Broadberry, Guan and Li (2018) made estimates for China's GDP per capita from 980 to 1840 in order to date the onset of the Great Divergence between China and western European economies. In response to Solar's (2021) criticisms, they (2021) made some revisions to the estimates but largely...

Strange Times. There were back-to-back harvest failures in 1799-1800, coming fast on the heels of the insurrections of 1798. The result was massive and sustained inflation in food prices. The conundrum is why there was so little excess mortality. Our approach is to begin by discussing the...

This paper offers an overview of the development of European industry between 1700 and 1870, drawing in particular on the recent literature that has emerged following the formation of the European Historical Economics Society in 1991. The approach thus makes use of economic analysis and...

Shipping was central to the rise of the Atlantic economies, but an extremely hazardous activity: in the 1780s, roughly five per cent of British ships sailing in summer for the United States never returned. Against the widespread belief that shipping technology was stagnant before iron...

Broadberry, Guan and Li (2018) made estimates for China's GDP per capita from 980 to 1840 in order to date the onset of the Great Divergence between China and western European economies. In response to Solar's (2021) criticisms, they (2021) made some revisions to the estimates but largely...

This paper investigates the early development of English cotton spinning by analyzing about 700 bankruptcies and 1300 dissolutions of partnership reported in the London Gazette, 1770-1840. The data show two temporal cycles, peaking in the early to mid-1800s and in the later 1820s, near the ends...

Strange Times. There were back-to-back harvest failures in 1799-1800, coming fast on the heels of the insurrections of 1798. The result was massive and sustained inflation in food prices. The conundrum is why there was so little excess mortality. Our approach is to begin by discussing the...

Shipping was central to the rise of the Atlantic economies, but an extremely hazardous activity: in the 1780s, roughly five per cent of British ships sailing in summer for the United States never returned. Against the widespread belief that shipping technology was stagnant before iron...