During World War II, the art market experienced a massive boom in occupied countries. The discretion, the inflation proof character, the absence of market intervention and the possibility to resell artworks abroad have been suggested to explain why investing in artworks was one of the most...

The recent debate on the Eurozone failed to appreciate a particular characteristic of European crisis experiences, namely their fundamentally political character. To make my argument, I borrow from Dani Rodrik (2000) the framework of a "political trilemma" between cross-border economic...

We report estimates of the fiscal multiplier for interwar Britain based on quarterly data, time-series econometrics, and 'defense news'. We find that the government expenditure multiplier was in the range 0.5 to 0.8, much lower than previous estimates. The scope for a Keynesian solution to...

Central banking in France from 1948 to 1973 was a paradigmatic example of an unconventional policy relying on quantities rather than on interest rates. Usual SVAR find no effect of policy shocks and support the common view that monetary policy was ineffective over this period. I argue that only...

The breakup of the Soviet Union provides evidence for the detrimental effects of secessionist conflict on domestic integration and economic growth. This paper shows that the increased likelihood of secessions by the Union's member republics in the late 1980s strongly reduced internal Union...

Apart from measuring inequality and poverty at the provincial level in Spain between 1860 and 1930, this paper empirically assesses the relationship between economic growth and both inequality and destitution. The results, on the one hand, confirm the presence of a Kuznets' curve. However,...

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...

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 essay offers a new set of historical GDP estimates from the demand and supply sides that revises and expands those in Prados de la Escosura (2003) and provides the basis to investigate Spain's long run economic growth. It presents a reconstruction of production and expenditure series for...