By David M. Higgins and Brian Varian Can a country with a free-trade policy also pursue a preferential trade policy? In the 1920s, Britain tried. Britain’s Empire Marketing Board (EMB) was created in 1926 to extend a non-tariff preference to imports from the empire by means a widespread publicity campaign. As we find, the EMB’s campaign […]
YSI Economic History Graduate Webinar, Spring 2021
Dear all, We are launching a third YSI Economic History Graduate Webinar this Spring. In previous editions we provided a platform for young researchers to present their ongoing work and get feedback from senior scholars. The online format made exchanges from people from different regions and research areas possible, offering early stage researchers an important venue […]
Optimism or pessimism? A composite view on English living standards during the Industrial Revolution
By Daniel Gallardo Albarrán (Wageningen University, @DanielGalAlb) and Herman de Jong (Groningen University) blog post based on the article, “Optimism or pessimism? A composite view on English living standards during the Industrial Revolution “, available on EHER here. Introduction The consequences of industrialization for the living standards of the mass of the population have been intensively […]
Changing Places: The Spatial Dispersion of U.S. Manufacturing during the 20th Century
Nicholas Crafts and Alexander Klein We provide new estimates of changes in the spatial concentration of U.S. manufacturing from 1880 to 2007. The average level across all industries fell by more than half over the period. Creative destruction has had a strong spatial component which eroded the manufacturing belt and when compounded by globalization left […]
Intergenerational mobility: what about the daughters?
by Vincent Delabastita*^ and Erik Buyst* *Department of Economics, KU Leuven^Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) blog post based on the article, “Intergenerational mobility of sons and daughters: evidence from nineteenth-century West Flanders”, now available on EHER early view here Research of the intergenerational transmission of socio-economic attainment has long had a restrictive focus on the relationship […]
Comparing Income and Wealth Inequality in Pre-Industrial Economies: the case of Castile (Spain), c. 1750
by Esteban Nicolini and Fernando Ramos-Palencia (@framospalencia) blog post based on the article, “Comparing income and wealth inequality in pre-industrial economies: the case of Castile (Spain) in the eighteenth century”, available on EHER early view here. Our knowledge of the evolution of economic inequality within countries in pre-industrial Europe has expanded considerably in the […]
Call for submissions: FIFTH EREH FAST TRACK MEETING, December 2020.
The previous fast track meetings were held in 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2017 in Paris, Lisbon and London, organized by the European Historical Economics Society and the editors of the European Review of Economic History. They resulted in the publication of several high-quality papers in the European Review of Economic History. The idea of the […]
The Past’s Long Shadow: Network analysis of Economic History
Author: Gregori Galofré-Vilà (Postdoctoral Researcher at Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Barcelona Institute of Political Economy and Governance). This column uses network analysis to review the development of economic history over the last 40 years. It shows how economic historians are interconnected through their research, which scholars are most cited by their peers, and the main […]
Secular stagnation and the global surge in house prices
by Julius Probst The decline in global real interest rates Back in 2013, Larry Summers started to believe that most advanced economies have entered a new macroeconomic regime, a prolonged period of lower economic growth as a result of insufficient aggregate demand. In a recent piece, I argued that Summers’ revival of the secular stagnation […]
Sex ratios and missing girls in 19th-century Greece
By Francisco J. Beltrán Tapia and Michail Raftakis The “missing girls” phenomenon, arising from discriminatory practices that result in excess female mortality early in life, has been especially dramatic in China and India. Analyzing sex ratios, the number of boys per hundred girls, in 19th-century Europe, recent researchsuggests that these practices could have also been […]