Recent advances in historical national accounting have allowed for global comparisons of GDP per capita across space and time. Critics have argued that GDP per capita fails to capture adequately the multi-dimensional nature of welfare, and have developed alternative measures such as the human development index. Whilst recognising that these wider indicators provide an appropriate way of assessing levels of welfare, we argue that GDP per capita remains a more appropriate measure for assessing development potential, focussing on production possibilities and the sustainability of consumption. Twentieth-century Africa and pre-industrial Europe are used to show how such data can guide reciprocal comparisons to provide insights into the process of development on both continents.

This article studies the evolution of the composition of shareholders in one of the big companies in Spain, Compañía del Norte, devoted to railways sector between 1858 and 1941. Changes in property and interests groups inside the company are identified along the time. We establish the implications that this changes had in the Board of Administration by using modern agency theory, and looking for how the corporate structure advanced within the company. This process is studied from a comparative point of view in Europe and United States. The French influence in property, management and power in BA is highlighted. Only at the beginning of the XX century, when First World War broke out, Spanish capital got the majority of shareholders and the company introduced and international management style. The Spanish General Managers started to recruit new executives from qualified staff preferably with the same nationality, introducing a new system between the managers. This meant a break with hierarchic and militar system imposed by French style. Finally we analyse the evolution of the organization of the company which grew up rapidly from line schemes into a more complex structure although without arriving at a multidivisional one.

En las tres primeras décadas del siglo xx la economía de los países industriales avanzados experimentó cambios profundos, al tiempo que conseguía tasas de crecimiento relativamente altas. La introducción de la electricidad y su pronta difusión han sido consideradas fundamentals para explicar el crecimiento de este período. Pero el papel exacto de esta nueva forma de energía en el progreso industrial y en el crecimiento económico estásujeto a cualificaciones, incluso a controversia. El objeto de este trabajo es ofrecer un primer contraste de hipótesis respecto a las causas económicas que marcan el ritmo y el grado de extensión de la electricidad en el sector industrial español—con énfasis especial en el caso del País Vasco—. Con este fin, me refiero en primer lugar a las contribuciones de varios autores respecto a la conexión entre electricidad y crecimiento y a los mecanismos que activan el proceso de electrificación. En particular, destaco la hipótesis según la cual el grado de electrificación, y la velocidad a la que ésta se produce, puede ser más debida a consideraciones de precios relativos entre tipos de energía alternativos y otros factores de producción que a ventajas absolutas de carácter técnico. En una segunda parte, y tras reunir la evidencia empírica pertinente, compruebo cómo, tanto en el conjunto español como en el caso vasco, coincidiendo con la presencia de unos mecanismos incentivadores muy débiles, se da un proceso de electrificación lento y poco profundo. Además de reforzar la tesis de Woolf (1984), la experiencia analizada es coherente con lo que ya sabemos respecto al comportamiento en España del sector energético (Sudrià, 1987) e industrial (Carreras, 1987). En nuestro país no parece darse la conexión automática apuntada por Devine (1983) entre electricidad y crecimiento económico.

This article presents three new annual indices of industrial output for Andalusia, Catalonia and the Basque Country between 1830 and 1975. The comparative analysis, the first to include the Basque Country, allows to specify the main tendencies of growth and structural change in the regions studied, two of them pioneers of the Spanish industrialization, Andalusia clearly left behind. The analysis highlights as well the changes operated in the composition of their respective industrial products and, with them, the different regional paths, going from specialization to the manufacturing diversification, followed during the 19th and 20th centuries.

