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190
Editors’ Notes
IN MEMORIAM
MOSES ABRAMOVITZ
1912–2000
It is with much sadness that we bring news of the passing of Moses Abramovitz, our
esteemed colleague and dear friend, who died on 1 December at the Stanford University
Hospital, just a month before reaching his eighty-ninth birthday. He had been hospitalized
with a gastroenterological condition for one week, during most of which time he remained
alert and conversational; then succumbed to a sudden, unexpected infection.
“Moe” Abramovitz was an important figure in twentieth-century American economics,
who, over the course of a long and distinguished academic career, gained international
admiration and renown for his fundamental insights and pioneering technical contributions
to the study of long-term economic growth. He also was one of the primary builders of the
Department of Economics at Stanford University, which he joined in the fall of 1948. For
the next 26 years Abramovitz taught at Stanford, taking leave only during 1962/63 to work
at the OECD Development Center in Paris, and served two separate terms as chair at
critical junctures in the department’s history. Following his retirement from the William
Robertson Coe Professorship in American Economic History in 1977, he continued his
active participation in Stanford’s intellectual life throughout the final quarter of the
century—participating regularly in economic-history seminars, maintaining a steady
program of research and writing, editing the Journal of Economic Literature, and under-
taking a variety of public-service roles.
A bountiful harvest of academic honors came to Abramovitz in this later stage of his
career. At home he was elected to the presidency of the American Economic Association
(1979/80), the Western Economic Association (1988/89), and the Economic History
Association (1992/93). From abroad came honorary doctorates from the University of
Uppsala in Sweden (1985), and the University of Ancona in Italy (1992); he took special
enjoyment from an invitation to become a fellow of the prestigious Academia Nazionale
de Lincei in 1991—“following Galileo,” with a lag, he said, with a characteristic self-
deprecatory twinkle.
Yet, this was not simply a time for gathering in the rewards of scholarly distinction; the
sowing and cultivation of new ideas and the tedious work of bringing them to fruition
through publication also had to be carried forward. Indeed, Abramovitz’s 1986 journal
article entitled “Catching up, Forging Ahead and Falling Behind,” which currently is the
second most-cited among all the papers published by the Journal of Economic History,
was presented the year before at the EHA’s Annual Meeting in New York, when its author
was in his seventy-seventh year. And, this past fall Moe was gratified by the appearance
in Volume 3 of The Cambridge Economic History of the United States of his co-authored
92-page chapter, “American Macroeconomic Growth in the Era of Knowledge-Based
Progress: The Long-Run Perspective.”
Although his health had been in decline, and his spirit never fully recovered from the
loss of his life partner, the sculptor and artist Carrie Abramovitz, who died in October
1999, Moe remained mentally vigorous, productive, and dependably entertaining company
to the end.
PAUL DAVID AND GAV I N WRIGHT
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Editors’ Notes 191
IN MEMORIAM
HAROLD GOODHUE VATTER
1910–2000
Harold Goodhue Vatter died on 8 September in his Portland, Oregon home. He was 89
years old and remained active in his field, teaching until a few weeks before his death. After
receiving a Ph.D. in Economics at University of California, Berkeley, where he was Head
Teaching Fellow, he taught at Oregon State University and Carleton College. Vatter also
was a Lilly Faculty Research Fellow at the University of Chicago. He came to Portland
State in 1965 where he taught American Economic History and the History of Economic
Thought. He was the author of more than a dozen books in his field, as well as hundreds of
articles and book reviews. A memorial chamber music concert was held at Portland State
University on the ninetieth anniversary of Vatter’s birth, 18 December.
IN MEMORIAM
TREVOR DICK
1934–2001
Trevor Dick was found dead of a heart attack at his home in Lethbridge, Canada 28
January. He will be sorely missed by family, friends, colleagues, and the University of Leth-
bridge Singers, of which he was a longtime member.
Dick received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1970, taught at the Univer-
sity of Western Ontario until 1976, then joined the faculty of the Economics Department
of the University of Lethbridge, from which he retired in 2000.
Dick was an active and productive participant in the Economic History Association, the
Canadian Association, the Cliometric Society, Canadian Clio, and the International History
Association for more than 30 years. He was in the midst of organizing a session for the
upcoming international meetings in Buenos Aires. Please contact Barry Eichengreen if you
are interested in helping that session go forward in Trevor’s memory.
