The historiography on Campomanes, in particular that referring to his writings on factory matters, has established a cliché of their anti-capitalistic or anti-industrial character. This appraisal, which can be traced back to a biased interpretation of his Discurso sobre el fomento de la industria popular, has secluded both the remaining doctrinal contributions on industry made by this author and the achievements of his proposed industrial policy. A more careful reading of his industrialist writings, adequately placed within their historical context, will no doubt contribute to discard platitudes and to rehabilitate one of the leading intellectuals of Spanish economy during the 18th century.

One key step in the process of development is the transition from the personalistic rules and privileges that characterise developing societies to open access orders and rational–legal bureaucracies sustaining impersonal rules. This article uses a micro-data set of Spanish officers to study the politicisation of the army during the Second Republic (1931–1939) taking Franco's Africanist faction as the case study. The military reforms during 1931–1933 increased the impersonality of rules determining the promotion of officers, but executive discretionary powers persisted. The results suggest that changes in the government affected the dynamics of the army. Under conservative governments (1934–1935), Africanists were promoted more rapidly. Centre-left governments during the period of 1931–1933 did not systematically promote Africanists differently, but the revision of promotions in 1933 slowed their careers. The politicisation of the army was one of the factors contributing to the military coup that started the Spanish Civil War.

This article analyses the impact of market forces and regulation in the Spanish telephone sector. It aims to explore the combined effects of the intersection between regulation of the monopoly, economic policy and entrepreneurial strategies, and hypothesizes that the regulation had a decisive influence on the development of the networks and services. Chronologically, the study covers the two decades of the transition from autarky to the Stabilization and Development Plans. In its double supply-demand approach, the article quantifies investment as an expression of supply and reviews the ground rules within which these two market forces developed. Finally, it examines the situation of shortages that the intervention created, and explains the intervention in prices from the perspective of the trade-off between its use as an element of stabilization and the bargaining power of the sector. The conclusions reflect the impact of the regulation and highlight its more complex aspects.

This article presents, for the first time, a continuous series of value of Honduran exports and imports for the period 1880-1930, extending the series previously available from Notten (2012). The new series were constructed based on the official statistics of the main trading partners of Honduras (United States, Great Britain, Germany and France) corrected from Honduran and complementary sources. The correction criteria applied are based on the results of a previous reliability validation exercise. The data obtained allow to delimit a new chronology of the foreign trade of Honduras where the “export age” began before the banana export boom that took place between 1903 and 1930.

In this paper we explore the determinants of women's work using data from Barcelona in 1930. Although participation rates were much lower in Barcelona than in cities in the UK or the US at roughly the same time, our estimates of the labour supply suggest women in Barcelona did respond to wage incentives. The most distinguishable feature of the household division of labour in Barcelona is the lack of substitution effects among family members, especially among women. The sensitivity of the participation of each individual woman to the participation of other members of the household might indicate that labour markets were highly segmented and anticipates the existence of large differences in household earnings and welfare. We argue that the persistence of labour-intensive methods of production requiring on-the-job training might explain the type of household division of labour that we find in Barcelona.

Six decades ago, Cuba initiated a momentous social and economic experiment. This paper documents the effects of the experiment on Cuban living standards. Before the revolution, Cuban income per capita was on a par with Ireland or Finland. Indeed, Cuba was one of the richest of the Spanish-speaking societies. Growth is glacially slow after the revolution as GDP per capita increased by 40 per cent between 1957 and 2017 equal to an annual growth rate of 0.6 per cent—among the lowest anywhere. To be sure, other dimensions of well-being such as education and health improved, yet broader welfare measures do not change the conclusion that the revolution impoverished Cuba relative to any plausible counter factual.

During the military regime in Brazil (1964–1985), enrollment ratios in primary education grew substantially in the first decade under dictatorship, but stagnated in the mid-1970s. This paper shows that education spending might depend on the levels of centralisation in tax matters. Using panel data regressions and qualitative evidence, we argue that a massive big push industrialisation programme increased the pressure on external accounts, leading the government to intensify an export incentive policy based on tax subsidies that decreased the income of subnational governments. As a result, the capacity of funding mass education was compromised in the second half of the 1970s.

