The project will produce estimates of gross domestic product (GDP) and GDP per capita at benchmark dates in the eighteenth century for the Middle Colonies of British North America, an area composed of the present-day states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. This study follows a pilot project on the economy of the Lower South (North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia). After completion of the work on the Middle Colonies, the investigators will estimate GDP for New England and the Chesapeake Bay region, and combine the figures for all regions to obtain GDP for the colonies as a whole. The investigators shall also link those figures to the GDP series for the early nineteenth century constructed by David (1967) and Weiss (1992 and 1994) and to existing estimates of GDP for the period since then, including official series produced by the Department of Commerce.
The project will estimate GDP by using the method of estimation devised by David and modified by Weiss, and used in the pilot project on the Lower South. The proposed estimates for the Middle Colonies, like those for the Lower South, will draw on the rich and extensive literature on wealth and standards of living in these colonies that has accumulated over the past several decades, will make use of the probate samples and other data sets that have been compiled by other researchers, and will supplement this work with documentary evidence of the sort we found for the Lower South. An annotated bibliography, probate samples and a database containing data on variables pertinent to estimating GDP for the region will be prepared and made available to other researchers.
The estimates will take into account the economic activity of Native American Indians. Whether one thinks that Indians should be treated as though they were part of the colonial economy or as separate nations and trading partners, their economic activity and its impact on the colonists needs to be taken into account. Native Americans were simply too important quantitatively to be ignored. The proposed work will establish more clearly the extent of Native Americans' participation in markets, their economic interactions with colonists, and the value of output produced by them.
This project will investigate the ways in which the colonial and early national periods of America contributed to the gradual acceleration of the nation's economy into sustained economic growth.
Broader Impact of This Work Our estimates will be of greatest interest to economic historians initially, and are already being cited in textbooks (e.g. Hughes and Cain, 2003). In the longer term they will be of use to those doing empirical macroeconomics and economic growth. This work can eventually inform public policy decisions regarding the nation's economy. As in our pilot study on the Lower South, we will produce databases that will be of use to other researchers, and we will make these readily available via the EH NET website and CD-ROMs.
The project will also involve undergraduates, primarily as paid assistants, but as occurred in the pilot project, they are likely to become interested enough in the subject to engage in research of their own. And this project will engage underrepresented groups in this research just as occurred in previous NSF sponsored projects conducted by Weiss. The fact that part of this research is about Native American economic history should increase the likelihood that other underrepresented groups will participate and be attracted to the study of economics. Furthermore, with the Native American component to this research we plan to present our results to multidisciplinary conferences and workshops, and disseminate it in ways that will reach broader audiences, just as was done in the pilot project.
