We provide annual estimates of GDP for England between 1270 and 1700 and for Great Britain between 1700 and 1870, constructed from the output side. The GDP data are combined with population estimates to calculate GDP per capita. We find English per capita income growth of 0.20 per cent per annum...

This paper investigates the ability of the new economic geography to explain the persistence of the manufacturing belt in the United States around the turn of the 20th century using a model which subsumes both market-potential and factor-endowment arguments. The results show that market...

This paper examines Gibrat’s law in England and Wales between 1801 and 1911using a unique data set covering the entire settlement size distribution.We find that Gibrat’s law broadly holds even in the face of population doubling every fifty years,an industrial and transportrevolution, and the...

This paper provides the first annual GDP series for Great Britain over the period 1700-1870. The series is constructed in real terms from the output side, using volume indicators and value added weights. Sectoral estimates are provided for agriculture, industry and services, and for a number of...

This paper examines home bias in U.S. domestic trade in 1949 and 2007. We use a unique data set of 1949 carload waybill statistics produced by the Interstate Commerce Commission, and 2007 Commodity Flow Survey data. The results show that home bias was considerably smaller in 1949 than in 2007...

In this paper, we analyze the International Great Depression in the US and Western Europe using the business cycle accounting method a la Chari, Kehoe and McGrattan (CKM 2007). We extend the business cycle accounting model by incorporating endogenous factor utilization which turns out to be an...

This paper presents two wage series for unskilled English women workers from 1260 to 1850, the first based on daily wages and the second on the remuneration per day implied in annual service contracts. These two series are compared and the series for women’s daily wages is also compared with...

We investigate whether and how the type of unemployment benefit institution affects productivity. We designed a field experiment to compare workers' productivity under a welfare system, where the unemployed receive an unconditional monetary transfer, with their productivity under a workfare...

We examine why heterogenous communities may fail to provide public goods. Current work characterizes sanctioning free-riders as an under-supplied public good. We argue that often free-riders can be punished by the coordinated action of a group. This punishment can be profitable, and need not be...

This paper provides a survey of the implications of post-war European economic integration for trade and income. A particular focus is the impact on the United Kingdom. The literature clearly points to large effects of the EU on trade but is more ambivalent about EFT A. Conventional econometric...