This paper addresses two issues. It documents the changes in the publication strategy of the members of the Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen over the last 50 years, away from a broad domestic audience to the international community of peers and scholars. From having been only...

This paper exploits microdata from parish registers in a rural Tuscan village to trace the relationship between experienced and expected child mortality on household fertility strategies. It turns out that spacing of births and hence completed fertility are not only linked to economic risks and...

This paper argues that the conventional view which sees international transport costs reductions as the major force in price convergence cannot be upheld when the period under scrutiny is extended to the last two centuries. Domestic transport costs fell for land-locked regions while real...

This paper challenges the widely held view that sharply falling real transport costs closed the transatlantic gap in grain prices in the second half of the 19th century. Several new results emerge from an analysis of a new data set of weekly wheat prices and freight costs from New York to UK...

There is increasing controversy regarding the basic characteristics of British industrialization. This paper takes a fresh look at total factor productivity growth in agriculture and industry, suggests a new method in estimating it adopting a probability approach, and presents some new results....

This paper gives straightforward answers to complex problems. First it identifies the adverse affects of the high price volatility typical of segmented grain markets during the ancien régime. Extending a result in the modern literature on poverty and famines it is argued that price stability...

Over the 400 years covered by this study European grain markets became increasingly integrated as measured by the speed of adjustment back to equilibrium after a shock. Market integration smoothened local supply shocks and therefore generated price stability which can be seen as having a...

A formula is developed that enables labour productivity ranking of regions with minimum access to data. Furthermore, a probability approach is chosen in the use of uncertain information. Results indicate a productivity gap in favour of 14th century Italy compared to England.

Economic history in general and agrarian history in particular is seriously hampered by the lack of production and income data before the middle of the 19th century. Analysis of British agriculture therefore has to rely on indirect evidence. This paper discusses previous attempts and suggests a...

The paper analyzes the long century of deregulation of European grain markets. Eighteen century reformers won the intellectual battle as to the merits of laissez-faire markets for grain but failed to convince the angry crowds which were alerted by temporary increases in prices. Not until falling...