Beyond the Threshold: An Analysis of the Characteristics and Behavior of Early Reaper Adopters

Alan Olmstead and Paul Rhode

The Journal of Economic History, 1995, vol. 55, issue 1, 27-57

Abstract: This article analyzes a large quantity of new data documenting the actual characteristics and behavior of early reaper adopters. It shows that a surprisingly large number of small-scale farmers were among the early purchasers and that institutional evolution—the emergence of local markets and cooperative exchanges for reaper services—encouraged rapid diffusion. These findings call into question the standard interpretation of northern farms as self-contained production units and, more specifically, challenge the usefulness of both the farm-specific-threshold model and the family-labor-constraint model.

Date: 1995
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:jechis:v:55:y:1995:i:01:p:27-57_04

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Journal of Economic History from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().