Gavin Wright

Stanford University | SU · Department of Economics

Economic implications of voting rights.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 revolutionized politics in the American South. These changes also had economic consequences, generating gains for white as well as Black southerners. Contrary to the widespread belief that the region turned Republican in direct response to the Civil Rights Revolution, expanded voting rights led to twenty-five years of...

In Making a Slave State: Political Development in Early South Carolina, Ryan A. Quintana describes the role of slaves and slave labor in building the state of South Carolina, from the eighteenth century colonial era to the internal-improvements boom following the War of 1812. In the beginnings, the primary focus of infrastructure construction was s...

British and American debates on the relationship between slavery and economic growth have had little interaction with each other. This article attempts intellectual arbitrage by joining these two literatures. The linkage turns on the neglected part two of the ‘Williams thesis’: that slavery and the slave trade, once vital for the expansion of Briti...

John D. Skrentny, After Civil Rights: Racial Realism in the New American Workplace (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014, $35.00/£24.95). Pp. xiv + 397. isbn978 0 6911 5996 6. - Volume 49 Issue 1 - GAVIN WRIGHT

Explores American slavery and its role in U.S. expansionism, global capitalism, and the subsequent Civil War in the Mississippi Valley. Discusses Jeffersonian visions and nightmares in Louisiana; the panic of 1835; the steamboat sublime; limits to capital; the runaway's river; dominion; “The Empire of the White Man's Will”; the carceral landscape;...

Legacies of the War on Poverty. Edited by Bailey Martha J. and Danziger Sheldon . New York: Russell Sage Foundation (The National Poverty Series on Poverty and Public Policy). 2013. Pp. xii, 309. $39.95, paper. - Volume 74 Issue 2 - Gavin Wright

Essays on the Postbellum Southern Economy. Edited by GlymphThavolia and KushmaJohn J.. (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1985. x + 119 pp. $17.50.) - Volume 60 Issue 3 - Gavin Wright

The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Ante-Bellum South. By BlassingameJohn W.. New York, Oxford University Press, 1972. Pp. xv + 262. $7.95. - Volume 47 Issue 3 - Gavin Wright

Recovery and Redistribution Under the Nira. By WeinsteinMichael M.. Amsterdam, North-Holland Publishing Company, 1980. Pp. xv + 171. $36.50. - Volume 56 Issue 3 - Gavin Wright

Prosperity Road: The New Deal, Tobacco, and North Carolina. By BadgerAnthony J.. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1980. Pp. xviii + 295. $20.00. - Volume 55 Issue 2 - Gavin Wright

Whereby We Thrive: A History of American Farming, 1607–1972. By SchlebeckerJohn T.. Ames, Iowa, Iowa State University Press, 1975. Pp. x + 342. $12.95. - Volume 50 Issue 2 - Gavin Wright

This chapter analyses the relationship between the diffusion of general purpose technologies (GPTs) and surges in the growth of productivity. It first explores the dynamics of GPT diffusion by considering the generic and differentiating aspects of the US experience with industrial electrification and in comparison with that of the UK and Japan. It...

International Competition and Strategic Response in the Textile Industries since 1870. Edited byRoseMary B. · London: Frank Cass, 1991. 194 pp. Tables, notes, and index. $32.00. ISBN 0-7146-3412-3. - Volume 66 Issue 4 - Gavin Wright

Recent studies assert that natural resource abundance (particularly minerals) has adverse consequences for economic growth. This paper subjects this "resource curse" hypothesis to critical scrutiny. Our central point is that it is inappropriate to equate development of mineral resources with terms such as "windfalls" and "booms." Contrary to the vi...

Economic history has been largely segregated from the mainstream of American history for some time now-even more so than political history. However, this has not always been so. Over the past three decades or so, one may search the volumes of the Journal of American History almost in vain for studies that might reasonably be counted as contribution...

This chapter discusses the Stanford tradition in economic history. It begins by discussing the influential economic historians and identifies historical studies that become tradition, including the institutionalization of science in universities, resource-based developments, historical encounters between Europeans and indigenous peoples, spatial pr...

This book challenges the static, ahistorical models on which economics continues to rely. These models presume that markets operate on a “frictionless” plane where abstract forces play out independent of their institutional and spatial contexts, and of the influences of the past. In reality, at any point in time exogenous factors are themselves out...

Using the records of British firms that supplied nearly 90 percent of world trade in cotton spinning machinery, we track the evolution and diffusion of spinning technology over more than 50 years. In contrast to scenarios in which modern technologies supplant older methods, we observe two paradigms in competitive coexistence, each one supporting on...

