Investigaciones de Historia Economica最新文献

The various nineteenth-century national patent systems had a heterogeneous institutional evolution. This article explores the international determinants of this institutional diversity, using the Spanish system as a case study. Instead of presenting the causality as running from institutions to economic performance, it explores the inverse relationship, that is, how Spain's technological backwardness and dependency set the stage for the institutional organisation of this country's patent system. The international dynamics manifested in different aspects of the system: its peripheral, hybrid and dual nature; the Spanish reception of the European controversy over patent rights; the early Spanish integration into the international patent system; and the prominence of international intermediaries. The article concludes that nineteenth-century variations in the institutional architecture and the administrative practices of the various national systems were the consequence of the historical making of an asymmetric international patent system.

Almost half the calories consumed globally today derive directly from grain; of this, about a quarter comes from wheat. Thanks to international trade, wheat is widely consumed in places where its production is virtually impossible, thus making the functioning of wheat markets unique in its importance for world food security. Yet it was not always like that: in historical terms, the globalization of wheat consumption has been a relatively new phenomenon. The aim of this work is twofold. First, it identifies major trends in wheat consumption across different groups of countries from 1939 to 2010. Second, it offers an informed explanation of those trends.

One of the major ways in which economic inequality can increase is when the development of wages of ordinary workers trail productivity and GDP growth, meaning that the increasing riches fall in the hand of other social groups (top employees, owners of land and capital). This paper investigates the relationship between wages and GDP in Denmark, Norway and Sweden from 1800 to 1910, using wage series for workers in agriculture as well as crafts and industry. It shows wages trailing GDP from the 1840s to the mid-1870s, with a particularly pronounced such trend in Norway. On the other hand, wages generally increase at the same pace as GDP in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s. The early 1870s is a break point also for food real wages which start increasing at that point. Four explanations for the varying fortunes of workers are tested: price developments, population growth, emigration, and institutional changes. Variations in labour supply, stemming from population growth and emigration, are shown to be the most important determinant.

The primary purpose of this article is to measure the mortality trajectory and to determine its role in the natural increment in the population of Burgos between 1650 and 1865, stage prior to the demographic transition process in inland Spain at the beginning of the 20th century. This paper used parish registers of baptisms and burials of 55 Burgos localities together with the Population and Housing Censuses of 1752, 1787, 1857, and 1860. The most important conclusions are: (i) there were significant variations in the mortality recorded in the Old Regime; (ii) the crude death-rate tended to decline from the first half of the 18th century, and (iii) this decline contributed the registration of a stronger and positive natural increase. These results contradict the traditional historiography, which argues that there was no remarkable changes in the trajectory in the mortality in Spain during the Early Modern Age and the Contemporary Age.