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...

About fifty years after the independence of most former colonies on the African continent, books on African nationalism again rank high on the agenda of the international academic discussion. A selection of three recent publications demonstrates the advances made in scholarly analysis in 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...

Literature on convergence among Latin American countries is still scarce compared to other regions. Almost none of the research connects convergence to the economic history of Latin America and the usual finding is one speed of convergence assuming one globally stable steady-state. In this paper...

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...

This paper analyzes the consequences of radical patent-regime change by exploiting a natural experiment: the forced adoption of the Prussian patent system in territories annexed after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Compared to other German states, Prussia granted patents more restrictively by...

We measure technological progress in oceanic shipping directly by using a large database of daily log entries from ships of the British and Dutch East India Companies and Navies to estimate daily sailing speed in different wind conditions from 1750 to 1850. Against the consensus among economic...

This working paper provides a survey of the theoretical underpinnings for the various employment guarantee schemes, and discusses full employment policy experiences in the United States, Sweden, India, Argentina, and France. The theoretical and policy developments are delineated in a historical...

This paper presents a History Friendly Model which addresses the issue of the bifurcation in technological styles" between US and Britain during the nineteenth century. The model aims at gaining a better understanding of the micro-dynamics that gave rise to different patterns of innovation in...