The paper collects the available Irish banking statistics from 1840 to 1921, and uses these to speculate about trends in living standards during the period. In particular, it estimates a velocity function for five countries using annual data from 1876 to 1913. It then uses this function to estimate Irish velocity, and hence Irish GDP, between 1864 and 1913.

Monetary Data and Proxy GDP Estimates: Ireland 1840-1921

This dissertation examines the extent to which proximity to markets - as measured by market potential, the trade cost-weighted sum of surrounding regions’ GDP - can explain late-nineteenth century Europe’s regional per capita income differentials. The research questions are: (1) was the spatial distribution of regional income random; (2) how helpful are traditional explanations - coal and institutions - of regional income; (3) how helpful is market potential when controlling for traditional explanations; and (4) did market potential have an effect on other determinants of income? This dissertation finds that: (1) the distribution of regional per capita income increasingly concentrated in the northwest; that there was little tendency to income convergence; and regional inequalities were higher within than between countries; (2) while a measure of regional institutions is correlated with income, simple distance-to-coal and a cost-to-coal measures are not; (3) market potential has a significant effect on income; foreign market potential more so than domestic; and increasing core relative to peripheral market potential results in perpherial income losses; and
(4) changes in literacy rates, a proxy for human capital, responded to changes in market potential. In conclusion, a new economic geography framework with market potential at its core fits the historical experience well. Certain regions performed better than others generally because they had cheaper access to markets. At the start of the period, trade costs were high, and so economic activity - long concentrated in Britain - was spread out more or less evenly across the Continent. By the end of the period, when trade costs dropped dramatically, economic activity concentrated in the northwest of Europe at the cost of the periphery.

Economic development and market potential: European regional income differentials, 1870-1913

This paper uses long-run real price and dividends series to investigate for the German stock market the questions asked of the U.S. market by Shiller (1989). It tries to determine in what periods and to what degree the Germanstock market has also possessed "excess volatility" over the past century. It finds no evidence or excess volatility in the pre-WWI German stock market. By contrast, there is some evidence of excess- volatiltiy in the post-WWII German stock market. The role played by the German Great Banks in the pre- WWI market might be the cause of the low comparative volatility of German stock indices before 1914.

"Excess Volatility" and the German Stock Market, 1870-1990

New data are used to construct a time series of real GDP in Germany for the period 1500–1850 using an indirect output estimation technique that relies on wages, prices, and sectoral employment. Until the mid-seventeenth century, real GDP per capita moved inversely with population. The eighteenth century saw a modest rise in output per head. From the late 1810s, economic growth gradually accelerated. The results shed new light on the reversal of fortunes in early modern Europe and the transition from a Malthusian regime to modern economic growth.

Economic Growth in Germany, 1500–1850

Our Home in Days Gone By: Housing Markets in Advanced Economies inHistorical Perspective

https://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/productFlyer/productFlyer_978-3-642-86089-8.pdf?SGWID=0-0-1297-176739640-0

H. C. Hillmann

Papers

Das Wachstum der Deutschen Wirtschaft Seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts