The telegraph was the Victorian equivalent of today's 'big data', helping firms to forecast future demand. Analysing such unique historical 'experiments' helps understand how firms and markets respond when new technology leads to a dramatic change in the availability of information.

The telegraph was the Victorian equivalent of today's 'big data', helping firms to forecast future demand. Analysing such unique historical 'experiments' helps understand how firms and markets respond when new technology leads to a dramatic change in the availability of information.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, urban life in France became a shadow of its former self, but in Britain it completely disappeared. Guy Michaels and Ferdinand Rauch use these contrasting experiences as a natural experiment to explore the impact of history on economic geography - and what...

Do locational fundamentals such as coastlines and rivers determine town locations, or can historical events trap towns in unfavourable locations for centuries? We examine the effects on town locations of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, which temporarily ended urbanization in Britain,...

A quarter of a century after the transition to a capitalist economy began, how are the nations of the former Soviet bloc faring? Peter Boone charts the failures of communism, the chaos that followed its collapse, the period of liberalisation and growth - and today's unhealthy combination of...

Can temporary protection from trade with advanced economies foster the development of 'infant industries' in developing countries? Reka Juhasz considers a natural experiment: Napoleon's wartime blockade of British exports, which allowed protected regions to build capacity in the new technology...

This paper presents a historical database on educational attainment in 74 countries for the period 1870-2010, using perpetual inventory methods before 1960 and then the Cohen and Soto (2007) database. The correlation between the two sets of average years of schooling in 1960 is equal to 0.96. We...

This paper argues that a geographical perspectie is fundamental to understanding comparative economic development in the context of globalization. Central to this view is the role of agglomeration in productivity performance; size and location matter. The tools of the new economic geography are...

John Van Reenen sketches the evolution of CEP research on the drivers of productivity growth - and its impact on policies to foster competition.