https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

Examining the correlation between trade and income cannot identify the direction of causation between the two. Countries’ geographic characteristics, however, have important effects on trade, and are plausibly uncorrelated with other determinants of income. This paper therefore constructs measures of the geographic component of countries’ trade, and uses those measures to obtain instrumental variables estimates of the effect of trade on income. The results provide no evidence that ordinary least-squares estimates overstate the effects of trade. Further, they suggest that trade has a quantitatively large and robust, though only moderately statistically significant, positive effect on income. (JEL F43, 040)

/pdf/does-trade-cause-growth-532nt8hsja.pdf

Does Trade Cause Growth

We investigate whether income inequality affects subsequent growth in a cross-country sample for 1965-90, using the models of Barro (1997), Bleaney and Nishiyama (2002) and Sachs and Warner (1997), with negative results. We then investigate the evolution of income inequality over the same period and its correlation with growth. The dominating feature is inequality convergence across countries. This convergence has been significantly faster amongst developed countries. Growth does not appear to influence the evolution of inequality over time. Outline

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/81822/1/02-28.pdf

Economic growth and income inequality

The four Visegrad states — Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia (until 1993 Czechoslovakia) and Hungary — form a compact area between Germany and Austria in the west and the states of the former USSR in the east. They are bounded by the Baltic in the north and the Danube river in the south. They are cut by the Sudeten and Carpathian mountain ranges, which divide Poland off from the other states. Poland is an extension of the North European plain and like the latter is drained by rivers that flow from south to north west — the Oder, the Vlatava and the Elbe, the Vistula and the Bug. The Danube is the great exception, flowing from its source eastward, turning through two 90-degree turns to end up in the Black Sea, forming the barrier and often the political frontier between central Europe and the Balkans. Hungary to the east of the Danube is also an open plain. The region is historically and culturally part of western Europe, but its eastern Marches now represents a vital strategic zone between Germany and the core of the European Union to the west and the Russian zone to the east.

Economy and Society

Why did the industrial revolution take place in eighteenth-century Britain and not elsewhere in Europe or Asia? In this convincing new account Robert Allen argues that the British industrial revolution was a successful response to the global economy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He shows that in Britain wages were high and capital and energy cheap in comparison to other countries in Europe and Asia. As a result, the breakthrough technologies of the industrial revolution - the steam engine, the cotton mill, and the substitution of coal for wood in metal production - were uniquely profitable to invent and use in Britain. The high wage economy of pre-industrial Britain also fostered industrial development since more people could afford schooling and apprenticeships. It was only when British engineers made these new technologies more cost-effective during the nineteenth century that the industrial revolution would spread around the world.

/pdf/the-british-industrial-revolution-in-global-perspective-40efi3wwm8.pdf

The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective

La reconstruccion de series macroeconomicas de largo plazo que permitan situar a Espana en el contexto de una optica internacional comparada es una de las principales lineas de investigacion ya consolidada en la Fundacion BBVA. Fruto de ello es esta obra que combina el acervo cuantitativo proporcionado por la labor de los historiadores espanoles durante el ultimo cuarto de siglo con una revision de las series disponibles de la Contabilidad Nacional.La carencia de series macroeconomicas historicas para la economia espanola constituye la razon principal del escaso enfasis comparativo de nuestra historia economica, asi como la ausencia del caso espanol en los principales debates acerca del moderno crecimiento economico en Europa. La investigacion de Leandro Prados de la Escosura (actualmente titular de la Catedra Principe de Asturias de Estudios Espanoles de la Universidad de Georgetown), que ahora publica la Fundacion BBVA, trata de resolver esta carencia.En la obra se proporciona una cuidadosa reconstruccion del Producto Interior Bruto espanol desde 1850 a 2000, atendiendo tanto al gasto cuanto a la produccion. Se ofrece, ademas, un primer balance de las tendencias de la economia espanola durante ciento cincuenta anos. En definitiva, la obra genera una base estadistica analoga a la de muchos paises europeos occidentales, que permitira a historiadores, economistas y cientificos sociales contrastar hipotesis acerca del comportamiento a largo plazo de la economia espanola. Provider_Name: Fundacion BBVA / BBVA Foundation

El progreso económico de España: 1850-2000

In this paper a new set of current price estimates of per capita income, adjusted for each currency's purchasing power, is presented for more than twenty countries over the last one and a half centuries. A short-cut method is used to derive current price comparisons for countries and periods in which aggregate PPPs are not available. Current price estimates of PPP-adjusted GDP appear to be more economically sound than constant price figures as economic agents react to current, not to constant, prices and, therefore, would allow us more appropiate cross-country comparisons of welfare and productivity. Moreover, the new estimates tend to mitigate the index number problem by rendering less remote benchmarks for constant price comparisons than widely used datasets at constant 1985 or 1990 "international" dollars. Country rankings in the new data set are different from those provided by earlier cross-country comparisons and among the new findings the earlier US leadership and the closer position of Britain and France over the long 191h century can be highlighted.

International comparisons of real product, 19820-1990: an alternative dataset

International Comparisons of Real Product, 1820–1990: An Alternative Data Set☆

Two distinctive regimes are distinguished in Spain over half-a-millennium. A first one (1270s-1590s) corresponds to a high land-labour ratio frontier economy, pastoral, trade-oriented, and led by towns. Wages and food consumption were relatively high. Sustained per capita growth occurred from the Reconquest’s end (1264) to the Black Death (1340s) and resumed from the 1390s only broken by late-15th century turmoil. A second regime (1600s-1810s) corresponds to a more agricultural and densely populated low-wage economy which grew along a lower path. Contrary to preindustrial Western Europe, Spain achieved her highest living standards in the 1340s, not by mid-15th century. Although its population toll was lower, the Plague had a more damaging impact on Spain and, far from releasing non-existent demographic pressure, destroyed the equilibrium between scarce population and abundant resources. Pre-1350 per capita income was reached by the late 16th century but only overcome after 1820.

The rise and fall of Spain (1270-1850)

Two distinctive regimes are distinguished in Spain over half a millennium. The first one (1270s–1590s) corresponds to a high land–labour ratio frontier economy, which is pastoral, trade-oriented, and led by towns. Wages and food consumption were relatively high. Sustained per capita growth occurred from the end of the Reconquest (1264) to the Black Death (1340s) and resumed from the 1390s only broken by late fifteenth-century turmoil. A second regime (1600s–1810s) corresponds to a more agricultural and densely populated low-wage economy which, although it grew at a pace similar to that of 1270–1600, remained at a lower level. Contrary to pre-industrial western Europe, Spain achieved its highest living standards in the 1340s, not by mid-fifteenth century. Although its death toll was lower, the plague had a more damaging impact on Spain and, far from releasing non-existent demographic pressure, destroyed the equilibrium between scarce population and abundant resources. Pre-1350 per capita income was reached by the late sixteenth century but only exceeded after 1820.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/ehr656.pdf?abstractid=2191389&mirid=1&type=2

Leandro Prados de la Escosura

Papers

El progreso económico de España: 1850-2000

International comparisons of real product, 19820-1990: an alternative dataset

International Comparisons of Real Product, 1820–1990: An Alternative Data Set☆

The rise and fall of Spain (1270-1850)

The rise and fall of Spain (1270–1850)†