This paper surveys the rise and fall of the European mercantilist system, and the transition to the modern, well-integrated international economy of the 19th century. It also surveys the literature on the links between trade and economic growth during the period, and on the economic effects of...

From a long-term perspective, technological innovation could have come from local or domestic inventive and research activity, or from the transfer of foreign technology. In reality either option produces similar effects and often it was a combination of both which drove the historical...

In this paper we will explore how international corporations used the Spanish patent system in the late nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century in order to discover what the actual effects of its apparent weakness were. The origins and evolution of corporate patenting...

The conventional wisdom about the early stages of modern economic growth in Italy is still heavily influenced by the work of L.Cafagna (1989). He argued that exports of primary products to industrializing North Western countries were the main source of growth and that exports of silk stimulated...

El objetivo de este trabajo es el de analizar si existían elementos objetivos, de carácter tecnológico o infraestructural, que impidieran un temprano nacimiento de la industria de construcción de material ferroviario y, específicamente, de locomotoras de vapor. Para ello se hace un repaso a...

There is a widespread idea that corporations have completely taken over invention and innovation processes throughout the twentieth century, thus becoming the main users of patent systems. However, recent studies suggest that, in spite of corporate expansion, independent invention is still...

In this paper, we reflect on the links between the origin and rate of foreign direct investments (FDI) and the granting of intellectual property rights (IPRs) to foreigners in Spain during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. Our main hypothesis is that the two issues were...

This study investigates the empirical determinants of the treaty network of the 1860s and 1870s. It makes use of three central theories about the determinants of PTA formation, considering economic fundamentals from neoclassical and ‘new’ trade theory, political-economy variables, and...

This paper offers new series on the evolution of the foreign sector of the Spanish economy in the period between 1821 and 2001. Besides the classical series of the trade balance in current, constant and gold pesetas, it incorporates the series of incomes, payments and balance of the main entries...

Spain’s financial position during the late 19th and early 20th century has usually been presented as one of persistent deficit on current account, which resulted from her integration into international commodity and factor markets and this, in turn, slowed down growth. In this essay a...