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Is there a refugee gap? Evidence from over a century of Danish naturalizations Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2024-02-18 Nina Boberg-Fazlić, Paul Sharp
The “refugee gap”—the difference in the economic status of refugees relative to other migrants might be due to the experience of being a refugee or to government policy. In Denmark before the Second World War, refugees were not treated differently from other migrants, motivating our use of a database of the universe of Danish naturalizations between 1851 and 1960. We consider labor market performance
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Land revenue, inequality, and development in colonial India (1880–1910) Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-11-26 Jordi Caum-Julio
In my dissertation, I explore how colonial land institutions influenced both income inequality and the provision and funding of hospitals in colonial India. To do so, I present the first income inequality estimates assessing its evolution and levels across provinces and districts as well as a novel georeferenced hospital-level database. Findings suggest that the introduction of different colonial landownership
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After da Gama: real wages in Western India, c. 1500–c. 1650 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-11-24 Helder Carvalhal, Jan Lucassen, Pim De Zwart
The article analyses the evolution of Indian real wages for the period 1500–1650. It argues that the Great Divergence between India and north-western Europe was already visible by the early 1500s by making use of a new dataset of 2,710 separate observations, reflecting over 76,000 paid-out wages, for nine locations in Western India. These wages were deflated by rice prices and a basket of goods and
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Risk management in traditional agriculture: intercropping in Italian wine production Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-09-02 Giovanni Federico, Pablo Martinelli Lasheras
In this paper, we provide an economic interpretation of intercropping as a risk management strategy based on spatial diversification of production. We study vine intercropping, i.e., the scattering of vines across fields rather than concentrating them in specialized vineyards, a traditional practice in Italian agriculture. We argue that, in the absence of developed financial markets, spatial diversification
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Was Spanish debt sustainable: a debt sustainability analysis between 1850 and 1913 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-08-31 Roldan Alba
At the end of the nineteenth century, Spain suffered from constant budget deficits. This article seeks to establish whether the Spanish debt was sustainable or not between 1850 and 1913 and how debt sustainability changed due to the various policies implemented by policymakers. This paper sheds new light on the analysis of Spanish fiscal solvency by estimating Bohn’s test (fiscal reaction function)
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Time on the crossing: emigrant voyages across the Atlantic, 1853–1913 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-08-21 Timothy J Hatton
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 2 decades and was associated with the transition from sail to steam. The standard deviation of voyage durations also dramatically decreased. Although average transatlantic fares
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Lending a hand: help banks in the Netherlands, 1848–1898 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-08-21 Amaury de Vicq, Christiaan van Bochove
Households and small businesses are often confronted with funding gaps due to small-scale lending problems. Whereas existing research focused primarily on how rural areas addressed such problems, this paper determines what contributed to the success of urban help banks in the Netherlands (1848–1898). It considers how help banks’ lending mechanism, corporate governance mechanism, and historical circumstances
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Nurses, doctors, and mortality: the effectiveness of early health professionals in rural Finland, 1880–1938 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-08-21 Sakari Saaritsa, Eero Simanainen, Markus Ristola
This article estimates the mortality effects of introducing modern health professionals in rural Finnish municipalities in the years 1880 to 1938 using panel data with approximately 25,000 observations over 423 population clusters. Our results show that ambulatory nurses had a more significant impact on mortality than municipal doctors. The effect of doctors depended on their proximity to the population
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A reconsideration of the economic decline of the British aristocracy 1858–2018 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-07-30 Matthew Bond, Julien Morton
Historical accounts of the British aristocracy argue its economic decline was owed to anachronistic characteristics, declining land values, and inheritance taxes. We find disconfirming evidence based on the hereditary peerage's probates 1858 to 2018, showing: decline only began after World War I; no links between aristocratic wealth and farmland prices; and a greater role for tax avoidance with respect
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Introduction to the special issue: the economic history of the arts Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-07-23 Karol J Borowiecki
This is the Introduction to the Special Issue on the Economic History of the Arts. It argues that economic history is well suited to study the arts. It also posits that the value of the discipline lies, among others, in its interdisciplinarity and the possibility to study creativity in history. Finally, attempts are made to coin the name of this field of research and some thoughts are shared on the
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Spatial inequality of opportunity in access to secondary education in nineteenth-century Spain Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-06-09 Pau Insa-Sánchez