EDITORS’ REPORT, SEPTEMBER 2000
In July 2000 Jan de Vries and Heath Pearson became the senior co- and assistant editors.
Their first leadership initiative was revision of the style sheet to remove outdated require-
ments. Gavin Wright at Stanford University succeeded Gary Libecap as the new editor for
the North American side, retaining Susan Isaac as his assistant. Gavin has also tapped Scott
Wilson of the Social Science History Institute for coordination within this geographically
dispersed editorial office and editorial assistance. All of the editors join the members of the
association in thanking Gary Libecap for his four years of dedicated service to the JOURNAL.
1999/2000 saw a small increase in new submissions relative to last year from 90 to 92. As
Figure 1 shows, the number of submissions for the last 20 years shows a downward trend.
Tables 1 through 3 show the distribution of new submissions by topic, region, and era.
Each of these measures of the scope of the JOURNAL’S coverage reflects a continuation of
the breadth that is a central goal of this publication.
The increase from 90 to 92 in new submissions was more than offset by the decline in resub-
missions from 67 to 40 and meant that the offices handled 27 fewer papers than last year. The
editors are curious about this decline in resubmissions. One possibility is that our invitations to
resubmit have become sterner and more demanding; another is that a large overhand of papers
under revision are about to descend on the editorial offices. For all submissions and
resubmissions for the year, the acceptance rate declined from 28 to 26 percent, the revise-and-
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192 Editors’ Notes
resubmit rate declined from 30 to 29 percent, and the rejection rate increased from 42 to 45
percent.
80
90
100
110
120
130
140
150
81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00
New Submissions
Total Submissions Trend
FIGURE 1
TRENDS IN NEW SUBMISSIONS, 1980/81–1999/2000
Source: The yearly totals were taken from the published Editors’ Notes.
TABLE 1
REGULAR ARTICLE SUBMISSIONS BY WORLD AREA, BROKEN DOWN BY TOPIC,
JULY 1999–JUNE 2000 (totals)
July 1997–June 1998 July 1998–June 1999 July 1999–June 2000
Topic
North
America
All Other
Regions
North
America
All Other
Regions
North
America
All Other
Regions
Agriculture 4 4 3 7 5 7
Demography 65 35 50
Growth 1 7 0 10 0 2
Industry 8 2 7 2 5 0
Technology 3 3 2 1 0 1
Labor 62 44 511
Money and macro 5 5 8 7 5 6
Public finance 2 4 0 4 3 3
History of thought 1 3 0 1 0 0
International trade, finance 2 8 3 2 3 4
Urban and regional 1 0 2 1 1 1
Political economy 9 7 7 9 11 6
Private finance, capital markets 6 8 5 4 4 5
Total 5458 4446 4646
Note: The numbers include new submissions only. The totals equal the number of new submissions
received because a paper is classified in only one topic category. In the latest year, the North American
office had 64 total submissions, 46 new and 18 resubmitted. The international office had 68 total
submissions, 46 new and 22 resubmitted.
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Editors’ Notes 193
TABLE 2
REGULAR ARTICLE SUBMISSIONS BY REGION, 1 JULY–30 JUNE
1996–1997, 1997–1998, 1998–1999, AND 1999–2000
Submissions
Region 1996–1997 1997–1998 1998–1999 1999–2000
Australia 4 4 2 0
United States and Canada 52 55 44 45
Non-Spanish speaking Caribbean 1 0 0 0
Great Britain 19 13 11 15
Western Europe 20 25 24 25
Asia 9 12 6 6
Latin America 9 5 5 2
Eastern Europe/Russia 1 2 4 2
Africa 3 0 1 1
Middle East 2 0 2 0
Not applicable or unknown 2 3 3 0
Note: The numbers include new submissions only. Totals may exceed submissions because a paper can
be classified as pertaining to more than one region.
TABLE 3
REGULAR ARTICLE SUBMISSIONS BY PERIOD, 1 JULY–30 JUNE
1997–1998, 1998–1999, AND 1999–2000
Submissions
Period 1997–1998 1998–1999 1999–2000
Twentieth century 59 61 45
Nineteenth century 62 68 44
Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 20 20 20
Pre-seventeenth century 9 12 8
Not applicable or unknown 0 0 0
Note: The numbers include new submissions only. Totals may exceed submissions because a paper can
be classified as pertaining to more than one period.
