John Parman
130 Morton Hall
jmparman@wm.edu
Office Hours: Mon 3:30pm-5:30pm, Thu 9:30am-11:30am
Econ 341, Fall 2011
M, W, F 11am - 11:50am
342 Morton Hall
Econ 341 - American Economic History
This couse covers the economic history of the United States from colonial times through the
twentieth century. The course emphasizes both the stylized facts about American economic history
and the process of using historical data to develop and test economic theory. We will cover the
economics of the Revolutionary War, demographic changes over time, the development of the banking
sector, the evolution of educational institutions, the economics of slavery, transportation and market
integration over time, and other topics.
Requirements
Students should have completed Econ 101 or 151 and Econ 102 or 152. I will assume a basic vocabulary
of economic terms and concepts.
Grading
Grades for the class will be based on two midterms, a final exam and a paper weighted as follows:
Midterm 1 (September 28, 2011): 20%
Midterm 2 (November 2, 2011):
20%
Final Exam (December 5, 2011): 35%
Paper (Due December 2, 2011):
25%
The exams will be a combination of essays and short answer questions designed to evaluate your
comprehension of the readings, your ability to work with the analytical tools presented in class, and
your ability to think critically about the issues presented in class and in the readings. There are
no makeup exams or alternate times for taking exams. If you are unable to take a midterm due to
an emergency or a William & Mary sponsored travel commitment your other exam scores will be
reweighted to make up for the missed exam.
Grades will be curved to conform to the typical grade distribution at William & Mary (see
http://www.wm.edu/offices/registrar/studentrecords/grades/index.php for statistics on grade distributions at William & Mary). The curve will be set at the end of the semester based on the class
distribution of overall numerical scores. Each time graded material is returned you will be given the
class distribution of numerical scores for the exam and a guide to how those numerical scores would
correspond to curved letter grades if the course curve were based soley on that exam (in other words,
the numerical cutoffs for an A, B, C, and so on). You have one week after graded material is returned
to raise any issues about the grading.
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John Parman
130 Morton Hall
jmparman@wm.edu
Office Hours: Mon 3:30pm-5:30pm, Thu 9:30am-11:30am
Econ 341, Fall 2011
M, W, F 11am - 11:50am
342 Morton Hall
Readings
The required text for the course will be A New Economic View of American History: From Colonial
Times to 1940 (second edition, W.W. Norton and Company) by Jeremy Atack and Peter Passell.
Additional required readings are noted in the outline of the course at the end of this syllabus. These
additional readings will either be posted on the course website or will be available through JSTOR.
For all of the readings, I will post several questions on the course website to help guide your reading
and stimulate class discussion. These questions are a good starting point for engaging the reading
but should not be considered an exhaustive list of what you should retain from the readings.
When reading journal articles there are several things to keep in mind. I do not expect you to follow
all of the technical details of the article. What you should focus on are identifying the following
aspects of the article. What question is the author attempting to answer? Why is this an important
question? What does previous research have to say about the question? What sort of evidence does
the author rely on? Are there any drawbacks or limitations to this evidence? What conclusions does
the author reach? What are the implications of these conclusions for larger economic questions?
Paper
There will be a paper due at the end of the last week of classes. The paper should be roughly ten
to fifteen pages in length and can be on any topic in American economic history of your choosing.
Your paper should identify an economic question of interest, provide an overview of the existing
literature on the question and present and interpret historical evidence relevant to answering the
question. This historical evidence can take the form of quantitative historical data or can be drawn
from primary documents. If you are interested in using primary documents, I strongly encourage you
to take advantage of the Special Collections Research Center in the Swem Library.More details about
the paper will be provided during the second week of classes.
Honor Code
You are expected to follow the William & Mary Honor Code. If I discover any academic misconduct,
I will initiate an Honor Council proceeding and recommend failure of the course. Be particularly
careful to avoid plagiarism when working on your research paper. This is one area where students
can unknowingly commit serious honor code violations. It is very important that you cite all sources
properly and fully acknowledge any help received. If you have any questions about how the Honor
Code relates to this course, feel free to talk to me or refer to the Student Handbook and the William
& Mary Honor Council’s website.
