Documentary evidence of the emergence and the eventual complete dominance of the Chinese mercantile traders (Sangleys) during the Spanish colonial period in the Philippines is first presented. We identify the critical traits in the Sangley mercantile genome and the new contractual and...

We analyze the evolution of the price of paintings in London auctions with a unique dataset of over 200,000 sales in the period 1780-1840. We build a price index for the representative painting through hedonic regressions controlling for the characteristics of auctions and paintings and for the...

We analyze the evolution of the price of paintings in the XVII century Amsterdam art market to test a hypothesis of endogenous entry: higher profitability should attract more entry of painters, which in turn should lead to artistic innovations and more intense competition. We build a price index...

We analyze art pricing in a unique dataset on Madrid inventories between 1600 and 1750. Hedonic regressions reveal a number of interesting facts about the taste of Baroque Spanish collectors and the imports of foreign paintings. The hedonic price index shows an impressive increase in the price...

Although largely absent from modern accounts of the Industrial Revolution, watches were the first mass produced consumer durable, and were Adam Smith's pre-eminent example of technological progress. In fact, Smith makes the notable claim that watch prices may have fallen by up to 95 per cent...

We take a first pass at quantifying the magnitudes of debt relief achieved through default and restructuring in two distinct samples: 1979-2010, focusing on credit events in emerging markets, and 1920-1939, documenting the official debt hangover in advanced economies that was created by World...

A sketch of the International Monetary Fund's 70-year history reveals an institution that has reinvented itself over time along multiple dimensions. This history is primarily consistent with a "demand driven" theory of institutional change, as the needs of its clients and the type of crisis...

The economic history of the United States is riddled with financial crises and banking panics. During the nineteenth-century, eight major such episodes occurred. In the period following World War II, some believed that these crises would no longer happen, and that the U.S. had reached a time of...

Seen in historical perspective the main economic predicaments of the present world (such as poverty, inequality, backwardness) appear in a somewhat different light than in many current discussions, especially by sociologists, radical economists and political scientists. In the present paper the...

The examination of U.S. crises reveals that the current financial crisis follows past patterns. An investment bubble creates excess demand for new financing instruments. During the railroad bubbles of the nineteenth century loans were issued at a pace higher than many companies could pay back....