The literature on internationalisation processes in family businesses has boomed with the emergence of new approaches and different perspectives. One of these schemes analyses the so-called born-again global firms, mostly technology companies, which experienced an internationalisation process after one or more serious incidents affecting it. The case of Ines Rosales extends the frontier of the meaning of a global born-again firm to firms in industries and traditional products. One of its most striking aspects is that the flagship product is centennial and based on basic ingredients. In addition, the production process of the firm mix production by hand and mechanised developments. Inés Rosales shows the ability of a family Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) in a process of internationalisation even in culturally distant markets through the traditional cake of olive oil.

This article examines Argentine relations with multilateral agencies and bankers during the first years of the last military dictatorship. It begins with an overview of relations and the external situation before the rise of the military and why a new economic team sought and restored Argentine credit standing. There follows a review of how links with the U.S. Treasury and international institutions lost significance and how cross-country financial intermediation, carried out mainly by leading state banks, gave foreign bankers a key role in the financing of Argentina’s foreign exchange needs. It also emphasises explicit and underlying motivations in the behaviour and policies of all actors involved and offers an evaluation of former Minister Martínez de Hoz’s efforts to justify these policies in the early 1980s.

This paper explores the relationship between the physical stature of Colombians born during the 20th century and several socio-economic and demographic variables. Using a dataset of more than 225,000 individuals built with information from judicial background certificates, we found a sustained growth of the average height of women and men during the 20th century. The results show significant differences in stature according to gender, level of education, occupation, and place and date of birth. Similarly, health conditions and access to aqueducts significantly affect height. We found that departmental average height disparities decreased and the gap across regions closed throughout the century.

La interpretación tradicional de la agricultura española considera que durante medio siglo antes de la guerra civil hubo pocos cambios en la productividad de los factores de producción. Además, la falta de cambios en la agricultura se ha considerado muchas veces, junto con los bajos niveles de vida de muchos productores y una demanda doméstica insuficiente para estimular la producción industrial, como un círculo vicioso del «estancamiento agrícola». Las causas principales de la baja productividad en el sector agrario han sido atribuidas a problemas estructurales, como el latifundio y el minifundio, y a los inadecuados métodos de cultivo, resultado de inversiones de capital insuficientes.

This paper analyses the role of Mompox in New Granada's interregional trade during the late colonial period. It focuses on the value, structure and destination of exports of domestic goods from Mompox to markets on the Atlantic and the Andes. By unearthing unexplored sources, this paper provides evidence that will help to understand, indirectly, some issues such as the nature and timing of economic growth, the degree of regional specialisation and, above all, the role of inland ports in the economic geography of the viceroyalty. The paper contends, first, that the region experienced a boom–bust cycle during the late colonial period. The export of domestic goods doubled between 1770 and 1800 but subsequently collapsed during the 1802-1809 years. Second, evidence suggests that the region experienced a process of market deepening and widening. Trade flows, then, played a larger role in shaping the economic history of the region than previously thought.

No sé si el lector de esta polémica habrá obtenido alguna satisfacción intelectual de su lectura. Confío, eso sí, que habrá podido valorar la validez de los datos y argumentos de una y otro. Reconozco que la respuesta de Antolín a mis objeciones me ha producido una cierta perplejidad. Contiene, en primer lugar, buen número de consideraciones —algunas de ellas interesantes— que nada tienen que ver con las objeciones que yo planteaba. Cuando se centra en ellas cae, a mi entender, en cierta incoherencia o, simplemente, elude presentar una réplica sólida. A fin de no aburrir más al inocente lector voy a presentar tan sólo tres puntualizaciones sobre los puntos en discordia y dos breves comentarios de alcance más amplio.

Los cambios que tuvieron lugar en las economías de los países occidentales desde los últimos años del siglo xix hasta el primer tercio del xx han venido asimilándose por la literatura reciente a la aceleración de la productividad de los factores producida por la rápida incorporación de nuevas tecnologías y cambios en los sistemas de organización de las empresas. Una de las principales nuevas tecnologías que contribuyeron a esta aceleración fue la incorporación y rápida expansión de la electricidad en el proceso productivo.

Although only recently the positive performance of the landlords in the Spanish agricultural growth has been standed up, we know relatively little about the participation of the landed aristocraty in these changes. Through the analysis of the administation, the accounting, investments and strategies of some aristocratic families, the article emphasizes the slowness and very often failure of some transformations. The work shows that nor mental factors neither the scarcity of resources and opportunities explain these failures. Instead it is pointed out their incapacity in creating an efficient organization which could solve, at die same time, the problems of a scattered inheritance and the ambiguities of formal property rights.

