This paper studies the organization of the internal labour market of postal services in Spain from 1890 to 1935. The paper discusses the evolution of total employment in relation to postal traffic and average nominal and real wages. The paper then analyses the operation of the internal labour...

From a long-term perspective, technological innovation could have come from local or domestic inventive and research activity, or from the transfer of foreign technology. In reality either option produces similar effects and often it was a combination of both which drove the historical...

In this paper we will explore how international corporations used the Spanish patent system in the late nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century in order to discover what the actual effects of its apparent weakness were. The origins and evolution of corporate patenting...

The paper analyses the legal transfer of formal rules regulating stock markets in Spain between 1800 and 1936. We argue that the transfer of French legislation in the 1830s provoked a “transplant effect”, which generated serious distortions in Spanish financial markets. As a result, Spain...

This paper explores the nature and implications of nineteenth century patent law in two late-industrializing countries: Spain and Mexico. Both inherited earlier ancien regime monopoly practices, both adopted aspects of modern, codified patent systems in the early nineteenth century, and both...

Public finance is a major feature of the development of modern European societies, and it is at the heart of the definition of the nature of political regimes. Public finance is also a most relevant issue in the understanding of the constraints and possibilities of economic development. This...

This paper surveys the rise and fall of the European mercantilist system, and the transition to the modern, well-integrated international economy of the 19th century. It also surveys the literature on the links between trade and economic growth during the period, and on the economic effects of...

The object of this study is to use documentation on patents as a partial technology indicator, and, above all, as an investment indicator in new technologies in order to analyze the formation, evolution and characterization of the Spanish technological system during the 19th and the beginning of...

El estudio de la gestión de las finanzas Municipales permite profundizar en el conocimiento de la funcionalidad y eficiencia de las instituciones en la Edad Moderna. En este trabajo se analiza el caso del patrimonio municipal de Madrid, una parte fundamental de las haciendas locales. Su...

This article provides a historical overview of the factors leading up to debt crises and the default methods used by the governments to solve them, ranging from repudiation and restructuring to inflation tax and financial repression. The paper also analyses the Spanish governments’ graduation...