Men of finance raised funds for loans, asientos, to Philip II by trading short-term financial instruments in credit markets and by selling long-term annuities, juros. These activities are illustrated by an asiento with the Maluenda brothers (July 13, 1595), where short-term credit secured by the...

This paper explores the role of agriculture in Spain's contribution to the little divergence in Europe. On the basis of tithes collected by historians over the years, long-run trends in agricultural output are drawn. After a long period of relative stability, output suffered a severe contraction...

This paper makes use of published information on wages and prices in Denmark to construct consistent real wage series for the years 1731 to 1913, which can be compared to other countries. Placing Denmark in a comparative perspective demonstrates that from being a relatively poor, backward...

The classical view of Bulgaria's failed industrialization prior to the Second World War was established by Alexander Gerschenkron. According to his interpretation, an inherently backward small peasant agriculture and well-organized peasantry not only retarded growth in agriculture but obstructed...

This paper presents new archival evidence about amount and structure of central government disaster relief during China's devastating flood of 1823. While the flood affected 20 percent of China's counties, spending per capita was sizable and distributed between provinces depending on the...

We add a historical and regional dimension to the debate on the Greek debt crisis. Analysing the 1841-1939 exchange-rate experience of Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia/Yugoslavia, we find surprising parallels to the present: repeated cycles of entry to and exit from gold, government debt...

Over the later 1920s and up to the mid-1930s, German coal-mining saw an exceptional surge in labour productivity led primarily by the Ruhr coalmines' performance. It is a commonly accepted view that the economy-wide 'rationalization boom' between currency stabilization and the depression years...

This paper explores regional (NUTS3) income inequality in Spain, 1860-2010. Using a novel dataset spanning 150 years, we analyse the evolution of inequality in regional per-capita GDP. To do this, we follow the growth literature and use spatial exploratory tools. Our aim is to understand not...

The city of Buenos Aires is an extreme case in immigration history since the native workers were less than one third of the labour force. This paper is the first attempt to present empirical evidence on occupations and wages for Buenos Aires ca. 1890s. Using a large dataset, we look at the...

Spanish land reform, involving the break-up of the large southern estates, was a central issue during the first decades of the twentieth century. This paper uses new provincial data on landless workers, land prices and agrarian wages to consider if government intervention was needed because of...