In this paper, secondary education graduation age is proposed as a way of measuring the obstacles students had to face to acquire education in historical contexts. Using a novel historical source, I find that students from rural areas bore increasingly larger obstacles than those from cities. The size of the municipality of origin exerts a larger negative effect on students who graduated later in life—that
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Breadwinner, bread maker: the gender division of labour in 1930s rural Italy Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-05-03 Giulia Mancini
This paper uses microdata assembled from a collection of family monographs to examine female work among rural households in interwar Italy. It finds that female employment in agriculture was very high (approximately 80 percent), which contradicts available estimates from population censuses (50 percent or less). Yet despite the pervasiveness of female work, time use remained extremely segregated by
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On some problems of using the Human Development Index in economic history Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-04-27 Nicola Amendola, Giacomo Gabbuti, Giovanni Vecchi
This paper provides a theoretical framework that shows that the Human Development Index (HDI) is equivalent to a paternalistic social welfare function: this implies that all alternative HDI formulas used by economic historians merely represent their ethical systems. The problem is neither the choice of the dimensions included in the HDI nor the weighting scheme but the lack of consistency with standard
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On the right track? Railways and population dynamics in Spain, 1860–1930 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-04-22 Guillermo Esteban-Oliver
This article explores how 19th century railways shaped population dynamics in Spain. Results showed that the municipalities closest to stations experienced significantly greater population growth. However, this effect was heterogeneous over time and depended on the territorial specificities and municipal features of the areas traversed. It was greatest in densely populated and industrializing areas
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Harmonious relations: quality transmission among composers in the very long run Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-04-21 Karol Jan Borowiecki, Nicholas Martin Ford, Maria Marchenko
Most creative professionals develop and refine their talents by learning from others. In most empirical settings, estimating how this learning process fosters quality is challenging. This paper explores the transmission of quality among music composers over more than seven centuries. How does a composer’s quality influence the quality of the composers they teach? Using a unique dataset of 17,433 composers
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Income distribution in Warsaw in the 1830s Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-04-12 Marcin Wroński
In this paper, I estimate income inequality in Warsaw in the early XIX century, using the 1833 tax census as the data source. I compare the income of Jews and Christians and investigate the spatial dimension of income inequality in the city. In 1833, income inequality in Warsaw was very high by modern standards and medium by contemporary standards. The Gini index stood at 0.59, and the share of the
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No wheat crisis: trade liberalization and transportation innovation in Quebec during the 1830s and 1840s Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-03-16 Vincent Geloso, Alicia Plemmons, Andrew Thomas
In the first half of the nineteenth century, the wheat oriented agrarian economy of Lower Canada saw a rapid collapse in wheat production. These developments have been blamed on factors ranging from soil exhaustion to cultural conservatism and used to infer falling living standards in the colony. We provide evidence suggesting this collapse was largely the result of adjustment to the trade shock that
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Market structure and creative cluster formation: the origins of urban clusters in German literature, 1700–1932 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-03-08 Lukas Kuld, Sara Mitchell
Using yearly data on 153 prominent German authors (1700–1932), we show how changes in the political and economic environment facilitated the formation of literary clusters. Early authors follow general population patterns, leading to geographic dispersion in a patronage system characterized by spatial competition. At the end of the nineteenth century, authors concentrate in large economic and political
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The highs and the lows: bank failures in Sweden through inflation and deflation, 1914–1926 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-03-08 Seán Kenny, Anders Ögren, Liang Zhao
This paper revisits the Swedish banking crisis (1919–1926) that materialized as post-war deflation replaced wartime inflation (1914–1918). Inspired by Fisher’s “debt deflation theory,” we employ survival analysis to “predict” which banks would fail, given certain ex-ante bank characteristics. Our tests support the theory; maturity structures mattered most in a regime of falling prices, with vulnerable
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Authorship as a determinant of art prices and auction settings in eighteenth-century Paris Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-02-20 Hans J Van Miegroet, Anne-Sophie V Radermecker
In the context of a booming art market in Paris, eighteenth-century art dealers began to exploit authorship as a value-enhancing strategy. Using Jean-Baptiste Pierre Lebrun’s business as a case study, we show that art dealers purposefully used a firm scale of authentication to create product differentiation and to boost auction dynamics and revenues by reordering the lots before the sale in leaflets
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Why do firms pay dividends? 180 years of evidence Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-02-20 Leentje Moortgat, Jan Annaert, Marc Deloof