This paper examines educational inequality in nine Latin American countries at the sub-country level from the 1950s to the 1990s. Educational inequality is measured by the difference in schooling years between the taller and the shorter half of the female population. Schooling years significantly increased across birth cohorts, especially before the 1980s, regardless of socio-economic stratum, region or country. However, educational inequality persisted. This finding reflects the achievement of the import substitution industrialisation era in educational development and its failure in mitigating the unequal distribution of education rooted in Latin America's social structure. Trade liberalisation and educational expansion are found to reduce educational inequality in capital and urban regions, whereas democracy and tax reform increased it. By contrast, educational inequality in rural regions was hardly influenced by policy changes. This finding urges future explorations into whether the persistence of educational inequality in rural regions is due to endemic social structure.

This article attempts to analyse the role that the Rothschild House played in the evolution of Spanish Public Finances along the 19th Century. Therefore, it endeavours to describe an elementary chronology of the relationships between the Spanish Government and the Rothschild House during the whole Century, analysing the main financial operations they underwrote, quantifying their annual aggregate figures and, finally, trying to comment upon the different consequences of the process above mentioned. To cover these aims, we have deployed original records from the Rothschild Archives in London and Paris, their contents having been supplemented with information from National Public Records in Spain and France, and other financial institutions, namely the Bank of Spain.

This paper aims to analyze the changes in the standard of living of workers in the popular sectors of Mendoza during the “great expansion” of the Argentine economy. A series of real wages of the construction pawn in public works is calculated for 1895–1914, in order to compare it with series of real wages of low and medium public employee grades (low-level policeman, porter and clerk) and vineyard employees, which were previously estimated. In this way, we try to know if the dynamism of viticulture and public investment improved their living conditions. In addition, it seeks to compare these results with the cost of a basic basket of goods and services and calculate family income for some construction laborers identified in the National Population Census of 1895, in order to know if they insured family subsistence.

It has often been argued that large landowners formed the core of the Buenos Aires' economic elite during the first half of the nineteenth century. According to this interpretation, the crisis of independence forced the colonial wealthiest capitalists to move from commerce to ranching, which soon emerged as the elite's major source of income. The evidence produced in this article suggests that this interpretation requires revision. Analysis of sucesiones (probate records) for a sample of fifty of Buenos Aires' largest capitalists of the central decades of the XIXth century indicates that, rather than concentrating on rural production, wealthy porteños sought to diversify their assets. This article suggests that this pattern on investment emerged as a result of businessmen's attempts to cope with economic and political instability.

The article is divided in two parts. In the first part we analyse the reasons why it is not possible to quantify the agrarian macrovariables of the Old Regime. In the second part, we point out the most salient features of valencian agriculture during the XVIth, XVIIth, and XVIIIth centuries, such as the adoption of new techniques and the increasing comercialization of all types of crops.

This paper presents the first results of our most recent research on the Bilbao Stock Exchange (BSE) from its foundation in 1890 up to the Spanish Civil War. We examine the origin of the Exchange and follow its evolution over the first half-century of existence. To this end we introduce some of the stock exchange indexes we have calculated for Bilbao and put them into comparative perspective with the existing series on general economic and industrial activity and the indexes for other Spanish exchanges for the period considered. These comparisons show Bilbao’s evolution from a public debt-dominated market to an industrial exchange very much tied to regional development. Finally, we contrast the degree of financial market integration associated with the existing Spanish exchange indexes. Our analysis finds strong support for considering the BSE index as an industrial index and little evidence of capital market integration between the principal Spanish exchanges before the 1920s.

