By Luigi Oddo (University of Genoa, Department of Political Science) and Andrea Zanini (University of Genoa, Department of Economics). From the second half of the 20th century, the role of urbanization in the development process has become an extensively investigated topic. In standard urbanization models, from the pioneering studies by Lewis (1954) on urban pull […]
EHES conference: Call for papers
Call for panels and papers are now open for the next EHES conference, to be held 17-18 June 2022 in Groningen. All submissions are due by 10 January. See the official call for papers for more details about PhD bursaries and the dissertation prize here The website and submission portal are coming soon – we’ll […]
Death, sex and fertility: Female infanticide in rural Spain, 1750-1950
By Francisco J. Beltrán Tapia and (Norwegian University of Science and Technology; CEPR) and Francisco J. Marco-Gracia (University of Zaragoza; Instituto Agroalimentario de Aragón). Blog post based on the article with the same name published in the European Review of Economic History(here). Many pre-industrial societies regulated population size by resorting to infanticide and the […]
War inflation as an agent of income tax modernization
Sara Torregrosa-Hetland Oriol Sabaté The World Wars were associated with progressive tax policies in most Western countries. Top marginal income tax rates increased to unprecedented levels, while other fiscal instruments, such as excess profits taxes, were implemented during the wars to meet the extraordinary revenue needs (Scheve and Stasavage, 2016). In the income tax, […]
Fiscal capacity in ‘responsible government’ colonies: the Cape Colony in comparative perspective, 1865-1910
by Abel Gwaindepi, Lund University It has been accepted that colonists in settler colonies were willing to shoulder unusually high tax burdens to assert their self-rule and autonomy. Was this willingness to shoulder high tax burdens by the colonists generalized through the British Empire? To explore this question, I study and compare the Cape Colony’s fiscal […]
Reconstructing income inequality in a colonial cash crop economy: five social tables for Uganda, 1925–1965
Michiel de Haas (Wageningen University) Few doubt that colonialism generated new economic cleavages in African societies (Van de Walle 2009). At the same time, we know very little about the extent of such economic inequality in different African colonies and across time. In this article, I measure income inequality in Uganda, located in central-East Africa […]
L’Histoire Immobile? A Reappraisal of French Economic Growth using the Demand-Side Approach, 1280-1850.
Leonardo Ridolfi (University of Siena) and Alessandro Nuvolari (Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies) Historians interested in the study of economic performance of preindustrial societies owe a major intellectual debt to Angus Maddison. Even if by means of somewhat speculative methods, Maddison (2001) produced the first comprehensive set of estimates of GDP per capita for a […]
The Empire Marketing Board and the Failure of ‘Soft’ Trade Policy, 1926-33
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 […]