The growth of the Belgian economy since 1945 is surveyed with emphasis on the distinction between open and sheltered sectors. Relatively slow growth to around 1960 is explained by a move away from traditionally liberal industrial policies that began in the crisis of the 1930s, by the squeeze on...

In the middle of the twentieth century, Belgium seems to have undergone a fairly rapid transformation from a relatively low-wage economy to a high-wage economy. How could Belgian business handle this change in its cost structure? Was it through exceptional technical progress? The best-known...

It is widely agreed that conflict or consensus on macroeconomic distribution of income between firms and wage-earners is important for macroeconomic stability. A new Keynesian model is developed with nominal price rigidities prevailing because of the sequential structure of wage ; price and...

In recent discussions on wage policies and their effects on employment it has been argued that the elasticity of employment to real wages can be different in case of wage increases and wage decreases. The paper analyses first the conceptual and methodological issues raised by this assertion. It...

The 'mixed-type' banks which sustained Belgium's industrial expansion in the 19th and early 20th centuries were demerged in 1934-1935 into deposit banks on the one hand, and holding collapse of the banking system, restricted the bank‚s operational scope. Helped by the war economy and the...

We investigate the early development of English cotton spinning by analysing about 700 bankruptcies and 1300 dissolutions of partnership reported in the London Gazette, 1770-1840. The data show three temporal cycles, peaking in the early to mid-1800s, in the later 1820s and again in the later...

This paper offers an overview of the development of European industry between 1700 and 1870, drawing in particular on the recent literature that has emerged following the formation of the European Historical Economics Society in 1991. The approach thus makes use of economic analysis and...