Mary Beth Combs

Ph.D., University of Iowa
M.A., University of Iowa
B.A., Fairfield

• Economic History
• Labor Economics
• Applied Microeconomics

Mary Beth Combs is an Associate Professor of Economics. Post service at a family resource center through the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, Dr. Combs embarked on a research career focused on the balances of power that can be examined through economic history. Her writing on married women’s property in 19th century Britain has appeared in Feminist Economics, Continuity and Change, and the journals of Economic History and Economics. She is the co-editor of Transforming the World and Being Transformed: Justice in Jesuit Higher Education.

Journal Articles
Must faculty who pursue justice ‘pay the price’?: Men and Women for Others across the Disciplines. Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education, Fall 2012, Number 42.

Cui Bono? The 1870 British Married Women’s Property Act, Bargaining Power, and the Distribution of Resources within Marriage. Feminist Economics 12 (1-2), 2006, 51-83.

A Measure of Legal Independence: The 1870 Married Women’s Property Act and the Wealth-holding Patterns of British Wives. Journal of Economic History 65 (4), 2005, 1028-1057.

Wives and Household Wealth: The Impact of the 1870 British Married Women's Property Act on Wealth-holding and Share of Household Resources. Continuity and Change 19 (1), 2004, 141-163.

The Price of Independence: How the 1870 Married Women’s Property Act Altered the Investment Risks Faced by British Women. Journal of Economics 30 (2), 2004, 1-26.

Books and Book Chapters
Transforming the World and Being Transformed: Justice in Jesuit Higher Education. Edited with Patricia Ruggiano Schmidt. Forthcoming, Fordham University Press, August 2013.

Cui Bono? The 1870 British Married Women’s Property Act, Bargaining Power, and the Distribution of Resources within Marriage. Chapter 2 in Women and the Distribution of Wealth, edited by Carmen Diana Deere and Cheryl R. Doss. Routledge, New York: 2007.

They Lived and Saved: Evidence of the Bequest Motive for Saving Among Small Shopkeepers in Late Nineteenth Century Britain.” Chapter 4 in Men, Women and Money: Perspectives on Gender, Wealth and Investment, 1870-1930, edited by in David Green, Josephine Maltby, Alastair Owens, and Janette Rutterford. Oxford University Press, Oxford: 2011.

Concealing Him from Creditors: How Couples Contributed to the Passage of the 1870 Married Women’s Property Act” forthcoming, McGill-Queen's Press, Fall, 2013.