Devaluations were traditionally considered to be expansionary in the short run and have no real long-run effects. Alternatively, some observers in developing countries found that devaluations were contractionary on impact, and that they might foster long-term growth. Using Argentina as a case study, which is convenient due to its long series availability and its subsequent switches in exchange rate regimes, four structural shocks are identified in line with the traditional and alternative views. It is found that devaluations were mostly contractionary, and that real long-run effects were only possible when inflation was either low or moderate. In light of the estimates, a historical revision of Argentinean devaluation episodes from 1854 to 2018 has been carried out.

Foundling hospitals spread across Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, taking in hundreds of thousands of children each year. In Spain, the hospitals of major cities had staffs of more than 1,000 external wet nurses, who worked mainly in rural localities. Their cash wages were key for the household economies of the poor rural and urban populations. This article presents a methodology to interpret wet-nurse wages and explains their utility with respect to other occupations for men and women. Our results include a series of nominal and real wages for wet nurses and a calculation of their contributions to family income. The level of wages these institutions could offer was a major determinant in the supply of wet-nurse labour.

Did industrialisation improve standards of living in interwar industrial Spain? We seek to contrast this empirically with high frequency data from 1914 until 1936 for the Bilbao area, an emerging industrial centre. Contrary to existing historiography suggesting that overall standards of living improved, we find that welfare ratios remained at the same level and, at times, fluctuated significantly below sustenance levels. Demographic and socioeconomic variables were highly responsive to short-term real wage shocks driven by food price increases and the delay in nominal wage increases. Interwar industrialisation provided improvements, but did not provide protection from recurring deprivations and these may have constituted an important part of future political and socioeconomic polarisation and violence.

Este trabajo presenta un análisis de la desigualdad regional en Castilla en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII, a partir del estudio del consumo per cápita provincial calculado con las recaudaciones de dos rentas que supusieron los mayores ingresos fiscales del estado: alcabalas y cientos. La desigualdad regional presentó unos niveles reducidos y constantes durante la segunda mitad del siglo, analizando la productividad del trabajo, no encontrando elementos que alterasen significativamente la diferencia entre regiones. Asimismo, podemos señalar que se advierten las dificultades relacionadas con el sector agrario, con limitaciones a la producción y bajos rendimientos. Esas dificultades trataron de minimizarse con actuaciones reformistas que, no obstante, no tuvieron un claro impacto sobre la desigualdad, que permaneció homogénea.

This paper examines the role that resource endowments played in the performance of two New World coinages. Massachusetts Bay and the Viceroyalty of Peru provide a useful study in contrasts, having markedly different institutions and resource endowments. Both colonies originally emphasised the provision of «good» money, that is, the provision of a uniform coin (in weight and fineness) and of a sensible mix of large and small denomination coins that would support the domestic economy. Their outcomes, however, differed. We suggest that in Potosi, the sheer volume of the resource endowment (silver) incentivised fraud and the neglect of the provision of fractionary coinage in the viceroyalty. In contrast, in Massachusetts Bay, the scarcity of the resource produced incentives better aligned with the production of «good» money. The northern colony produced a trustworthy coinage that provided small denomination coins for the domestic market.