Traditional theories of the origins of the welfare state have emphasized the financial weakness of Britain’s largest provider of mutual insurance in the late 19th century, the friendly societies. These theories share common implications with contemporary theories of institutional change...

Alternative work arrangements, including temporary and contract work, have become more widespread. There is interest in understanding the effects of these types of arrangements on employment and earnings risk for workers and the potential for existing social insurance programs to address this...

Alternative work arrangements, including temporary and contract work, have become more widespread. There is interest in understanding the effects of these types of arrangements on employment and earnings risk for workers and the potential for existing social insurance programs to address this...

What was the contribution of intercontinental trade to the development of the European early modern economies? Previous attempts to answer this question have focused on static measures of the weight of trade in the aggregate economy at a given point in time, or on the comparison of the income of...

I analyse the age at death of 121,524 European nobles from 800 to 1800. Longevity began increasing long before 1800 and the Industrial Revolution, with marked increases around 1400 and again around 1650. Declines in violence contributed to some of this increase, but the majority must reflect...

During the decades previous to the Civil War, Spain experienced a rapid process of urbanization, which was accompanied by the demographic transition and sizeable rural-urban migrations. This article investigates how urban housing markets reacted to these far-reaching changes that increased...

This paper uses the spread of disease as a proxy to measure economic interactions. Based on a case study of the Black Death (1346-51) in the Mediterranean region and Europe, we find geographic, institutional, and cultural determinants of trade. To achieve this we create and empirically test a...