We investigate the determinants of dividend payments in Belgium between 1838 and 2020. As the institutional environment changes drastically over time, we explore whether the determinants of dividend payments depend on the environment in which firms operate. Large firms, firms that are not informationally opaque, firms with a high share denomination and firms with liquid shares are more likely to pay
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The German art market during WW II Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-02-11 Jeroen Euwe, Kim Oosterlinck
This paper investigates quantitatively the evolution of the German art market between 1937 and 1944. During the war, the boom observed in occupied countries offers a sharp contrast with the price evolution in the United Kingdom. Did the German art market show more similarities with the countries it was occupying or was its evolution closer to the British one? Our results show that the German art market
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Women in European academia before 1800—religion, marriage, and human capital Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2023-02-02 David de la Croix, Mara Vitale
We document the participation of women in European academia from the first universities to the eve of the Industrial Revolution. A total of 108 women taught at universities or were members of academies of arts and sciences. Most of them were active in Catholic southern Europe—an unexpected result. We conjecture that Protestantism left less room for women at the top of the distribution of human capital
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Sticky wages and the Great Depression: evidence from the United Kingdom Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2022-11-12 Jason Lennard
How sticky were wages during the Great Depression? Although classic accounts emphasise the importance of nominal rigidity in amplifying deflationary shocks, the evidence is limited. In this paper, I calculate the degree of nominal wage rigidity in the United Kingdom between the wars using new granular data covering millions of wages. I find that nominal wages changed infrequently but that wage cuts
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Coffee tastes bitter: education and the coffee economy in Colombia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2022-10-18 María José Fuentes-Vásquez, Irina España-Eljaiek
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, coffee became the main Colombian export, turning the country into one of the world’s leading coffee producers. This agrarian commodity provided resources for coffee-growing areas, favouring the rise of mass education. However, this paper suggests that coffee led to children ceasing to attend school to work in coffee production, thus affecting the
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Government finance and imposition of serfdom after the Black Death Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2022-10-01 Margaret E Peters
After the Black Death, serfdom disappeared in Western Europe while making a resurgence in Eastern Europe. What explains this difference? I argue that serfdom was against the interests of the sovereign and was only imposed when the nobility, who needed serfdom to maintain their economic and political standing, had leverage to impose their will. The nobility gained this power through financing the state
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Terms of trade during the first globalization: new evidence, new results Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2022-09-29 David Chilosi, Giovanni Federico, Antonio Tena-Junguito
By analyzing a new dataset of terms of trade covering the whole world during the “first globalization” (1800–1913), this article finds that trends of terms of trade varied significantly, both within the periphery and the core, and were mainly driven by import prices. Volatility declined because price spikes became less frequent and export prices became increasingly stable. We find little evidence of
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Materfamilias: the association of mother’s work on children’s absolute income mobility, Southern Sweden (1947–2015) Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2022-09-08 Gabriel Brea-Martinez
This article examines the association of mothers’ income with children’s economic mobility in a period of increased women’s labor market participation in Sweden. I found that whether a mother was economically independent and had an income similar to that of the father during her children’s late childhood and adolescence positively associated with upward mobility. The results show a substantial association
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Foreign investments and tariff protection revisited: correcting the trade balance of the Russian Empire, 1880–1913 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2022-08-29 Marina Chuchko
This article examines the accuracy of Russian foreign trade statistics between 1880 and 1913 and provides empirical evidence that prior to the introduction of the gold standard in 1897, Russia’s trade surplus was systematically understated. My novel trade data suggest a higher degree of protectionism with an increase of an ad valorem equivalent tariff up to 4 percentage points. Moreover, my corrections
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Scuttle for shelter: flight-to-safety and political uncertainty during the Spanish Second Republic Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2022-07-28 Stefano Battilossi, Stefan O Houpt, Gertjan Verdickt
The Spanish Second Republic was a unique experiment of democratization in interwar Europe, which was characterized by extreme levels of political uncertainty. We find that investors responded to shifts in uncertainty by selling stocks in favor of government bonds—a behavior known as flight-to-safety. Additionally, we find that political uncertainty caused stock market stress and induced significant
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From Sweden to America: migrant selection in the transatlantic migration, 1890–1910 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2022-07-18 Martin Dribe, Björn Eriksson, Jonas Helgertz
We examine selection by class origin and gender in the emigration from Sweden to the United States during the age of mass migration. We use full-count census data linked to emigration lists to create a panel of over one million men and women. Class selection was similar for men and women, with children from medium-skilled backgrounds being most likely to leave. Selection on class origin was most pronounced
