The endogenous growth literature has explored the transition from a Malthusian world where real wages, living standards and labor productivity are all linked to factor endowments, to one where (endogenous) productivity change embedded in modern industrial growth breaks that link. Recently,...

This paper documents the size and timing of the world inter-continental trade boom following the great voyages in the 1490s of Columbus, da Gama and their followers. Indeed, a trade boom followed over the subsequent three centuries. But what was its cause? The conventional wisdom in the world...

In his seminal publications between the 1930s and 1960s, Frederick Lane offered three hypotheses regarding the impact of the Voyages of Discovery that have guided debate ever since. First, pepper and other spice prices did not rise in European markets in the century before the 1490s, and thus...

The years between 1793 and 1815 saw an unusually bloody, lengthy and widespread conflict between Great Britain and France, which widened to include many of the other leading powers of the day. The period is also notable for its economic warfare, which involved not only the belligerents, but...

The years between 1793 and 1815 saw an unusually bloody, lengthy and widespread conflict between Great Britain and France, which widened to include many of the other leading powers of the day. The period is also notable for its economic warfare, which involved not only the belligerents, but...