The purpose of this work is to correct an error contained in the historical record of Mexico’s GDP which has led to underestimate considerably the progress achieved by industrialisation in the Mexican economy before the Great Depression, also distorting its position within the Latin American context. This error consists in the misleading identification of industry with manufacture, ignoring the contribution to Mexican industrial production made by the metallurgical sector. By incorporating the value added from metallurgy to the net output of manufacture the share of industry in GDP grows accordingly, placing Mexico among the most industrialised countries of Latin America by the end of the export era.

This article connects the financial capacity of the public finance of the city of Alicante in order to provide street lighteing, between 1815 and 1874, with its repercussions on the process of industrialization. The work deals with the rules that regulate this service, forms of management and the technological impact of the industrialization. It comes to the conclusion that the insufficient financial level of this institutional consumer, caused a high debt. It was responsible, to a large extent, for the loss of capital of the individuals and the enterprises offering that service, especially the gas producing factories and therefore, could have an influence in the delay of the industrialization process.

On the basis of a new quantitative data set which is varied, accurate and representative, today it is possible to correct previous shortcomings in order to obtain a solid historical picture of the Atlantic trade passing through the port of Bilbao in the mid-sixteenth century. In this paper we aim to explore both the macroeconomic and microeconomic aspects of Spanish-French trade, analysing, on the one hand, the volume, composition and «balance of trade» and, on the other, the scope and nature of trading enterprises of merchants operating in Bilbao, measurable by the size of their business, the concentration of trade and the amount of business carried out by traders on their own account, in association with other merchants or on behalf of these. We also highlight, once again, the enormous value of judicial sources in the study of trade in the Modern Age.

The economic history of Uruguay throughout the 20th century, and more especially its second half, is characterized by a long-term economic decline. From the end of the Second World War, economic institutions and the policies adopted were unable to create a favorable climate for growth and development. This article presents evidence to support the idea that institutional factors played a part in the weak GDP growth and the high level of cyclical volatility between 1920 and 2001. Some factors stand out as particularly relevant: the weakening of governments' political power, increasing fragmentation of the political system, an excessively discretional monetary policy and the existence of opportunistic political cycles in macroeconomic policies.

The historiography emphasizes the importance of the fiscal policy and regional differences as causes of Hispano-American independences. The Consolidación de los Vales Reales (1804-1809), an endorsement of the debt contracted to its colonies by Spain in order to finance its constant wars, caused the collapse of the Mexican Treasury and was a key factor in its independence. This article demonstrates that in Cuba, the Consolidation had a different effect. Thanks to its different institutionalization and fiscal praxis, it was used to alleviate the deficit of situados, with which the Mexican Treasury financed the Cuban, and it may help to understand the reasons for non-independence. However, to prove this requires reconstructing the accounts of the Cuban Consolidation, which also demonstrates that the data used up until now were erroneous.

This article deals with the consumption and marketing of textiles in some Castilian areas during the first decades of the 17th century. The study uses a new documentary source: the 1618 inquiry. Part one describes the main characteristics of this documentary source. The second part analyzes textiles sales according to the fibre the different fabrics were made of. The third part presents some notes on the typology of the textiles sold in the country. This allows us to describe the marketing areas of two highly representative products of the Castilian woollen industry: the Segovian and Andalusian cloth. Finally, in the fourth and last part we have estimated the consumption of textile fabrics by household. This analysis has also been completed with a study of the terms of trade between grain and some textile fabrics between 1614 and 1616. The results support the hypothesis of a higher consumption of textile products in Andalusia than in Old Castile at the beginning of the 17th century.

In this paper a sample which gives information on males from Buenos Aires in 1852 is used to estimate earnings equations. Some of these empirical results deserve special attention. No statistical correlation is found between salaries and literacy, but there is a significant correlation between capital owners and literacy. These results are interpreted using human capital theory. Then, they are compared with similar studies for other countries in the same period.

This article examines a case study of profound agricultural transformations along the Early Modern Age. Around the protoindustrial town of Alcoi there was an intense process of substitution of cultivations that altered the physiognomy of the rural activities of an area traditionally considered as poor from the agrarian point of view. The catalogue of these changes is substantial: the substitution of wheat for barley, the early introduction of corn and its strong spread, the advance of the cultivation of vine, and, finally, the adoption of crop rotations in the irrigable area that was part of a limited extension of land, though significant for a mountainous area. Throughout the text these changes are described and explained, keeping in mind the proto-industrial framework in which they appear, as well as their context in the Valencián and Spanish environment.

