What was the impact of urban political structure on economic inequality in preindustrial times? I document that more closed political institutions were associated with higher economic inequality in a panel of early modern German cities. To investigate the mechanisms behind that...

Most creatives acquire professional talents by learning from others, but in most settings it is difficult to estimate the existence of long-term effects. This paper explores the transmission of skills over a period of more than seven centuries by focusing on the case of music composers. We ask...

With use of innovative proxies and new annual data, I demonstrate that relatively high legal capacity and regulatory activity of the early-modern Polish parliament was positively associated with deeper commodity market integration. Conversely, the lack of effective law-making, caused by the...

Without safe and effective vaccination the current coronavirus pandemic will not get under control. Moreover, economic history suggests that even with vaccination, success is uncertain. To make this point, the present paper studies smallpox - an aggressive viral disease like Covid19 - as a model...

This paper investigates whether high borrowing costs deterred investment in sanitation infrastructure in late nineteenth-century Britain. Town councils had to borrow to fund investment, with considerable variation in interest rates across towns and over time. Panel regressions, using annual data...

It is well known that after the First World War there was a massive flight of capital from the major European countries to foreign financial centres. It is surprising, however, to note that no historian to date has actually taken the trouble to make a detailed study of the phenomenon. The aim of...

Can autocratic governments gain support by implementing a welfare reform and a repressive law? This paper studies a famous case - Bismarck's policies of social insurance and the antisocialist law in late 19th century Germany. The socialist party, I find, increases its vote share in...