This is Part 2 of a two-part paper which surveys the historical evidence on the role of institutions in economic growth. The paper provides a critical scrutiny of a number of stylized facts widely accepted in the growth literature. It shows that private-order institutions have not historically...

This is Part 1 of a two-part paper which surveys the historical evidence on the role of institutions in economic growth. The paper provides a critical scrutiny of a number of stylized facts widely accepted in the growth literature. It shows that private-order institutions have not historically...

This article investigates women s position in early modern Bohemia by focusing on female household headship, which was very low by European standards. Empirical analysis suggests that the factors hypothesized in the literature as influencing female economic independence in preindustrial Europe...

This paper analyzes an early modern German economy to test alternative theories about guilds. It finds little evidence to support recent hypotheses arguing that guilds corrected market failures relating to product quality, training, and innovation. But it finds that guilds were social networks...

The Netherlands are thought to have pioneered an early modern 'Retail Revolution' which reduced the transaction costs of bringing market wares to wider social strata, facilitating the Consumer Revolution. This paper addresses open questions about this development using a commonly used...

This paper explores a key implication of Richard Smith's work on agrarian societies: the need to be attentive both to rural people's decisions as economic agents and to the constraints on their choices. It begins by examining evidence of goal-maximizing behaviour by rural people – not...

The “less-developed” interior of early modern Europe, especially the rural economy, is often regarded as financially comatose. This article investigates this view using a rich data set of marriage and death inventories for seventeenth-century Germany. It first analyzes the characteristics of...