This article explores possible ways in which economic history may evolve in the foreseeable future. The author starts with a review of the evolution of the discipline in past decades, with especial attention to the influx of the cliometric revolution, and contends that the economic history is presently passing through a critical situation. To overcome it, the author makes a plea for increasing attention towards economic and institutional change, seen as topics distinctive of the long run, and for a rapprochement to development economics, growth economics, neo-institutional economics, firm theory and economics of technical change.

Small landownership had an outstanding role in determining the process of viticultural specialization that some well-defined territories known as “comarcas” experienced in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Catalonia. The net product these small landholdings yielded was not enough to safeguard the reproduction of the peasant family units closely linked to those small areas devoted to vineyards. It is for this reason that this article analyzes the different strategies these families developed in order to guarantee their reproduction, either as consumption or production units.

This article aims to analyze the territorial taxes in the province of Alicante during the Década Moderada (1844–1854). Besides a structural analysis of the territorial taxes —quota and its charges—, the sharing out of taxes among the villages of the province, as well as the individual share of taxpayers in the town of Alicante and its province will be studied. Reference to the objections from villages and individuals to the sharing out effected by the provincial and local oligarchy is therefore necessary in order to understand the political and social implications of the new tax. Such objections show the extent to which the sharing out was unfair and the resistance offered towards the taxes, which resulted in high levels of tax evasion.

In spite of the limitations of the data, the estimation of a Cuban price index for 1872–1897 offers an acceptable result, is an important contribution to its economic history and offers some replies for the controversial issue of its independence. These prices suffered a deflation process similar to the other countries and which took place much at the same time as in the US (economy to which the island was already very linked to). However, after the 1883 crisis, prices started to decrease at a much lower rate than those of sugar, causing economic losses that, given the importante of this product, can be a good approach to what indicators such as the income rate —there are not income estimations— could show. Opposite to other studies, our research has got a complementary character. It points out die necessity of enlarging the spectre of analysis of issues such as the tariff policy or the protection of Cuban market for Spanish goods, since evidence proves that the international economic system development in the 1880's and 1890's was the main economic reason for die Island's independence.

The article presents an aggregate and regional analysis of the evolution of agriculture in the Peruvian space between 1681 and 1800, using deflated tithe series. It concludes that after an initial collapse, agricultural production expanded in the XVIII century, an expansion that accelerated in the second half of the century. This increase in production was not homogeneous across regions.

Patrick O'Brien and Leandro Prados de la Escosura say they are discussing «the economic consequences of empire», but in fact they are discussing «the costs and benefits of European imperialism». This is clearer and more specific, but I fear less useful. It is clearer, since «costs and benefits» are easier to quantify, and less useful in that I do not agree that «economic consequences» are the same as, or can be reduced to, an assessment of «costs and benefits». Furthermore, as they themselves note, «counterfactual assumptions are… implicit in any attempt… to measure costs and benefits of macro economic strategies» (O'Brien & Prados, 1998, p. 31), and I shall want to argue that what we need to do is make «factual assumptions».

En términos generales los autores que se han dedicado al estudio del nacimiento del Cálculo de Probabilidades aceptan la importancia que representó la formulación del problema de la «división de las apuestas» en el origen de dicho cálculo. Como es sabido, este problema consiste en establecer una regla que permita dividir lo apostado en un juego cuando éste se interrumpe antes de que finalice. En la literatura especializada sobre los precedentes del Cálculo de Probabilidades se admite la idea de que Luca Pacioli fue el primero que formuló explícita y claramente de forma escrita el problema de la división de las apuestas. No obstante, esto no significa que sea un problema original de este autor, antes bien la hipótesis más plausible es que este problema de la división de las apuestas y otros similares sobre juegos de azar están ya presentes en el saber popular de estas sociedades cuya transmisión es de carácter oral, muchas de cuyas descripciones han llegado hasta nuestros días y otras se han perdido irremisiblemente al no haber sido recogidas por escrito en algún momento de la historia.