In this paper we explore the relationship between the presence of agglomeration economies and regional economic growth in Spain during the period 1870-1930. The study allows us to revisit the existence of a trade-off between economic growth and territorial cohesion, and also to examine whether the existence of agglomeration economies could explain the upswing in regional income inequality during the early stages of development. In doing so, we present alternative indicators for agglomeration economies and estimate conditional growth regressions at province (NUTS3) level. In line with new economic geography models, agglomeration economies in a context of market integration widened regional inequality in the second half of the 19th century and hindered its reduction during the early decades of the 20th.

The settlement and expansion of the Portuguese colonies in South America were made possible by slave labour; however, the historical size of enslaved Native and African groups is largely unknown. This investigation compiles extant statistics on the population of «Brazil» by race and state for the pre-census period from 1545 to 1850, complementing them with headcount estimates based on sugar, gold, and coffee production; pre-contact indigenous populations; and trans-Atlantic slave voyages. The resulting panel of demographic data illustrates national and regional racial transitions encompassing the colonial era. Brazil's population was of Native descent but became predominantly African in the 18th century; people of European ancestry remained a minority for another 200 years.

Historiadores y antropólogos han solido concebir los pueblos de indios como asentamientos estables en zonas rurales. Han supuesto que desde que la administración colonial española redujo allí a los indígenas, no se suscitaron en ellos movimientos de envergadura hasta quea la modernización reciente provocó una fortísima emigración. Investigaciones en curso no respaldan, empero, tal presunción. D. J. Robinson acaba de recordarnos que «en el mundo hispanoamericano siempre ha habido mucho de qué huir o, por lo que ser atraído» (1). La estabilidad resulta menos cierta aún en los Andes meridionales, donde a menudo los indios cortaron los lazos que les ataban a sus comunidades. Sobre este fenómeno hemos escrito antes en términos generales o, más en detalle, en relación con la migración urbana (2).

In the early 20th century, governments not only used trade policy to protect domestic agricultural markets, but they also introduced regulations affecting quality, quantity and prices. In this article I assess the differences in the state intervention in wine markets in two major wine-producing countries, France and Spain, and try to explain the reasons for them. To do so, I examine the specific features of their markets and productive systems, the winegrowers’ collective action, and the political framework in each country. I argue that the differences are related to (a) the strength and cohesion of the winegrowers’ lobby, (b) the winegrowers’ relationship with political parties and (c) the state’s ability to respond to their demands.

This paper reviews the analysis of technological change by cliometricians. It focuses on lessons about total factor productivity (TFP) from growth accounting and on aspects of social capability that are conducive to the effective assimilation of new technology. Key messages are that when TFP growth is very rapid this typically involves reductions in inefficiency not just technological advance and that even really important new technologies have small initial effects on aggregate productivity. Incentive structures matter greatly for the adoption of new technology, but social capability is not independent of the technological epoch as the information and communications technology (ICT) era has emphasized to Europeans.

The aim of this work is to study the diffusion of the changes towards a diversified manufacturing structure in the different Spanish regions during the first third of the XXth century and the evaluation of the factors which explain the manufacturing industrial growth of these regions. The considerated factors are the localization economies (Marshall's externalities of specialization) and the urbanization economies (externalities of diversity or Jacobs's externalities). Owing to the non-existence of an industrial census in Spain, we estimate a data set based on a reconstruction of the industrial direct taxes in 1913 and 1929, for 50 provinces and 20 manufactures. We find that in this period of creating of an important manufacturing basis to realize the industrialization process, the different regions did not increase their specialization and, the urbanization economies were even positive to the manufacture growth between 1913 and 1929.

Es todavía mucho lo que ignoramos acerca de la demografía española en el siglo XVIII, pese a contar con una serie de trabajos de gran interés, y distinta significación, como los de M. Livi Bacci (1968), F. Bustelo (1972 a y b), V. Pérez Moreda (1980) y J. Nadal (1984). No se trata sólo de que persistan numerosos interrogantes sobre los niveles de fecundidad y mortalidad, sino que ni siquiera hay acuerdo entre los investigadores sobre el grado de ocultación de los distintos censos y vecindarios, y por lo tanto son todavía objeto de discusión aspectos tan fundamentales como el volumen mismo de la población y su tasa de crecimiento.

The aim of this paper is to study the process of integration of the XIX century Spanish market of wheat Basically, integration grew until the middle of the XIX century, and decreased from then. The growth of agricultural production and the reduction of transport costs explain the improvement of integration in the period 1830/50. The process of disintegration is more enigmatic, but the advent of railway does not seem to have contributed to building the national market On the contrary, it could be the cause of diat disintegration, in spite of the fact that it improved die connection of some markets.

Spanish banking has been considered as an industry ruled by oligopolistic conducts. It has been even dealt as a cartel, which has been able to keep along xx century with the support of the State. This paper checks this interpretation with the aid of a set of indexes of the degree of competitori in a market: an annual series of economic concentration and another one of intra-industrial turnover, as well as some proxi figures of the height of the barriers to entry. Doubts about the thesis of the banking cartelization are yielded by our results. To be precise, the competitive nature of the Spanish banking industry is defended, at least for the time before the civil war, and it is questioned that big banks emerged unharmed from the statu quo declared by Franco's goverments.

This article provides a historical overview of the factors leading up to debt crises and the default mechanisms used by governments to solve them, ranging from repudiation and restructuring to inflation tax and financial repression. The paper also analyses the Spanish governments’ graduation to responsible public debt management under democracy and the last debt crisis starting in 2010. After analysing the evolution of the outstanding public debt, budget deficits, the Spanish economy's ability to borrow, the central government's debt affordability and the profile of public debt, the article concludes that the Spanish case confirms the main hypotheses of concerning international debt crises: short-term borrowing enhanced the risk of a debt crisis; insolvency problems arose when governments were unwilling or unable to repay debt; debt crises took place after large capital inflows; most outright defaults ended up being partial defaults; public debt level became unsustainable when it rose above 60-90 per cent of GDP; default trough inflation became commonplace when fiat money displaced coinage; financial repression was used as a subtle type of debt restructuring; and defaults endangered the creditworthiness of the Spanish Finance Ministry and forced disciplined fiscal policies.

Apart from Appendini (1972) for 1900, there are, so far, no Mexican regional GDP estimates for the period before 1930. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap by presenting new Mexican regional GDP per capita estimates for several benchmark years between 1895 and 1930. The paper presents the methodology and sources used to estimate the new series, compares them with the previous estimates and offers a first long-term picture of Mexican regional per capita GDPs (1895-2010).

This article discusses a new series of alternative indexes to measure Spanish protectionism in the period 1875–1930. The new indexes show that the biases downwards of the conventional index are relevant specially for the protection increase at given years and sectors. They confirm the relatively high level of protection at the beginning of the «Restauración» in the 1870's but contradict the stable level of protection before First World War and put forward an upward cyclical trend until the 1920's. From the beginning of the period Spanish protection was mainly industrial. When the general protection index is moderate, agriculture improves its position in relation to industry, and when protection increases the reverse occurs. The high level of departure, the upward cyclical trend and the permanent industrial bias support the traditional hypothesis of the existence of a strong influence of the industrial sector in Spanish comercial policy design and deny the «compulsory» or «accidental» explanation of the Spanish return to protection in the 1890's.

Recently in Colombia has emerged a new interest in explaining some facts in economic history within the context of cliometrics. However, the analysis of transportation infrastructure and its impact on the Colombian's economic development has not received enough attention. The objective of this paper is to close this gap, after all transportation developments is a central topic in the study of country's economic history. This paper provides a new database that contribute to the study of transportation developments in Colombia. The main contribution is to demonstrate that railroads did not play an overwhelming role in Colombia's economy during the first half of the twentieth century.

This work tackles the creative process and the development of the savings banks and trust companies throughout the 19th century, coinciding with the changes that implied the introduction of the regulations and the institutions of economic liberalism in Spain. We study the double charitable financial functions which was fulfilled by gaining control over the savings deposits. Those deposits come mainly from the low income urban groups, and later transferred in the turn of loans to small borrowers in industry and commerce.

What was the degree of Brazil's regional inequality in living standards during the first decades of the 20th century? This paper presents municipal and state information on wages and prices in order to build welfare ratios for skilled and unskilled workers between 1912 and 1940. Despite the significant differences in nominal wages and costs of living throughout the country, real wage differentials remained lower than those estimated by earlier studies. Williamson (1999) argued that real wages in the Southeast were approximately six times higher than in the Northeast during the 1930s. The new evidence in this paper suggests that wages were on average only 1.5 times higher.

The object of this paper is to assess and analyze the economic policies of the Spanish Government between 1760–1790. After reviewing the major criticisms of die role of die State, three basic areas are considered. First, a survey of die principal measures introduced and their aims; second, die process of policy making and, three, die consequences of economic policy on growth. We suggest mat perhaps some of the traditional interpretations of the role of die State in this period need to be reexamined.

The impact of the privatisation of the commons remains a contested topic throughout the social sciences. Focusing on the Spanish case, this article reviews the literature and provides an overall assessment of this historical process based on recent research. Common lands appear to have been reasonably well managed and their dismantling did not foster agricultural productivity. Instead, the privatisation process negatively affected the economic situation of a large proportion of rural households and local councils, as well as deteriorating the stock of social capital. Therefore, the long-standing belief in the existence of a trade-off between equity and efficiency actually turns out to be misleading.

This article aims to shed light on the process and mechanisms through which Asian manufactured goods (Chinese silk and porcelain, among others) were commoditised and how markets for such goods were formed in the Spanish Empire. After the opening of the Manila Galleon route in 1571 supply of and demand for Asian goods grew in the Spanish Empire, but retail means of supply of such goods were scantly developed. The article offers an econometric model which, when applied to data on a sample of probate inventories of elites of Mexico City and Seville, determines the influence of belonging to private, familial global networks in consumer demand expansion for Asian manufactures throughout the Spanish Empire.

From the independence of Brazil in 1822 down to the independence of the African colonies in 1975, successive Portuguese governments became engaged in maintaining, enlarging, developing and, ultimately, in defending an empire in Africa. The literature on the Portuguese African empire is largely concerned with discussing the economic and political motives behind imperial policy1. Thus, the evaluation of the costs and benefits of the empire for the metropolitan economy —or, for that matter, the colonial economies— has not received much attention. This paper attempts to provide some of the evidence necessary to conduct such an evaluation2.

This paper investigates the evolution of income inequality in Spain during its transition to democracy, suggesting a method for the correction of under-reporting of earnings and profits in the Household Budget Surveys’ data. The contribution is twofold: the methodological proposal, based on income-expenditure discrepancy and scaling-up to National Accounts, improves on previous work and can be useful for similar historical sources in other countries. Second, its application results in an alternative history of the distribution of income in this case, changing the levels and also the observed trend. Previous literature asserted a substantial equalisation, related to the democratisation process, while after the adjustment inequality in disposable income is shown to have been quite persistent.