The essay measures the fiscal costs and benefits of colonialism both for die Spanish American colonies and for Spain in the period 1760–1814 using new estimates of die annual transfers from die colonies to the metropolitan treasury. The various components of die fiscal benefits for die metropolis are analyzed, including not only die transfer of silver but also large shipments of tobacco leaf from Cuba. It is argued that die American contribution to the ordinary income of the Spanish government increased in absolute and relative terms in die period 1790–1810.

El encargo que me ha hecho Pablo Martín Aceña de escribir esta nota me compensa, aunque sólo en parte, el dolor que me causó la inesperada noticia de la muerte de Manuel Tuñón de Lara, historiador a quien admiraba, amigo a quien quería. Pese a lo plateado de su cabellera, que sus compañeros habíamos ido viendo pasar gradualmente del gris al blanco, y lo creciente de su sordera, el vigor, la vivacidad, la inteligencia, el humor de Manolo Tuñón eran tales que uno olvidaba que, como todos, se iba haciendo mayor; ha muerto a los ochenta y un años, y para sus amigos la suya ha sido una muerte prematura.

The continuity of big mercantile houses established in Western Andalusia during die eighteenth century was jeopardized not only due to die political and economic crisis of the end of the century, but also due to another source of instability that has received little attention in economic history: the equalitarian principles of the Castilian hereditary system, whose aim was to safeguard the transmission of family wealth between generations. Castilian hereditary law and customs promoted family well-being, but die equalitarian division of patrimonies also had the result of forcing die dispersion of fortunes, dierefore hindering the continuity of numerous mercantile family firms. This article studies the effects of die Castilian hereditary system in Cádiz during the eighteen century, when die Andalusien city held the legal monopoly of trade between Spain and its American possessions. The study also analyzes some of the mechanisms that die Cádiz mercantile elites used in order to bequeath more concentrated patrimonies.

The aim of this paper is to study the process of integration of the XIX century Spanish market of wheat Basically, integration grew until the middle of the XIX century, and decreased from then. The growth of agricultural production and the reduction of transport costs explain the improvement of integration in the period 1830/50. The process of disintegration is more enigmatic, but the advent of railway does not seem to have contributed to building the national market On the contrary, it could be the cause of diat disintegration, in spite of the fact that it improved die connection of some markets.

The interest of the Borbonic reforming policy about the interior colonization granted —in the ancient Aragon's Crown lands— many enterprises which, on the second half of the 18th Century, counted with the model of repopulation of Sierra Morena and, from 1772, with die replacement of die Fuero Alfonsino of 1329, a privilege that allowed to get die baronal jurisdiction. That is the way, togheter with repopulation thoughts, it was easy to find, in these proyects, speculative motivations or a way to get into die privileged class.

A common view in the Spanish population history has been to show the variety of its regional demographies. In this regional setting the population of Catalonia has been characterized by its early connection between economic and social modernization and demographical change. This article aims to evaluate these connections between economic and demographical dynamics in Catalonia in the pre-industrial era (1600–1850). Series of vital events and prices from a sample of Catalan villages have been collected and demographical responses to short run fluctuations in standards of living evaluated through lag time series models. The main results show: a) Levels of mortality responses to fluctuations in standards of living are higher than levels of fertility throughout two and a half centuries, b) Nuptiality, in the XVIII th century, and fertility, in the first half of XIX th century, are the demographical mechanisms applied by the Catalan population in order to avoid tensions between population and resources during the process of economic growth.

During the first years of XIX century, there were many outstanding authors who defended die direct tax system which fitted better widi die new liberal Constitution. This posistion was even further reinforced in die «Cádiz Cortes». Nevertheless, some others important authors denied die possibility of setting up die new system in order to replace die old one. The later position began with Vicente Alcalá Galiano, continued with the debates in die Cortes de Cádiz and, later on, with die works of Duaso, Pinilla and Plana to critizise die Decreto (Bill) of September, 13, 1813 on the New Public Taxes and it finished with several works by Cañedo in die second decade of die century. Ramón M.a Cañedo will defend a tax system based on indirect taxes. He will based his arguments on Adam Smidi in order to fit his tax principles to die system which was set up in 1785. From his point of view, the indirect tax system was better adapted to the economic and social conditions in Spain.

The system of multiple exchange rates for the peseta, in force between 1948 and 1959, has posed many problems for Spanish historiography, in that it implies that the price at which foreign transactions were carried out is unknown, being hidden in the dense foliage of special exchange rates. In this paper we estimate the various average exchange rates series for all the Balance of Payments of these years, thus filling the vacuum that the post-Civil War period represents in the history of the peseta. We also calculate the real effective exchange rate, concluding that the important devaluations of 1949–1951 and 1957–1959 were insufficient in order to achieve equilibrium between Spanish relative prices and those of its main trading partners, so that the peseta remained continuously over-valued throughout the 1940's and 1950's.

The autor deals with the need for researches based on the connection of private and public capital in the functioning of the royal finances in Catalonia of the 16th-century. B. Hernández describes the existence of a powerful private sector of business-men that contacted with the fiscal administrators in order to face the monetary necessities of the Monarchy. This article analyzes the frequency of credit contracts negociated though bills of exchange dispatched on the fairs of Lyons and the associated speculative mechanisms that allow to evaluate the importance of fiscal and mercantile factors thats had intervened in the royal financial system in Catalonia.

