Income distribution has been a main topic in economics since the days of Gregory King and William Petty. In this paper some empirical issues in the study of labor income are surveyed in the light of economic history, including the hypothesis of the stability of factor shares across time and...

The paper explores the similiraties and differences between the origin, behavior and evolution of the central banks of Portugal and Spain. Portugal and Spain are two countries that share the same peninsular space in the west corner of Europe. Though different in size and population, the...

This paper aims to provide new light on a famous episode in financial history, the so called Baring crisis. Taking a microeconomic approach, this paper addresses issues that were not emphasized in traditional explanations of the crisis. We analyze borrowing costs in the 1880s using new data from...

This paper analyses the information structure of European investors on the eve of the Baring crisis in 1890. We argue that financial intermediaries were in a privileged position by having the monopoly of information. This situation led to conflicting interests because business and proper...

This paper discusses the economic consequences of independence in Latin America. Grand interpretations that assess Nineteenth Century Latin America by comparison to the U.S. performance are examined and the alternative approach of using African and Asian post-colonial experiences as the...

Real wages PPP adjusted are used to analyse labour market integration in Spain. In contrast to earlier research analysing migration and nominal wages rates, our research seems to indicate that a well-integrated labour market had emerged in Spain by 1914 and substantial wage convergence happened...

This paper looks at the response of growers and merchants, first to vine disease and high prices, and then to the problems of overproduction and product adulteration. France produced a large range of wines, but by the early twentieth century most commodity chains were failing to provide accurate...

This study provides an economic analysis of the post-War institutions of the European tenancy markets. Two representative types of market interventions are analyzed: the introduction of compulsory terms in the tenancy contracts and rent control. First of all this study offers a description and...

We argue for a new approach to examining the relationship between tariffs and growth. We demonstrate that more can be learned from time series analyses of the experience of individual countries rather than the usual panel data approach, which imposes a causal relation and presents an average...

This paper discusses how Spain’s urban housing markets reacted to the farreaching changes that affected the demand for dwellings during the first phase of the rural-urban transition process. To this end, we construct a new hedonic index of real housing prices and assemble a cross-regional...