Economic Interests and the American Constitution: A Quantitative Rehabilitation of Charles A. Beard
首次用统计方法检验查尔斯·比尔德关于美国宪法制定受经济利益驱动的理论，发现代表投票行为与其经济特征显著相关，支持了比尔德七十年前的论断。
An important change in the structure of U.S. institutions occurred when the government under the Articles of Confederation was replaced by a new government under the Constitution. In 1913, Charles A. Beard proposed a view of the formation of the United States Constitution—an economic interpretation—that remains a much discussed yet unresolved explanation of the behavior and motives of the men who wrote the document. This paper provides the first rigorous statistical test of this issue. We summarize the preliminary results of a statistical analysis of the relationship between the voting behavior of individual delegates involved in the making of the Constitution and their economic and personal characteristics. Contrary to current historical wisdom, significant patterns related to economic interests are found in the voting, with the division of interests generally consistent with that outlined by Charles A. Beard seventy years ago.