Since 1789, mass education has been a key factor in development, enablinglarge numbers of people to escape at least the worst effects of poverty. This paper explores an ancient harbinger of mass education, among Jews in the Roman empire, the basis of Jewish religious education to modern times....

This paper explores the impact of antiquity on capitalism through the finance-growth nexus. We define antiquity as the length of established statehood (i.e., state history) and agricultural years. We argue that extractive institutions and deeply entrenched interest groups may prevail in...

We analyze factors explaining the very different patterns of industrialization across the 42 counties of England between 1760 and 1830. Against the widespread view that high wages and cheap coal drove industrialization, we find that industrialization was restricted to low wage areas, while...

Are return migrants 'losers' who fail to adapt to the challenges of the host economy, and thereby exacerbate the brain drain linked to emigration? Or are they 'winners' whose return enhances the human and physical capital of the home country? These questions are the subject of a burgeoning...

Was the collapse of world trade between 1928 and 1937 caused by higher transport costs, increased protectionism or the collapse of the gold standard? Using recent advances in the estimation of gravity equations, I examine the partial and general equilibrium effects of bilateral distance,...

This paper surveys publications in the fields of economic history and demography in the ESR since 1969. Numbering sixty in all, they cover a broad chronological and thematic range. Some of these papers never attracted much notice, but stand as useful sources for future historians. A few have...