This book presents a model for examining problems of institutional change and applies it to American economic development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Part I. The Theory Developed: 1. A theory of institutional change: concepts and causes; 2. The government, coercion, and the redistribution of income; 3. A theory of institutional innovation: description, analogy, specification; 4. Changes in the institutional environment: exogenous shifts and arrangemental innovation; Part II. The Theory Applied: 5. Land policy and American agriculture; 6. Organization and reorganization in the financial markets: savings and investment in the American economy, 1820-1950; 7. Transportation developments and economic growth; 8. Economies of scale, unsuccessful cartelization, and external costs: some sidelights on the growth of manufacturing in the United States; 9. Institutional change in the service industries; 9. The labor force: organization and education; Part III. Conclusions: 11. The changing public-private mix; 12. History and the analysis of arrangemental change: a look to the past with an eye to the future.