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...

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 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...

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...

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...