This chapter surveys the recent social science literature on religion in economic history, covering both socioeconomic causes and consequences of religion. Following the rapidly growing literature, it focuses on the three main monotheisms -Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - and on the period up...

This paper analyzes the determinants of the labor-capital split in national income for 20 countries since the late 1800s. Our main identification strategy focuses on unique historical quasi-experimental events: i) the introduction of universal suffrage, ii) close election wins of left-wing...

The Axial Age, which lasted between 800 B. C. E. and 200 B. C. E., covers an era in which the spiritual foundations of humanity were laid simultaneously and independently in various geographic areas, and all three major monotheisms of Judaism, Christianity and Islam were born between 1200 B. C....

The quality of life experienced by people in the past is one of the most important areas of historical enquiry, and the standard of living of populations is one of the leading measures of the economic performance of nations. Yet how accurate is the information on which these judgments are based?...

Chapter 1: Introduction; Sabrina Joseph -- Chapter 2: Making Cheap Nature on High Altitude: A World-Ecological Perspective on Commodification, Communities, and Conflict in the Andes; Hanne Cottyn -- Chapter 3: Agricultural Commodities on the Philippine Frontier: State-Sponsored Resettlement and...

Chapter 1: Introductory Remarks -- Chapter 2: Grand Narratives in Premodern Economic History -- Chapter 3: Introduction into the Study of Production -- Chapter 4: Introduction into the Study of Markets -- Chapter 5: Introduction into the Study of Money and Credit -- Chapter 6: Reviewed Sample...

The emergence and evolution of modern science since the 17th century has led to three major breakthroughs in the human condition. The first, the Industrial Revolution, started in the late 18th century and is based chiefly on developments associated with the rise of the natural sciences. The...

We compile data spanning the period 1900-2014 and up to 30 countries to study long-run patterns in the tax elasticity of top incomes. Our results show that top tax elasticities vary tremendously over time; they were medium-to-low before 1950, virtually zero during the postwar era up to 1980 and...

1. Discovering a Global Perspective -- 2. ‘Se mantiene de lavar’: The Laundry Business in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Mexico City -- 3. Investing in Enterprise: Women Entrepreneurs in Colonial ‘South Africa’ -- 4. A Mosaic of Entrepreneurship: Female Traders in Moscow, 1810s-1850s...

Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages: the crisis before the crisis or the transition from the ancient system to feudalism revisited -- Chapter 3: The Great Late-Medieval Depression in the Catalan-speaking lands -- Chapter 4: The seventeenth-century crisis in...