The U.S. Capital Stock in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

This paper -- prepared for and presented at a meeting of the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth -- describes a set of seven capital stock estimates for the U.S., distributed at decennial intervals, 1840 through 1900.The estimates link with Raymond Goldsmith's work on the twentieth century to form a capital stock series covering well over 100 years of U.S. history. The paper describes the theoretical underpinnings of the new estimates, the sources of the evidence from which they were constructed, the types of estimating procedures followed, and the relationships of the new series to other economic aggregates. A few of the ways in which the series illuminates the nature of the nineteenth century U.S. economy and the course of U.S. economic development are taken up.