Natural resources, especially energy resources, are often considered vital to the process of economic development, with the availability of coal considered central for the nineteenth century. Clearly, however, although coal might have spurred economic development, development might also have...

International trade became much less multilateral during the 1930s. Previous studies, looking at aggregate trade flows, have argued that discriminatory trade policies had comparatively little to do with this. Using highly disaggregated information on the UK's imports and trade policies, we find...

A recent literature explores the nature and causes of the collapse in international trade during 2008 and 2009. The decline was particularly great for automobiles and industrial supplies; it occurred largely along the intensive margin; quantities fell by more than prices; and prices fell less...

This paper discusses how Spain's urban housing markets reacted to the far-reaching changes that affected the demand for dwellings during the first phase of the ruralurban transition process. To this end, we construct a new hedonic index of real housing prices and assemble a cross-regional panel...

This paper uses a new dataset on the universe of Canadian imports and tariffs between 1924 and 1936, disaggregated into 1697 goods originating in 112 countries, to analyse the impact on Canadian imports of interwar Canadian trade policy, including the 1932 Ottawa trade agreements. Rather than...

The relative success of the Danish and failure of the Irish dairy industries before the First World War is often contrasted given their competition for the lucrative British butter market. The traditional narrative implicitly assumes that Ireland failed because it was unsuccessful at adopting...

Economic historians have debated the importance of energy for economic development. Energy economists would argue that energy systems need to be adaptable in the face of shocks. In this light, we consider the case of Denmark, a country which was almost entirely dependent on imports of coal, and...

Is a lack of domestic energy resources necessarily a limiting factor to growth, as suggested for example by the work of Robert C. Allen? We examine the case of Denmark - a country which historically had next to no domestic energy resources - for which we present new historical energy accounts...

Why did the establishment of cooperative creameries in late nineteenth century Ireland fail to halt the relative decline of her dairy industry compared to other emerging producers? This paper compares the Irish experience with that of the market leader, Denmark, and shows how each adopted the...