Many sovereign defaults have occurred worldwide over the past 200 years. An analysis of 321 sovereign debt restructurings since 1815 shows that foreign private and institutional investor losses were 43 percent on average. Notably, beginning in the 1970s, several debt exchanges have increasingly...

In den vergangenen 200 Jahren hat es weltweit viele Zahlungsausfälle von Staaten gegeben. Die Untersuchung von 321 Umschuldungsabkommen seit 1815 zeigt, dass Verluste von ausländischen privaten und institutionellen Investoren durchschnittlich 43 Prozent betrugen. Auffällig ist, dass es...

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...

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...

Social attitudes toward women vary significantly across societies. This chapter reviews recent empirical research on various historical determinants of contemporary differences in gender roles and gender gaps across societies, and how these differences are transmitted from parents to children...

The history of the German cooperative banks has enjoyed renewed attention in recent years. This applies specifically to the current central cooperative bank, DZ BANK, whose origin lies in the Prussian Central Cooperative Bank ("Preußenkasse") founded in 1895. What previous research has in...

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...

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...

As part of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's commitment to supporting efforts to revitalize the economy of Springfield, Massachusetts, this paper analyzes the economic development approaches of other mid-sized manufacturing-oriented cities during the past half century. From among a comparison...

This paper explores the implications of Unified Growth Theory for the origins of existing differences in income per capita across countries. The theory sheds light on three fundamental layers of comparative development. It identifies the factors that have governed the pace of the transition from...