New EHES working paper Is the spread of religious communities related to economic risk? Historically, religious communities have often been the only source of support beyond the family. The social support provided by religious communities appears to be a type of informal mutual insurance especially valuable in historical agricultural societies exposed to much economic risk […]
Participative Political Institutions and City Development 800–1800
New EHES working paper Does contemporary economic development have medieval roots? Fabian Wahl is a PhD studentat University of Hohenheim Numerous studies suggest that the institutional, educational and technical innovations connected with the commercial revolution in the late medieval laid the ground for the later European Industrial Revolution. However, the late middle ages also saw […]
A Re-interpretation of UK Corporate Law and Corporate Governance before 1914
A new EHES Working paper by James Foreman-Peck and Leslie Hannah Companies were the principal institution through which investment was channelled into the nineteenth and early twentieth century economy. The close cross-country correlation of company numbers and GDP around 1910 is therefore no surprise (figure 1). In the top right of the figure are the […]
Contracts and cooperation: The relative failure of the Irish dairy industry in the late nineteenth century reconsidered
New EHES working paper Eoin McLaughlin is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at University of St. Andrews Ireland was one of the major dairying exporters on the London market in the early nineteenth century but lost its position of pre-eminence to Denmark by the close of the century. The question Henriksen, McLaughlin and Sharp seek to address is why the establishment of […]
The Heavy Plough and the Agricultural Revolution in Medieval Europe.
New EHES working paper Did the heavy plough – as suggested by Lynn White Jr. and many others – lead to economic development during the Middle Ages? This question is investigated in a new EHES working paper by Andersen, Jensen and Skovsgaard, University of Southern Denmark. Fig 1: (a) the old plough, the ard, and (b) the heavy […]
Origins of Political Change—The Case of Late Medieval Guild Revolts
New EHES working paper Fabian Wahl is a PhD student at the Universityof Hohenheim In the last decades there has been an increasing interest in the role of institutional innovations in the late medieval and early modern period for the “Rise of the West” and the “Great Divergence” between the Western countries and the rest of […]
Effects of Agricultural Productivity Shocks on Female Labor Supply: Evidence from the Boll Weevil Plague in the US South
New EHES working paper Manifested in historical accounts, songs, and family tales, the boll weevil (Anthonomus grandis), an approximately one-fourth inch long beetle with a very long snout, is considered as the most well-known agricultural pest in the American South. Anthonomus grandis Arriving near Brownsville, Texas, from Mexico in 1892, the boll weevil started to […]
Accounting for the Size of Nations: Empirical Determinants of Secessions and the Soviet Breakup
New EHES working paper The year 2014 has marked the return of secessions as a challenge to existing European states. A referendum on Scottish independence was held in September, and the regional government of Catalonia may follow suit in November. Meanwhile, Ukraine faced secessionist referenda and uprisings in a number of its regions. But why […]
How the Danes Discovered Britain: The International Integration of the Danish Dairy Industry Before 1880
New EHES working paper On the 150th anniversary of the loss of the Danish Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein to Prussia, a new EHES working paper, by Markus Lampe at Universidad Carlos III Madrid and Paul Sharp at the Historical Economics and Development Group of the University of Southern Denmark, asks whether it really was the turning point in Danish […]
New crops, local soils and urbanization: Clover, potatoes and the growth of Danish market towns, 1672-1901
How did local soil conditions affect local development historically? Evidence on this question is provided in a new EHES working paper by Torben Dall Schmidt, Peter Sandholt Jensen and Amber Naz from the University of Southern Denmark. They investigate how the introduction of clover and potatoes affected market town development. Their strategy is to apply […]