The American economy is the largest, most diverse, and most sophisticated in the world.  How was this economy created?  How was it governed and regulated as it developed?  What aspects of its remarkable success resulted from the entrepreneurship of private citizens as opposed to institutions, public policy, and government regulation?  In this course, we examine the United States as a developing country, facing the same kinds of problems that are found in the underdeveloped world today.  Specifically, we will focus on the role of the state and political institutions in developing industry, promoting investment, and creating markets. 
    We begin the course with a review of theories used to explain European economic history and to interpret what is happening in underdeveloped nations today.   Using these theoretical tools, we then examine the history of American industrialization in the 19th century.  Focusing on how investment capital was organized and how the basic institutions of a market economy such as firms, banks, and contracts were created, we ask how industrial growth was fostered by the American state.  How did the legal system and the federal structure of government affect the development of investment and the labor force?  How was the infrastructure of finance and transportation that created a national market built?   
    In the final section of the course, we turn to the three great regulatory revolutions of the 20th century and the backlash against them that began in the 1970’s.  The regulations introduced in these three periods fundamentally re-shaped the American economy and gave it most of the characteristics that we are familiar with today.  Understanding these changes allows one to interpret contemporary political debate and the character of today’s economic growth in a more sophisticated manner, as many American institutions and standards are exported to the rest of the world under the banner of globalization.