N.S.B. Gras, the father of Business History in the United States, argued that the era of mercantile capitalism was defined by the figure of the “sedentary merchant,” who managed his business from home, using correspondence and intermediaries, in contrast to the earlier “traveling...

Bubbles have become ubiquitous. This ubiquity has stimulated research over the past three decades into bubbles in history. In this article, we provide a systematic overview of research into historical bubbles. Our analysis reveals that there is no coherent approach to the study of bubbles and...

This working paper provides a business history perspective on debates about the Great Divergence, the rise of the gap in incomes between the West and the Rest, and the more recent Great Convergence, which has seen a narrowing of that gap. The literature on the timing and causes of the Great...