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John Parman
130 Morton Hall
jmparman@wm.edu
Office Hours: Mon 3:30pm-5:30pm, Thu 9:30am-11:30am
Econ 341, Fall 2011
M, W, F 11am - 11:50am
342 Morton Hall
Outline of Course
Below is the general outline we will follow for the course. For each topic, the relevant chapters of
the text are included. In addition to the chapters listed, there will be supplemental readings posted
online (some required, some recommended) for several of the topics. These readings are also noted in
the outline. Required readings are designated with a ♦. All of these supplemental readings will be
available as pdf files either on the course website or through JSTOR (www.jstor.org, access requires
being on the William and Mary network). At the beginning of each class I will update you as to
where we are in the outline and what we will cover in the next classes.
I. The Study of Economic History
• Readings:
– ♦ Davis, Lance. “The New Economic History II: Professor Fogel and the New Economic History.” Economic History Review, Vol. 19, No. 3 (1966).
II. A Brief Economic History of the United States
• The sources of economic growth
• Economic and demographic change over three centuries
• Readings:
– ♦ Atack and Passell, Chapter 1
III. The American Economy Before the Revolution
• The pre-colonial economy
• Mercantilism and British policy in the Americas
• The increasing costs of empire membership
• Readings:
– ♦ Atack and Passell, Chapters 2 and 3
– ♦ Salisbury, Neal. “The Indians’ Old World: Native Americans and the Coming of
Europeans.” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 53, No. 3 (1996).
– Diamond, Jared. “Evolution, Consequences and Future of Plant and Animal Domestication.” Nature, Vol. 418 (2002).
– Diamond, Jared. “The Wealth of Nations.” Nature, Vol. 429 (2004).
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John Parman
130 Morton Hall
jmparman@wm.edu
Office Hours: Mon 3:30pm-5:30pm, Thu 9:30am-11:30am
Econ 341, Fall 2011
M, W, F 11am - 11:50am
342 Morton Hall
– Thomas, Robert Paul. “A Quantitative Approach to the Study of the Effects of British
Imperial Policy upon Colonial Welfare: Some Preliminary Findings.” Journal of Economic History, Vol. 25 (1965).
– ♦ Sawers, Larry. “The Navigation Acts Revisited.” Economic History Review, Vol.
45, No. 2 (1992).
IV. Forging a New National Economy
• Financing a war
• Defining the roles of state and federal government
• A brief history of government regulation
• Readings:
♦ Atack and Passell, Chapters 3 and 5
♦ Federalist Papers, Numbers 11, 30 and 35
Articles of Confederation
♦ Constitution of the United States, Articles I through VII and Amendments I through
X
– McGuire, Robert and Robert Ohsfeldt. “Economic Interests and the American Constitution: A Quantitative Rehabilitation of Charles A. Beard.” Journal of Economic
History, Vol. 44, No. 2 (1984).
–
–
–
–
V. The Evolution of the Banking Sector
• Chartering banks
• Bank notes as currency
• The rise of federally chartered banking
• Readings:
– ♦ Atack and Passell, Chapter 4
– Hammond, Bray. Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War.
Princeton: Princeton University Press (1957).
– ♦ Temin, Peter. “The Economic Consequences of the Bank War.” Journal of Political
Economy, Vol. 76, No. 2 (1968).
– ♦ Engerman, Stanley. “A Note on the Economic Consequences of the Second Bank of
the United States.” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 78, No. 4 (1970).
VI. The Transportation Revolution
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John Parman
130 Morton Hall
jmparman@wm.edu
Office Hours: Mon 3:30pm-5:30pm, Thu 9:30am-11:30am
Econ 341, Fall 2011
M, W, F 11am - 11:50am
342 Morton Hall
• Early transportation networks
• The Erie Canal
• The rise of railroads
• Readings:
– ♦ Atack and Passell, Chapters 6 and 16
– Fishlow, Albert. American Railroads and the Transformation of the Ante-Bellum
Economy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1965).