The first long period of economic development of the Hieronymite Monastery of Guadalupe, probably the wealthiest in Spain during the early Modern Age, is analysed in this paper. The economic success of this monastic house was primarily based on the brilliant exploitation its rectors implemented of the Marian sanctuary of the Villuercas. The Hieronymite leaders achieved an increasing prestige and fame for the former through an efficient publicity system its main aim being the maximum diffusion of Our Lady's «miracles» by thousands of pilgrims who were attracted to Guadalupe by means of various incentives. At the same time, the economic directors of the «House» managed to widen and strengthen an efficient thick network of collectors throughout the Crown of Castile which annually collected a huge sum of money. In summary, the Monastery of Guadalupe was for over one and a half centuries a thriving «enterprise» of spiritual services.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the sources of growth of real product in the Spanish economy over the period 1964–1973. This is decomposed into five components: capital stock, quality of capital stock, hours worked, quality of hours worked and TFP. The methodology is based on the transcendental logarithmic production function and distinguishes growth in quality and quantity of inputs. We find that the main component of the growth in output is total factor productivity.

Ultimamente, tanto para Mayo (1984, 1987) como para Salvatore y Brown (1987, 1989) —quicnes analizan la campiña del Río de la Plata en el siglo XVIII—, la clave del dilema de la formación del mercado de mano de obra rural, a diferencia de quienes, como Amaral (1985) y Gelman (1987, 1989), interpretaron que para retenerla era necesario endeudarla, no sólo residiría del lado de la demanda, específicamente el mercado del trigo, sino también del lado de la oferta. Esto ocurriría, según Mayo, Brown y Salvatore, debido al fácil acceso que dicha mano de obra tuvo a otras alternativas de subsistencia (contrabando de tabaco, abigeato, faenas clandestinas de cueros, etc.) y, en consecuencia, a diferentes medios de producción y subsistencia (caballos, ganados, tierra y provisiones como tabaco, sal y yerba), lo cual generó una suerte de superpoblación relativa, y a la consecuente irrelevancia o ineficacia que los mecanismos extraeconómicos tuvieron para retener y disciplinar dicha mano de obra.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of the control of the exchange rate vellón-silver over the prices in the Castile Crown's short-run credit. It compares the official price rates with the prices signed in the credit contracts of foreign financiers during the first half of the XVII century. The paper uses concepts from the price control theory and research done on black markets. There are many evidences that suggest that the official rates did not work to control the price of precious metals. In fact, the Crown had to pay the costly real price of the silver when it needed. Nevertheless, this policy served to change the behaviour of the financiers in the markets.

Argentinean economy historiography lacks consensus as to the periodization of its recent growth phases. A related open question is the date at which Argentinean economy ended its first major growth phase. For some economists this was a consequence of the First World War, whereas for others Argentina lost positions from the Great Depression on. The aim of this paper is to contrast these views. We apply univariate analysis and unit root contrasts to the now available Argentinean GDP per capita series. The results point at 1913 as the first important break in the trend, whereas 1929 only represents a significant change in the intercept of the series. At the same time, this analysis defines three new long-term phases in the Argentinean growth process: 1875 to 1913, 1914 to 1974, and 1975 to 2000.

This paper analyses new balance of payment data for Spain in the autarkic period. New evidence suggests that import restrictions where relaxed to a certain extent during die first half of die 1950s thanks to an increase of the entry of foreign currency. This increase was due to the rise of exports of goods and services beginning in 1949. The paper studies several explanatory factors for this increase. In particular the effect of a hypothetical change in commercial policy and the influence of the international context are considered.

El decenio tal vez peor conocido de la economía española del.siglo xx es el de 1940. Las dificultades para utilizar determinadas fuentes, en unos casos, y los muchos defectos e insuficiencias de las disponibles, en otros, han desalentado la investigación de unos años cuya sombría memoria —esa «basura acumulada de tiempos viejos», por decirlo al modo de Faulkner— quizá haya contribuido también, todo debe decirse, a desincentivar la dedicación de historiadores y estudiosos. Por eso deben acogerse con especial interés los trabajos que de unau otra forma, incluso con referencias sólo tangenciales, abordan el análisis de dicho período.