This note is a first aproximation to the evolution of wages in a catalan cotton firm. From the firm sources it has been made a male and female wages indexes. The main conclusions are the relative wage stability up World War I, the change in die evolution from die war, the sexual diferentiation of wages and the different evolution between bodi indexes.

An attempt is made to describe main developments of Aragonese agriculture, distinguishing two different periods separated by the agricultural depression which occurred at the end of the 19th century. The main part of the article is dedicated to the first third of the 20th century, with special attention to the importance that technological change had on labour and land productivity.

We present the yearly evolution of the Spanish income velocity of money (M2) and we explain its behavior from 1850 to 2000. The Spanish income velocity of money displays a downward trend until 1973 and shows the expected U-shaped pattern at the end of the twentieth century. An international comparison shows how the Spanish trend change occurs with a lag due to the late industrialization. We estimate the determinants of the velocity—the inverse of the demand for money—for the period 1850–1997. A cointegration analysis and an error correction model investigate the importance of the institutional variables in explaining the long-run behavior of the income velocity of money in Spain. The findings reveal a greater stability in the long-run velocity model when the institutional variables are considered.

The degree of development of Spanish agriculture at the end of the XIX century and the beginning of XX is a controversial issue. In this respect the study of the integration of the domestic market could provide new evidence since the degree of the market integration can be considered an indicator of economic development. By using regional wheat prices this paper analyzes the Spanish market integration between 1891 and 1905. With this aim in mind we employ the usual cointegration approach as well as an alternative method based on spectral analysis that allows taking into consideration the existence of no synchronized cycles.

On the eve of the Great Famine (1846–50) Irish incomes were low by west European standards. However, an analysis of Irish diets at the time suggests that poverty was mitigated by a calorific intake that exceeded that of early nineteenth-century England and France. The added physical requirements of farm work in Ireland were not commensurate. The impression of healthy food is corroborated by a comparative analysis of Irish and British heights in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

This article explores the development of railway nationalism and «railway imperialism» within Colombian politics during the early 20th century. It uses the experience of the hitherto unstudied Great Northern Central Railway of Colombia British «free-standing company» as a lens to evaluate the way in which these political currents impacted railway development in the Colombian department of Santander. It argues that the rise of railway nationalism intertwined with regionalism and personal interests represents an important and unacknowledged factor in the collapse of the British company, as well as the overall lack of railway expansion and subsequent economic decline in the department.

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.

Diversas investigaciones sobre el Banco de España nos han permitido conocer la evolución de sus activos y pasivos, las vicisitudes de su vinculación con el Tesoro, su expansión por provincias o la favorable cotización de sus acciones, pero no sabemos quiénes eran los que se veían principalmente beneficiados por esto último, es decir, nos es prácticamente desconocido el nombre de los mayores accionistas, por más que haya referencias como la que encabeza este artículo, de lo bien que les iba a tales accionistas; otros contemporáneos se atrevieron a recargar aún más las tintas o a cuantificar suculentos beneficios.

This article considers the importance of sugar in the Cuban economy in the first twelve years after the Revolution. Two major emphases in policy can be identified. From 1959 the revolutionary leaders attempted to diversify away from sugar, but with only limited success. By 1970 the failure of this policy was evident and a second approach, which placed sugar in the forefront of economy policy, was introduced.

Wood has always been and will continue being a material used bay man in thousands of different ways, but it has barely received the attention it descrves from economic historians. This article aims to show the great variety of economic problems related to wood as well as to illustrate the need to carry out further research on this matter. Forest, industrial and commercial aspects of wood in Spain from mid-XIX to mid-XX century, taking into account the changes produced in wood use and in the evolution of international markets, are analysed. The most important conclusions of die study include die «lumbering» of Spanish forest production, the increase and spread of sawmills, the complementing of national production with imported timber and die self-sufficient descapitalisation of die autharchic years.

The author proposes a method of comparing different levels of factor market integration in Spain. This method consists of standarizing four indicators about labor market (L), land market (T1 y T2) and capital market (K) to build an composit indicator. This permits us to make some generalizations concerning the level of market integration in northern Spain.

Este ensayo es un intento de análisis de la evolución del comercio exterior español durante los siglos XVIII y XIX, que aspira a mostrar su incidencia sobre la evolución general del país y a comparar algunas de las conclusiones obtenidas con algunas de las teorías más extendidas acerca de las interrelaciones entre el sector exterior y la economía en general. Se trata, naturalmente, de una versión muy resumida de un proyecto de investigación en curso, y cualquier demanda de información adicional será atendida.