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This study examines how demand for public goods shaped state-building in historical China. The dataset is a grid-cell–by-century panel dataset covering historical China from roughly the 2nd century BCE to the 19th century CE. Each observation is a ~1,000 km² grid cell (id_grid) in a given century (id_century). It combines multiple measures of state capacity (e.g., administrative center density, tax revenue, length of roads, number of post stations), potential drivers of state building (e.g., proximity to foreign-war frontline, proximity to the Yellow River, population density, distance to capital, and trade routes), and measures of local institutions (e.g., lineages, Buddhist temples, and ethnic-minority leadership). The dataset enables a quantitative analysis of the evolution of the state-locality relationship over time.

STATA files for estimates of the duration of sailing-ship voyages from Europe to Adelaide and Melbourne (Australia) in the mid-nineteenth century as functions of the characteristics of ships and of the rotes taken.

Using discontinuities in the wage schedule of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), I document that higher WPA wages led to greater WPA employment but did not significantly reduce unemployment levels. The estimated impact on private wages is positive but imprecise. Higher WPA wages did not influence the characteristics of WPA employees. However, they led to lower school dropout rates of 15–16-year-old boys in WPA households.

This is the replication package for the paper titled "The Progressive Era War on Vice: Public Health Consequences of Closing Red-Light Districts" published in Journal of Economic History.

This dataset was assembled to study the fiscal effects of Italy's 1889 Crispi Law, which introduced indirect mayoral elections in municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants or district-capital status. It combines archival municipal budget records with population and enfranchisement data to enable a difference-in-discontinuities analysis of how the reform affected local public spending, particularly on primary education.

The dataset covers 8,257 Italian municipalities and includes: (i) digitized municipal-level fiscal data (public revenues and expenditures, including per capita primary education spending) for the years 1884 and 1895, drawn from official budget records; (ii) municipal expenditure on primary schooling for 1862-63, from Ministero dell'Educazione Nazionale (1865); (iii) local enfranchisement rates for 1865-66 and 1895, distinguishing tax-based and literacy-based voting eligibility, from MAIC (1867) and MAIC (1897); and (iv) a set of municipality-level covariates (e.g., demographic and geographic characteristics) used as controls in the empirical analysis. All monetary values are expressed at 1911 constant prices. The analytical sample is restricted to municipalities with populations between 3,000 and 30,000 (2,587 municipalities) to ensure a credible comparison group around the 10,000-inhabitant policy threshold.

This is the replication package for “Why Was the Wheel (Not) Used in the Andes? A Hypothesis Explaining the Slow Adoption of Wagon Transport and Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Colombia.” The package includes the data, code, and documentation necessary to reproduce the analyses, tables, and figures reported in the article.The study examines the slow adoption of wagon transport in the Andes through a threshold technology-adoption model calibrated with historical and physiological evidence on human, mule, and wagon transport costs. The data refer primarily to nineteenth-century Colombia and include information on transportation routes, route characteristics, traffic demand, energy-based transport costs, and the comparison between animal-pack transport and wagon-road transport.The replication files allow users to reproduce the model calibration, the construction of key variables, and the empirical and quantitative exercises used to evaluate why wagon transport became economically viable only after transport demand crossed a threshold sufficient to offset the fixed costs of wagon-road construction.

This is the replication package for:

Shiyu Bo, Xiaomeng Cui and Cong Liu. "Modern Technology on Traditional Farms: The Impact of Electric Irrigation on Rural Farms in Early Twentieth-Century China," Journal of Economic History, forthcoming.

Please consult the "Readme" file in the package for a more detailed description.

• data/ — CSV inputs: model parameters (metrology, pay rates, ration masses, campaign lengths); Seleukid gross-revenue scenarios; attested army sizes by engagement and side; comparative Roman war indemnities of 241, 201, 197, and 188 BCE; Polybian grain-ration components; a preliminary geodesic route-control index; indicative campaign-cost scenarios; and the coded sequence of commitment episodes.
• regenerate_tables.py — a Python 3 script (standard library only) that reads the CSV inputs and reproduces the table values, printing both exact and manuscript-rounded figures where they differ.
• source_register.csv — every figure mapped to its primary or secondary source and an assigned verification level.
• codebook.md — variable definitions, the verification scheme, and the derivation formulas.
• README.md — package documentation and a source-rights note.
• CHECKSUMS.sha256 — SHA-256 checksums for all files.

How much did France pay for its colonial empire? Did colonies benefit from large transfers from French taxpayers and private investors, or were they, on the contrary, drained of their capital? This paper uses novel budgetary, private investment, and loan data to compute monetary flows between France and the colonies between 1833 and 1962. Public expenditure spent by France on the empire represented only 1.3 percent of its GDP, of which four-fifths was for the military. Trade balance deficits of French colonies were not counterbalanced by large public or private capital transfers from France to the colonies, but by military expenditure from the metropole. Overall, large sums of money were flowing from the colonies to the metropole, a "drain" representing a couple of percentage points of colonial GDP, making French colonies comparable to British India in the twentieth century.

Replication Package for: The Her in Inheritance: How Marriage Matching Has Always Mattered, Quebec 1800–1970

The project examines the origins of modern economic growth in the antebellum United States.

It compiles statistics on postal activity available on an annual or biennial basis at the county level

to shed light of the expansion of economic activity. It also extends Easterlin state-level income estimates

for 1840 to the county level.

This package replicates all tables and figures in the paper and online appendix for "Economic Conditions and Incarceration in the United States: Evidence from Missouri, 1850-1930.

Replication Package for: The Her in Inheritance: How Marriage Matching Has Always Mattered, Quebec 1800–1970