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Smooth sailing: market integration, agglomeration, and productivity growth in interwar Brazil Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2022-06-03 Marc Badia-Miró, Anna Carreras-MarÍn, Michael Huberman
Leveraging an original dataset on coastal shipping and invoking a new economic geography framework, we study the effects of domestic and international trade costs on industrial concentration and productivity growth in interwar Brazil. In the great wave of globalization before 1914, international trade costs were low and domestic costs high. Economic activity was dispersed along the coastline. The interwar
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Local multipliers and the growth of services: evidence from late nineteenth century USA, Great Britain, and Sweden Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2022-04-25 Vinzent Ostermeyer
Abstract In the shadow of industry, the service sector substantially expanded during the late nineteenth century. This paper analyzes how the creation of industrial employment contributed to this growth of services. I leverage full-count census data from the United States, Great Britain, and Sweden to estimate local employment multipliers. I show that industrial growth was a key driver in the emergence
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Benchmarking the Middle Ages: fifteenth century Tuscany in European perspective Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2022-04-05 Jan Luiten van Zanden, Emanuele Felice
The article presents GDP estimates for fifteenth century Tuscany, based on the 1427 Florentine Catasto. In per capita GDP, Tuscany was only slightly above England and Holland. Furthermore, when compared to England and Holland, Tuscany was characterized by high extractive rates in favor of Florence, to the detriment of the subdued cities and the countryside, and by subsequent market blockades. This
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Political power of the press in the Weimar Republic Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2022-02-28 Bang Dinh Nguyen
This paper examines how changes in newspaper circulation affected voter turnout, party vote shares, and mass polarization in Weimar Berlin. My empirical strategy exploits variation in the development of railway system across historical districts of Berlin, which influenced the circulation of newspapers. I find that an increase in newspaper circulation significantly induced higher turnout in fourteen
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The panopticon of Germany’s foreign trade, 1880–1913: New facts on the first globalization Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2022-02-17 Wolf-Fabian Hungerland, Nikolaus Wolf
We present and analyze the panopticon of Germany’s foreign trade, with new data on all products, all trade partners, quantities, and values, at annual frequency, 1880–1913. Historical product categories are reclassified according to the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) to ensure comparability over time and across countries. Germany became increasingly specialized in manufacturing
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The paradox of “Malthusian urbanization”: urbanization without growth in the Republic of Genoa, 1300–1800 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2022-02-08 Luigi Oddo, Andrea Zanini
This paper investigates the relationships between urbanization and long-term economic growth in the pre-industrial world. To this end, we compiled a novel dataset collecting all currently available data on urban and rural populations in an Italian pre-unification state, the Republic of Genoa. Data show the paradoxical coexistence of high urbanization levels with cyclical Malthusian stagnations. Putting
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The effects of lender of last resort on financial intermediation during the great depression in Japan Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2022-01-18 Masami Imai, Tetsuji Okazaki, Michiru Sawada
The Bank of Japan (BOJ) expanded its liquidity provision in response to a series of financial panics from 1931–1932; however, the BOJ restricted its lending mostly to correspondent banks. We use the BOJ’s preferential treatment of correspondent banks as a quasi-experimental setting to examine the impact of central bank lending on financial intermediation. We find that deposits and loans did not fall
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Reassessing Ireland’s economic development through the lens of sustainable development Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-12-09 Luke Mcgrath, Stephen Hynes, John Mchale
After a century of Irish independence, this study constructs long run Genuine Savings estimates, a leading economic indicator of sustainable development, to reassess Irish economic history from the vantage of sustainable development. The main difference uncovered surrounds the post-1950 period where Ireland failed to achieve economic convergence and was considered an economic failure in growth terms
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Death, sex, and fertility: female infanticide in rural Spain, 1750–1950 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-11-09 Francisco J Beltrán Tapia, Francisco J Marco-Gracia
Relying on longitudinal micro data from rural Spain between 1750 and 1950, this article evidences that families mortally neglected a significant fraction of their female babies. Firstly, baptism records exhibited exceptionally high sex ratios at birth until the late nineteenth century. Secondly, having no previous male siblings increased the probability of male baptisms. Likewise, this same feature
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25th year of the European Review of Economic History Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-11-06
Note of the Editors
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A short history of the European Review of Economic History in celebration of its twenty-fifth anniversary Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-10-13 Sharp P.