TABLE 4
ACCEPTANCE AND TURNAROUND
North American Office International Office Total
Decision 1998/99 1999/00 1998/99 1999/00 1998/99 1999/00
Accepted 25 19 19 16 44 35
Revise and resubmit 21 19 26 19 47 38
Rejected or withdrawn 33 26 33 33 66 59
Total 79 64 78 68 157 132
Decision Lags (in days)
Year minimum maximum mean median
1997/98 1 393 99 99
1998/99 1 383 112 101
1999/00 1 219 89 91
Note: The numbers include new submissions plus resubmissions.
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194 Editors’ Notes
We find it difficult to detect clear trends in the research interests of economic historians
from the tabulations displayed in Tables 1 through 4. To be sure, submissions continue to
reveal strong interests in monetary and financial history, labor and agriculture, and the
relative strength of pre-nineteenth-century topics has increased. Submissions on North
America and Europe continue to account for the vast majority of the total, but what the
tables do not reveal is that the submissions on non-Western history, while not more
numerous than before, have become more competitive. A larger percentage of these
submissions now actually enter the pages of the JOURNAL. Indeed, the “rest of the word”
office is experiencing the influence of globalization.
The editorial offices of the JOURNAL owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the editorial
board, conscientious referees, and book review authors. Only with the professional,
scholarly commitment of these individuals can the JEH maintain its reputation as the
premier journal in economic history. During this year Avner Greif, Charles Calomiris, John
James, Robert McGuire, and Jan-Luiten Van Zanden each completed four-years of service
on the editorial board. Our referees for the past year were:
Brian A’Hearn, Franklin and Marshall
College
Jeremy Adelman, Princeton University
Barbara Alexander, Charles River
Associates
Douglas Allen, Simon Fraser University
Lee Alston, University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign
George Alter, Indiana University
Jeremy Atack, Vanderbilt University
Michael Bernstein, University of
California, San Diego
Gregory Besharov, Duke University
Howard Bodenhorn, Lafayette College
Knut Borchardt, University of Munich
Michael Bordo, Rutgers University
Gail Bossenga, University of Kansas
George Boyer, Cornell University
Jorge Braga de la Macedo, Nova
University, Portugal
Loren Brandt, University of Toronto
Steven Broadberry, Warwick University
Colleen Callahan, Occidental College
Charles Calomiris, Columbia University
Forest Capie, City University Business
School, United Kingdom
Ann Carlos, University of Colorado at
Boulder
David L. Carlton, Vanderbilt University
John Chapman, University of Portsmouth
Carmel Chiswick, University of Illinois,
Chicago
Jon Christianson, University of Minnesota
Greg Clark, University of California, Davis
Karen Clay, Carnegie Mellon University
Peter Coclanis, University of North
Carolina
Philip Coelho, Ball State University
Jon Cohen, University of Toronto
Raymond Cohn, Illinois State University
James Collins, Georgetown University
William Collins, Vanderbilt University
Nicholas Crafts, London School of
Economics and Political Science
Lee Craig, North Carolina State
University
Jeremy Edwards, Cambridge University
Barry Eichengreen, University of
California, Berkeley
Bernard Elbaum, University of
California, Santa Cruz
Robert Eng, University of Redlands
Charles Feinstein, All Souls College,
Oxford University
Gerald Feldman, University of California,
Berkeley
Joseph Ferrie, Northwestern University
Adam Fforde, National University of
Singapore
Price Fishback, University of Arizona
Marc Flandreau, Observatoire Français
des Conjoncture Economiques, France
Robert Fleck, Montana State University
Jennifer Frankl, Williams College
Gerald Friedman, University of
Massachusetts
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Editors’ Notes 195
Bruce Gardiner, University of Maryland
Richard Gilbert, University of California,
Berkeley
Tom Gilligan, University of Southern
California
George Grantham, McGill University
Avner Greif, Stanford University
Karl Gunnar Persson, University of
Copenhagen
Steven Haber, Stanford University
Koichi Hamada, Yale University
Leslie Hannah, City University, United
Kingdom
Knick Harley, University of Western
Ontario
John Hatcher, Corpus Christi College,
University of Cambridge
Tim Hatton, University of Essex
Yujiro Hayami, The National Graduate
Institute for Policy Studies, Japan
