For the past several years, we have presented and published studies based on postal related data, from postmaster cash books and the Official Register, where we use postmaster salary data as a measure of local, highly disaggregate proxies for general economic activity at town and village level....

The 1860s witnessed Britain's third, and last, large railway mania. Although it added about as much mileage to the rail network as the great Railway Mania of the 1840s, little is known about it in modern literature. This paper documents how this mania managed to delude investors into pouring...

This paper argues that the promotion boom, which occurred in the railway industry during the mid-1840s, was amplified by the issue of derivative-like assets which let investors take highly leveraged positions in the shares of new railway companies. The partially paid shares which the new railway...

"We study the relative importance of technology and institutions as factors determining the size of markets. The setting of 19th century Europe presents a unique opportunity to address this issue, since it witnessed fundamental change in both dimensions. First, Germany went from around 1,800...