The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in the economic literature. Moreover, while much is known about 19th century black legal and material conditions, less is known about how 19th century institutional arrangements were related to black stature....

This paper calculates indicators of revealed comparative advantage (RCA) and revealed symmetric comparative advantage (RSCA) for 17 British manufacturing industries for the years 1880, 1890, and 1900. The resulting indicators show that the late-Victorian 'workshop of the world' was at a marked...

This study provides new evidence on the advance of literacy in Spain during the period 1860-1930. A novel dataset, built with historical information (over 8,000 municipalities) from the Spanish population censuses, enables us to describe this process in detail from the end of the Ancien Régime...

In Bulgaria the share of secondary production in GDP remained constantly low between c. 1870–1910. To explain the country's exceptionally weak growth, we use endogenous and unified growth theory. Gerschenkron and Palairet blame a self-sufficiency-oriented peasant economy for rising labour and...

This article analyses the interstate dispute settlement mechanisms between member states of the German Confederation (Deutscher Bund). The question as to how disputes between German sovereigns should be decided already had a long (pre-)history dating back to the Middle Ages. Article 11 IV of the...

The development of a well adapted financial system was a main part of the successful Swedish economic modernization in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In this paper it is shown that this development followed the pattern of a financial revolution. Major institutional and organizational...

The pivotal role played by non-banking institutions in supporting the expansion of international trade after the Napoleonic Wars and before first globalization c. 1870 - 1913 has long been recognised. Merchant-bankers in particular played a crucial role by advancing monies to consignors of...