Essays on the economic history of the American frontier

This dissertation is three essays on the economic history of the American frontier. The second and third chapters weigh in on fractious and long-standing historical debates: the frontier thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner and the origins of nineteenth century farm discontent. The fourth chapter studies the rule of law in the mining camps of the American West.;Chapter 2 uses a new sample of households linked between the 1860, 1870, and 1880 censuses to investigate migration to the frontier, wealth accumulation, and persistence. The self-selection of migrants is treated by combining the sample of frontier migrants with a nationally representative sample of households and estimating a structural model of migration and wealth accumulation. Laborers were well represented among frontier migrants. Also, on average, migrants to the frontier fared well: they accumulated wealth faster than households living off the frontier.;Chapter 3 examines the origins of agrarian unrest from an information perspective. After the Civil War farmers migrated to the frontier under imperfect information about the region's climate. During the drought of the late 1880s and early 1890s, farmers suffered hardship because they lacked knowledge to farm on the frontier. At the same time, the drought devastated mortgage lenders who had extended credit to farmers. The high price of credit became one of farmers' biggest grievances and a rallying point for the Populist movement.;Chapter 4 uses evolutionary game theory to study the rule of law in the mining camps of the American West. Miners demanded secure property rights to exploit the region's mineral wealth. In the model, players must divide their labor between mining and supporting institutions that promote property rights. The model predicts that ideology, factors affecting the opportunity cost of contributing to the public good, and the ability of miners to sanction one another affect the likelihood of the rule of law. I test these predictions against evidence from the letters and diaries of miners and conclude that the evidence is largely consistent with the model's predictions. I argue that more of history may have been subject to evolutionary forces at the micro-level than previously realized.