GAVIN WRIGHT
William Robertson Coe Professor of American Economic History

Ph.D. Yale University; B.A. Swarthmore College.

Research Interests: American economic history; the U.S. South; technology; natural resources and economic development.

Current Research: The economics of the Civil Rights Revolution

Recent Publications and papers:   
 Survey
“Quantitative Economic History in the United States,” (pdf) in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (2001).

  Nationhood
“The Role of Nationhood in the Economic Development of the USA,” (pdf) in Alice Teichova and Herbert Matis (eds.), Economic Change and the Nation State in History (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 387-403.

  Natural Resources and Economic Growth
“The Myth of the Resource Curse” (pdf) (with Jesse Czelusta), Challenge (March-April 2004), 6-36.

“Order Without Law: Property Rights During the California Gold Rush” (pdf) (with Karen Clay), Explorations in Economic History 42 (April 2005), 155-183.

“Resource-Based Growth Past and Present” (pdf) (with Jesse Czelusta), in Daniel Lederman and William F. Maloney (eds.), Natural Resources: Neither Curse nor Destiny (World Bank/Stanford University Press, 2007), 183-211.

  Labor History
“Arbitraging a Discriminatory Labor Market: Black Workers and the Ford Motor Company, 1918-1947,” (pdf) (with Christopher L. Foote and Warren Whatley), Journal of Labor Economics 21 (July 2003), 493-531.

“Organized Labor and the Race Issue: Economics or Economic History,” (pdf) Labor History 48 (May 2007): 234-241. (Symposium Contribution)

  Technology and Productivity
“Productivity Growth and the American Labor Market: The 1990s in Historical Perspective,” (pdf) in Paul Rhode and Gianni Toniolo (eds.), Understanding the 1990s (Cambridge University Press, 2006), 139-160.

“National Leadership and Competing Technological Paradigms: The Globalization of Cotton Spinning, 1878-1933,” (pdf) (with Gary Saxonhouse) presented at Conference in Memory of Gary Saxonhouse, University of Michigan, December 2007.

“Historical Foundations of American Technology,” (pdf) presented to Chiba University conference on the New American Economy, December 2007.

  Slavery
“Slavery and American Agricultural History,” (pdf) Agricultural History 77 (Fall 2003), 527-552.

Slavery and American Economic Development (Louisiana State University Press, 2006). Available from LSU Press at  http://s50780.sites40.storefront-hosting.com/detail.aspx?ID=1408.

  Civil Rights History
“The Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution,” (pdf) in Winfred O. Moore, Jr., and Orville Vernon Burton (eds.), Towards the Meeting of the Waters: The Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina (University of South Carolina Press, 2007)..

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C.V. (pdf)