AMERICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY
Professor John Hall AMERICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY, EC456/556 Your Learning Opportunity #1 is due, before 5 pm, Thursday, 30 October 2014, and under my office door, CH241-P, or bring with you to our course and hand in to me. For those under my office door, I shall pick up these exams when I return after my 4:40-6:30 class. If your exam is not handed in on time, five points will be taken off for each 24 hour period exams are turned in late. I will be out of town, so the office will have to stamp late exams.
Learning Opportunity #1. This learning opportunity is offered to assist you in formulating your ideas, and to help you to gain mastery over material that was introduced and considered in the first half of our course. By completing this learning opportunity you should then be in a good situation to go forward into the second half of our course, and this involves formulating an original idea that is also rooted in the literature we have (or will) somehow consider(ed] in this course.
Below, please find three questions. You need to consider and deal with all three. This involves reading the questions and then formulating and writing up answers that comprehensively address the questions. Your answers should run three full pages of double-spaced text. You should cite your answers as outlined in the final four pages of this exam, and as harped upon in class. Citations should be integrated into the text, and not tacked on at the end of sentences.
Grades for this Learning Opportunity #1 are evenly split between “content” and “style.” Content concerns the literature, and style concerns referencing (citing) this literature. This “Learning Opportunity” could count as much as 50 points toward your final grade. 25 points can be earned for content that draws from the literature, as well as your own brilliant synthesis. ^
Another 25 points are given for style. Style is covered in the final pages of this exam, and the finer points will be presented during class time. As I consider your 25 points for style, your grade should reflect the progress you are making with absorbing and incorporating new ideas and material into your thinking and expressing your ideas in writing. Any citation that is not integrated skillfully and correctly into your text will suffer a mark against your grade. Citations that are completely correct will earn one point.
Please include a cover page. No reason to limit the cover page to 12 point fonts. Also, include a bibliography.’ If you have doubts about a bibliography, visit my home page, and take a look a recent entry, “Veblen’s Predator and the Great Crisis.”
Page 2, Learning Opportunity #1
Question #1, Three page answer, fronts only, plus add sources to your bibliography on Page 10.
1. The colonies that would later become the United States were profoundly- influenced by England and later Great Britain (which could be thought of as emerging in appx. 1707 with England’s union with Scotland). By “taking on the character of England and Great Britain” what this means is that the American colonies were influenced by England and Great Britain. Much of this has to do with patterns found in populating the colonies, the transferring of institutions, and the establishing of patterns in economic relations, especially trade activity.
Please offer a narrative description (that also references the data in our text). The narrative should describe convincingly: This is how and why the United States came to represent its English and British influences.” (three pages, double spaced, fronts only)
Question #2, Three page answer, fronts only, plus add sources to your bibliography on Page 10. 2. Among our supplementary readings we have an article coauthored by Kenneth L. Sokoloff and Stanley L. Engerman and with the title: “Institutions, Factor Endowments, and Paths of Development in the New World.” What Sokoloff and Engerman ((2000, p. 118) note is that the “… economic leadership of United States and Canada did not emerge until several centuries after the Europeans arrived and began establishing colonies. In 1700, there seems to have been virtual parity in per capita income between Mexico an the British colonies that were to become the United States ….” With time, this changed. This answer asks you to take into account: According to Sokoloff and Engerman, what variables facilitated the changes and caused the U.S., in particular, to generate and exhibit higher levels of per capita output over time (or after 1700)? So, the question to answer: What caused the changes, according to the authors? Phrased differently, and according to the authors, what caused the United States to emerge as a higher per capita income country over time? In your answer, please consider: What role did factor endowments play. And, also consider: what roles were played by institutions?
Page 3, Learning Opportunity #1
Question #3, Three page answer, fronts only, plus add sources to your bibliography on Page 10.
3. Nathan Rosenberg is widely recognized and his appreciated for assisting economists in understanding the importance of technological change and its effects on U.S. economic development.
Please consider Rosenberg’s article “Technological Change in the Machine Tool Industry, 1840-1910” that was published in The Journal of Economic History in 1963. Rosenberg [1963, p. 416) notes that for the U.S., its process of development has been “… characterized by a significant increase in the importance of manufactured producers’ durables and a decline in the relative importance of construction goods.” Extending his thinking, Rosenberg suggests that in order to understand U.S. development, one needs to concentrate on “… examining the changing role of the capital goods industries, and more particularly that growing portion of them which is devoted to the production of producers’ durable goods.” Rosenberg then goes on to develop the changes taking place (evolution) of the U.S. capital goods sector. While reviewing his article, what can you note are the salient features that Rosenberg emphasizes in the evolution of the U.S. capital goods sector? Please be sure to also consider production, innovation, and diffusion of capital goods.
