The aim of this paper is to present a historical series of Venezuelan GDP from 1830 to 2012. For that purpose we have employed an expenditure approach to reconstruct the GDP of Venezuela, which could be applied with advantages for others Latin America countries. We were able to identify three long economic phases for Venezuela: The first one from 1830-1924 which we refer as “agrarian economy”; the second one of oil driven development, characterize by a high velocity growth from 1924 to 1977, and the last phase portrayed as one of stagnation and decline from 1977 to 2012.

This paper estimates original yields for five grains in thirty-three provinces of Spain in the mid-18th century. We observe a strong heterogeneity between the provinces with yields being considerably higher in the north of the country than in the south-east. Although average yields in Spain were below those in other countries of north-western Europe, the provinces in the north achieved yields not far behind the most advanced agricultural regions of the world. The heterogeneity of yields across Spain can be explained by the different climatic conditions in each province. Although all the provinces improved their yields in the long term, the differences between the provinces remained stable until the modernisation of Spanish agriculture around the mid-20th century.

Before 1936, private insurance against unemployment was mostly run by trade unions. Commercial companies, meanwhile, did not penetrate into this insurance branch, which is probably due to the advantages that trade unions had when dealing with adverse selection and moral hazard problems. Nevertheless, union-based unemployment insurance reached a lower level of development than other private social insurance schemes, like sickness insurance, perhaps because of the financial difficulties that economic crisis involved for unemployment funds. Also, unemployment insurance spread specially among urban and high-wage workers, although coverage rates in Spain were below those of other European countries with higher income levels. However, even in the latter private coverage against unemployment did not reach 10% of the working population. As in other European countries, Spanish unemployment union-funds implemented strict economic incentives to deal with moral hazard, but precisely this hindered the spreading of private unemployment insurance.

This paper deals with Anglo-Spanish trade and finances for the period c. 1810-1850. It concentrates on the business activities of a London merchant bank (Huth & Co. or Huth) with Spain during this period by paying special attention to the support given by Huth to the many bilateral trades between Spain and Britain in which the company participated. It also focuses on the support given by Huth to much trade in and out of Spanish ports but which did not go through British ports. This overall support included the provision of credit facilities, exchange rate brokerage, insurance services and commercial intelligence. In addition, the article covers the links between Huth and the Spanish crown, thanks to which the bank became an important conduit of Spanish investments in American securities before 1850. Huth was also the paymaster abroad for the Spanish state. In view of Huth's close connections to the Spanish economy during this period, it is perhaps surprising that this is the first study of this «Spanish» house in London.

The study of the rise and fall of mineral coal as an energy source can shed light on the characteristics of energy transition in Uruguay. This article presents historical series of coal consumption for Uruguay since the last decades of the 19th century until nowadays (1879-2011). The “coal era” can be placed in the first decades of the 20th century. The use of this mineral in four sectors may explain the dynamic of the coal consumption as a result of different trajectories that characterize the Uruguayan energy transition pattern of stops and goes. In addition, the article put forward three factors to explain the decisions to shift from coal to other energy sources: relative prices and freights, technological innovations and institutional aspects.