Alan Taylor: prediction

Transcript context

…If we think of people who left the original American colonies, how many of them do you think were leaving for political reasons, and how many were leaving because the land up north was cheaper? I would say about a third of them are leaving for political reasons, and most of those leave very early in the 1780s. Then there is a larger number, two-thirds of the overall total, who are going during the 1790s and the early 19th century. For them, they’re not particularly political. Their motivation is that they can get this free land in this lower tax burden by moving into British Canada. We shouldn’t exaggerate the numbers, however. We’re talking about relatively small numbers, something in the vicinity of about 50,000 people at most, and that’s a small portion of the millions that lived in the United States. If we think of the American Revolution as at some point being a surprise, is there any evidence on how asset prices reacted to that surprise, which is the question an economist would ask?…

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