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 imply low and declining standards of living over the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In comparison with Europe, these real wages represent comparatively low living standards, and they were not much above those in Japan.
{"title":"After da Gama: real wages in Western India, c. 1500–c. 1650","authors":"Helder Carvalhal, Jan Lucassen, Pim De Zwart","doi":"10.1093/ereh/head026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/head026","url":null,"abstract":"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 imply low and declining standards of living over the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In comparison with Europe, these real wages represent comparatively low living standards, and they were not much above those in Japan.","PeriodicalId":51703,"journal":{"name":"European Review of Economic History","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138534215","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Francisco J Beltrán Tapia, Alfonso Díez-Minguela, Alicia Gómez-Tello, Julio Martinez-Galarraga, Daniel A Tirado-Fabregat
Abstract This article analyses the relationship between institutions and human capital formation. We use literacy rates in 1860 at the municipal level in Valencia where the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609 was followed by the Christian resettlement. Our findings show that male literacy was consistently lower in Morisco areas by mid-19th century. Yet, the analysis also shows the disappearance of this effect at the beginning of the 20th century. We argue that the deployment of the liberal state would have entailed the gradual decoupling of educational outcomes from the institutional heterogeneity characteristic of the Old Regime.
{"title":"Local institutions and human capital formation in pre-industrial societies: evidence from Valencia","authors":"Francisco J Beltrán Tapia, Alfonso Díez-Minguela, Alicia Gómez-Tello, Julio Martinez-Galarraga, Daniel A Tirado-Fabregat","doi":"10.1093/ereh/head022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/head022","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article analyses the relationship between institutions and human capital formation. We use literacy rates in 1860 at the municipal level in Valencia where the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609 was followed by the Christian resettlement. Our findings show that male literacy was consistently lower in Morisco areas by mid-19th century. Yet, the analysis also shows the disappearance of this effect at the beginning of the 20th century. We argue that the deployment of the liberal state would have entailed the gradual decoupling of educational outcomes from the institutional heterogeneity characteristic of the Old Regime.","PeriodicalId":51703,"journal":{"name":"European Review of Economic History","volume":"50 10","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135431830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gino Luzzatto Prize by the European Historical Economics Society for the best dissertation in economic history submitted between June 2019 and June 2021—Summaries of the finalists’ PhD theses","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/ereh/head023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/head023","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51703,"journal":{"name":"European Review of Economic History","volume":"30 1-2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135566779","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This study presents new urban and rural annual wage series for the South of Italy before the unification. The use of annual wages overcomes the intrinsic biases of daily wages and mirrors the effective living standards of unskilled workers making regional comparisons more reliable. The comparisons with existing analogous series for the centre and the north of the country show a divide at the time of Italy’s unification in line with the majoritarian view expressed in earlier studies. However, unexpected convergence trends emerge at the urban level, mostly before 1840. Instead, rural areas consistently displayed divergence that has been worsening since 1850.
{"title":"Annual wages in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from 1800 to 1860 and the beginning of the Italian regional divide","authors":"Francesco M S Fiore Melacrinis","doi":"10.1093/ereh/head021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/head021","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This study presents new urban and rural annual wage series for the South of Italy before the unification. The use of annual wages overcomes the intrinsic biases of daily wages and mirrors the effective living standards of unskilled workers making regional comparisons more reliable. The comparisons with existing analogous series for the centre and the north of the country show a divide at the time of Italy’s unification in line with the majoritarian view expressed in earlier studies. However, unexpected convergence trends emerge at the urban level, mostly before 1840. Instead, rural areas consistently displayed divergence that has been worsening since 1850.","PeriodicalId":51703,"journal":{"name":"European Review of Economic History","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135132986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The paper summarizes my dissertation, submitted to the Geneva Graduate Institute. I constructed a novel database of the currency composition of European foreign exchange reserves during the Bretton Woods period, from central banks’ archives. The first paper studies the determinants of the composition of the foreign exchange portfolios. The second paper compares the British pound’s international role in Europe and the sterling area. I argue that its persistence as a reserve currency was due to threats and economic sanctions. The final paper focuses on 19th Bank of France, and shows that data was used as collateral at the discount window.
