I reconsider the growth of Western Europe during the Golden Age of European Economic Growth after the Second World War. The preceding thirty years of conflict and depression impeded the normal path of industrialisation in these countries, and they had too much labour in agriculture for their level of income and stage of development at the end of the war. The disequilibrium added to other more ordinary forces to produce unusually rapid economic growth. This hypothesis explains the speed of economic growth during the Golden Age, differences between growth rates in these years, and the end of this historical episode.

Some world historians attach globalisation ‘big bang’ significance to 1492 and 1498. Such scholars are on the side of Adam Smith who believed that these were the two most important events in recorded history. Other world historians insist that globalisation stretches back even earlier. There is a third view which argues that the world economy was fragmented and completely de-globalised before the early nineteenth century. None of these three competing views has distinguished explicitly between trade expansion driven by booming import demand or export supply, and trade expansion driven by the integration of markets between trading economies. This article makes that distinction, and shows that there is no evidence supporting the view that the world economy was globally integrated prior to the 1490s; there is also no evidence supporting the view that this decade had the trading impact that world historians assign to it; but there is abundant evidence supporting the view that a very big globalisation bang took place in the 1820s.

‘The year 1500 marks an important turning point in world history . . . The European discoveries made the oceans of the earth into highways for their commerce . . .’ William H. McNeill 1999, p. 295.

At the end of the nineteenth century some of the less developed countries of Southern Europe often faced major problems when they sought to increase their exports of primary products. Such problems were a consequence of the tariff policies implemented by a number of their trading partners. In this article we analyse the case of the Spanish exports of ordinary table wine during the period 1890–1935. The expansion of wine production outside Europe meant that some countries in the American continent raised their tariffs to protect national production, which caused serious damage to exporters. Much more serious was the discriminatory trade policy initiated by France in 1891 which gave priority to the tariff-free importing of Algerian wine, as against the high tariffs that had to be paid by other exporters. This policy, as well as protecting French production, aimed to support her colonial policy in Algeria and seriously affected Spanish exports, as shown by our data and the econometric analysis we have carried out. The Spanish response resulted in a greater penetration of other European markets, thanks to the competitiveness of Spanish wine, but this did not prevent a serious crisis in the sector.

In this article we investigate the relationship between structural change – defined as the distribution of value added between the industrial branches – and transformation pressure in Swedish industry 1870–1993. The objective is to investigate signs of a change in this relationship during the 1970s. Quite surprisingly, the investigation showed the change occurred in the early 1950s. The rate of structural change is estimated by using an angle measure and is then compared with the dispersion of gross profit shares (GPS) between nine branches of Swedish industry. The dispersion of GPS is used as an indicator of the transformation pressure. A good correlation was present until the early 1950s, when a change in the relationship between GPS dispersion and actual structural change was observed. Furthermore, we suggest that the change in the relationship may be understood either as the result of institutional factors affecting the resource allocation or as an outcome of growth itself, supported by the hypothesis that a higher capital intensity led to market concentration and natural barriers to entry, possibly reinforced by a higher degree of specialisation

Everyone in the profession knows Angus Maddison. He has written dozens of books and articles on a myriad of issues, and, above all, three books (Maddison 1982, 1991 and 1995) which rank among the major modern interpretations of long-term economic growth. His books, however, stand out even within this literature because of their Statistical Appendices. They contain the most comprehensive data set available on historical trends in GDP (and on much else), and thus, they have become in all likelihood the most quoted books in economic history and perhaps in economics as well. In fact, his latest book (Maddison 2001) is hailed by Paul Krugman as ‘an essential reference for anyone interested in global economic development for many years’ (www.sourceOECD.org). Maddison sets out to accomplish three main tasks: (1) To revise and update to 1998 the data for the ‘industrial’ period (after 1820); (2) To present comprehensive estimates for pre-industrial times, since 0 AD (so the subtitle is not boastful at all); and (3) To explore the main causes of long-term trends.