Today there is no doubt that the European Review of Economic History is one of the leading journals in its field, although few could have imagined this in 1997 when the first issue was published. The European Historical Economics Society (EHES) held its first meeting in Copenhagen in July 1991 sponsored by the Danish Social Science Research Council, the Danish Society for Economic and Social History
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Income tax progressivity and inflation during the world wars Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-10-10 Sara Torregrosa-Hetland, Oriol Sabaté
This paper studies the impact of inflation on income taxes in Sweden, the UK, and the United States during the world wars. As tax reforms were rising top marginal rates and reducing exemption thresholds, extraordinary levels of inflation eroded the real value of exemptions, brackets, and deductions. The micro-simulation of actual and alternative scenarios shows that inflation made the tax less progressive
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Fiscal capacity in ‘‘responsible government’’ colonies: the Cape Colony in comparative perspective, c. 1865–1910 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-10-10 Abel Gwaindepi
This study contributes to debates on the efficacy of institutions in settler colonies by comparing the Cape Colony’s fiscal path to the experiences of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. I find that the Cape’s fiscal trajectory was divergent. Agricultural and mining taxes were important surrogates of income taxes in other colonies, but the Cape’s narrow interests pushed for insulation from direct taxes
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Spreading Clio: a quantitative analysis of the first 25 years of the European Review of Economic History Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-09-19 Martina Cioni, Giovanni Federico, Michelangelo Vasta
This paper traces the history of the first 25 years of the European Economic History Review (EREH) comparing its initial agenda with its actual publication record and measuring its success with citation data. We rely on a database of all articles published in the EREH and in the four other top field journals from 1997 to 2020. The EREH has been a great success becoming, as planned at its establishment
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Capital market development over the long run: the portfolios of UK life assurers over two centuries Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-09-16 David A Bogle, Christopher Coyle, John D Turner
What shapes and drives capital market development over the long run? In this paper, using the asset portfolios of UK life assurers, we examine the role of regulation, historical contingency, and political reactions to events on the long-run development of the UK capital market. Government response to events such as war, hegemony-secured peace, and the wider macroeconomic environment was the ultimate
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Economic growth on the periphery: estimates of GDP per capita of the Congress Kingdom of Poland (for years 1870–1912) Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-09-04 Piotr Koryś, Maciej Tymiński
This paper presents the estimates of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the Congress Kingdom of Poland for the period 1870–1912. The authors used bottom-up methodology and calculated sectoral added values using historical economic, social, and demographic data. The presented results offer first ever insight into the structure of sectoral added values in the Congress Kingdom of Poland during the period
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To the manor born: a new microlevel wage database for eighteenth-century Denmark Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-08-09 Peter Sandholt Jensen, Cristina Victoria Radu, Paul Sharp
We document and make available to the scholarly community a uniquely detailed database of 20,680 observations of wages for men, women, and children and 30,000 observations of prices from eighteenth-century rural Denmark. These microlevel data were originally collected by the Danish Price History Project but have not previously been released. To illustrate the usefulness of such data, we discuss possible
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The wild card: colonial paper money in French North America, 1685 to 1719 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-08-03 Bryan P Cutsinger, Vincent Geloso, Mathieu Bédard
We use the first French experiment with playing card money in its colony of Quebec between 1685 and 1719 to illustrate the link between legal tender restrictions and the price level. Initially, the quantity of playing card money and the government’s poor fiscal condition appears to have had little effect on prices. After 1705, however, the playing card money became inflationary. We argue that this
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Elite violence and elite numeracy in Africa from 1400 CE to 1950 CE Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-07-14 Joerg Baten, Kleoniki Alexopoulou
How can we trace early African development? The share of rulers’ known birth year has been identified as an indicator of elite numeracy in African regions since 1400, and the share of murdered rulers allows us to gain insights into interpersonal violence behaviour of African elites. From this emerges a dynamic picture of quantitative African history: the absence of elite violence and high elite numeracy
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L’histoire immobile? A reappraisal of French economic growth using the demand-side approach, 1280–1850 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-06-16 Leonardo Ridolfi, Alessandro Nuvolari
We construct a new series of GDP per capita for France for the period 1280–1850 using the demand-side approach. Our estimates point to a long-run stability of the French economy with a very gradual acceleration toward modern economic growth. In comparative perspective, our new estimates suggest that England and France were characterized by similar levels of economic performance until the second half
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Reconstructing income inequality in a colonial cash crop economy: five social tables for Uganda, 1925–1965 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-06-02 Michiel de Haas
This study contributes to an expanding literature on historical African inequality, presenting five social tables and income inequality estimates for Uganda between 1925 and 1965. I find that income inequality was mostly stable and overall low compared to other African colonies. Decomposition reveals important underlying fault lines and shifts. Income gaps between the African majority and a tiny Asian
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Erratum to: Climate change, weather shocks, and price convergence in pre-industrial Germany Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-05-31 Albers H, Pfister U.
