Employing DEA productivity analysis and the Malmquist index, this article investigates the productivity differences and its sources across a set of banks during the last years of the liberal era of the Spanish banking system (1900–1914), which was characterised by major qualitative and quantitative changes in the banking industry. We find evidence of an overall increase in efficiency consequence of increasing competition across banks. Also, our estimates suggest that differences in productivity could serve to explain, at least in part, the subsequent evolution of the different regional banking groups.

Se van a analizar las características y consecuencias de los préstamos a los agricultores (la mayoría viñadores) de la región sita al este de Málaga, donde el cultivo de la vid llegó a ser en muchas localidades casi dominante.

Las fuentes utilizadas han sido 659 contratos de obligación de una muestra de pueblos de la zona1; dada la importancia económica de Málaga y Vélez-Málaga, principalmente los escribanos se concentraban en ellas y, por esto, es mayor el número de elementos muéstrales pertenecientes a esos lugares. De entre los préstamos analizados hemos excluido aquellos en los que expresamente no consta que eran para labores de sus viñas o tierras, por considerar que no son para este fin; así, se han desechado los 43.035 reales que debía A. Canga, de Málaga, a F. Hoppe2, o los 15.000 que prestó Andrea Benturo, de Málaga, a Miguel Criado, de la misma…3. Por último, señalar que con este trabajo no damos por concluido el tema, que pensamos seguir profundizando en base a las contabilidades privadas, si podemos disponer de ellas.

In the 1940s, when the governor of Puerto Rico was still appointed by the U.S. president, a large state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector was established. Later, in 1948-1950, the island's first elected government privatised these SOEs. This paper documents both the creation of the SOE sector and its privatisation, and analyses the role played by ideology, political interests and economic concerns in the decision to privatise. Whereas ideological factors might have played a significant role in the building of the SOE sector, the privatisation process was driven by economic factors. In the cement sector, the competing private firm was more efficient and the SOEs in other sectors with no private competitors in the island showed permanent losses.

Con motivo de la elaboratión de mi tesis doctoral, me vi obligado, dada la época que la misma abarca —primera mitad del siglo XVII— a aplicar, bastante a menudo, el premio de la plata a las valoraciones de bienes reflejadas en moneda de vellón en los inventarios.

La documentatión no siempre precisa el premio vigente en los momentos del aprecio. Por ello, en ausencia de este dato, hube de recurrir a una fuente complementaria para salvar los problemas de bimetalismo y consideré oportuno utilizar, con este motivo, las tablas elaboradas por Hamilton en dos de sus obras capitales, corroborando, a través del trabajo, la coincidencia entre las mencionadas tablas de Hamilton y los premios señalados en la documentatión notarial, como puede comprobarse en el cuadro y la gráfica adjunta.

Celebro que nuestros artículos hayan despertado el interés que evidencia la réplica de Valdaliso, aunque siento que a éste su lectura le haya «dejado un tanto insatisfecho». No voy a decir que el sentimiento sea recíproco, aunque eso no significa, desde luego, que esté de acuerdo con todo lo que él dice. ¿Cómo voy a estarlo, si dedica gran parte de su artículo a meterse conmigo?

El breve espacio de un artículo obliga siempre a efectuar una selección. Teniendo esto en cuenta, me parece muy bien que Valdaliso, en el suyo, mencione autores y corrientes que nosotros habíamos omitido en los nuestros, pero disiento en que se tome omisión como sinónimo de deficiencia: soy perfectamente consciente de haber efectuado una selección —así lo advertía, por ejemplo (Coll, 1991, 264) al aclarar, subrayando las palabras, que el panorama ofrecido no era exhaustivo, y lo manifestaba desde el propio título del artículo—, pero no comparto la idea de que tal selección está mal hecha, o al menos tan mal hecha como supone nuestro crítico.

After pointing out the problems involving the making of historic time series of economic aggregates, the main estimates of Spanish national income are described, indicating shortcomings and disparities. Prof. Prados de la Escosura's work is thoroughly analyzed. Taking into account two more recent works on national income in contemporary Spain, the author stresses the need both to contrast data, methods and findings in any attempt to quantify the past, and to establish checks on the validity of these data.

