This paper presents new estimates of income inequality derived from Prussian tax statistics for the years 1822-1914. Confidence intervals are also calculated. The results show a rise in inequality in the nineteenth century, with a peak around 1906, thus supporting the view put forward by Simon...

This paper provides estimates of wage dispersion in nineteenth-century Barcelona and documents the compression of the pay distribution between 1856 and 1905. A decomposition of inequality changes by sector and gender leads to two conclusions. First, that most of the changes occurred within each...

By analysing a newly compiled data base of grain prices, this article finds that prior to the nineteenth century the grain trade in India was essentially local, while more distant markets remained fragmented. It was only in the second half of the nineteenth century that market integration...

This paper contributes to the debate on the causes of unemployment in interwar Germany. It applies the Layard-Nickell model of the labour market to interwar Germany, using a new quarterly data set. The basic model is extended to capture the effects of the tariff wage under the Weimar Republic...

This paper will focus on the powerful contributions to the winning side, the currency school, of Loyd, its most formidable member. His father Lewis Loyd, was a Welsh Classical Tutor and Unitarian Preacher who married the daughter of a Manchester banker. Lewis Loyd turned a small bank into a...

Market size is claimed by various economic traditions to be an important factor in explaining the transition to modern economic growth. This paper examines whether differences in market size might explain the retardation of the Industrial Revolution in France. It uses an exceptional source on...

This paper documents the regional divide in educational facilities between East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Pakistan between 1947 and 1971. During this period, the total number of primary schools in East Pakistan declined, leading to overcrowding of existing schools and classrooms. On the...

Automobile depreciation rates and dealer markups in the United States and Britain during the 1950s and 1960s provide evidence on the effect of asymmetric information on market structures. Initial depreciation was not exceptional, and trade was not disabled. ‘Lemon’ effects were evident in...

Although the high level of private house-building in the 1930s was an important episode in Britain’s economic and social development, the literature has not addressed adequately the nature of the demand for these houses. In particular, the class and income characteristics of their purchasers...