This article deals with the political economic consequences of the disappearance of the Spanish silver peso standard in Spanish America, the longest monetary union that ever existed. With the Napoleonic invasion of Spain in 1808, the fiscal and political structure of the empire imploded and most...

As part of an endeavour to explain the divergence in incomes per capita between North and South America new institutional economics (NIE) and economic history have attempted in recent years to realize the potential effort for illumination derivable from comparisons of the heritage of their...

The economics literature is full of studies of monetary or currency unions ranging from the sterling area before 1914, to the Bretton Woods system later and the euro zone within the European Monetary Union today. A quick search in Econ-Lit returned over 10,000 entries among abstracts and...

Economic historians explaining the divergent economic path in North and South America over time focus on the post-independence period in the former British or Spanish colonies. Their institutional explanation for Latin American economic backwardness is anchored in the political disorder that...

Economic historians explaining the divergent economic path in North and South America over time focus on the post-independence period in the former British or Spanish colonies. Their institutional explanation for Latin American economic backwardness is anchored in the political disorder that...

This paper revises the traditional view of Spain as a predatory colonial state that extracted revenue from natural resources and populations in the Americas while offering little in return. Using 18th century Spanish American treasury accounts we show that local elites not only exerted important...