Econ 311 Fall 2024 Midterm 3 Review PDF

Econ 311 Mid Term 3 Review Sheet Wallis Fall 2024 The third exam will be on November 7. It will take the entire period. The exam will have a few multiple choice questions and several essay questions. This exam will be comprehensive. I have included the rev...

Econ 311 Mid Term 3 Review Sheet Wallis Fall 2024 The third exam will be on November 7. It will take the entire period. The exam will have a few multiple choice questions and several essay questions. This exam will be comprehensive. I have included the review sheets for the first and second exams, as well as from the third part of the course. We have talked about several common elements in all three parts of the course: Institutions like charters, constitutions, and land policy Regional specialization and division of labor Demography and labor systems: slavery, indentured servitude, free labor. First part of the course You should be familiar with Staple theory and Malthusian theory Setting up an English colony Land Demography Bailyn and Greene Be familiar with the general outlines of the Staples theory and the Malthusian theory as presented by McCusker and Menard and discussed in class. What does the staple theory focus on? Why is the character of the primary export good important to the development of a colonial economy? What does the staple affect, for example, land or labor systems? What are the main elements of a Malthusian system? How do the staple and Malthusian frameworks differ in what they try to explain? Why, when the colonies were established, did the colonist want to be granted charters by the King? What was the difference between a “corporate” colony and a “proprietary colony”? What were the first three British colonies: Virginia, Maryland, and Massachusetts? Be sure you are familiar with the way the charters set up governments in the colonies and how the charters established property rights in land. Be sure you are familiar with the concept of land tenures and the tenure of free and common socage. Why could the King tax land? Why did the King choose to grant the Virginia company the right to tenure land only in free and common socage? Mathusian forces. Be familiar with the basic Malthusian model and the idea that populations will tend to grow. What is a preventive check? What is a positive checks? What was the rate of population growth in the colonies? Did the Caribbean differ from the North American colonies? How? What roughly were the crude birth and death rates in the North American colonies? Why was fertility high and why mortality was low (relative to Europe)? What were the primary causes of death in the 17 and 18th century? th Trade, regional specialization and comparative advantage: What colonies had “absolute” advantages in growing particular crops or particular economic activities, and which colonies had a “comparative” advantage? (You should know the difference between absolute and comparative advantage. How does specialization and division of labor promote economic growth and development? How important was regional specialization to the economy of the colonies? You should be very familiar with the pattern of specialization across the various colonial regions. You should be able to explain the pattern of specialization for all of the British colonies, not just the ones that became American colonies. You should be familiar with the elements of the balance of payments in the colonies. Second part of the course: - You should be familiar with the material from Bailyn and Greene. Why did colonists and the British share common ideas about how the British constitution worked and why it was the best constitution in the world. How did the British constitution work? What were the elements of mixed government in Britain? What were the elements in the colonies? Why were colonial governors relatively weak politically? That is, why did colonial governors have trouble influencing the course of political debate and policy in the colonies? Did the colonists have fundamentally different views from the British about how mixed government limited arbitrary government? And if they had similar views, why did the come to disagree with the British about how colonial government should be structured? - You should be familiar with the concepts of King-in-Council and King-in-Parliament. Which of the concepts did the British think governed the colonies? How had the colonies actually been governed? Had the colonists or the King controlled the sale and registration of land and land titling? Why did the Stamp Act affect land titling? Why, under the King-in-Council view, was the Stamp Act “unconstitutional”? - Once hostilities started in 1775, how did the Continental Congress finance the war effort? Why did issuing money ultimately make it more expensive to borrow? Why couldn’t the Congress levy taxes? Why was it difficult for them to get the states to meet their requisitions? The Articles of Confederation were not ratified until 1781, did these solve the problem? Why did the Articles leave so much latitude to the states? - How did the Congress solve the problems surrounding the question of western lands? You should be familiar with the Land Ordinances of 1785 and 1787, how public land was surveyed and sold, and how new states were created and admitted to the Union. - How did the Constitution remedy the main weaknesses in the Articles? What happened to the power to tax, the power to raise a standing army, the power to regulate the currency, and the power to regulate international relations. How did the states protect themselves against the encroachment of national authority? What limits did the constitution put on governments relationships with individuals? You should be familiar in a general way with Article 1, sections 1, 7, 8, 9 and 10; what they include and what allow and/or prevent the national and state governments from doing. - Charles Beard hypothesized that the Constitution was affected by “economic interests.” How might the interests of national government bondholders, slave owners, or merchants be affected by a stronger national government. Did there votes at the national convention or in the state ratifying convention reflect their interests? Does this mean that the Constitution was written by narrow economic interests? - What happened when the national government tried to charter a bank? What were the constitutional issues raised by Jefferson and Hamilton in their recommendations to Washington about chartering the Bank of the United States? How did conflict over the bank lead to the formation of the first political parties? How does the struggle over the bank reflect the issues about politics and corruption that Bailyn discusses? - What were the four main dangers to the new Republic that George Washington laid out in his Farewell Address? How did these reflect the concerns about corruption discussed by Bailyn? Were Washington’s fears about organized political and economic interests, that is about political parties and corporations, realized in time? That is, did the emergence of political parties and large numbers of corporations spell the end of American democracy? Third part of the course: - You should be familiar with Callender’s argument about the sources of economic growth in the early 19th century. What was the pattern of regional specialization and division of labor? What kind of investments were required to enable that pattern of specialization? Why is capital so important to Callender? Why were states involved in investments in transportation finance? Why couldn’t private firms make those investments? - You should be familiar with the diffferences between Northern agriculture and Southern agriculture. Why did the South have a comparative advantage in growing cotton? What effect dif the industrial revolution in Britain have on the demand for cotton in the South? What were the3 differences in mean and median farm size in the North and the South? - Why were small family farms dominant in the North? What was the harvest labor constraint? How did it work to limit farm size? - How connected were slavery and cotton? How much of the cotton crop was grown on farms with slavcs versus free farms? What did the distribution of farm sizes in the South look like? How did the distribution of famr sizes affect the politics of the South compared to the politics of the North? - What did Callender’s three regions invest in? Why did it require investments in both transportation and finance to implement regional specialization? Why did the South invest in banks but not in transportation? Why did the Northeast invest in transportation but not in banks? Were there banks in the Northeast? - What kind of banks did the Southern states invest in? How did land banks enable Southern land owners to purchase more land and more slaves?