Essays in North American economic history

This dissertation examines two subjects. After an introduction, the next two chapters examine banks owned and operated by African-Americans before World War II. The final chapter looks at Newfoundland's political economy from 1867 to 1949. Chapter 2, "Banking on African-American Business," uses a newly-created data set of banks owned and managed by African Americans from 1907 to 1930. I provide the first analysis of the contribution of African-American banks to the development of African-American communities. Economic progress is measured by business ownership, proxied by the number of African-Americans who reported employing at least one person, as well as white-collar occupations, mortgages, and home ownership. Fixed effects analysis shows that an additional African-American bank per ten thousand African-American adults in a county increased the share of African-Americans employing at least one person by 1.9 percentage points, 1.5 times the median rate. Put another way, African-American banks from 1907 to 1930 created roughly 14,000 African-American business owners. This effect persists when limiting the sample to both the South and the Cotton South. The effects on white-collar occupations and home ownership are positive but relatively small, and seen in both the North and the South. Overall, African-American banks made significant contributions to their communities, contrary to skepticism expressed in the previous literature. Chapter 3, "Triple Segregation: Virginia African-American Banks, 1915-28," studies African-American banking operations in depth. Using a new dataset of declassified Virginia bank examinations from 1915 to 1928, this chapter provides the first in-depth comparison of banks owned and operated by African Americans to white banks. This dataset shows that banks owned and operated by African-Americans generated lower profits than white banks. These lower profits were likely due to African-American banks facing three segregated markets: the markets for borrowers, for bank deposits, and for mergers were all significantly different. In each case, the customers for African-American banks were almost entirely African-American. This confirms the assertions of scholars that the most important difference for the performance of African-American firms was the exclusion of white customers from their market. These segregated markets, along with other factors, may have led African-American banks to pursue lower-risk strategies in their asset allocation and deposit mix. Chapter 4, "The Many, Many Bonds of Newfoundland," describes how the self-governing Dominion of Newfoundland found itself in 1933 owing debt of approximately twice its GDP, with interest payments over 80% of government revenue. The tale of how the Dominion came to this point is sordid and fascinating; the means by which this crisis was resolved are unique. Researchers have mostly overlooked that Newfoundland was the Dominion of the United Kingdom that came the closest to defaulting, and for which default plausibly could have improved its circumstances. However, Newfoundland left behind over 34 bonds, loans, and other borrowing instruments, all with different clauses, maturities, interest rates, and investors. Using these variations, along with comparing Newfoundland bonds to more widely studied sovereign debt, allows an analysis of the bond markets of the early twentieth century. Results show that bond prices were disproportionately affected by World War I.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference