This article presents three new annual indices of industrial output for Andalusia, Catalonia and the Basque Country between 1830 and 1975. The comparative analysis, the first to include the Basque Country, allows to specify the main tendencies of growth and structural change in the regions studied, two of them pioneers of the Spanish industrialization, Andalusia clearly left behind. The analysis highlights as well the changes operated in the composition of their respective industrial products and, with them, the different regional paths, going from specialization to the manufacturing diversification, followed during the 19th and 20th centuries.

I Los reinados de los dos primeros Austrias españoles se encuentran cuajados de intentos y esfuerzos por dotar de más eficacia y control a la gestión financiera de la Corona, superando los inconvenientes de la gran dispersión y desparramamiento del aparato hacendístico, no menos grave, a estos efectos, que la corruptión propia de la época y que la falta de un funcionariado organizado y eficiente.

Aunque algunos de estos intentos alcanzaron resultados más o menos positivos, no puede uno evitar, sin embargo, una leve sensación de punzante patetismo al asomarse a todo este contexto, a este incesante y angustioso ir y venir de los monarcas en pos de unos frutos que sólo cosechaban en medida parca y desproporcionada. Pero su urgencia era grande, y la necesidad de más y más fondos para financiar su política de liderazgo europeo les forzaba a la instrumentación de nuevos arbitrios y a una mejor canalización y administratión de los fondos recaudados.

This work aims to evaluate the extent of State intervention in the process of the redefinition of property rights. By studying the evolution of municipal woodlands in Extremadura, my main objective is to analyse the two mechanisms of intervention in the area of publicly held property: the definitive privatisation of property and the technical inspection of production. Even if we play down the effect of legislation, the present investigation confirms the full success of the privatisation formula employed in the Sapnish Southwest. State control over production, however, was far less efficient. Precisely in this area we can see how difficult it is for the State to enforce a comprehensively policy throghout its territory.

La industria del cemento artificial portland constituye un caso típico de oligopolio en todos los países en los que está implantada. Se trata, quizá, del ejemplo más socorrido que encuentran los autores de tratados de economía. Por su propia naturaleza —canteras, inversión de capital fijo, costes variables modestos—, este sector está compuesto por un corto número de fabricantes.

Using social tables and modern household surveys, this article explores Brazil's income distribution from a historical perspective (1850-2010), examining its relationship with economic development and the factors driving inequality changes. It shows that Brazil's inequality was not always high, but rather followed a Kuznets curve, increasing from the early 20th century, reaching a high plateau between the 1970s and 1990s and declining thereafter. Notably, results highlight the importance of both economic and political factors for enabling the completion of the second Kuznets curve phase.

Most of the Catalan vineyards were cultivated by means of sharecropping contracts that granted the sharecropper ownership rights over the land. This paper maintains that the “bundle of rights” view of property is not the most appropriate for analysing situations of this kind. It shows that, from around 1900 onwards, sharecroppers’ rights became insecure, which gave rise to a series of dysfunctions that resulted in the contract no longer being optimal. It concludes that the removal of the inefficiencies arising from shared ownership was a sufficient reason to justify the agrarian reform that the Catalan Parliament sought to introduce in 1934.

This paper presents a new dataset of enrolment rates and grade distribution ratios (GDR) in Brazil between 1933 and 2010, in addition to enrolment rates and GDR of Brazilian states from 1955 to 2010. To our knowledge, there are no previous estimates of enrolment rates by states for such a long period in Brazil. Enrolment rates and GDR in northern and north-eastern states were meagre and comparable to the lowest Latin American performers, and even the most advanced Brazilian states lagged behind the early leaders of the region, such as Argentina and Uruguay, until the turn of the century. Given a certain enrolment rate, Brazilian states were expected to present lower GDR compared to Latin American countries on average.

The quantitative and comparative analysis of Spanish and Portuguese cork exportations during the 20th century shows that Spain lost its leading position in the world trade of transformed cork while Portugal rose to claim first place. This article takes a step towards identifying the institutional aspects behind the different paths taken by the cork business in the two countries between 1930 and 1975. Starting with a comparative analysis of the legal framework and economic policies which had an impact on the various branches of business during the two Iberian dictatorships, it is argued that Salazar and Franco attributed different degrees of importance to the cork sector. It concludes that these institutional aspects explain a part of the loss of competitiveness of Spanish exports in comparison with Portuguese exports, insofar as they influenced the extent to which the two economies participated in international trade flows as well as production costs in the industry.

Taking as an example the island of Mallorca, the authors identify the different socioenvironmental, institutional and economic factors that influenced the feudal colonization of this island in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This study also suggests, by comparing this case with others, that the petrification of the late medieval agrarian structures introduced a sort of path dependence which favoured certain patterns of development to the detriment of others.

Rice was one of the crops that improved agricultural yields under the restrictive conditions of the mediterranean world. However the expansion of its cultivation demanded deep changes in the use of water and new forms of government intervention because of the sanitary effects of the crop. The introduction of rice in the existent agrarian structures was not easy. However it facilitated the use of difficult agrarian areas such as the Valencián Albufera, the delta of the Ebro and the Marismas of the Guadalquivir. From the second half of the XIX century rice production had to adapt to the competition of the Asian countries. This was done through the intensification of the production under high and protective tariffs. The paper shows that the Spanish yields were among the highest in the world in the XX century.

The economic history of the Spanish Second Republic has received a big impulse in the last years, but new research is still required. In the present work we approach the behaviour of the Spanish banking system between 1930 and 1935 on the basis of the new theories on credit rationing. The conclusions support a supply side interpretation of the fall in the avalaible amount of credit.

James Simpson ha escrito un interesante artículo sobre las tendencias del consumo de alimentos y de la producción agraria (en el núm. VII, 2, de esta Revista). Uno de los aspectos más destacables del mismo es la audacia conque Simpson aborda el espinoso problema de la medición indirecta del producto de la agricultura ante la ausencia de fuentes homologables a los diezmos o a las modernas estadísticas. Comparto con él el interés por conocer las grandes líneas de la evolución del sector agrario a lo largo del siglo xix, pues, de otro modo, resultará difícil establecer conjetura razonable alguna sobre el cambio económico en el conjunto de la economía española. Mi réplica a su artículo la suscita, sin embargo, el desacuerdo con el método indirecto propuesto para reconstruir las tendencias de la producción agraria, así como conlos resultados derivados de éste.

This paper proposes a new interpretation for a main issue of modern Spanish monetary history. The Spanish legal monetary system became bimetallist, as result of the Figuerola Decree, in 1868. The bimetallist system in force throughout the XIXth Century allowed the Bank of Spain, as the Bank of France did, pay its notes with silver, gold or both. As a result there was neither an inconvertibility declaration, nor any imaginary gold standard was abandoned in 1883. Law and legal practice always guaranteed convertibility of the peseta, that can't be identified only with gold exchange. In Spain there was never a suspension of tender notes convertibility such as in Italy, Portugal, Austria or France.

This article analyzes the extent to which fiscal policy has contributed to the industrialization of Spain over the last two centuries. Spanish governments have traditionally placed excessive emphasis on policies of economic regulation but at the same time, they have failed to provide a suitable level of merit and public goods. Recurrent budget deficits were always financed by inflationary means, which did nothing to promote economic growth. In clear contrast with public expenditures, the system of taxation which prevailed until 1978, meant that there was not much of a tax burden. This allowed for a level of savings, and potential investment, which was conducive to industrialization.

In 1940, the Portuguese government approved a massive primary school construction plan that projected a 60 per cent increase in the number of primary schools. Based on the collection of a new dataset, we describe literacy levels in Portugal prior to the plan as well as the plan's strategy regarding the location of schools. We then estimate the causal impact of the increase in the number of schools between 1940 and the early 60s on enrolment and literacy, all at the county level. We conclude the increase in the number of schools was responsible for 80 per cent of the increase in enrolment and 13 per cent of the increase in the literacy rate of the affected cohorts.

This paper explains the so-called «Spanish railways problem» as a consequence of the new competition that this traditional mean of transport suffered from the rapid development of the automobile industry. Road transportation more than any other factor was the cause of the financial difficulties of the railways companies before the Civil War. We also study the reaction of these firms and the failures of all measures that were taken.

This article provides the first series of adult male height for 19th-century Chile. Our aim was not only to assess the trends indicated by height during this period, but also the relationship between stature and both GDP per capita and exports. Having analysed our data, our primary conclusion is that there was a reduction in height for cohorts born in the 1850s and 1860s with respect to cohorts born between 1820 and 1840. Height stagnated thereafter, with small to no improvement towards the end of the 19th century, in line with other Latin American countries for which there is comparable evidence. The increase in per capita GDP and exports during the second half of the century did not result in better biological welfare, as was the case in other Latin American countries during similar export booms.

Writing on the eve of one of the major transformations in the British Empire, Adam Smith more or less repeated the remark made by the Abbé Raynal several years earlier that «the discovery of America, and that of passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind»l. Both of these great events of the 1490's, Columbus's discovery of the Americas and the sailing to India, a few years later, by Vasco de Gama, had no immediate impact on the British economy, but the opening up of this wider world for colonization and trading would soon have profound impacts on Britain and the other nations of Western Europe. In the same decade Britain, however, did make its first claim to New World territory, when John Cabot landed on Newfoundland in 1497, but it was to be about a century before title was clear and setdement begun. Not the first to establish an empire, the British rose to world-wide dominance over the course of the next three centuries.

The essential aims of this article are: (1) to measure the magnitude of the crisis of 1803-1805 in the two Castiles; (2) to analyse the causes and consequences of this crisis. Among the main conclusions of this essay we would like to underline: (a) the 1803-1805 crisis led to a fall in the population of Castile of about 15 per cent; (b) the severe rise in the price of grains in those years was due to the bad harvests and the sparse working capacity of the municipal grain stores, but more than anything else it was the collapse of the market for this produce as a result of the prohibition of removing grain; (c) government measures to deal with the crisis were numerous and relatively bold, but not very effective; (d) the strong mobilisation of the people disrupted the working of some of the basic institutions of the Ancien Régime.

Perfecta la concordancia entre las curvas de los precios del trigo y del pan. No podía ser de otra manera: los dos asuntos están estrechamente relacionados, y subidas de precios y bruscas depresiones se repiten al mismo compás, excepto en contadas fechas.

La tónica general es una tendencia más acusada que la de los precios del trigo al acercarse al valor central de la serie durante el período 1680–1755, lo que significa que las oscilaciones del precio del pan son menos violentas en el sentido de que las diferencias entre mínimos y máximos arrojan saldos inferiores en sus valores a los correspondientes entre los cereales. Estamos, pues, ante lo que se puede considerar como un éxito del Pósito: haber evitado los grandes desequilibrios cíclicos o coyunturales de los productos de primera necesidad.