En su Riqueza de las Naciones, Adam Smith ilustra frecuentemente los principios generales que, según él, explican el acontecer económico con los ejemplos más. variados. De ahí que su monumental obra puede considerarse un verdadero tratado de historia económica, en el que se analizan aspectos de las economías de la China, el Perú, Japón, Francia, España y Rusia, entre otras. Tampoco Buenos Aires y la economía del Plata escaparon a su examen. Pero antes de exponer sus ideas sobre la economía pampeana, daremos unas breves indicaciones sobre la fuente que permitió que Smith conociese algunos datos importantes sobre esa remota región de la Corona española.

El presente trabajo pretende, por una parte, destacar la extraordinaria importancia que alcanzó el mercado negro de productos agrarios en la post-guerra y sus repercusiones sobre los distintos grupos sociales. Por otra, se intenta resaltar la labor de ocultación y manipulatión realizada por los responsables de las estadísticas agrarias, así como la insuficiencia de las investiga-ciones llevadas a Cabo para subsanar estos problemas. Finalmente, se intenta mostrar cuales son actualmente las tareas más urgentes a realizar y las posibles vías para desarrollarlas.

This article studies the dynamics of exports from the Argentine Litoral to Buenos Aires between 1783 and 1850. A quantitative analysis of the litoral's commerce enables us to state that exports grew faster after independence than during the colonial period, as did die «litoraleña» economy as a whole. As a result, the region experienced a successful transition from the colonial period to independence.

El fin que nos proponemos con este trabajo es el de hacer una contribución crítica a una serie de hipótesis y afirmaciones que sobre la problemática de la invasión de los viñedos españoles por la filoxera, la crisis vinícola de la segunda mitad del siglo xix y la crisis agraria generalizada a toda España por la misma época se vienen haciendo en publicaciones, alguna de ellas muy recientes.

Sería ilusorio tratar de apresar todo el amplio espectro de estas cuestiones dentro del estrecho marco de una ponencia. Debido a ello nos limitaremos a entrar tan sólo en un par de temas que consideramos tan decisivos como indicativos del resto, y que resultan ser los más fructíferos de cara a sucesivas investigaciones que pudieran permitir elaborar una verdadera síntesis.

This article examines the evolution of trade exchange between Spain and Cuba from 1878 to 1898, the variations in the volume and composition of the transactions and their effect on Spanish and Cuban economies as a whole, reviewing the impact of peninsular exports on the colonial market. The conclusions point to an instrumental overvaluation of Antillas' mercantile domination aiming to obtain adventages in Spain's commercial policy, which nevertheless helped to foster an awareness of dependence on the eve of the war of independence.

The importance of political institutions in the economic performance of developing countries is generally overlooked. Argentine economic development in the 19th and early 20th centuries relied on the production of rural exports. The production structure in agriculture was supported by the widespread use of tenancy contracts. This paper uses spatial analysis and logistic regression to study the role of Congress in shaping tenancy legislation for the period 1912 to 1943. The finding is that legislative reform was a product of how political institutions worked in Congress providing veto power to Conservatives over the proposals of Radicals. Electoral fraud in the 1930s stopped tenancy legislation and gave rise to revolutionary changes in the 1940s.

Over the last few years, the idea that some of the central problems of Latin American development are a consequence of the excessive power of the elites has regained influence. Nevertheless, this neoinstitutionalist approach has been criticized because of its excessive determinism and the fact that it doesn’t pay enough attention to the periods when elite’s power was eroded. The present paper analyzes one of these cases, which occurred in Chile between 1913 and 1973. The income share of the top 1% is used as a proxy for the elite’s power. New quantitative evidence on incomes for different groups –the 1% and wage earners– is integrated into an analytic narrative on the conflictive relation between the elite and other political and social actors.

This paper analyses the mechanisms through which capital flows produced financial instability in Spain over a 165-year period. We study why and how capital bonanzas make crises more likely and severe, and whether their incidence varies depending on types of crises (currency, banking and debt crises). We conclude that most of them occurred in different monetary policy regimes, but they were associated with capital bonanzas in a liberal regulatory framework, both of which contributed to a higher likelihood and greater severity of crises. The analysis of the different monetary policy regimes, financial structures and the types of crises allows us to draw some policy implications that emphasise the need for sound financial regulation and supervision.

