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A standard track gauge—the distance between the two rails—enables connecting railway lines to exchange traffic. But despite the benefits of standardization, early North American railways used six different gauges extensively, and even today breaks of gauge at national borders and within such countries as India and Australia are expensive burdens on commerce. In Tracks across Continents, Paths through History, Douglas J. Puffert offers a global history of railway track gauge, examining early choices and the dynamic process of diversity and standardization that resulted. Drawing on the economic theory of path dependence, and grounded in economic, technical, and institutional realities, this innovative volume traces how early historical events, and even idiosyncratic personalities, have affected choices of gauge ever since, despite changing technology and understandings of what gauge is optimal. Puffert also uses this history to develop new insights in the theory of path dependence. Tracks across Continents, Paths through History will be essential reading for anyone interested in how history and economics inform each other.
Studies the balance between social security taxes and benefits over workers' entire lifetimes.
Tax policy debates, generated by one of the most sweeping reforms of the Federalincome tax system since its inception, are certain to continue for years to come, providing afertile field for economic research. This book is the first in a series of annual publications ontax policy and the economy initiated by the National Bureau of Economic Research and designed toconvey research results in a way that is accessible to a wide body of lawyers, policymakers, andbusinesspeople involved in formulating tax policy.Volume 1 of Tax Policy and the Economy presentssix studies of diverse tax policy issues, each bringing new data to bear on an important policyissue. Alan Auerbach and James Poterba examine...
Ai Hisano exposes how corporations, the American government, and consumers shaped the colors of what we eat and even the colors of what we consider “natural,” “fresh,” and “wholesome.” The yellow of margarine, the red of meat, the bright orange of “natural” oranges—we live in the modern world of the senses created by business. Ai Hisano reveals how the food industry capitalized on color, and how the creation of a new visual vocabulary has shaped what we think of the food we eat. Constructing standards for the colors of food and the meanings we associate with them—wholesome, fresh, uniform—has been a business practice since the late nineteenth century, though one invisib...
The Aimless Life is a historical memoir that tells the story of Leonard Worcester Jr. and provides a clear example of the capitalist development of the American West and borderlands regions in the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century.
The authors analyze Solvay's 150-year history, showing the enormous impact geopolitical events had on the company and the recent consequences of global competition.
Combining theoretical work with careful historical description and analysis of new data sources, History Matters makes a strong case for a more historical approach to economics, both by argument and by example. Seventeen original essays, written by distinguished economists and economic historians, use economic theory and historical cases to explore how and why "history matters." The chapters, which range in subject matter from the economic theory of irreversible investment to the nineteenth-century decline in U.S. rural fertility to the English poor law reform, are unified by three themes. The first explores the significance, causes, and consequences of path dependence in the evolution of technology and institutions. The second relates to the ways in which economic and political behavior are profoundly shaped and constrained by the cultural and political context inherited from history at a particular point in time. The final theme demonstrates the importance of integrating economic theory into historical research in the gathering and interpretation of data.