In this paper we build a general index of retail prices for the city of Santander, using the information from the «Mercurial» during the first half of 19th century, a period we do not have much information about This index for the Cantabrian capital is compared to the Reher-Ballesteros index. The hypothesis is that the Santander index has a different profile to the Reher-Ballesteros one due to two reasons —its composition is more varied and it describes a peripheral area. The uselfulness of local documentation for this kind of research is equally shown.

This paper examines the convergence process at a disaggregated level in a historical context. A three-way disaggregation of the national accounts by output, income and expenditure reveals a wealth of diversity, bom over time and across countries, i.e. history and geography matter. Countries can specialise according to comparative advantage, and convergence at the aggregate level can occur through changes in structure as well as through convergence at the micro level. Similarly, changes in factor proportions may lead to convergence of aggregate incomes without requiring convergence of all factor prices at the micro level. Also, differences in preferences may persist, so that individual components of expenditure do not need to converge in line with aggregate expenditure. Convergence at the aggregate level, dren, does not necessarily lead to uniformity. Vive la différence!

This work offers a new vision of the agrarian reformism carried out by the Government during the Restauración. This revision focusses on die study of the contributions of Rafael Gasset, die everlasting minister of Fomento during the Restauración —a duty he occupied nine times between 1900 and 1923— to the solution of so called agrarian question in the historical period which started in the critical moment of 98 and finished with the liquidation of die turno de partidos system in September 1923. The analysis looks at the reasons of die failure of the hydraulic agrarian policy during die years of die Canovite system —in our opinion essentially political—, as well as to the reasons that explain its historical continuity and success during die dictatorships of Primo de Rivera and Franco; it also serves to establish some hypothesis which allow us to understand better the nature of these historical regimes.

In this essay is presented an estimation of a cost of living index in Spain for the period 1861–1936, based on the reconstruction of series of prices for twelve Spanish provinces. The author describes the quantitative process, detailing the nature and origin of the sources, the goods selected and the budget criteria. Although die results do not modify our knowledge about the dynamics of the Spanish economy, they suggest a new reading intensity of subsistence crisis in the second half of ninenteenth century.

La finalidad de esta Guía es dar a conocer los principales archivos y fondos documentales en los que se conservan fuentes para el estudio de la inversión extranjera en España durante el siglo XIX. Este tema, tan importante para la investigación de la historia económica española, ha llamado desde siempre la atención de los historiadores no sólo españoles sino también foráneos. Hoy día existe una apreciable cantidad de libros publicados que de una manera u otra se refieren a los aspectos legales, fiscales o políticos relacionados con la inversión extranjera en España. Se puede asegurar que es un asunto que siempre ha sido polémico y que muchas veces incluso ha despertado apasionamiento, en gran medida precisamente por sus implicaciones políticas. Algunos historiadores lo han considerado como un vehículo para una cierta forma de «colonialismo», mientras que otros lo ven como un claro signo de debilidad por parte del país receptor de la inversión cuando por ejemplo el ahorro interior es insuficiente para cubrir sus necesidades financieras.

Monetary policy has been one of the least understood and much debated topics in Chilean economic history. An ideological commitment to convertibility has alienated economic historian from die larger subject of costs and benefits of the exchange regime. This paper studies the process of money creation in Chile and its relationship with banking regulation. Given the characteristics of the Chilean economy, the author concludes that adherence to the gold standard was not possible and that Chilean naive experiments with the real bills doctrine provided the economy with financial stability.

Es generalizada la idea de que la revolución probabilística no se produjo en España hasta después de 1930 y que nuestro país fue un verdadero páramo donde se ignoraban las aplicaciones que la nueva metodología estadística, basada en los modelos de probabilidad que se habían desarrollado a lo largo de los dos últimos siglos en Europa, ofrecía a las ciencias sociales, en general, y a la demografía, a las compañías de seguros, a la especulación en Bolsa, a las actividades industriales y comerciales, etc. Este trabajo tiene la pretensiñn de poner de manifiesto el interés que algunos científicos españoles se tomaron para propagar estos conocimientos por su gran utilidad desde los inicios del surgimiento del Cálculo de Probabilidades, aunque no supieran (o no pudieran) crear una escuela que diera continuidad a sus aislados esfuerzos, intentos que también chocaron con la secular desidia de nuestra ciencia matemática a la que incomodaba cualquier conato de modernización.

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.

Cualquier referencia al comportamiento de los precios en la economía española, anterior a la Primera Guerra Mundial, pasa ineludiblemente por el índice de Sardà (1948) para 1812–1890, y desde entonces el que se recoge en el Dictamen de la Comisión del patrón oro. El índice de precios al por mayor de Bustelo y Tortella (1976) para este período es el resultado del enlace entre los dos anteriores. Por otra parte, algunos investigadores han preparado índices de precios basados en estadísticas oficiales de comercio. Así, por ejemplo, Leandro Prados elaboró un índice de precios para las exportaciones y otro para las importaciones a partir de las estadísticas del comercio exterior español y británico. Las estadísticas del comercio de cabotaje también han sido utilizadas para obtener información sobre la evolución de los precios correspondientes. Ninguno de ellos, sin embargo, informa satisfactoriamente sobre el comportamiento de los precios en el sector industrial de la economía española.