The link between circumstances faced by individuals early in life (including those encountered in utero) and later life outcomes has been of increasing interest since the work of Barker in the 1970s on birth weight and adult disease. We provide such a life course perspective for the U.S. by...

Using a novel dataset of regional GDP per worker from 1860 to 2009, this paper analyzes communalities in regional long-term growth trajectories for 24 Swedish regions. Wavelet Analysis and Principal Component Analysis are used to decompose regional growth trajectories and assess the extent that...

Much recent work has focused on the influence of social capital on innovative outcomes. Little research has been done on disadvantaged groups who were often restricted from participation in social networks that provide information necessary for invention and innovation. Unique new data on...

In the nineteenth century, the Paris Bourse struggled to manage counterparty risk, revealing the awkward choices for the regulation of derivatives markets. The exchange, primarily a forward market, instituted a mutual guarantee fund to prevent broker failures from snowballing into a liquidity...

Using social tables, we make an estimate of global inequality (inequality among world citizens) in early 19th century. We then show that the level and composition of global inequality have changed over the last two centuries. The level has increased reaching a high plateau around 1950s, and the...

Before about 1900, most strikes in the United States were either won or lost by the workers who called them. Relatively few strikes ended in any sort of compromise. Sometime during the last decade of the 19th century, however, the pattern begins to change, with the fraction of strikes ending in...

The First World War hit Germany severely, particularly the agricultural sector, because the outbreak came unexpected and its duration exceeded all expectations. Many resources necessary for agricultural production were required by the war economy and led to shortages and shrinking supplies. Many...

In the sixteenth century, European countries engaged in long-distance trade with the East. Despite sharing the same objectives and technology, Portugal opted for a crown monopoly, England, the Netherlands, and Sweden franchised trade to private merchants, whereas in Denmark and France, king and...

We examine the potentialities of a new indicator measuring the value of English patents in the period 1617-1841. The indicator is based on the relative visibility of each individual patent in the contemporary technical and legal literature as summarized in Bennet Woodcroft's Reference Index of...

Czechoslovak industrial labour productivity fluctuated around two-thirds of the UK level under the private sector regime between the wars. Under the central planning regime of the postwar period, Czechoslovakia's comparative productivity position initially improved to around three-quarters of...