Founding Choices
American Economic Policy in the 1790s
- Contents
- Review Quotes

The Significance of the Founding Choices: Editors’ Introduction
Douglas A. Irwin and Richard Sylla
I. Politics
1. The Constitutional Choices of 1787 and Their Consequences
Sonia Mittal, Jack N. Rakove, and Barry R. Weingast
II. Policy
2. Financial Foundations: Public Credit, the National Bank, and Securities Markets
Richard Sylla
3. Revenue or Reciprocity? Founding Feuds over Early U.S. Trade Policy
Douglas A. Irwin
4. Monetary Policy and the Dollar
Peter L. Rousseau
5. Federal and State Commercial Banking Policy in the Federalist Era and Beyond
Howard Bodenhorn
6. The Other Foundings: Federalism and the Constitutional Structure of American Government
John Joseph Wallis
III. Business Organization and the Factors of Production
7. Rise of the Corporation Nation
Robert E. Wright
8. U.S. Land Policy: Founding Choices and Outcomes, 1781-1802
Farley Grubb
9. Free Labor and Slave Labor
Stanley L. Engerman and Robert A. Margo
10. Looking Backward: Founding Choices in Innovation and Intellectual Property Protection
B. Zorina Khan
“In Founding Choices, Douglas Irwin and Richard Sylla have brought together an impressive and accomplished list of economic historians to examine the long-run importance of the economic decisions made in the Founding Era, decisions which helped foster sustained economic growth and development in the United States. There is a tremendous amount of useful and important information contained in these essays.”
Economics and Business: Economics--Development, Growth, Planning | Economics--History
History: American History
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