Monetary policy has traditionally been viewed as theprocess by which a central bank uses its influence overthe supply of money to promote its economic objectives. Forexample, Milton Friedman (1959, p. 24) defined the tools ofmonetary policy to be those “powers that enable the [FederalReserve]...

[...]In this article, we shed light on the globalizationof international production and trade by demonstratingthe increasingly important role vertical specializationplays in international trade. We use case studies andinput-output tables to calculate the level and growth...

We evaluate explanations for why Germany grew so quickly in the 1950s. The recent literature has emphasized convergence, structural change and institutional shake-up while minimizing the importance of the post-war shock. We show that this shock and its consequences were more important than...

This paper presents new regional GDP estimates for the Habsburg Monarchy and constructs measures of market potential for its 22 major regions. The paper argues that regional income differentials were significantly larger, that intra-empire catching-up of poor with rich regions was far more...

Research into the origins of economic growth in the late nineteenth century Habsburg Empire has so far suffered from a lack of evidence on the evolution of the capital stock. As a first step towards a more comprehensive documentation of the role played by factor inputs in the Habsburg growth...

This paper considers the 1990s in the context of long run economic growth performance. Growth in the context of this paper should be understood to comprise the growth of real living standards as well as real GDP per person. There were a number of new experiences during the decade that were...

A significant but uneven spurt of industrialization started in China during the first three decades of the 20th century at a time of political instability and national disintegration. This article argues that economic growth during this period was closely associated with the rise and expansion...

In early modern north-western Europe, real wages declined while GDP per capita was on the increase. In contrast, wage growth in Tokugawa Japan went hand in hand with output growth. Based on this finding, the paper revisits Thomas Smith’s thesis on ‘Pre-modern Economic Growth: Japan and the...

This paper reassesses and extends Hawke’s passenger railway social savings for England and Wales. Better estimates of coach costs and evidence that third class passengers would otherwise have walked reduce Hawke’s social savings by two-thirds. We calculate railway speeds, and the amount and...