comments on johnson, kiesling, and van vleck

Economic History Association

Comments on Johnson, Kiesling, and Van VleckAuthor(s): Barbara SandsSource: The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 55, No. 2 (Jun., 1995), pp. 390-393Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2123566 .

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390 Summaries of Dissertations

national aggregates and macroanalysis. Here I think he probably dismisses macro-issues and analysis a bit too hastily.

In any case, turning then to the three case studies, Seltzer convincingly shows that although the technology and labor market conditions varied among these three industries, the Fair Labor Standards Act had either a negative or insignificant effect on employment or employment growth. I find his theoretical and empirical work here persuasive; and for the future, it would be edifying to see similar research on northern industries concentrated in the congressional districts of representatives who supported minimum wage legislation.

Seltzer sets out to explain the history of minimum wage legislation in the United States; and he achieves this objective through the skillful use of narrative, game theory, and empirical models of voting behavior. In so doing, he displays a rare skill, namely the ability to employ narrative to characterize convincingly his theoretical approach and his empirical techniques. I think this skillful application of both narrative and technique should make Seltzer's dissertation and the publications that follow from it the standard against which others on this subject will be judged for some time.

Let me conclude my remarks by emphasizing that these dissertations are well written, address interesting and important topics, and contribute importantly to the field of economic history. I will leave it to Barbara to offer a broader summary of these and the other dissertations that we read, but I want to end my comments by noting that these dissertations are outstanding examples of original scholarly research, and I want to sincerely and publicly congratulate the authors-Garland Brinkley, Dora Costa, and Andrew Seltzer-for that achievement.

LEE A. CRAIG, North Carolina State University

Comments on Johnson, Kiesling, and Van Vleck

You have just heard from three people whose dissertations I helped select to be finalists for the Gerschenkron prize for the best dissertation on a non-U.S. country's economic history. They have now had a chance to tell you a bit of what their works are about. I could also do the same, but I will not. The reasons, at least to me, are obvious: (1) in writing them, they spent a lot more time than I did in reading them; (2) they are all long, and I only have a short time up here; (3) there are people in this audience who know far more about each of these subjects than do I, and I try to exercise some discretion when parading my ignorance (although I do think a Chinese economic historian-who first wrote on early twentieth-century Shanxi province's agricultural markets-being assigned the task of reading umpteen dissertations regarding "the rest of the world's economic histories, none about China," has some rich irony within); and (4) that is not my job as I perceive it.

My task is to put these works in some kind of larger perspective so as not only to better understand them but also understand what we all are doing a bit better. All three dissertations (and all the others I read as well) can be seen as incremental contributions to the ongoing progress of economic history-that is, the inching of the field in some direction. My job, as I define it, is to define this direction and measure the inches.

I am currently teaching three courses this semester-a senior-level course entitled "European, Japanese, and Chinese Economic History," a graduate seminar in economic development, and a senior-level course for business majors on international business environments. Although my teaching the third course can only be described as a torturous convolution of an administrative course-offering objective function and a Business College faculty expertise (or lack of expertise) constraint, the former two



Summaries of Dissertations 391

courses are in my field, aimed at economics students-undergraduates and graduates- and therefore relevant for what I want to say here. Both of these courses' workloads involve reading and critiquing economic journal articles. My experience with the undergraduates has taught me that initially they cannot see the "forest for the trees" in these articles or, for that matter, in most economic arguments. These students need to be taught what is in a published economic history article, that is, how the production of new applied economics knowledge works, so they can sift through all the offerings and choose what to accept. Graduate students are a different matter. These people are in the pipeline to become new producers of economic knowledge and not just discerning absorbers of it. They need to understand not only exactly what is, but also how they are supposed to produce, economic knowledge. Over the years I have devised a simple categorical construct to help me convey to students at all levels what are the different potential contributions to economic history knowledge (and thus how to critique such knowledge offerings). What I want to do here is to explain briefly my construct and then to characterize all three dissertations within it.

