Do countries with less democratic forms of government necessarily have lower literacy rates as a consequence? Using a random sample of 4,600+ individuals from military archives in Portugal, we show that 20-year old males were twice as likely to end up literate under an authoritarian regime than...

We construct the first time-series for Portugal's per capita GDP for 1527-1850, drawing on a new database. Starting in the early 1630s there was a highly persistent upward trend which accelerated after 1710 and peaked 40 years later. At that point, per capita income was high by European...

We offer a new methodology for the construction of annual population stocks over the very long run. Our method does not require the assumption of a closed economy, and can be used in situations in which local annual gross flows are obtainable. Combining gross flows with intermittent census-type...

This paper presents the first estimate to date of the anual output of Portugal's agriculture between 1500 and 1850. It adopts the well-known indirect approach, which uses a consumption function for agricultural products. Prices and wages for this come from a recently created data base. It also...

From its foundation as a private corporation in 1694 the Bank of England extended large amounts of credit to support the British private economy and to support an increasingly centralized British state. The Bank helped the British state reach a position of geopolitical and economic hegemony in...

How did the Spanish money supply evolve in the aftermath of the discovery of large amounts of precious metals in Spanish America? We synthesize the available data on the mining of precious metals and their international flow to estimate the money supply for Spain from 1492 to 1810. Our estimate...

I provide the first annual time series of coin and money supply estimates for about six hundred years of English history. I propose two main estimation methods. The first, which I call the 'direct method', is used to measure the value of government-provided, legal-tender coin supply only....

The Bank Restriction Act of 1797 suspended the convertibility of the Bank of England's notes into gold. The current historical consensus is that the suspension was a result of the state's need to finance the war, France's remonetization, a loss of confidence in the English country banks, and a...

PhD dissertation summary forthcoming at: European Review of Economic History

Classic accounts of the English industrial revolution present a long period of stagnation followed by a fast take-off. However, recent findings of slow but steady per capita economic growth suggest that this is a historically inaccurate portrait of early modern England. This growth pattern was...