This paper considers the impact of New Deal programs on the economy of the American South. Through investments in infrastructure (roads and electric power), environmental improvements (reforestation and soil conservation), and advances in public health (sanitation facilities and disease eradication), the federal government kickstarted modern econom...

Gary R Saxonhouse was one of the leading world scholars on Japanese economy. Born in New York City in 1943, he attended Yale University, where he received his PhD in Economics in 1971. He joined the Faculty of Economics at the University of Michigan beginning in 1970, where he taught throughout his career. The selection of his published papers that...

John Majewski has written a stimulating and original analysis of the antebellum Southern economy and the emergence of a southern ideology in favor of strong state support for economic development. The book presents two distinct arguments. The first maintains that southern underdevelopment was rooted in a set of agricultural practices known as Shift...

The Race Between Education and Technology. By GoldinClaudia and KatzLawrence F.. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008. Pp. vi, 488. $39.95, cloth. - Volume 69 Issue 2 - Gavin Wright

The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925. By MontgomeryDavid. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Pp. xii, 494. $27.95. - Volume 48 Issue 2 - Gavin Wright

Gary R. Saxonhouse died November 30, 2006 in Seattle, WA, where he was being treated for leukemia. To honor his many accomplishments and writings on the Japanese economy and given our longstanding relationships with him, Hugh Patrick of Columbia University, Gavin Wright of Stanford University, and I decided to assemble the best of his many writings...

Presents new evidence on why the English cotton industry was so much slower than the rest of the world in switching from mules to ring-frame spinning, by drawing on the records of six textile machinery companies (now available at the Lancashire Record Office, Preston, UK). The data show that Lancashire's commitment to mule-spinning prior to 1914 wa...

The US South maintained a distinctive economic and political structure from the demise of slavery in the 1860s to the Civil Rights revolution of the 1960s. Racial wage differentials in the unskilled labour market were small. But blacks were virtually absent from higher-paying skilled jobs. Disfranchisement led to a drastic fall in relative expendit...

Part of the Supplemental Materials for INNOVATION AND U.S. COMPETITIVENESS The Conference Board report #R-1441-09-RR About the Report: The Conference Board has recently undertaken a project on innovation and competitiveness, with funding from Microsoft Corporation. The goal of the project is to provide an overview of the current state of knowledge...

Presented to the International Symposium on ECONOMIC CHALLENGES OF THE 21ST CENTURY IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE, Oxford, England, 2nd-4th July, 1999 Celebrating the Scholarly Career of Charles H. Feinstein, FBA. Re- examination of early twentieth century American productivity growth experience sheds light on the general phenomenon of recurring prolon...

A marked acceleration of total factor productivity (TFP) growth in U.S. manufacturing followed World War I. This development contributed substantially to the absolute and relative rise of the domestic economy's aggregate TFP residual, which is observed when the 'growth accounts' for the first quarter of the twentieth century are compared with those...

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History. Edited by Joel Mokyr, Editor in Chief. Five Volumes. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. 2,800. $695. - - Volume 64 Issue 4 - GAVIN WRIGHT

Southern Cultures 10.3 (2004) 104-106 "Economics? That was my worst subject." How often those of us in the field have heard this lament. Or is it a reprimand? "Worst subject" probably means the speaker did not do well in the course, but it also often implies that they didn't much like economics anyway. Too dry, too unsentimental, too short on appre...

The Journal of Economic History completed another successful year in 2002 03, marked (for a change) by an absence of dramatic change. Most contributors and some book publishers have by now adapted to our tripod office system: North American materials go to Wright at Stanford, all other geographic areas go to Harley at Western Ontario, with Susan Is...

This essay considers the role of slavery in American agricultural history by examining the impact of political decisions during the period when the boundary between free and slave states was not yet settled. This boundary was not dictated by geographic imperatives. In Kentucky, an early "beachhead" in the bluegrass district allowed slavery to becom...

The paper reconsiders the nature of mining districts and property rights during the California gold rush. According to a widely accepted view advanced by Umbeck [Explorations in Economic History 14 (1977) 197; A Theory of Property Rights with Application to the California Gold Rush. Iowa State University Press, Ames, IA, 1981], in the absence of ef...

The 191847 employee records of the Ford Motor Company provide a rare opportunity to study a firm willing to hire black workers when similar firms would not. The evidence suggests that Ford did profit from discrimination elsewhere, but not by paying blacks less than whites. An apparent "wage-equity constraint" prevailed, resulting in virtually no ra...

This book shows how analysis of past experiences contributes to a better understanding of present-day economic conditions; chapters offer important insights into major challenges that will occupy the attention of policy makers in the coming decades. The seventeen chapters are organised around three major themes, the first of which is the changing c...