The quantitative and comparative analysis of Spanish and Portuguese cork exportations during the 20th century shows that Spain lost its leading position in the world trade of transformed cork while Portugal rose to claim first place. This article takes a step towards identifying the institutional aspects behind the different paths taken by the cork business in the two countries between 1930 and 1975. Starting with a comparative analysis of the legal framework and economic policies which had an impact on the various branches of business during the two Iberian dictatorships, it is argued that Salazar and Franco attributed different degrees of importance to the cork sector. It concludes that these institutional aspects explain a part of the loss of competitiveness of Spanish exports in comparison with Portuguese exports, insofar as they influenced the extent to which the two economies participated in international trade flows as well as production costs in the industry.

The study of the Irati hydroelectric company aims to show some of the business strategies behind the first stages of the development of electricity in Spain and, in turn, pose new questions regarding the factors and conditioning elements of the country's regional industrialization processes. In fact, this firm represents one of the many possibilities electricity brought to non-industrialized Spanish regions at the start of the 20th century. The electricity generated by its falls explains the creation of Spain's largest integrated industrial complex built up around the initial processing of timber (saw-mills and chemical distilling) and its commercialization (railways), along with the sale of its energy surpluses on the most important market in the region of Navarre. Furthermore, the analysis of this latter activity allows us to offer an explanatory model that is both an alternative and a complement to the classical model —that provided by the largest firms—concerning the progressive incorporation of the traditional electrical markets into the integrated markets of the major Spanish companies.

This paper deals with the permanent existence of deliberate fertility control arising from short-term economic stress among rural farm workers. The micro-level analysis uses the family reconstitution method for ten rural Spanish localities. The husband's socio-economic level is regarded as an indicator of the family's socio-economic status. According to the available data, human agency between 1801 and 1909 resulted in a negative fertility response among all farm groups, with this negative response being especially strong among the landless and semi-landless. The existence of a rapid fertility control response suggests that such control was a voluntary decision. Since the end of the 19th century, the number of economic shocks due to high prices has reduced.

During the first half of the 20th century, most electric utilities were owned by foreign companies in Latin America as well as in Argentina, where the electric system was managed by firms of different nationalities and types. After comparing the trajectories of the firms, the article explores the causes of the unsuccessful performance of the electric utilities managed by British and American companies in Argentina. The results show that the life-cycles of electric utility companies greatly diverged according to their style of management and financing, the entry into the market, and the level of capitalization and technology applied to electrical networks.

The «rentas provinciales» were a group of indirect taxes that provided an important part of the Spanish fiscal revenues. This taxes were criticized specially for being a constraint upon economic development. Several studies abaut «rentas provinciales» have used net revenues, in most cases not distributed among the twenty-two Castile provinces. This article shows gross revenues, administrative costs and net revenues obtained from «relaciones generales de valores» made by «administradores generales de las provincias», available at Archivo General de Simancas. Using this data, it is possible to obtain new conclusions about the quantitative evolution of this taxes and about its influence in the economic growth of the Castile Crown in XVIIIth-century.

Las finanzas de los gobiernos de fines del siglo XVIII en España han sido con frecuencia calificadas de inherentemente inflacionarias. Los crónicos déficit presupuestarios, consecuencia de una base fiscal débil y fuertes gastos de guerra, se han considerado el móvil que forzó al gobierno a la emisión de papel moneda. Pese a ser ésta en gran medida una descriptión aplicable a los últimos añnos del siglo, cuando empezaban a desintegrarse las finanzas del Antiguo Régimen, el gobierno consiguió resolver sus problemas hacendísticos con mayor éxito del que, por lo general, se le concede.

During the 1861–1930 period, Argentina was under a virtual gold-exchange standard regime in die 1867–1876; 1883–1884 and, 1900–1913 years. In die remaining periods, a managed paper standard was in place, always with die aim to restore convertibility.

I show that currency substitution was already an economic phenomenon in die Argentine economy. If currency substitution prevailed, dien die notion that Argentina, by abandoning die Gold-Standard rule, could manage an independent monetary and banking policy to insulate die level of economic activity from shocks arising from die rest of die world should be qualified if not dismissed. In die medium run domestic attempts to inflate (or deflate) die economy were mainly reflected in changes in die foreign exchange rates and/or prices.