– Fogel, Robert. Railroads and American Economic Growth: Essays in Econometric
History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (1964).
– ♦ Fogel, Robert. “Notes on the Social Saving Controversy.” Journal of Economic
History, Vol. 39, No. 1 (1979).
– Engerman, Stanley and Kenneth Sokoloff. “Digging the Dirt at Public Expense: Governance in the Building of the Erie Canal and Other Public Works.” In Corruption
and Reform: Lessons from America’s Economic History, ed. by Edward Glaeser and
Claudia Goldin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (2006).
VII. Labor Markets through the Nineteenth Century
• Labor scarcity in early America
• The use and disappearance of indentured servitude
• The economics of slavery
• Readings:
– ♦ Atack and Passell, Chapters 2, 11 and 12
– ♦ Galenson, David. “The Market Evaluation of Human Capital: The Case of Indentured Servitude.” The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 89, No. 3 (1981).
– Fogel, Robert and Stanley Engerman. Time on the Cross: The Economics of American
Negro Slavery. Boston: Little, Brown (1974).
– ♦ Steckel, Richard. “A Peculiar Population: The Nutrition, Health, and Mortality of
American Slaves from Childhood to Maturity.” Journal of Economic History, Vol. 46,
No. 3 (1986).
VIII. Demographic Change: Birth, Death and Migration
• Birth, death and the uniqueness of America’s demographic transition
• Family formation and fertility decisions over time
5
John Parman
130 Morton Hall
jmparman@wm.edu
Office Hours: Mon 3:30pm-5:30pm, Thu 9:30am-11:30am
Econ 341, Fall 2011
M, W, F 11am - 11:50am
342 Morton Hall
• International and internal migration
• Readings:
– ♦ Atack and Passell, Chapters 8 and 9
– ♦ Haines, Michael and J. David Hacker. “Spatial Aspects of the American Fertility
Transition in the Nineteenth Century.” In Navigating Time and Space in Population
Studies, edited by M.P. Gutmann, et al, Spring (2011).
– Haines, Michael, Lee Craig and Thomas Weiss. “The Short and the Dead: Nutrition,
Mortality, and the ‘Antebllum Puzzle’ in the United States.” Journal of Economic
History, Vol. 63, No. 2 (2003).
– ♦ Carter, Susan and Richard Sutch. “Historical Perspectives on the Economic Consequences of Immigration into the United States.” In Handbook of International Migration: The American Experience, edited by Charles Hirschman, Philip Kasinitz and
Josh DeWind, New York: Russell Sage Foundation (1999).
IX. The Transition to Industrial Superpower
• The rise of American manufacturing
• Creating a skilled workforce
• Readings:
– ♦ Atack and Passell, Chapters 7, 17, 19
– Hounshell, David. From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932: The
Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins Press (1985).
– Du Boff, Richard. “The Introduction of Electric Power in American Manufacturing.”
Economic History Review, Vol. 20, No. 3 (1967).
– Goldin, Claudia and Lawrence Katz. The Race Between Education and Technology.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press (2008).
– ♦ Goldin, Claudia. “America’s Graduation From High School: The Evolution and
Spread of Secondary Schooling in the Twentieth Century.” Journal of Economic History, Vol. 58, No. 2 (1998).
– ♦ Goldin, Claudia and Lawrence Katz. “The Origins of Technology-Skill Complementarity.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 113, No. 3 (1998).
X. The State of Economic History
• The evolution of techniques, evidence and beliefs
6
John Parman
130 Morton Hall
jmparman@wm.edu
Office Hours: Mon 3:30pm-5:30pm, Thu 9:30am-11:30am
Econ 341, Fall 2011
M, W, F 11am - 11:50am
342 Morton Hall
• Concensus or lack thereof
• Readings:
– ♦ Whaples, Robert. “Where is There Consensus Among American Economic Historians? The Results of a Survey on Forty Propositions.” Journal of Economic History,
Vol. 55, No. 1 (1995).
– Fuller, Dan and Doris Geide-Stevenson. “Consensus among Economists: Revisited.”
Journal of Economic Education, Vol. 34, No. 4 (2003).
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