Power to the People examines the varied but interconnected relationships between energy consumption and economic development in Europe over the last five centuries. It describes how the traditional energy economy of medieval and early modern Europe was marked by stable or falling per capita...

According to Allen, between 1500 and 1750, a 'great divergence' among countries in the level of wages occurred in Europe. Italian real wages were already among the lowest in the late medieval and early modern age. Their relative level diminished even more from the seventeenth century. An...

The transformation of the energy system during the period between the 16th and 19th centuries was the necessary, although not sufficient, condition of modern growth, first in Euro pe and then in the rest of the World. The transition to alternative forms of energy was prompted by the decline in...

Socioeconomic disparity between North and South Italy has been recently explained by Lynn (2010) as the result of a lower intelligence quotient (IQ) of the Southern population. The present article discusses the procedure followed by Lynn, supplementing his data with new information on school...

The paper focuses on energy transitions in Europe over the last four centuries. Special attention is given to the models of theoretical explanations for the historical energy transitions and how these may be empirically assessed. The twin model of serial substitutions (supply side) and energy...

The recent work by E. Felice, Perché il Sud è rimasto indietro, il Mulino, Bologna, 2013, is rather a pamphlet than a book of economic history. In the present article, we discuss both the statistical series of regional GDP from 1871 until 2001 worked out by Felice (section 1), and the...

A detailed exploration of the influence and utility of Thomas Malthus' model of population growth and economic changes in Europe since the nineteenth century. This important contribution to current discussions on theories of economic growth includes discussion of issues ranging from mortality...