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During the early development of the telegraph industry, the network consisted of many interconnected firms that were often local monopolists. This market structure gave firms an incentive to supply a lower quality of service and charge a higher price than an integrated monopolist. Telegraph entrepreneurs attempted to contract with each other in order to provide better quality service throughout the network. However, the high costs of monitoring and enforcing these agreements made them untenable and ultimately contributed to the integration of the industry.

This volume of Research in Economic History (REH) includes eight papers, five of which were submitted and evaluated through our regular channels. An additional three were solicited from among those presented at the conference “Toward a Global History of Prices and Wages,” held in Utrecht in August of 2004. Because of the emphasis of these papers on data and the relevance of their findings for our understanding of long-run economic growth and development in different parts of the world, we encouraged a number of authors from this conference to submit their work to REH. Associate editor Gregory Clark took responsibility for soliciting, refereeing, selecting, and editing the submissions. We anticipate publishing up to three more of these in the next volume, enriching both REH and our understanding of economic history.