We use data collected by the Cambridge Group to investigate and explain differences in fertility by socio-economic group in pre-industrial England. We find, in line with results presented by Greg Clark, that wealthier groups did indeed have higher fertility until the 1700s. We demonstrate that this had to do with earlier age at marriage for women. We then turn to the likely social and economic impact of this, considering Clark's hypothesis that ‘middle-class values’ spread through English society prior to the Industrial Revolution. Through the construction of social mobility tables, we demonstrate that the children of the rich were indeed spreading through society, but they were small in number relative to poorer sections of society, and moreover the children of the poor were also entering the middle classes.

Russia's emancipation of the serfs was accompanied by numerous other measures aimed at modernizing the Tsarist economy and society. Among these ‘Great Reforms’ was the creation of a new institution of local government – the zemstvo – which has received comparatively little attention from economic historians. This quasi-democratic form of local government played an important role in expanding the provision of public goods and services in the half-century leading up to the Russian Revolution. This article utilizes archival records and contemporary evidence to outline the zemstvo's role in Russian society and describe its political structure. The article then presents a newly collected panel data set that includes information on the allocation of political rights within the zemstvo, spending and revenue decisions by district zemstva, and a variety of other socio-economic indicators. With these data, I explore whether the electoral structure of the zemstvo allowed the newly emancipated peasantry to voice their preferences over spending levels and tax rates. I find that the district zemstvo with greater political representation from the peasantry shifted taxes away from communal property and spent more per capita, especially on education. However, these effects did not derive from a direct voting mechanism but most likely arose out of the interaction between peasant representation and more liberal elements of the noble class. This study initiates a broader research agenda into the zemstvo's place in Russian economic history and contributes to the literature on the political economy of public good provision in developing societies.

This article addresses the question whether the substantial financial flows received by emigration countries contributed to domestic financial development in peripheral Europe before 1914. We quantify a sizable and significant relation between remittances and measures of financial development that is both larger than the contribution of other international capital flows and the best estimates of the same relation today. Given that financial development is regularly included among the conditions for economic growth and catch-up of developing nations, this article adds to our understanding of the multiple impacts of the mass migration phenomenon on the economies of emigration countries.

We consider the relative contributions of changing technology and institutions for economic growth through the investigation of a natural experiment in history: the almost simultaneous introduction of the automatic cream separator and the cooperative ownership form in the Danish dairy industry from around 1880. Using a new database of statistics from creameries and the tool of stochastic frontier analysis, we find that both institutions and technology were important for the success of the Danish dairy industry and, by implication, the growth and early development of the Danish economy.

This article provides a new perspective on the interwar foreign debt crisis by analysing original data on the credit ratings, market yields and subsequent performance of government borrowers in the New York market. We focus on the four agencies that are known to have been operating at the time (Fitch, Moody's, Poor's and Standard Statistics). We provide a description of the rise of the market for grades and gather information on the products sold, price schedules, etc. We find that rating agencies did exhibit features similar to those that have attracted considerable interest recently: namely, they did not react until the crisis had already begun and then implemented massive downgrades. We conclude by suggesting that, given the less than stellar record of the agencies, their emergence in the 1930s as a regulatory tool will have to be explained in future research.

The objective of this article is to study how people change their behaviour when taxes change. I follow the revenue from gift, inheritance and estate taxes in Sweden over more than a century. Second, I focus on a unique episode during the second half of the 1940s when gifts and gift tax revenue exploded. I have access to aggregate tax revenue data since 1884. Moreover, I have constructed a rich micro-data set of all gifts reported during the period 1942–9 in one county. A first main result is that gifts, inheritances and estates were never important sources of tax revenue. Tax revenue as a share of GDP and total government revenue had already reached peaks in the 1930s. The role of these taxes has instead primarily been equity and to provide integrity for other tax bases. Second, expectations were important. Gift tax revenue during the 1940s started to increase long before a new estate tax and increased wealth taxation were decided and implemented. The increase began even before the legislative process started. Third, economic power and economic control were important. Parents gave to their children to avoid taxes, but only when the expected gain became large enough and in ways that left them with as much economic power as possible.

Since 2003, the European Historical Economics Society has presented the Figuerola Prize at its biannual congresses to the author of the best article published in the European Review of Economic History during the previous two years. Members of the review's editorial board and scientific committee vote on the choice of best article.