Owing to the high cost of transporting farm produce before the railway age, the land-intensiveness of European mixed farming caused both production and consumption of foodstuffs and intermediate farm inputs in the steady state to be highly dispersed, a spatial configuration offering weak...

In this text we analyze the main economic activities that were developed in the city of Alicante in the mid 19th century promoted by dynamic elite of aristocrats and middle classes. The economy was moderately diversified, the main weight falling on trade and commercial farming. Following this we...

This article makes use of Lee’s ‘dynamic synthesis’, which aims to combine the views of Malthus and Boserup, to provide a new interpretation of population dynamics in Northern Italy from about 1450 to 1800. The article analyzes Lee’s theory and suggests that, even if it is difficult to...

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it quantifies and analyzes the demographic evolution of the province of Guadalajara during the Early Modern Age and the first decades of the Modern Age. Second, it estimates the cereal production in two specific areas, La Campiña and La Sierra, between...

This paper explores a key implication of Richard Smith's work on agrarian societies: the need to be attentive both to rural people's decisions as economic agents and to the constraints on their choices. It begins by examining evidence of goal-maximizing behaviour by rural people – not...

In this paper we introduce a new source of data to economic history: palynological data, i.e. information about pollen grains which are preserved in bottom sediments of various water basins. We discuss how this data is collected and how it should be interpreted; develop new methods for aggregating...

In the early 19th century coal mining in the region of Aachen (Prussian Rhine Province) developed to an industrial scale within few decades production was mechanised and new types of industrial organization emerged that allowed for concentration on production and economies of scale. The region...

In this paper we investigate the quantitative relation between population, real wages and urbanization in the Italian economy during the period 1320-1870. In this period the prevailing conditions were those of a poor, mainly agricultural economy with limited human capital and rudimentary...

Demographic behaviour is influenced not just by attributes of individuals but also by characteristics of the communities in which those individuals live. A project on ‘Economy, Gender, and Social Capital in the German Demographic Transition’ is analyzing the longterm determinants of...

Class specific mortality in 17th and 18th Century Vienna shows a cyclical pattern which is related to grain price cycles in the 5-10 years range. This relationship is not stable over time. Applying spectral analysis based on time-varying VARs, it can be shown that at the beginning of the...