The conventional wisdom about the early stages of modern economic growth in Italy is still heavily influenced by the work of L.Cafagna (1989). He argued that exports of primary products to industrializing North Western countries were the main source of growth and that exports of silk stimulated...

Este ensayo examina el intento por parte de Jordi Maluquer de Motes de construir “una nueva y más sólida estimación del Producto Interior Bruto de España”. Para ello elabora una serie histórica del PIB a precios corrientes para 1850-1958. Además, extrapola retrospectivamente las series...

This paper would like to analyse how Swedish iron and steel entrepreneurs reacted to the strains of increasing competition on world markets which affected the industry between 1870 and 1940. It implicitly searches for readjustments taken by the sector as a whole in order to increase...

We survey aggregate growth in a sample of 27 European countries during the interwar period. We discuss the available data, possible explanations for a slowdown in growth rates and test the explanatory power of several hypotheses put forward in the literature.

In the first age of rapid economic growth after 1945, fluctuations of western European output and employment were so mild that the very notion of a cycle was transformed or even seemed obsolete. A second period of much slower average economic growth was marked by large and frequent oscillations,...

This paper is an attempt at assessing the economic impact of market-oriented reforms undertaken during General Franco’s dictatorship, in particular, the 1959 Stabilization and Liberalization Plan. Using an index of macroeconomic distortions (IMD) the relationship between economic policies and...

Stabilizing and liberalizing policies are key elements of the Washington Consensus. This paper adds a historical dimension to the ongoing debate by assessing the economic impact of market-oriented reforms undertaken during General Franco’s dictatorship, the 1959 Stabilization and...

Recent literature on sharecropping has emphasized its importance in reducing problems associated with moral hazard in cultivation (Tuscany), or in providing an important ‘rung’ on the farm ladder (US South). Yet despite these and other important features, sharecropping is surprisingly absent...

This paper surveys the main features of Portuguese economic growth in the last half century, with a particular emphasis on the period after the return to democracy in 1974. It shows that significant structural change and capital deepening were the chief sources of growth in the Portuguese...

The Spanish 2nd Republic (1931-1936) witnessed one of the fastest and deepest processes of popular mobilization in interwar Europe, generating a decisive reactionary wave that brought the country to the Civil War (1936-1939). We show in the paper that both contemporary comment and part of the...