To my mind, economic historical analyses are compositions of three distinct ele- ments: (1) delineation of some observed human action requiring explanation, (2) offering of a hypothetical model to explain this behavior, and (3) gathering and use of empirical evidence to test the hypothesized model's power to explain the target behavior. Although economic historical contributions contain all three components, they do so with differing emphases on each category. No work need make a "new" contribution in all three categories. In fact, only one of the subcomponents need be "new" to allow it to be offered as a potential contribution to the knowledge stockpile. Contributions are thus various outcomes of a simple combinatorial problem: for each of the three described categories, choose one out of two possible characteristics, namely, "new" or "old," for the effort. Although the total number of ways of doing this are eight, with the added constraint that there must be at least one "new" component amongst the different combinations of three categories, possible combinations reduce to seven.1 I list them below:

Possible Combinations of Subcomponents

Three Necessary Sub-components Comprising a Work of an Economic History Work 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1. Behavioral observation 0 0 N 0 N N N ("Question Asked")

2. Theoretical Model 0 N 0 N N 0 N ("Explanation Offered")

3. Empirical Test ("Data and N 0 0 N 0 N N Econometric Link Between Behavior and Theory")

Let me discuss a few of the listed possible combinations for economic history works so as to make clear this breakdown of research contributions. One could, for example, write a dissertation following Combination 1, that is, cite an already known historical event, utilize an already known and offered theoretical model to explain it, but bring new empirics to bear on the issue. Or, just as credibly, one could employ Combination 6 in one's dissertation by citing a heretofore unknown historical economic event or behavior as a target for explanation, employing a known theoretical model to suggest

1 The option of "old" question to be asked, using an "old" theoretical model and "old" data and econometrics was pointed out by two graduate students to be as good a definition of plagiarism as they had seen.



392 Summaries of Dissertations

causality for the event, and using a new data source to test the model's explanation. Combination 2 suggests yet another way-focusing on an already asked question about historical economic behavior, constructing "new" hypothetical questions using a previously unused theoretical model, and seeking verification in an already existing data set. In this construction, all seven possible combinations listed above offer viable contributions to the stockpile of economic history knowledge. How one ranks the offerings depends not only on how well the individual has pursued and mastered each subcomponent, but also on how each referee weighs the importance of each subcomponent. Let me now turn to the three finalist dissertations and use this framework to substantiate our choice of them.

Clark Johnson's dissertation entitled "The Gold Deflation, France, and the Coming of the Depression, 1919-1932," written in Yale's History Department under the direction of Harry Miskimin and William Buiter, can be characterized as a work in the category of Combination 1. The dissertations asks the "old" question: "What caused the Great Depression?" employs "old" theoretical tools (those generally devised by Keynes but never before so particularly applied to this problem), and offers "new" data gathered concerning French monetary policy and action during 1919 to 1932. Dr. Johnson's answer to the motivating question is the result of working these three subcomponents. The Great Depression was caused by a price deflation (the underlying cause) that was precipitated by French monetary policy, which imported into France lots of gold, where much of it was sterilized (proximate cause).

But there is much more to this work. This dissertation is an impressive piece of creative research by an apparently almost indefatigable historian. Dr. Johnson surveys immense amounts of macroeconomic theoretical research, clarifying for the reader his particular view (a la Keynes) of the Great Depression and thus the data relevant to his investigation. Then he produces the needed data to make concrete his theoretical suspicions, and as a result, offers up what is undoubtedly one more piece to the very complicated puzzle called the Great Depression. What Dr. Johnson emphasizes is the role that individuals can play in affecting economic history. In his story, the policy objectives of both the Governor of the Bank of France and the Premier and Finance minister caused France to play a large and damaging role. Although Combination 1 is an acceptable format for making a contribution to economic history knowledge, the outstanding feature of Dr. Johnson's dissertation is his relentless, independent-minded search for alternative factors underlying an already well-studied and important economic history topic.

