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Information Sharing During the Klondike Gold Rush

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2007

Douglas W. Allen
Douglas W. Allen*
Affiliation:
Burnaby Mountain Professor, Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University. Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada. E-mail: allen@sfu.ca.
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Abstract

When George Carmack struck gold in the Yukon territory on 17 August 1896, he freely shared the details and started what would eventually be three waves of rushes. This reflected a social norm of the Klondike, namely that any miner who struck gold would share this information. Miners did not behave this way in other nineteenth-century gold rushes. The article's hypothesis is that the extreme mining conditions and local geography of the Yukon led to very secure property rights over mining claims. Therefore, it took only a small incentive payment to induce miners to act in the social interest.

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ARTICLES
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The Journal of Economic History , Volume 67 , Issue 4 , December 2007 , pp. 944 - 967
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2007

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