IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/kan/wpaper/200806.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Role of Exports in the Economy of Colonial North America: New Estimates for the Middle Colonies

Author

Listed:
  • Peter C. Mancall

    (University of Southern California)

  • Joshua L. Rosenbloom

    (Department of Economics, The University of Kansas)

  • Thomas Weiss

    (Department of Economics, The University of Kansas)

Abstract

Economic historians of the eighteenth-century British mainland North American colonies have given considerable weight to the role of exports as a stimulus for economic growth. Yet their analyses have been handicapped by reliance on one or two time series to serve as indicators of broader changes rather than considering the export sector as a whole. Here we construct comprehensive export measures for the middle colonies. We find that aggregate exports did grow quickly but that this expansion failed to keep pace with population growth during much of the period under consideration. We argue this result challenges the export staples model on the role of foreign demand as a stimulus for economic growth. Instead, these results emphasize the impact of resource abundance and labor and capital scarcity as the defining characteristics of colonial economic growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter C. Mancall & Joshua L. Rosenbloom & Thomas Weiss, 2008. "The Role of Exports in the Economy of Colonial North America: New Estimates for the Middle Colonies," WORKING PAPERS SERIES IN THEORETICAL AND APPLIED ECONOMICS 200806, University of Kansas, Department of Economics, revised Sep 2008.
    • Handle: RePEc:kan:wpaper:200806
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://kuwpaper.ku.edu/2008Papers/200806.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Walker, Jack L., 1969. "The Diffusion of Innovations among the American States," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 63(3), pages 880-899, November.
    2. Price V. Fishback & Shawn Everett Kantor, 2000. "A Prelude to the Welfare State: The Origins of Workers' Compensation," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number fish00-1, October.
    3. Walker, Jack L., 1969. "The Diffusion of Innovations among the American States," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 63(3), pages 880-899, November.
    4. Fishback, Price V. & Kantor, Shawn Everett, 2000. "A Prelude to the Welfare State," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226251639, December.
    5. Abramovitz, Moses, 1993. "The Search for the Sources of Growth: Areas of Ignorance, Old and New," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 53(2), pages 217-243, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lindert, Peter H. & Williamson, Jeffrey G., 2013. "American Incomes Before and After the Revolution," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 73(3), pages 725-765, September.
    2. Peter H. Lindert & Jeffrey G. Williamson, 2012. "American Incomes 1774-1860," NBER Working Papers 18396, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stoian, Adrian & Fishback, Price, 2010. "Welfare spending and mortality rates for the elderly before the Social Security era," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 1-27, January.
    2. Price V. Fishback & Rebecca Holmes & Samuel Allen, 2008. "Lifting the Curse of Dimensionality: Measures of the Labor Legislation Climate in the States During the Progressive Era," NBER Working Papers 14167, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Samuel K. Allen & Price V. Fishback & Rebecca Holmes, 2025. "The impact of progressive era labor regulations on annual earnings and employment in manufacturing in the USA, 1904–1919," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 19(1), pages 249-278, January.
    4. Amy Y. Li, 2017. "Covet Thy Neighbor or “Reverse Policy Diffusion”? State Adoption of Performance Funding 2.0," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 58(7), pages 746-771, November.
    5. Timothy W. Guinnane, 2011. "The Historical Fertility Transition: A Guide for Economists," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(3), pages 589-614, September.
    6. Fonseca, Camila & Jiang, Haiyue & Zeerak, Raihana & Zhao, Jerry Zhirong, 2024. "Explaining the adoption of electric vehicle fees across the United States," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 139-149.
    7. Felix Strebel & Thomas Widmer, 2012. "Visibility and facticity in policy diffusion: going beyond the prevailing binarity," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 45(4), pages 385-398, December.
    8. Xiaohan Li & Yang Lv & Md Nazirul Islam Sarker & Xun Zeng, 2022. "Assessment of Critical Diffusion Factors of Public–Private Partnership and Social Policy: Evidence from Mainland Prefecture-Level Cities in China," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-15, February.
    9. Christoph Engel & Alon Klement & Karen Weinshall Margel, 2017. "Diffusion of Legal Innovations: The Case of Israeli Class Actions," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2017_11, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, revised Jan 2018.
    10. Weixing Liu & Hongtao Yi, 2020. "What Affects the Diffusion of New Energy Vehicles Financial Subsidy Policy? Evidence from Chinese Cities," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(3), pages 1-15, January.
    11. Mary A. Weiss & Sharon Tennyson & Laureen Regan, 2010. "The Effects of Regulated Premium Subsidies on Insurance Costs: An Empirical Analysis of Automobile Insurance," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 77(3), pages 597-624, September.
    12. Tim Legrand & Diane Stone, 2021. "Governing global policy: what IPE can learn from public policy? [Review article: What is policy convergence and what causes it?]," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 40(4), pages 484-501.
    13. Saatvika Rai, 2020. "Policy Adoption and Policy Intensity: Emergence of Climate Adaptation Planning in U.S. States," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 37(4), pages 444-463, July.
    14. Thomas Holyoke & Jeffrey Henig & Heath Brown & Natalie Lacireno-Paquet, 2009. "Policy dynamics and the evolution of state charter school laws," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 42(1), pages 33-55, February.
    15. Edward L. Glaeser & Andrei Shleifer, 2003. "The Rise of the Regulatory State," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(2), pages 401-425, June.
    16. repec:osf:osfxxx:ruyp3_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Djankov, Simeon & Glaeser, Edward & La Porta, Rafael & Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio & Shleifer, Andrei, 2003. "The new comparative economics," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 595-619, December.
    18. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/f4rshpf3v1umfa09lat1n0o44 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Richard J. Butler & John D. Worrall, 2008. "Wage and Injury Response to Shifts in Workplace Liability," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 61(2), pages 181-200, January.
    20. Jean-Robert Tyran & Rupert Sausgruber, 2005. "The diffusion of policy innovations -an experimental investigation," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 15(4), pages 423-442, October.
    21. Rauch Griffard, Megan & Sadler, James & Little, Michael & Cohen-Vogel, Lora, 2022. "Governing early learning among the American states," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    22. Nadiya Kostyuk, 2024. "Allies and diffusion of state military cybercapacity," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 61(1), pages 44-58, January.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kan:wpaper:200806. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Professor Zongwu Cai (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deuksus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.