We study the effects of domestic conflict and external shocks on Spanish trade policy in the interwar period. Our account mobilizes a new granular dataset on exports and imports, and good-country level information on tariffs, trade agreements, and quotas. Into the Depression, the mainstay of policy was the tariff. The establishment of the Second Republic in 1931 was a turning point in policymaking. The new regime initiated bilateral trade negotiations. The Republic’s dilemma was to find countries willing to exchange market access. In a daunting international environment, the Spanish case offers a poignant reminder of the perils of going against the grain.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, a handful of societies began creating and enforcing impersonal rules, rules that treat everyone the same, on a broad scale. The existing institutional literatures, while appreciating the importance of impersonal rules for the rule of law, have not understood how they contribute to economic and political development through rules that are enforced but not followed: default rules. The conceptual importance of impersonal default rules is drawn out and then applied to better understand both economic and political development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In 1719, French commander Jean-Baptiste Benard, Sieur de la Harpe, together with nine men, ventured into the Prairie Plains, a region previously unvisited by Europeans, to establish trading alliances with the Plains Indians. His journey took him to what is now eastern Oklahoma, where his men spent ten days at an Indian village interacting with peoples of various tribes who later merged into the Wichita tribe. The village was the principal home of the Tawakoni, the most powerful of the Wichita-related tribes. In La Harpe's Post, George H. Odell documents the initial contact between La Harpe's party and these peoples, thereby potentially adding a crucial chapter to the history of the Plains Indians during the early eighteenth century. The information regarding the native population is considered the most significant consequence from this event. Odell takes much of his information from findings obtained during an excavation of the presumed site of the Tawakoni village. Odell ambitiously uses this information to write a reevaluation of the general history of the eastern Plains during this period. The technical aspects of the archeological research, such as the excavation data and statistical analyses, are located in 11 appendixes, as his book is intended for a wide audience.

These two books have one element in common, the International Monetary Fund. For the rest, they differ in virtually every dimension. James Boughton, Assistant Director of the fund's Policy Development and Review Department, writes a colossal history of the institution for the period 1979–1989; his insider's perspective is inherently sympathetic to the institution and its main actors. Paul Blustein, a financial journalist of the Washington Post, describes the fund's handling of the financial crises of 1997–1999 in Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, Russia, and Brazil; as an outsider, he has no institutional allegiance and, as a matter of fact, his assessment of the fund is negative. There are other differences, to be sure: Boughton's is a heavily researched history, rich not only in institutional knowledge but also in theories and policy debates; Blustein's focuses almost exclusively on the policy aspect. Boughton relies primarily on archival material, whereas Blustein on interviews with key policy makers, both inside and outside the fund. Boughton writes for an audience of economists and policy makers, Blustein for the educated but unspecialized. Boughton's work reads like a treatise, Blustein's like a novel.