1850-01-01--1890-01-01
This is the replication package for Xiong and Zhao (2023). It contains data and code to produce all tables and figures in the paper. 
Self-published

UK Investment Trust Valuation and Investor Behavior, 1880–1929. (ICPSR 177621)

Released/updated on: 2022-08-16
Geographic coverage: United Kingdom
Time period: 1880-01-01--1929-01-01
This is the replication package for the study of the valuation of U.K. investment trusts between 1880 and 1929. Our study invetigates the relationship between the ordinary share prices of investment trusts and their underlying net asset values.
Self-published

U.S. Textile Industry Location 1880-1900 (ICPSR 111026)

Released/updated on: 2019-08-01
Time period: 1888-01-01--1890-01-01
This project comprises three databases containing data on firms, products, costs. inputs, outputs, and technology for 448 products made by 70 textile manufacturing firms surveyed over the period 1888-1890 in 16 states and published in the Seventh Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, Vol. I (1892).

The firms' names and locations (except region: north or south) were originally hidden, in order to obtain cooperation in revealing firms' competitive data to the U.S. Commissioner of Labor. However, scholars have since discovered most of the textile mill names through careful matching of  information in the report with other sources (see Doane pp. 51-54). Identification of each firm permitted augmenting the data (e.g., transportation costs) using other sources.

Data were assembled by Doane for his doctoral dissertation research, which analyzed shifts in textile manufacturing after 1880. He evaluated statements by economic historians about the causes of the decline of northern manufacturing. His goal was to evaluate common assertions against empirical evidence in an explicit argument form grounded in economic theory. To this end, he used many data sources to measure and compare manufacturing cost, productivity, and quality of textiles made by firms located in the northern and southern regions.

Doane transformed and augmented the Commissioner's data, adding categorical variables and imputed costs (transportation, interest, depreciation) to the Commissioner's original data. To adjust for varying cloth width (and thereby facilitate product comparison, classification, and coding) Doane transformed the Commissioner's cost per linear yard to cents per square yard.

Originally (1968-1970) the data were keypunched onto IBM cards. In 2019, Doane (then retired from a 44-year academic career) converted, cleaned, and reformatted his data to Excel format to make them available to modern scholars. The resulting databases comprise three Excel spreadsheets:

    Doane Data B: Cost Per Linear Yard.xlsx
           (448 products, 41 variables, B1, B2,  ... , B42)
    Doane Data C: Cost Per Square Yard.xlsx
          (448 products, 51 variables, C1, C2, ... , C52)
    Doane Data F: Total Cost for Each Textile Mill
          (70 firms, 36 variables, F1, F2,  ... , F32)