Z: **Archived from Fall 2007**: American Economic History: Economics 113

A Question for People Taking Econ 113 This Fall: Resources and Pre-Civil War Growth

This question is for those who have previously exercised their economic theory-growth accounting muscles...

Read Brad DeLong and Marit Rehavi's handout on growth accounting for the pre-Civil War United States compared with Britain. Britain was the heartland of technological innovation and industrialization in the years before 1860. Yet the United States not only started out richer in per capita terms, but its income levels grew faster. How could this be? Do you find DeLong and Rehavi's solution to this puzzle satisfactory? What does it say about how different American economic growth would have been had European superpowers Britain and France continued to seek American empires--had France not sold the Louisiana purchase to Jefferson, and had Britain succeeded in grabbing the old northwest territories north and west of the Ohio River for Canada?

A Question for People Taking Econ 113 This Fall: Amerindian Migration

Hunter-gatherers who are exploring a previously-unsettled frontier can walk a mile a week.

How long after their arrival in the new world ca. 14000 years ago do you think it took the Amerindians to spread out and essentially cover the entire two continents of the Americas?

What implications does this have for how we think about the human history of the Americas between ca. 12000 BC and 1492?

A Question for People Taking Econ 113 This Fall: Amerindian Numbers

Roughly 14000 years ago rough 1000 humans made it to the Americas across the Bering Land Bridge.

A Malthusianly-unstressed preindustrial human population with reasonable access to food (whether hunter-gatherer, herder, or settled agriculture) roughly doubles in a generation of 25 years or so.

If the incipient Amerindian population had remained unstressed, how many American Indians would there be today?

What implications does this have for how we think about the human history of the Americas between ca. 12000 BC and 1492?