Spain’s financial position during the late 19th and early 20th century has usually been presented as one of persistent deficit on current account, which resulted from her integration into international commodity and factor markets and this, in turn, slowed down growth. In this essay a...

The pessimistic flavour of the Human Development Reports appears to be in contradiction with their own numbers as developing countries fare comparatively better in human development than in per capita GDP terms. This paper attempts to bridge this gap by providing a new, ‘improved’ human...

Este ensayo examina el intento por parte de Jordi Maluquer de Motes de construir “una nueva y más sólida estimación del Producto Interior Bruto de España”. Para ello elabora una serie histórica del PIB a precios corrientes para 1850-1958. Además, extrapola retrospectivamente las series...

Argentina has slipped from being among the ten richest countries in the world by the eve of World War I to its current position close to developing countries. What did originate Argentina’s economic retardation?. In this paper we employ a structural model to investigate the extent to which...

A long-run view of inter-country inequality in living standards is provided for a large sample of countries in Western Europe, the European Offshoots, Japan – OECD, for short- and Latin America. A long term rise in real per capita income inequality is found. The deepening gap between OECD and...

Argentina has slipped from being among the ten richest countries in the world by the eve of World War I to its current position close to developing countries. Why did Argentina fall behind? In this paper we employ a structural model to investigate the extent to which contract enforcement, as...

How have growth and inequality affected poverty reduction in Latin America over the long run? On the basis of the available evidence on growth and inequality tentative answers and conjectures are proposed about the long run evolution of poverty in Latin America. Modern Latin America experienced...

In Spain, inequality evolution fits a Kuznets curve. World wars increased inequality but had non-permanent effects. Progressive taxation had no impact until 1980. This picture is at odds with Atkinson, Piketty, Saez, and associates’ depiction of western countries. Stolper-Samuelson forces only...

Growth and inequality over the long-run are assessed and their impact on poverty calibrated on the basis of López and Servén (2005) recent empirical research. Spain’s per capita income multiplied by 15 between 1850 and 2000, while private consumption per person did it by 12, but did such a...

Between 1850 and 2000, Spain’s real output and labor productivity grew at average rates of 2.5 and 2.1 percent. The sources of this long-run growth are investigated here for the first time. Broad capital accumulation and efficiency gains appear as complementary in Spain’s long-term growth....