The costs and benefits of insider trading is a persistent topic in the economic literature and public discourse alike. Nowadays insider trading is principally illegal and morally banned implying that the costs are supposed to weigh heavier than the potential benefits. We study insider trading...

Energy was one of the keys to the remarkable increase in English GDP between 1650 and 1700. Increased per head physical activity and basal metabolic rate led to increased energy consumption. In response, subsistence wages, productivity, wages and incomes increased. Malthusian adjustment explains...

We propose that the "historically relevant" comparison of the Danish and Russian Empires from the early eighteenth century until the First World War presents a useful starting point for a promising research agenda. We motivate the comparison, noting that the two empires enjoyed striking...

Previous work has demonstrated the potential for wheat market integration between the US and the UK before the 'first era of globalization' in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was however frequently interrupted by policy and 'exogenous' events such as war. This paper adds Canada to...

This paper analyses the impact that Spanish road construction had on local population growth between 1787 and 1857. We find that the increase in market access associated to road accessibility had a substantial effect on local population growth. The impact was substantially higher on the...

In this paper, we analyze the effect of transport infrastructure investments in railways. As a testing ground, we use data from a new historical database that includes annual panel data on approximately 2,400 Swedish rural geographical areas during the period 1860-1917. We use a staggered event...

Did the outbreak of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars influence technical change during the Industrial Revolution? We address this question by investigating an instance of state intervention into the market for inventions from 1793-1820: the introduction of a new proviso into British...

I provide a new series of the average duration of emigrant voyages from Liverpool to New York from 1853 to 1913. Time on the crossing fell by 80 percent, from about 40 days to just eight, most of which occurred in the first two decades and was associated with the transition from sail to steam....

Studies of the determinants of emigration from Europe from 1850 to 1913 include the gains to migrants but often neglect the costs. One component of those costs is earnings forgone on the voyage. In this paper I present new data on the voyage times for emigrants from the UK traveling to the...

Debates about the future of work frequently reference past instances of transformative innovation to preface analysis of how automation and artificial intelligence could reshape society and the economy. However, technological shifts in history are rarely considered in depth or used to improve...