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Workers' compensation was arguably the first widespread social insurance program in the United States--before social security, Medicare, or unemployment insurance--and the most successful form of labor legislation to emerge from the early progressive movement. In A Prelude to the Welfare State, Price V. Fishback and Shawn Everett Kantor challenge widespread historical perceptions by arguing that workers' compensation, rather than being an early progressive victory, succeeded because all relevant parties--labor and management, insurance companies, lawyers, and legislators--benefited from the ruling.
The American economy has provided a level of well-being that has consistently ranked at or near the top of the international ladder. A key source of this success has been widespread participation in political and economic processes. In The Government and the American Economy, leading economic historians chronicle the significance of America’s open-access society and the roles played by government in its unrivaled success story. America’s democratic experiment, the authors show, allowed individuals and interest groups to shape the structure and policies of government, which, in turn, have fostered economic success and innovation by emphasizing private property rights, the rule of law, and protections of individual freedom. In response to new demands for infrastructure, America’s federal structure hastened development by promoting the primacy of states, cities, and national governments. More recently, the economic reach of American government expanded dramatically as the populace accepted stronger limits on its economic freedoms in exchange for the increased security provided by regulation, an expanded welfare state, and a stronger national defense.
The urgent demand for housing after World War I fueled a boom in residential construction that led to historic peaks in home ownership. Foreclosures at the time were rare, and when they did happen, lenders could quickly recoup their losses by selling into a strong market. But no mortgage system is equipped to deal with credit problems on the scale of the Great Depression. As foreclosures quintupled, it became clear that the mortgage system of the 1920s was not up to the task, and borrowers, lenders, and real estate professionals sought action at the federal level. Well Worth Saving tells the story of the disastrous housing market during the Great Depression and the extent to which an immense...
This book brings together contributions written by internationally distinguished economic historians. The editors explore the current fascination with the 1930s great depression, and link it with the great recession which began in 2007 and still poses a threat to economic stability.
The central role of the housing market in the recent recession raised a series of questions about similar episodes throughout economic history. Were the underlying causes of housing and mortgage crises the same in earlier episodes? Has the onset and spread of crises changed over time? How have previous policy interventions either damaged or improved long-run market performance and stability? This volume begins to answer these questions, providing a much-needed context for understanding recent events by examining how historical housing and mortgage markets worked—and how they sometimes failed. Renowned economic historians Eugene N. White, Kenneth Snowden, and Price Fishback survey the foundational research on housing crises, comparing that of the 1930s to that of the early 2000s in order to authoritatively identify what contributed to each crisis. Later chapters explore notable historical experiences with mortgage securitization and the role that federal policy played in the surge in home ownership between 1940 and 1960. By providing a broad historical overview of housing and mortgage markets, the volume offers valuable new insights to inform future policy debates.
How has the United States government grown? What political and economic factors have given rise to its regulation of the economy? These eight case studies explore the late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century origins of government intervention in the United States economy, focusing on the political influence of special interest groups in the development of economic regulation. The Regulated Economy examines how constituent groups emerged and demanded government action to solve perceived economic problems, such as exorbitant railroad and utility rates, bank failure, falling agricultural prices, the immigration of low-skilled workers, workplace injury, and the financing of government. The c...
While most studies of labor in the coal industry focus on the struggle to organize unions, this work offers a more diverse and quantitative examination of the labor market. It regards the economic lives of the bituminous coal miners in the early twentieth century. Fishback's analytic framework encompasses competition among employers for labor, the legal environment, institutional development in response to transactions costs as well as the impact of labor unions on the coal industry. Utilizing economic theory and statistics, Fishback reveals the models hidden in the descriptions of events, and then tests their internal consistency as well as the hypotheses they generate.
Without economic history, economics runs the risk of being too abstract or parochial, of failing to notice precedents, trends and cycles, of overlooking the long-run and thus misunderstanding ‘how we got here’. Recent financial and economic crises illustrate spectacularly how the economics profession has not learnt from its past. This important and unique book addresses this problem by demonstrating the power of historical thinking in economic research. Concise chapters guide economics lecturers and their students through the field of economic history, demonstrating the use of historical thinking in economic research, and advising them on how they can actively engage with economic histor...
It has become commonplace to think that globalization has produced a race to the bottom in terms of labor standards and quality of life: the cheaper the labor and the lower the benefits afforded workers, the more competitively a country can participate on the global stage. But in this book the distinguished economic historian Michael Huberman demonstrates that globalization has in fact been very good for workers' quality of life, and that improved labor conditions have promoted globalization.
The town of Ladysmith was one of the most important coal-mining communities on Vancouver Island during the early twentieth century. The Ladysmith miners had a reputation for radicalism and militancy and engaged in bitter struggles for union recognition and economic justice, most notably the Great Strike of 1912-14. This strike, one of the longest and most violent labour disputes in Canadian history, marked a watershed in the history of the town and the coal industry.