{"title":"Essays in monetary history","authors":"Maylis Avaro","doi":"10.1093/ereh/head018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/head018","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The paper summarizes my dissertation, submitted to the Geneva Graduate Institute. I constructed a novel database of the currency composition of European foreign exchange reserves during the Bretton Woods period, from central banks’ archives. The first paper studies the determinants of the composition of the foreign exchange portfolios. The second paper compares the British pound’s international role in Europe and the sterling area. I argue that its persistence as a reserve currency was due to threats and economic sanctions. The final paper focuses on 19th Bank of France, and shows that data was used as collateral at the discount window.","PeriodicalId":51703,"journal":{"name":"European Review of Economic History","volume":"105 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134951440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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 provided a third layer of insurance for peasants operating in traditional agrarian economies, distinct from and in addition to crop diversification at the farm level and risk sharing through tenancy contracts at the estate level. Spatial diversification increased production costs, particularly transportation costs. Therefore, the price of this form of insurance (and the likelihood of its adoption) depended critically on rural settlement patterns. We test our model with data from Italy in the 1930s, when intercropping still prevailed in many areas of the country. We show that its adoption was positively related to the pattern of scattered dwellings that dated back to the late Middle Ages and reduced transportation costs to individual plots. The mass exodus from the countryside during the economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s made intercropping no longer viable.
{"title":"Risk management in traditional agriculture: intercropping in Italian wine production","authors":"G. Federico, Pablo Martinelli Lasheras","doi":"10.1093/ereh/head017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/head017","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 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 provided a third layer of insurance for peasants operating in traditional agrarian economies, distinct from and in addition to crop diversification at the farm level and risk sharing through tenancy contracts at the estate level. Spatial diversification increased production costs, particularly transportation costs. Therefore, the price of this form of insurance (and the likelihood of its adoption) depended critically on rural settlement patterns. We test our model with data from Italy in the 1930s, when intercropping still prevailed in many areas of the country. We show that its adoption was positively related to the pattern of scattered dwellings that dated back to the late Middle Ages and reduced transportation costs to individual plots. The mass exodus from the countryside during the economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s made intercropping no longer viable.","PeriodicalId":51703,"journal":{"name":"European Review of Economic History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47895857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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 lowered operating costs. The latter was crucial and depended on elites with philanthropic and practical considerations, who housed, staffed, and funded help banks at modest costs. This mix provides guidance to small-scale lenders, including microcredit institutions, to address funding gaps and tailor their services.
{"title":"Lending a hand: help banks in the Netherlands, 1848–1898","authors":"Amaury de Vicq, Christiaan van Bochove","doi":"10.1093/ereh/head015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/head015","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 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 lowered operating costs. The latter was crucial and depended on elites with philanthropic and practical considerations, who housed, staffed, and funded help banks at modest costs. This mix provides guidance to small-scale lenders, including microcredit institutions, to address funding gaps and tailor their services.","PeriodicalId":51703,"journal":{"name":"European Review of Economic History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47077404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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. Qualitative evidence suggests that a superior capacity to influence behavior in communities mattered more than treatment or medical knowledge in the pre-biomedical context. Doctors consequently advocated for the hiring of more nurses. Their estimated contribution to mortality decline still remained modest.
{"title":"Nurses, doctors, and mortality: the effectiveness of early health professionals in rural Finland, 1880–1938","authors":"Sakari Saaritsa, Eero Simanainen, Markus Ristola","doi":"10.1093/ereh/head011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/head011","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 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. Qualitative evidence suggests that a superior capacity to influence behavior in communities mattered more than treatment or medical knowledge in the pre-biomedical context. Doctors consequently advocated for the hiring of more nurses. Their estimated contribution to mortality decline still remained modest.","PeriodicalId":51703,"journal":{"name":"European Review of Economic History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45961460","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract 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 did not fall, if foregone earnings during the voyage are included, the total cost declined until the early 1900s, and especially so when measured in terms of the number of weeks’ work.
{"title":"Time on the crossing: emigrant voyages across the Atlantic, 1853–1913","authors":"Timothy J Hatton","doi":"10.1093/ereh/head014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/head014","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract 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 did not fall, if foregone earnings during the voyage are included, the total cost declined until the early 1900s, and especially so when measured in terms of the number of weeks’ work.","PeriodicalId":51703,"journal":{"name":"European Review of Economic History","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135937365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract 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). The results are interpreted using narrative evidence and data from previous studies. The findings reveal that Spanish debt was unsustainable between 1850 and 1902 while the debt restructuring of Raimundo Fernández Villaverde made the Spanish public debt sustainable from 1902.
{"title":"Was Spanish debt sustainable: a debt sustainability analysis between 1850 and 1913","authors":"Roldan Alba","doi":"10.1093/ereh/head020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/head020","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract 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). The results are interpreted using narrative evidence and data from previous studies. The findings reveal that Spanish debt was unsustainable between 1850 and 1902 while the debt restructuring of Raimundo Fernández Villaverde made the Spanish public debt sustainable from 1902.","PeriodicalId":51703,"journal":{"name":"European Review of Economic History","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135162574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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