John Hall, Department of Economics, Portland State University
Some tips on Social Science writing to consider:
Consider an excerpt from our text: authored by Jonathan Hughes and Louis Cain. American Economic History, Eighth Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson, 2011.
Sentence from Chapter 3, Page 48. And heading “Wealth and Income” When we look at structures dating from the colonial period that have survived to modern times, we see evidence of past solidity and wealth in Portsmouth, Newburyport, Boston, Philadelphia, Georgetown, and Charleston.
Paraphrasing involves carrying forward ideas found in an author’s text without taking three or more words together. The word “that” often designates a paraphrase is about to start. When borrowing an idea, best to artfully cite your author, year, and page number.
Try: Hughes and Cain [2011,48] stress that in in coastal and estuary cities, such as Portsmouth and Newburyport, was well as Charleston, Georgetown and Philadelphia, that we can find structures that offer evidence of solidity as well as accumulation of wealth.
or.
According to our authors Hughes and Cain [2011,48) coastal and estuary cities, such as Portsmouth and Newburyport, was well as Charleston, Georgetown and Philadelphia, we can find structures that offer evidence of colonial prosperity.
or, clarily your thinking with two ideas in two sentences. “In addition,” is useful.
According to Hughes and Cain [2011,48) we can find structures that offer evidence of a prosperous past. Such structures can be found in coastal and estuary cities, such as Portsmouth and Newburyport, was well as Charleston, Georgetown and Philadelphia,
In this course, a correct manner for citing is to offer the citation as close to the author’s name as possible. An incorrect manner for citing would involve including the citation after a pronoun, or offering the citation removed from the author’s name. Please note this.
Hall, Page 2
Social science writing relies heavily on a few key sentence structures that can be relied upon repeatedly and artfully mixed.
Simple: Hughes and Cain stress the roles played by England and Great Britain in American economic development.
subject verb object
Consider a complex sentence with a gerund clause added:
Gerunds are verbal nouns and are noted by adding an -ing ending to a verb. After a phrase that could also stand alone as a sentence, add a comma and then an -ing gerund. In the sentence below the verb is “stress” and the gerund is “stressing.” The gerund clause is stressing that material resources could indeed be applied toward fostering economic development and enhancing political strength of a nation state.
Introducing a gerund and gerund clause along with a citation.
Hughes and Cain [2011, 6) introduce ideas governing mercantilist thought, stressing that material resources could indeed be applied toward fostering economic development and enhancing political strength of a nation state.
Consider another gerund and gerund clause;
Roles played by England and Great Britain, in the view of Hughes and Cain [2011, 6- 32) proved important, providing an institutional foundation for industrial development.
Then there are sentences with two independent clauses that can rely upon conjunctive adverbs to carry the ideas, such as: therefore, moreover, however, nevertheless; furthermore. Use these with a semicolon before and then followed by a comma.
Hughes and Cain [2011, 6) introduce ideas governing mercantilist thought; moreover, their textbook stresses that material resources could indeed be applied toward fostering economic development and and enhancing political strength of a nation state.
Hall, Page 3
If one offers a sentence with two fully independent clauses that could stand alone as sentences, then the colon [:} is appropriate. The way that I know when the ; is
used correctly, I can substitute for the colon the words “in other words.” This is a sure rule of thumb. Many people use the colon improperly, and editors let it pass.
Hughes and Cain (2011,6) introduce ideas governing mercantilist thought: their textbook stresses that material resources could indeed be applied toward fostering economic development and enhancing political strength of a nation state.
For this course I prefer that you learn the art of paraphrasing. Paraphrasing typically avoids quotes. My take is that when paraphrasing that one relies on quotes when introducing an odd term. The term is presented once in quotes, and once presented, the quotes are never relied upon again in the text.
Bibliographical references according to the Journal of Economic Issues and my interpretations: Hughes, Jonathan and Cain, Louis P.. American Economic History, Eighth Edition.
Boston, MA, Pearson, 2011.
Sokoloff, Kenneth L. and Engerman, Stanley L.. “Institutions, Factor Endowments, and Paths of Development in the New World,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 14, no. 3 (Summer, 2000]: pp. 217-232.