Lynne Kiesling's dissertation, "Collective Action and Assisting the Poor: The Political Economy of Income Assistance During the Lancashire Cotton Famine," was written in Northwestern University's Economics Department under the direction of Joel Mokyr. It also qualifies as a Combination 1 type of economic work. It asks the "old" question: "What are the roles of social institutions in famine relief?" employs "known" microanalytics investigating social institutions' information flows and incentive structures, and brings data from a "new" situation, namely, that of the Lancashire cotton famine in the 1860s, to bear on this topic. As a result of heavily empirical, investigative efforts, Dr. Kiesling concludes that the nature of information flows were very important in determining how social institutions (both private and public) dealing with insurance and charity were set up and performed. When the nature of information changed, so too did the mix of social institutions.

The special contribution of this dissertation's work is its presentation of a wonderfully empirically explicated social and economic (both private and public) institutional microcosm. Within this quantitatively constructed institutional format, many detailed questions regarding the interactions between the nature of information flows and shocks and the socially instituted incentive structures are posed and answered. Adverse economic shocks and subsequent redistributions of income within the affected popula-



Summaries of Dissertations 393

tion can be measured. We have all learned that "institutions matter," but Dr. Kiesling's dissertation is one of a handful of outstanding efforts that show exactly how (and with what effect) they do matter. In quantitatively explicating the welfare outcomes chan- neled by Lancashire's constructed famine relief institutions, Dr. Kiesling has given us a first-rate empirical study of a complex socioeconomic institution and event.

Va Nee Van Vleck's dissertation, "Reassessing Technological Backwardness: Ab- solving the 'Silly Little Bobtailed' Coal Car," was written in the Economics Department at the University of Iowa under the direction of Donald McCloskey. Dr. Van Vleck's dissertation, at first glance, appears, like the previous two, to fall under the category of Combination 1. She asks the "old" question: "What happened to Britain's technical progress (that is, why didn't the British maintain their industrial revolution momentum)?" uses "old" cost/benefit analysis to address this question, and employs it within the "new" case of the British use of small-sized coal cars in the late 1800s and early 1900s. She addresses the issue of why the British continued to use the small-sized coal cars while knowing about (and having the technology available to use) the apparently more "economical" larger-sized coal cars? After conducting an at times necessarily scrambling-for-data empirical investigation of the full economic benefits and costs of doing so, Dr. Van Vleck concludes that the use of the smaller-sized coal car was, in fact, the economically rational thing to do at the time.

So far, so good. Dr. Van Vleck, however, then proceeds to address a more fundamental question regarding how it is that we pose our economic history questions: given that our profession is dedicated to asking how (and why) did change occur over time, perhaps we should take care in how we ask such questions? The coal-car question is a case in point. One can look at the situation from the present backwards and using more current information ask why and where technological choice went wrong? "Path dependency" is a term often employed in this type of inquiry and brings with it a view that "economic mistakes" can be perpetuated through time. Yet, Dr. Van Vleck asks, is this the only possible question and does this view have some potential problems for understanding the unfolding of an economy's history? What if one views technological choice within the context of its own time and not from a later time's perspective? In treating the coal-car-choice problem in such a way, Dr. Van Vleck finds no "mistake" at all-given the costs and benefits of all other involved factors, the small car was the optimal choice. Why Britain did not retain its industrial revolutionary momentum, at least in the case of the coal car, cannot be ascribed to the almost inevitable playing out of an initial-choice mistake. If "path dependency" has a role to play, the onus is on its users to identify the initial mistakes.

We awarded Dr. Van Vleck's dissertation work the Gerschenkron Prize because her contribution fell into the more-difficult-to-achieve category of Combination 6: in the end, she offered a "new" question to be asked-"Is hindsight-driven questioning the appropriate stance to adopt in economic history inquiry?"-after using an "old" technique-cost/benefit analysis-to examine a "new" problem, namely, the size choice of coal cars in late nineteenth-century, early twentieth-century Britain. It is very difficult to pursue questions regarding our own method of questioning, but when done with care and attention, such questioning is all to the good.

BARBARA SANDS, University of Arizona



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