This paper investigates the macroeconomic effects of UK banking crises over the period 1750 to 1938. We construct a new annual banking crisis series using bank failure rate data, which suggests that the incidence of banking crises was every 32 years. Using our new series and a narrative approach...

In June 2017, in the negotiations between Greece, the European Union and its Member States, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, it was decided that the highly-indebted country in Europe's southern periphery should receive an additional disbursement of 8.5 billion...

Prior to the Age of Mass Migration, Germans left central Europe to settle primarily in modernday Hungary, Serbia, Romania, Ukraine and Russia. Despite the harsh conditions that the first generation of settlers had to endure, their descendants often fared better, not worse, compared to native...

The limited partnership emerged as a key societal innovation during the early modern age. It allowed an effective separation between partners – those acting and those conferring capital – and it granted limited liability to partners in case of insolvency. The diffusion of limited partnership...

The paper represents the outcome of an ongoing research program on the dynamics of joint stock companies in Italy between the 1861 Unification of the country and World War 1. It is based on a considerable quantity of data, the bulk of which is constituted by the very detailed set covering the...

In this paper, we address the partial equilibrium functioning of the shortterm credit market in the Eighteenth-century Lisbon and its response to three major events: massive gold inflows from Brazil, a catastrophic destruction of capital caused by the 1755 earthquake and the enactment of a 5%...

This paper discusses Gelderblom’s hypothesis that urban competition (including a large number of competing cities, footloose foreign traders and municipal autonomy) was central to the rise of inclusive trade institutions in Europe. The first part discusses the precise behaviour of traders,...

The paper gives an overview of foreign government loans to Serbia from 1862 to 1914. It considers the reasons for borrowing abroad and the conditions under which foreign banks placed Serbian government bonds on the European capital markets. Special attention is paid to the phenomenon of foreign...

This paper argues that the relatively voluminous surviving records about foreign exchange (FX) rates in the Middle Ages can help to illuminate the much murkier question of medieval interest rates. We first explain how the medieval FX market operated and its links to the money market. Next, we...

This paper will show how the relatively voluminous surviving records about exchange rates in the middle ages can help to illuminate the much murkier question of medieval interest rates. We will first explain how the medieval FX market operated and its links to the money market. Next, we will set...