The «Compañía de Nuestra Señora de los Desamparados» was made by the silk craftsmen in 1772, but the General Board of Commerce changed its nature to authorize all the social classes to take part in share-holders. Although that circumstance favoured its growth, it laid the foundations of its final failure to provoke a serious conflict between the craftsmen sector, who exercised sole right the managines charges, and the rest of share-holders, which fundamental discord motive was the loss suffered in the commercial crisis of 1779–82. Anyway, the preservation of its private documentation has made it possible to analyse its manufacturing activity and the result of its business; the commercialization of the silk textile in Cádiz stands out.

Landlord-peasant land relationships embodied in different management strategies and forms of possession, constitute a central chapter in the medieval and modern agriculture history of the Castilian crown. In the following text, we analyse its evolution within the extended monastic patrimony of León, connecting it to social and economic circumstances between the end of XIIth century and the beginning of the XVIth century. Understanding them becomes all the more important since they play a key role in the explanation of exploitation field patterns applied in the modern era and of the agriculture system where they thrived.

This paper investigates the reasons why provincial issuing banks in Spain maintained high reserves in the 19th century and the effects this had. The introduction of banknotes into the economy meant that convertibility had to be guaranteed. If convertibility was respected, this gave banks a good reputation and made them reliable. The Palmer Rule was a control mechanism stating that a well-managed bank should keep one-third of its liabilities as cash in hand and two-thirds in securities. In Spain the banking system, constituted in the mid-19th century, was characterised by a plurality of issuing banks. Regulations required reserves only to secure notes, with no mention of reserve requirements for banks’ other types of liabilities. However, Spanish provincial banks of issue adopted the Palmer Rule. The Bank of Spain did not follow the same path.

Through the analysis of Argentina-World Bank (WB) relations between 1971 and 1976, this article examines how democracies and dictatorships, as well as political and economic constraints did (or did not) impact WB lending to Latin America. This period is especially revealing. Between May 1971 and September 1976, the WB did not grant any new loans to Argentina, thereby generating an exceptional and unusually long break in WB lending to the country. Drawing on previously undisclosed files from the WB Archives and additional primary sources from Argentina and the United States, this article unveils the actual mechanisms, criteria and justification that stood behind the decision to lend or not to lend to Argentina. It maintains that the WB’s self-imposed principle of «neutrality» played a crucial role in facilitating the WB’s relations with Argentina during the politically and economically unstable early 1970s.

El estudio de la economía y de la política económica durame la Segunda República sigue despertando entre nosotros un gran interés, El advenimiento del nuevo régimen coincidió con el peor año de la depresión mundial iniciada en 1929 y durante su corta existencia tuvo que sobrevivir en circunstancias económicas muy deslavorables. En sus escritos, los políticos republicanos hieieron notar este desafortunado suceso, destacando cómo la crisis internacional limitaba seriamente su capacidad de acción. Naturalmente, el adverso escenario económico de la década de 1920 hubiera tenido menor trascendencia si no hubiese sido por las exageradas expectativas de mejoras sociales y económicas que había suscitado la llegada al poder de los partidos de izauierda v de los urunos republicanos.

This essay aims to introduce an issue of the RHE-JILAEH dedicated to the reconstruction of historical trade statistics of Latin American countries. It comments on the early perceptions of the quality and utility of historical trade statistics and on the way in which more recent analyses have overcome the distrust that prevailed until the last third of the 20th century. It then summarises the different criteria and methodologies that have been used to assess the accuracy and reliability of trade statistics in order to make them useful for the purpose of reconstructing new, more complete and precise trade series or re-estimating those available. The introduction ends with a brief description of the contents of this volume.

En la literatura económica sobre tipos de cambio pueden encontrarse diferentes teorías o explicaciones sobre la determinatión del valor de cotización de las monedas. De todas ellas, las que gozan de mayor aceptación son la teoría de la balanza de pagos, la teoría del mercado de cambios a futuros, la teoría keynesiana sobre determinatión del tipo de cambio, el reciente enfoque monetarista y, por último, la traditional teoría de la paridad del poder adquisitivo.