This article aims to explain how the market for land functioned in medieval south-west Finland. The data show that in medieval times land was increasingly treated as something to be transferred in return for ready money, albeit within the limits set by the interests of the family. The land market was open to large segments of society, suggesting that barriers to entry were low. It was characterised by strong vertical integration, although asymmetric, as the majority of the transactions took place between participants from different social groups. The article will also consider the high degree of geographical integration in the land market.

A customary tenant's widow in County Durham had a right to his holdings for her life, and did not forfeit the lands for remarriage or fornication in contrast to customs found elsewhere in England. In this case study of three neighbouring villages, more than 80 per cent of widows with the option exercised this right, and did so consistently over three centuries. The persistence of this pattern indicates that widows as tenants were common and capable of cultivating or managing holdings. It suggests complex interconnections of gender with local social and economic structures, which include marriage, migration, and household formation.

This study utilises several sources of male occupational data to track the decline of the Norwich worsted industry, c. 1700–1820. The data show that the industry began to fall away during the second half of the eighteenth century, if not sooner, and earlier than has been previously realised. The transfer of the industry to the north of England began before the introduction of steam-powered spinning or weaving. Market competition, notably from Lancashire printed fustians and cottons, and the loss of export trade through war, were the likely causal factors.

During the eighteenth century, Germans from the Hessian county of Hanau-Münzenberg emigrated westward to the American colonies, and east to Hungary, Russia, and other parts of Europe. Using new emigrant data, I examine their age, occupation, and emigration strategies. Those who settled in Pennsylvania were the richest of these emigrants, more likely to travel as intact families and the most networked. The poorest were the Hessians who went to Russia, mostly in 1766. A large percentage of the Hanau-Hessians settled in Pennsylvania, suggesting that eighteenth-century German emigration to Hungary and Russia has possibly been overestimated.

This study uses data on income and distribution of relief payments from local poor relief tables for 512 rural parishes in Flanders (present-day Belgium) in 1807 to examine spatial variation in poor relief practices in a region characterised by well-established local poor relief institutions and marked socio-economic differences. By combining data on poor relief with local data on population, landholding and occupational structure, we map out the relative importance of regional economies and local variation in producing distinct poor relief regimes. The results show that although local variation was considerable, the nature and extent of this variation interacted with structural socio-economic characteristics to produce regional patterns, signalling that local variation did not so much contradict as constitute regional patterns in poor relief regimes. The importance of socio-economic characteristics in determining both regional patterns and local variation supports our more general contention that local and regional levels of analysis represent a more fruitful avenue for understanding variations in poor relief practices than national differences in legislation, and therefore has implications for the comparative study of poor relief practices in a wider international context.