Daniel Bogart

Daniel Bogart · University of California, Irvine · PhdFit

About

Daniel Bogart is a Professor of Economics at the University of California, Irvine. He received a B.S. in Economics, a B.A. in History, and a B.A. in Math from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities in 1998, and earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2003. Since 2003, he has been affiliated with UCI, with visiting appointments at Caltech and NYU. His research interests encompass economic history, urban economics, economic growth, and political economy. Broadly, he studies how economic development occurred in the past and seeks to draw lessons for the present. His work examines institutions, property rights, new technologies, and the development or impacts of transport networks, often introducing new historical datasets and employing various statistical tools and geographic information systems. His research has been published in leading academic journals such as the Economic Journal, the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, the Journal of Economic History, the Journal of Urban Economics, and the Economic History Review. He has received research funding from organizations including the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Leverhulme Trust. In addition to his research, Bogart teaches a range of economics courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels, with a focus on economic history and upper-division writing. He has advised more than a dozen Ph.D. students at UCI and has served as an editor for the Journal of Economic History and the European Review of Economic History.

Research topics

Economics
Political Science
Sociology
Law
Economic geography
Demography
Econometrics
Geography
Marketing
Economic growth
Business
Political economy

Selected publications

A better ride: New evidence on travel and the quality of roads in England and Wales, 1660-1820
ICPSR Data Holdings · 2026-03-07
datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding
Travel improved dramatically between 1660 and 1820 in England and Wales. This paper uses nearly 100 travellers’ diaries to study the mode choice, speed of road transport and the quality of the roads used from the mid-1600s to 1820. Using mapping software, we digitise journeys made by various travel modes along more than 348,000 journey miles. We document that travel shifted from the saddlehorse to wheeled vehicles and that speed increased, although to a lesser degree in private or hired carriages compared to stagecoaches. We also report a novel measure of road quality using diarists’ descriptions of the road. The reported quality of many main roads went from ‘poor’ to ‘adequate’ or ‘good’ by the early 19th century. We also show that turnpike trusts, a novel organization for road funding, contributed to significantly better quality and were favoured over other roads by travellers in wheeled vehicles. Our estimates imply that the spread of turnpike trusts can account for most of the road quality change from 1660 to 1820.

Recent grants

Modelling the Transport Revolution and the Industrial Revolution in England
NSF · $296k · 2013–2017

Frequent coauthors

Max Satchell
University of Cambridge
20 shared
Dustin Frye
University of Wisconsin–Madison
16 shared
Gary Richardson
16 shared
Jakob Schneebacher
16 shared
Seth Benzell
16 shared

Education

B.S., Economics
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
1998
B.A., History
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
1998
B.A., Math
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
1998
Ph.D., Economics
University of California, Los Angeles
2003

Awards & honors

Fellow of the Journal of Economic History
Fellow of the European Review of Economic History

A better ride: New evidence on travel and the quality of roads in England and Wales, 1660-1820

Explorations in Economic History · 2026-02-24

articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

Abstract 1 1 Data for this paper was created thanks to grants from: (1) The Economic and social research council, The Occupational Structure of Nineteenth Century Britain, Grant RES-000-23-1579; (2) The Leverhulme Trust, The Occupational Structure of England and Wales c.1379-c1729; (3) the Leverhulme Trust, Transport, Urbanization and Economic Development c.1670-1911 (RPG-2013-093); (4) NSF (SES-1260699), Modelling the Transport Revolution and the Industrial Revolution in England; (5) The Isaac Newton Trust (Cambridge), Transport, Energy and Urbanization c.1670-1911. We thank Max Satchell for foundational work creating GIS shapefiles of the roads. We also thank seminar participants at the University of Cambridge and UC Irvine. All errors are our own. Travel improved dramatically between 1660 and 1820 in England and Wales. This paper uses nearly 100 travellers’ diaries to study the mode choice, speed of road transport and the quality of the roads used from the mid-1600s to 1820. Using mapping software, we digitise journeys made by various travel modes along more than 348,000 journey miles. We document that travel shifted from the saddlehorse to wheeled vehicles and that speed increased, although to a lesser degree in private or hired carriages compared to stagecoaches. We also report a novel measure of road quality using diarists’ descriptions of the road. The reported quality of many main roads went from ‘poor’ to ‘adequate’ or ‘good’ by the early 19 th century. We also show that turnpike trusts, a novel organization for road funding, contributed to significantly better quality and were favoured over other roads by travellers in wheeled vehicles. Our estimates imply that the spread of turnpike trusts can account for most of the road quality change from 1660 to 1820.

Publisher DOI

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