Banking in the UK was stable for more than a century after 1866. Financial institutions were differentiated according to function. The core banks did not engage in maturity transformation, but in managing a payments system for business. Real estate was a potential source of instability due to...

This study estimates agency’s impact on the efficiency of sugar plantations on St.Vincent and the Grenadines during the early 19th century. Using a panel data set covering the years 1814-1829, a series of stochastic frontier models are estimated to investigate whether estates employing agents...

Between the 1870s and World War II, falls in world shipping costs and Western industrialisation gave rise to export-led Southeast Asian growth and specialization in a narrow range of primary commodity exports. A linked development was the emergence of a few dominant Southeast Asian urban...

We examine the impact of the Great Depression on the share of votes for right- wing anti-system parties in elections in the 1920s and 1930s.We confirm the existence of a link between political extremism and economic hard times as captured by growth or contraction of the economy.What mattered was...

The paper presents trade policy as in line with that of other continental European powers, with a move to moderate levels of tariff protection for politically sensitive sectors such as steel and textiles and clothing, but also in agriculture, with levels of protection falling slightly before the...

This study investigates the impact of joint-stock banks on the rationalisation of the British interwar steel industry. A new panel data set of steel firm characteristics covering 1920 to 1938 is used to document rationalization and bank involvement, including interlocking directorships, with...

This paper analyzes how Japan financed its World War II occupation of Southeast Asia, the transfer of resources to Japan, and the monetary and inflation consequences of Japanese policies. In Malaya, Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines, the issue of military scrip to pay for resources and...

This paper challenges the growing consensus in the literature (Stone, 2005; Dodds, 2007) that medieval English peasants and manorial managers were price responsive in their production decisions. Using prices of and acreages planted with wheat, barley, and oats on 49 manors held by the bishop of...

Bad ethics can make for bad economic outcomes. Bad ethics are defined hedonically as the infliction of pain on others for private advantage. The infliction of pain is often justified by ‘Just World Theories’, which state that everyone gets what they deserve. Market liberalism (and its...

Although Nigeria's Benin region was a major rubber producer in 1960, the industry faltered before 1921. I use labour scarcity and state capacity to explain why rubber did not take hold in this period. The government was unable to protect Benin's rubber forests from over-exploitation. Plantations...