July 2002 Recent literature argues that natural resource abundance is likely to be bad for economic growth. This paper provides a counterargument by highlighting examples of successful resource-based development. The first is historical: the United States from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth. We show that U.S. mineral abundance was...

Published in 1991, Robert J. Steinfeld s The Invention of Free Labor was something of a milestone in the relationship between the fields of legal and economic history. Through a detailed comparative study of employment law in England and America across several centuries, Invention showed that meaning of free labor was by no means self-evident to hi...

June 2001 The experience of the Ford Motor Co. from 1918-1947 provides a unique opportunity to study a firm willing to employ significant numbers of black workers when similar firms would not. An analysis of Ford employee records over this period suggests that Ford did profit from discrimination at other auto firms, but not by hiring black workers...

A marked acceleration of total factor productivity (TFP) growth in U.S. manufacturing followed World War I. The paper analyzes this development, attributing it to the confluence of diffusion of a general-purpose-technology (electrification) with a regime change in the industrial labor market.

It is with much sadness that we bring news of the passing of Moses Abramovitz, our esteemed colleague and dear friend, who died on 1 December at the Stanford University Hospital, just a month before reaching his eighty-ninth birthday. He had been hospitalized with a gastroenterological condition for one week, during most of which time he remained a...

Journal of Interdisciplinary History 31.3 (2001) 469-470 This study considers the market for slaves as a multidimensional human experience, focusing primarily on New Orleans. Gracefully written, its most original contribution is a vivid account of life in the "slave pens," where new arrivals were locked up at night and paraded for potential buyers...

A marked acceleration of total factor productivity (TFP) growth in U.S. manufacturing followed World War I. The paper analyzes this development, attributing it to the confluence of diffusion of a general-purpose-technology (electrification) with a regime change in the industrial labor market.

This paper provides a survey on studies that analyze the macroeconomic effects of intellectual property rights (IPR). The first part of this paper introduces different patent policy instruments and reviews their effects on R&D and economic growth. This part also discusses the distortionary effects and distributional consequences of IPR protection a...

This paper provides a survey on studies that analyze the macroeconomic effects of intellectual property rights (IPR). The first part of this paper introduces different patent policy instruments and reviews their effects on R&D and economic growth. This part also discusses the distortionary effects and distributional consequences of IPR protection a...

La prééminence économique des États-Unis est l'un des traits marquants de l'histoire mondiale du 20 e siècle. La domination américaine a été si nette et si évidente qu'elle semble souvent ne requérir aucune explication. L'historien Paul Kennedy écrit quant à lui, dans son étude très appréciée, The Rise and the Fall of the Great Powers : Les États-U...

List of figures List of tables Preface Glossary List of abbreviations 1. Introduction: the myth of the Lancashire labour market Part I. Labour Market Failure?: 2. Custom against the market: the early labour market 3. Principals and agents: the labour market into the second generation 4. Who's minding the mill? The supervision problem Part II. The E...

Before World War II, the Ford Motor Company was virtually alone in its hiring of black auto workers. If this was because other employers would not hire blacks, then the terms of employment at Ford might differ for blacks and whites. This paper uses Ford's own personnel data to test for racial differences in its terms of employment. We find that tho...

December 1997 With specific reference to the American surge into world economic leadership in the decades bracketing the turn of the twentieth century, the paper advances two propositions: First, that American technological progress was a network phenomenon, growing out of the actions of large numbers of interacting people -- not necessarily in fo...

The USA became the world's leading mineral-producing nation between 1870 and 1910, a development paralleled by the rising resource-intensity of American manufacturing. This paper challenges the premise that resource abundance simply reflected the country's geological endowment of mineral deposits. Instead, in the century following 1850 the USA expl...

American manufacturing exports became increasingly resource-intensive over the very period, roughly 1880-1920, during which the U.S. ascended to the position of world leadership in manufacturing. This paper challenges the simplistic view that the resource-intensity of manufacturing reflected the country''s abundant geological endowment of mineral d...

During the quarter century following World War II, the United States was the world's most productive economy by virtually ant measure. U. S. output per worker was higher by margins of 30 to 50 percent over the other leading industrial nations, and the gap in total factor productivity was nearly as large. A wide variety of measures, backed by the co...

Innovation policy is increasingly informed from the perspective of a national innovation system (NIS), but, despite the fact that research findings emphasize the importance of national differences in the framing conditions for innovation, policy prescriptions tend to be uniform. Justifications for innovation policy by organizations such as the OECD...

The United States became the world's preeminent manufacturing nation at the turn of the twentieth century. This study considers the bases for this success by examining the factor content of trade in manufactured goods. Surprisingly, the most distinctive characteristic of U.S. manufacturing exports was intensity in nonreproducible natural resources;...