La mística de los números es un legado pitagórico que seguimos cultivando con cierta veneración. El medio siglo transcurrido desde el inicio de la Guerra Civil parece haber liquidado definitivamente la frontera sicológica que, hasta hace bien poco, se habían impuesto los historiadores económicos de la España contemporánea: ya no sólo es Historia Económica lo que sucedió antes de la contienda. La década de los cuarenta parece de momento señalar los bornes de la nueva frontera conquistada. A varios trabajos que se ocupan de este oscuro período de nuestro reciente pasado económico, firmados por algunos de los principales investigadores que se han aventurado por tan tortuosa senda, ha dedicado la revista Economistas su número 21, correspondiente a agosto-septiembre de 1986.

Cabe pensar que la estatura media que se alcanza a una determinada edad o la estatura media adulta que alcanza la población es un indicador histórico de la experiencia nutritiva de los individuos que componen esa población. Este tipo de razonamiento se basa en investigaciones médicas, que han demostrado sin lugar a dudas que la ingesta nutritiva acumulada de una población influye poderosamente en su estatura media y que el entorno epidemiológico también desempeña un papel importante. Por lo tanto, la estatura física puede utilizarse como un indicador de cómo se desarrolla el organismo humano en su entorno socioeconómico. Concretamente, la situación nutritiva —y, por lo tanto, la estatura— está relacionada con el consumo de alimentos y, por consiguiente, con la renta familiar real y, por lo tanto, con los salarios y con los precios y, por lo tanto, con el nivel de vida, concebido en términos generales.

La obra de Léon Walras (1834–1910) es, en su mayoría, casi desconocida, incluso por el público especializado. La escasa lectura directa de Walras ha dado lugar a la transmisión de una imagen incompleta y, lo que es peor, deformada de uno de los economistas más importantes de la historia del pensamiento económico.

Existen varias razones que explican el porqué la escasa lectura de Walras. En primer lugar, su obra, muy extensa y dispersa, está escrita en un estilo farragoso y reiterativo que no sólo la convierte en poco atractiva desde el punto de vista literario, sino que, además, la hace a veces poco inteligible.

The aim of this paper is to study the water market in Canaries in the long run and to show how this resource was managed in the Canary Islands. In the first section, a theoretical model of operation is presented and then is tested to examine the evolution of water prices. We show that the evolution of waterprices is conditioned by the fact that the property of water has been concentrated only in few hands. Finally, we discuss if in the Canary Islands the water has been efficiently managed during XXth century.

This paper presents an annual series of the Spanish infrastructure stock between 1844 and 1935 and tries to ascertain to what extent it responded to the needs of the Spanish economy. A comparison with other European economies of die time, both in monetary and in physical terms, shows a situation of relative infrastructure shortage in Spain, which progressively deteriorated during the period under analysis. That shortage did probably set a constraint on the Spanish economic growth during die century prior to die Civil War.

Los estudios sobre el campesinado mallorquín suelen presentar su vinculación casi exclusiva a trabajos puramente agrícolas, de forma que la inexistencia o la irrelevancia de las actividades no agrarias se admite como uno de los rasgos del mundo rural insular. Sin embargo, las variables demográficas constatan el crecimiento de la población, mientras las de producción certifican la notable recesión del aceite y los cereales —principales renglones de la economía mallorquina—, y un espectacular incremento de las cosechas de legumbres. Estas informaciones, en apariencia contradictorias, plantean la existencia de procesos de «reacción» ante las coyunturas críticas, permitiendo que los sectores sociales más afectados por las crisis de subsistencias afronten la escasez y el hambre en condiciones menos gravosas; asi, puede entenderse que los índices poblacionales de determinadas zonas de la isla durante el Setecientos no respondan en absoluto a parámetros de declive económico.

This essay presents an estimation of regional income, for early 20th Century Cantabria. After a short introduction, die paper presents the major results. Methodological support is set forth in die annex.

Among the colonial powers of the early modern period, France was the last to emerge. Although, the French had not abstained from the exploration of fhe New World in the 16th century: G. de Verrazano discovered the site of New York (1524), during a voyage sponsored by King Francis I; Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence to Quebec and Montreal (1535). From the early 16th century, many ships from ports such as Dieppe, St. Malo, La Rochelle, went on privateering and or trading expeditions to the Guinea coast, to Brazil, to the Caribbean, to the Spanish Main. Many French boats did fish off Newfoundland. Some traded in furs on the near-by Continent. Moreover, during the 16th century, sporadic attempts were made to establish French settlements in «Equinoctial France» (Brazil), in Florida, in modern Canada, but they failed utterly. Undoubtedly, foreign wars against the Habsburgs, during the first half of the 16th and of the 17th centuries, civil «wars of religion» during the second half of the 16th century, political disorders like the blockade of La Rochelle or the Fronde during the first part of the 17th century, absorbed the attention and resources of French rulers, despite some ambitious projects, like those of Richelieu, for overseas trade. As for the port cities they tried to trade overseas but they were isolated and not strong enough (specially during die wars of religion) to create «colonies». Some small companies, which had been started in 1601 and 1604, to trade with the East Indies, were very short-lived, and the French did not engage seriously in Asian trade before 1664.