This paper investigates the (lack of any lasting) impact of John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory on economic policymaking in Germany. The analysis highlights the interplay between economic history and the history of ideas in shaping policymaking in postwar (West) Germany. The paper argues that...

This paper investigates the macroeconomic effects of UK banking crises over the period 1750 to 1938. We construct a new annual banking crisis series using bank failure rate data, which suggests that the incidence of banking crises was every 32 years. Using our new series and a narrative approach...

We estimate income/expenditure inequality in Britain, exploiting five household surveys, spanning the years 1890 to 1961, some of which we recovered and digitised. After adjusting for differences in scope and sampling, we find little change in inequality among worker households over the period...

In Great Britain the seven years following WWI were marked by rigorous austerity policies. From 1918 to 1925 the main objectives were budget cuts and monetary deflation. Certainly, being the central department for financial policies, the British Treasury had decisive authority in setting such...

This article contributes new time series for studying the UK economy during World War I and the interwar period. The time series are per capita hours worked and average capital income, labor income, and consumption tax rates. Uninterrupted time series of these variables are provided for an...

The article presents a history of the Lancashire cotton textile industry from the perspective of decision-making entrepreneurs as embedded historical actors, in contradistinction to the economics-based counterfactuals that dominate the recent historiography of the industry.A simulation approach...

This paper offer a guide to how the British experience of 1929–39 may provide useful macroeconomic lessons for the present once due regard is made for historical contingency and context. It re-examines the forces that shaped policy and what we know about policy impact, focusing on, first, the...

Access to the British butter market was an important issue during British negotiations with continental Europe in the early 1960s. Commonwealth producers enjoyed preferential treatment under the terms of the Ottawa Agreement, and butter exports were of particular importance to New Zealand. This...

During World War I ocean freight rates rose to extraordinary levels. Using a new monthly dataset it is shown that freight rates can be well explained by economic activity, commodity prices, war risk and world tonnage in the period 1912 to 1916. In the first two years of the war part of the...