En un reciente artículo en esta misma Revista sobre la introducción de la electricidad en España durante el primer tercio del presente siglo, Francesca Antolín ha presentado una nueva aproximación, incluyendo nueva evidencia empírica y nuevos elementos de análisis. Algunas de las hipótesis que se sostienen en ese trabajo son, sin duda, atrayentes y susceptibles de inspirar nuevas investigaciones, muy en especial en el ámbito de la estrategia empresarial. Otras propuestas, sin embargo, contradicen, a mi entender sin base suficiente, explicaciones propuestas hace algún tiempo por Jordi Maluquer de Motes, y que yo mismo he recogido en diversos trabajos.

This paper analyses the attempts of the Spanish state to regulate industrial relations in the early 20th century. The main conflict being over union recognition, workers faced strong opposition from employers, which generated a situation in which all possible agreements to end strikes were unstable. Faced with an increasingly active labour movement, the state tried to regulate industrial conflict but hesitated to apply state authority to force recalcitrant employers to recognize unions. A transitory system was in place for more than 20 years in which the state and employers clashed over the issue of the freedom to work and the state selectively applied its coercive power to force employers to give up on some of the strikers' demands. Tracing the role of authorities in strikes, I show how the intervention of state officials in strikes granted workers at least the partial satisfaction of their demands. I finally argue that state intervention in industrial conflict fuelled the radicalism of both unions and employers' associations.

In this article, we discuss whether there was a single Latin American pattern of agricultural growth between 1950 and 2008. We analyse the sources of growth of agricultural production and productivity in ten Latin American countries. Our results show that the differences between these countries are too large to establish a single pattern for this region. However, certain common trends may be observed, such as the growing importance of labour productivity as a component of agricultural production growth and the increasing relevance of total factor productivity as a component of agricultural labour productivity growth.

In the present work we study the evolution of the prices of the most representative goods of the Buenos Aires market in the decades after independence from the Spanish empire. The paper analyses the evolution of import, export and local prices in Buenos Aires for the first half of the 19th century and intends to contribute to a more accurate estimate of the intense process of price inflation and changes in relative prices that occurred in Buenos Aires during this period. We also aspire to be able to analyse the relationships between the increases in prices and the institutional effects of commercial blockades, the issuance of paper money and changes in the demand for goods that occurred in the commercial interaction of Buenos Aires. An attempt is also made to compare the dynamics of various baskets of goods, allowing us to evaluate the differentiated effects in local, regional and overseas supply and demand. With this in mind we analyse both general price indexes, with their main changes, and also aim to integrate a variety of products in baskets that represent as accurately as possible the diverse demands of the commercial space offered by the Buenos Aires market. Finally, we reexamine the effects of the price variations of the baskets of prices on various social sectors and regions linked to the significant interregional plaza represented by the Buenos Aires market.

This article provides an initial (partial) estimate of silver quantities held within China around mid-18th century, utilising archival evidence related to wealth confiscations. Better future estimates for overall Chinese silver holdings could also facilitate more accurate estimation of Chinese silver (legal plus illegal) imports. Similar analyses for other world regions could eventually yield estimates for global silver stock holdings, useful in turn for improving global silver mining and trade flow estimates. Extensive contraband silver mining and silver trade are known to have escaped official recordation, by definition. If methodologies suggested herein prove successful, then parallel non-silver-trade-good estimates could follow. Current exclusive focus upon production and trade flows should be reevaluated in the context of linkages with accumulations of goods (wealth components). Economic history could someday provide a prominent stage for the historical study of wealth holdings, thereby furnishing context for increasing wealth concentrations observable worldwide today.

This paper revisits the political economy during Spanish rule in America by reappraising the allegedly positive impact that intra-imperial transfers (situados) had on the Caribbean economy. It raises concerns concerning categories such as bargaining and absolutism and their accuracy in accounting for the nature of Spanish imperial rule. Three main findings are reported. Firstly, it seems inaccurate to hold that all remittances were injected into the economy with positive effects. Liquidity apparently provoked a real estate bubble. Secondly, the local market was not necessarily sensitive to the arrival of bullion. Finally, jurisdictional fragmentation allowed the king to issue debt in a disorderly fashion and with no constraints, and local officials and groups of interests to behave as free riders.