Errare humanum est – “to err is human”. This oft-heard saying is most applicable to certain details of Hungarian monetary historiography. We find in the specific area of numismatic history the well-established view that the Polish półtorak, known in Hungary poltura,1 was a key culprit in...

A cikk a 2024. évi közgazdasági Nobel-díjasok hatalmas és releváns munkáját ismerteti igen röviden. Kiemeli, hogy abban az empirikusan ellenőrizhető megállapítások és a gazdaságpolitikai gyakorlatban közvetlenül alkalmazható felismerések dominálnak. Ez fordulatot jelent a...

Recent crises have cast doubt on the legitimacy of technocratic power, yet its role in global economic governance remains poorly understood. Revisiting the collapse of Bretton Woods, we propose a dynamic theory of global monetary governance to explain how expanding central bank discretion can...

As seldom before, the current war in Ukraine has seen the use of World War II analogies by belligerents and also some Western non-belligerents. They thereby follow in the footsteps of such political leaders as Anthony Eden, Margaret Thatcher, Joseph Stalin, or John F. Kennedy. Indeed, statesmen...

Are railways always a harbinger of prosperity? We examine the economic effects of railways in Bosnia-Herzegovina under Habsburg colonial rule. Our novel dataset consistently tracks the non-agrarian population share of over 4,500 settlements in Habsburg Bosnia in 1885, 1895, and 1910, based on...

While several studies have shed light on the emergence of consumer society in Western Europe and the Atlantic world, our knowledge on the spread of new consumption patterns in regions beyond the core areas of European economic development is still limited. To gain insights into patterns of...

The transition from sail to steam for emigrant ships on the route to Australia took place in the early 1880s, nearly two decades later than on the route across the Atlantic. The lag can be accounted for by the incremental improvement in steam technology and by aspects of economic and business...

When agrarian societies urbanize their governments face a policy dilemma: farmers seek fair prices, while urban workers and employers desire cheap food. Drawing on a new dataset of historical food prices in 146 markets, we explore the political economy of maize markets in East Africa...

Diese Studie untersucht die Entwicklung der Assekuranz in den letzten 30 Jahren und gibt einen Ausblick auf zukünftige Trends in der Branche. Während sich einige der in früheren Studien prognostizierten Entwicklungen, wie die Internationalisierung und Konsolidierung, bestätigt haben,...

The correspondence of historical personalities serves as a rich source of psychological, social, and economic information. Letters were indeed used as means of communication within the family circles but also a primary method for exchanging information with colleagues, subordinates, and...

This paper examines the evolution of the biological standard of living using anthropometric data from approximately 22,000 Swiss mercenaries born between c. 1725 and c. 1865. Analyzing mercenary data presents two key challenges: left-truncation due to height requirements and potential selection...

Explaining President Trump's "Liberation-day" tariffs on April 2nd, 2025, Stephen Miran, President Trump's chairman of the council of economic advisors suggested that countries accept the U.S. tariffs without retaliation to come to a fair "burden sharing"(Miran: 2025). History shows that this...

We introduce a new dataset on British exports at the bilateral, commodity-level from 1700 to 1899. We then pit two primary determinants of bilateral trade against one another: the trade-diminishing effects of distance versus the trade-enhancing effects of the British Empire. We find that the...

The unexpected loss of a large cargo of barley taken on loan in Barcelona in 1021 suggests that the merchandise was intended for export. The Jewish merchant concerned, named Benevenisti, may have lost the cargo as a result of a shipwreck. An Arab source from the 11th century reports a maritime...

Europe must rapidly increase its military spending, but how? We collect 150 years of data to study what governments in similar situations have done. How were past military buildups financed? What was the relative importance of debt financing, budget cuts, and taxes? Our main finding is that...

We examine Qin Dynasty (221 to 207 BCE) wood bookkeeping slips from 217 to 210 BCE unearthed in Hunan province, China. While purely written slips were unearthed before, these slips are unique in that they contain written records of details of transactions as well as notches on their sides that...

The global turn towards the market of the 1980s and 1990s led some to believe that globalization was untethering itself from its political moorings. More recently, however, the combined impact of the China shock, Covid, and war have revealed even to economists what historians and political...

State-led repression of minority identities is a well-documented phenomenon, yet its implications for national identity remain understudied. We examine how the Soviet state-induced famine (1932–33) shapes contemporary Ukrainian national identity through vertical (familial) and horizontal...

Auch 35 Jahre nach der deutschen Einheit wird in Politik und Öffentlichkeit weiterhin intensiv darüber diskutiert, welche Unterschiede zwischen Ost und West bestehen und wie weit das Land tatsächlich zusammengewachsen ist. Besonders deutlich treten diese Differenzen im politischen...

Nostalgia, a longing for the past, has been used successfully by marketers via nostalgia marketing or retro-marketing, including retro-branding, of goods and/or services. The nostalgia market has stereotypically been of interest to older consumers so it is surprising that a significant number of...