Upon initial publication, the author requested inclusion of a second file, containing the dataset developed in the article, which was inadvertently omitted from the Supplementary data prior to publishing. The Publisher would like to apologize for any inconvenience caused to the reader and has since made the necessary corrections.
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What causes hot markets for equity IPOs? An analysis of initial public offerings in the Netherlands, 1876–2015 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-05-28 Abe de Jong, Wilco Legierse
This paper explains fluctuations in the number of initial public offerings (IPOs) between 1876 and 2015 in the Netherlands. We test an econometric model and find that the number of IPOs is strongly related to the economic growth and the size of the stock exchange. We also find that IPOs are timed to coincide with favorable market conditions. Our model explains almost 50 percent of the fluctuations
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Pandemics and regional economic growth: evidence from the Great Influenza in Italy Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-05-05 Mario F Carillo, Tullio Jappelli
We investigate the link between the 1918 Great Influenza and regional economic growth in Italy, a country in which the measures implemented by public authorities to contain the contagion were limited or ineffective. The pandemic caused 600,000 deaths in Italy: 1.2% of the population. Going from regions with the lowest mortality to those with the highest mortality is associated to a decline in per capita
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Living costs and welfare ratios in Western Europe: new estimates using a linear programming model Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-04-24 Luis Felipe Zegarra
This study provides new estimates on welfare ratios for London, Amsterdam, Paris, Strasbourg, Munich, and Leipzig for 1600–1850. I use a linear programming model to compute the basket that minimizes the food cost subject to nutrient requirements. For a balanced nutrition, I take into consideration that people should ingest not only calories and proteins, but also fat, iron, and some basic vitamins
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Cartelization and firm performance in Upper Silesia 1880–1913 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-04-23 Christian Beyer
In this article the effects of cartelization on firms’ efficiency are investigated using the example of an early twentieth century coal-mining cartel in Upper Silesia: the Upper Silesian Coal Convention. Established in 1898, the cartel comprised various types of private, as well as state-owned, mining enterprises. Using a microeconomic dataset based on firm-level data of the Upper Silesian mines, I
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Asientos as sinews of war in the composite superpower of the 16th century Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-04-08 Carlos Alvarez-Nogal, Christophe Chamley
The full analysis of the text of a contract, asiento, between Philip II of Spain and a Genoese merchant–banker details how in this pre-modern composite state, merchant–bankers acted as agents of the Crown who gathered many scattered sources of income to the Crown and transformed them into large and regular cash flows, mesadas, for the army. Because of the uncertain availability of these sources, the
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Britain’s Empire Marketing Board and the failure of soft trade policy, 1926–33 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-04-06 David M Higgins, Brian D Varian
Before 1932, Britain’s essentially free-trade policy left barely any scope for reciprocating the preferential tariffs that the Dominions applied to Britain’s exports. Thus, Britain attempted to reciprocate by means of a “soft” trade policy aimed at increasing Britain’s imports from the empire through wide-reaching publicity coordinated by the Empire Marketing Board (EMB). This article, the first econometric
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Before the cult of equity: the British stock market, 1829–1929 Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. (IF 1.706) Pub Date : 2021-03-26 Gareth Campbell, Richard S Grossman, John D Turner
We analyze the development and performance of the British equity market during the era when it reigned supreme as the largest in the world. Using an extensive monthly dataset of thousands of companies, we identify the major peaks and troughs in the market and find a relationship with the timing of economic cycles. We also show that the equity risk premium was modest and, contrary to previous research