Alan Heston, University of Pennsylvania
Robert Higgs, Independent Institute
Philip Hoffman, California Institute of
Technology
Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich, Freie
Universität Berlin
Christopher Howe, School of Oriental and
African Studies, University of London
Jane Humphries, All Souls College,
Oxford University
Douglas Irwin, Dartmouth
James Irwin, Central Michigan
University
John James, University of Virginia
Insong Jill, Sogang University
Ronald Johnson, Montana State
University
Paul Johnson, London School of
Economics and Political Science
Philippe Jorion, University of California,
Irvine
John K. Davies, University of Liverpool
Mark Kanazawa, Carleton College
Shawn Kantor, University of Arizona
Kyle Kauffman, Wellesley College
Bruce Kogut, Wharton School
John Komlos, University of Munich
Randall Kroszner, Graduate School of
Business, University of Chicago
Gerald Kuper, University of Groningen
Sumner La Croix, University of Hawaii
Naomi Lamoreaux, University of
California, Los Angeles
Stanley Lebergott, Wesleyan University
James Lehning, University of Utah
Tim Leunig, London School of
Economics and Political Science
Margaret Levenstein, Albion College
Lillian Li, Swarthmore College
Gary Libecap, University of Arizona
Thomas Lindblad, Leiden University, The
Netherlands
Peter Lindert, University of California,
Davis
Shelly Lundberg, University of
Washington
Mary MacKinnon, McGill University
Gloria Main, University of Colorado
Bob Margo, Vanderbilt University
Steve Margolis, North Carolina State
University
Alfred McCoy, University of Wisconsin-
Madison
John McCusker, Trinity University
Robert McGuire, University of Akron
Benjamin McRee, Franklin and Marshall
College
Mark Metzler, Oakland University
Jon Moen, University of Mississippi
Michael Montesanto, National University
of Singapore
Bernardo Mueller, Universidade de
Brasília
Larry Neal, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
Kenneth Norrie, University of Alberta
Anthony O'Brien, Lehigh University
Avner Offer, Nuffield College, United
Kingdom
Martha Olney, University of California,
Berkeley
Mark Overton, University of Exeter,
United Kingdom
John R. Hanson, Texas A&M University
Daniel Raff, The Wharton School,
University of Pennsylvania
Angela Redish, University of British
Columbia
Jaime Reis, European University Institute
Paul Rhode, University of North Carolina
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196 Editors’ Notes
Hugh Rockoff, Rutgers University
Christina Romer, University of
California, Berkeley
Joshua Rosenbloom, University of Kansas
Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, University of
California, Los Angeles
John Rule, University of Southampton
Gary Saxonhouse, University of
Michigan
Peter Scholliers, Vrije Universiteit,
Brussels, Belgium
L. D. Schwarz, University of Birmingham
Raphael Seeley, University of California,
Berkeley
Andrew Seltzer, University of London
Carole Shammas, University of Southern
California
James Shepherd, Whitman College
James Simpson, Universidad Carlos III
de Madrid
Kenneth Sokoloff, University of
California, Los Angeles
Peter Solar, Free University of Brussels
Richard Steckel, Ohio State University
William Summerhill, University of
California, Los Angeles
William Sundstrom, Santa Clara
University
Nathan Sussman, Hebrew University of
Jerusalem
Richard Sylla, New York University
Simon Szreter, St. John’s College, United
Kingdom
Alan M. Taylor, University of California,
Davis
Peter Temin, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
Michael Turner, University of Hull
Jan-Luiten van Zanden, Utrecht
University, The Netherlands
Pierre van der Eng, Australian National
University
Artur Van Riel, Utrecht University, The
Netherlands
Roland Vaubel, Universität Mannheim
Simon Ville, Australian National
University
Hans-Joachim Voth, Robinson College,
United Kingdom
Jenny Wahl, Carleton College
John Wallis, University of Maryland
Steven Webb, The World Bank
Warr e n Weber, Federal Reserve Bank,
Minneapolis
Thomas Weiss, University of Kansas
Warren Whatley, University of Michigan
David Wheelock, Federal Reserve Bank,
St. Louis
Eugene White, Rutgers University
Jeffrey Williamson, Harvard University
Susan Wolcott, University of Mississippi
Gavin Wright, Stanford University
Chris Wrigley, Nottingham University
Peter Xenos, The East-West Center
Yishay Yafe, The Hebrew University
Kozo Yamamura, University of
Washington
Vera Zamagni, University of Bologna
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