How is rule of law established? We address this question by exploring the causal effect of increases in fiscal capacity on the establishment of well enforced, formal, legal standards in a pre-industrial economy. Between 1550 and 1700 there were over 2,000 witch trials in France. Prosecuting a...

We use book translations as a new measure of international idea flows and study the effects of Communism's collapse in Eastern Europe on these flows. Using novel data on 800,000 translations, we show that while translations between Communist languages decreased by two thirds with the collapse,...

Spain has experienced many financial crises through its history. These financial crises have varied origins. However, they do have common threads. The current recession and subsequent debt crisis follow the same pattern. The fiscal and monetary policies of the Spanish government have played a...

This paper examines the evolving effects of England's Old Poor Law (1601-1834). It establishes that poor relief reduced social unrest from around the late-17th century through the turn of the 19th century, at which point it began to spur population growth and its social stability effects...

Although cross section relationships are often taken to indicate causation, and especially the important impact of economic growth on many social phenomena, they may, in fact, merely reflect historical experience, that is, similar leader-follower country patterns for variables that are causally...

In this paper we investigate the link between government debt-to-GDP ratio and real per capita income growth in Italy over 1861-2009. We model our regression analysis on a standard production function. Our results support the hypotheses of a negative relation between public debt and growth and...

This work focuses on some economic aspects of the two main waves of Italian emigration (1876-1913 and post-1945) and of the immigration of recent years. First, we examine the characteristics of migrants. Second, for the period 1876-1913 we investigate the determinants of emigration using a new...

This is an entirely new draft of the sixth chapter of my book 'Foundations of Evolutionary Economics' which is going to be published by Edward Elgar in due course. With permission of the publisher, the draft chapters are posted on the web to facilitate academic discussion for further...

The paper empirically investigates the issue of macroeconomic convergence in the West Africa Monetary Zone (WAMZ) using monthly data from 1990:01 to 2010:05 as part of the ongoing discussion on the single currency for West Africa, The ECO initiative. The study specifically examines exchange and...

A popular misconception among scholars of Adam Smith holds that he thought that government intervention was a good and natural aspect of civil society. Scholars who have this misconception argue that Smith often portrays politicians and government intervention as being benevolent. But there are...