We study the effects of domestic conflict and external shocks on Spanish trade policy in the interwar period. Our account mobilizes a new granular dataset on exports and imports, and good-country level information on tariffs, trade agreements, and quotas. Into the Depression, the mainstay of policy was the tariff. The establishment of the Second Republic in 1931 was a turning point in policymaking. The new regime initiated bilateral trade negotiations. The Republic’s dilemma was to find countries willing to exchange market access. In a daunting international environment, the Spanish case offers a poignant reminder of the perils of going against the grain.

German imperial expansion, begun under Bismarck, swiftly unfolded with the aid of industrial technology along lines that adapted it ideally for the organization, not of a national state, but of a continent or even the world. In this fact lies a major contrast between the neo-mercantilism which followed 1879 and the cameralism borrowed from the Burgundians by the German princes in the sixteenth century. The system extolled by Becher was designed to meet the power needs of dwarf states perpetually torn, by a mule-and-the-two-haystacks dilemma, between the fractioning particularism of the lay princes on the one hand, and the centrifugal pull of a meaningless imperial universalism on the other. The ‘new age’ for which, as Schulze- Gavaernitz once remarked, Bismarck played the role of ‘obstetrician,’ employed a machinery for internal unification that fitted the national—in particular the German—state almost as badly as it did the political fractions of which it was compounded.

The poor quality of western European forests as sources of masts and the depletion of oak forests in Britain and France during the eighteenth century forced the two principal maritime powers to import naval timber and to seek far afield for naval masts. Both Britain and France gradually were forced to increase their imports of timber from neighboring states and the Baltic market. The acquisition of masts for naval vessels involved even greater dependence on markets overseas. Masting trees were sparsely scattered in western Europe; the British Isles produced none. France took some masts from forests in the Pyrenees, Auvergne, Alsace, and Dauphiné, but they were limited in quantity, lacking in flexibility, and were often condemned for their propensity to early brittleness and rot. Masts imported from French colonies in North America proved unsatisfactory in both cost and quality. Until the last quarter of the eighteenth century Britain enjoyed an advantage over France in the acquisition of colonial North American mast supplies, since die forests of New England produced excellent masts of extraordinary size. Britain's imports from New England, under a Royal Navy monopoly, satisfied a sizable part of her needs and reduced the British navy's importation of Baltic mast supplies by perhaps one third in the early 1770's. The American Revolution, however, abruptly ended Britain's monopoly of American masts. The rebellious colonists halted British imports and opened the splendid pine forests of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Maine to French naval exploitation.

Technological progress has long been widely recognized as a crucial source of economic growth. Many countries have, accordingly, devoted considerable resources to promote more rapid generation and diffusion of technology in their economies. Yet recent studies reveal a persistence of stark contrasts across countries and geographic space more generally, not only in productivity, but also in the generation of new technological knowledge. What accounts for these geographic disparities is not well understood.

Puerto Rico became an insular possession of the United States following the Spanish-American War in 1898. Shortly thereafter the island was brought within the monetary and tariff structures of the United States, and mainland capital began to flow into the island, especially in the form of investments in the sugar industry. These factors were mainly responsible for shaping the Puerto Rican economy and for tying it closely to the economy of the United States.

The year 1873 marked the zenith of the German free-trade movement, which had been gathering impact since 1818 when Prussia first established a tariff along free-trading lines. Promulgated at the peak of prosperity, the law of 1873 abolished immediately the duties on pig iron, raw steel, and ships, but, as a concession to the protectionists, only reduced the rates on other iron products and provided for their repeal on January 1, 1877. Despite the dissatisfaction of many free-traders, the latter provision opened the door for the repeal of other protective rates. Germany thus stood at the threshold of complete free trade.

This essay explores the state of economic knowledge regarding the development of household economic life in the United States since early industrialization by examining explanations for the low labor-force participation of middle-class married women prevailing until the 1940s. These explanations, including those emerging from fertility studies and resting on market forces, imprecisely specify the domestic roles of housewives. Interdisciplinary specification of these roles, drawing on social and cultural historians, and rigorous measurement of time allocation within the household would help resolve the various interpretations and assist in estimating the contribution of household work to social product.

The object of this dissertation is to analyze the role of the banking system in the process of industrialization in Spain from 1829 to 1874. The reasons for taking these two dates as starting and closing points in my investigation will be evident as the exposition proceeds.

We study the impact of the 1907 Panic, the most severe economic crisis before the Great Depression, on the selection of Mexican immigration. We find that migrants were positively selected on height before the crisis. This pattern changed to negative selection during the crisis but returned to positive selection afterward. Adjustments in selection were partially mediated by the enganche, a historical labor-recruiting system that reduced migration costs but only for taller laborers with above-average earnings potential. We document that labor recruiting contributed to maintaining the relatively constant height profile of the migration flow in the short run.