During crisis art is often considered as a safe haven both by the scientific literature and the financial advisors. For example, during WWII art markets encountered a massive boom in occupied countries This paper questions this vision of art as a safe investment providing evidence that art has...

The First World War was not only a military conflict, but also an economic war. In all belligerent countries labour and material resources were shifted from civilian production to war-related purposes, and a central planning system was established to organise production and distribution. In this...

The paper emphasizes the transition in Russia and the role institutions played before and during the process. In Russia, a big bang approach was applied. That is to say, transition was conducted all of a sudden, omitting important underlying reforms. This practice should function as a shock...

The article treats the history of Germany’s Great Inflation from 1914 to 1923. It focusses on explaining the turning points of wholesale price trends. It demonstrates that these were mostly triggered by national and international political decisions immediately impacting the mark exchange...

Economic history can offer an independent contribution to the analysis of the conditions of success and the mode of action of different types of monetary integration. Up to now, the debate about the functional mechanisms of monetary unions in the real world has ignored the Habsburg Monarchy. The...

Using the business cycle accounting framework [Chari V., P. Kehoe and E. McGrattan 2007. Business cycle accounting. Econometrica 75, 781–836.], this paper sheds new light on the French Great Depression. Frictions that reduce the efficiency with which factor inputs are used (efficiency wedge)...

Recent studies suggest that the only convergence of Southern Italy towards the Italian and European average, from 1951 to 1973, was due to the massive regional policy pursued through the State-owned agency "Cassa per il Mezzogiorno" (1950-1984). From the oil shocks onwards, however, public...

This paper provides a description of the economic growth process and its major characteristics in the Netherlands from the 1930s up to the present. The first part presents some main characteristics of the long-run growth performance of the Dutch economy. It is shown that the Netherlands has...

Keynesian-inspired macro regulation gained importance in West German economic policy from the mid-1960s and was enshrined in law through the Stability and Growth Act in 1967. In the context of the legislative process, the question arose as to what extent the Deutsche Bundesbank should be given...

This article analyses the Bank of England's (BoE) involvement in UK policy towards the European Monetary System (EMS) between 1979 and 1990. It outlines how scepticism about rigid monetarist approaches influenced the institution's stance towards the EMS. Despite internal disagreements, the BoE...