Editor's Introduction. Hours at work and total factor productivity growth in nineteenth-century U.S. agriculture (L.A. Craig, T. Weiss). Migration, labor market dynamics and wage differentials in Hawaii's sugar industry, 1901-1915 (S.J. La Croix, P. Fishback). Did the black-white income gap close during the late nineteenth century? (A.P. O'Brien). Cooperation and cooperatives in Southern European wine production: the nature of successful institutional innovation 1880-1950 (J. Simpson). Factor endowments and contract choice: why were sugar cane supply contracts different in Cuba and Hawaii, 1900-1929? (A. Dye). Moral hazard and asset specificity in the Renaissance: the economics of sharecropping in 1427 Florence (F.L. Galassi). Squatting and the settlement of the United States: new evidence from post-gold rush California (K. Clay, W. Troesken). The social prologue to the civil rights movements (J.R. Mandle).