The Victorian era saw remarkable economic growth and a rise in real wages. But not everyone shared in the nation's prosperity. Many families continued to live in grinding poverty with women and children usually faring worst. In this incisive account...

The number of immigrants in the US science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce and among recipients of advanced STEM degrees at US universities has increased in recent decades. In light of the current public debate about immigr...

Christophe Guilluy, a French geographer, makes the case that France has become an "American society" – one that is both increasingly multicultural and increasingly unequal. The divide between the global economy's winners and losers in today's France...

Hundreds of years before a sixteenth-century crisis in European agriculture led to the origins of capital, investment, and finance, the silver mining industry exhibited many of the features of modern capitalism. Silver mines were large-scale business...

Throughout the twentieth century, "free enterprise" has been a contested keyword in American politics, and the cornerstone of a conservative philosophy that seeks to limit government involvement into economic matters. Lawrence B. Glickman shows how t...

When we think about history, we often think about people, events, ideas, and revolutions, but what about the numbers? What do the data tell us about what was, what is, and how things changed over time? Economist Robert E. Gallman (1926-1998) gathered...

Are corporations people? The U.S. Supreme Court launched a heated debate when it ruled in "Citizens United" that corporations can claim the same free speech rights as humans. Should corporations be able to claim rights of free speech, religious consc...

If you've got some money in the bank, chances are you've never seriously worried about not being able to withdraw it. But there was a time in the United States, an era that ended just over a hundred years ago, in which bank customers had to pay close...

Today, more American women than ever before stay in the workforce into their sixties and seventies. This trend emerged in the 1980s, and has persisted during the past three decades, despite substantial changes in macroeconomic conditions. Why is this...

Finding a job used to be simple. You'd show up at an office and ask for an application. A friend would mention a job in their department. Or you'd see an ad in a newspaper and send in your cover letter. Maybe you'd call the company a week later to ch...