The paper proposes an interpretation of the «Argentine failure» based on development accounting and econometrical approaches frequently used in the current cross-country income differentials literature. The main results are as follows: the development process of Canada — in term of per capita GDP –– moved away from that of Argentina around 1918, but there was a structural change in the determinants of aggregate productivity around 1935 that led Argentina to take a diverging path. Recovery — thanks to improved aggregate productivity –– was not possible after 1940. The results support the idea that Argentina fell into a «staple trap», while Canada embarked on a successful path due to the adjacency and political proximity with a larger and complementary economy.

In the 1940s, when the governor of Puerto Rico was still appointed by the U.S. president, a large state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector was established. Later, in 1948-1950, the island's first elected government privatised these SOEs. This paper documents both the creation of the SOE sector and its privatisation, and analyses the role played by ideology, political interests and economic concerns in the decision to privatise. Whereas ideological factors might have played a significant role in the building of the SOE sector, the privatisation process was driven by economic factors. In the cement sector, the competing private firm was more efficient and the SOEs in other sectors with no private competitors in the island showed permanent losses.

Latin America participated in the electric revolution which profoundly transformed the most developed Western economies between 1880 and 1930. The qualitative empirical evidence shows that Latin American electrification began with little delay compared to those economies. This article provides new quantitative evidence consisting of annual series about a reliable indicator of the degree of electrification of the Latin American nations. The database built shows that towards 1930 electricity consumption per inhabitant in Latin America was far below that of most advanced economies, and only Latin American leaders in the electrification process had reached power consumption levels similar to the European late comers. Unlike other newly industrializing economies, the region was not able to quickly incorporate new technology to overcome their backwardness.

The article questions the degree of importance that has been attributed to insecurity in the recent analysis of Colombia's lack of development in the 19th century, and of the lack of development in post-independence Latin America generally. The author criticizes their lack of empirical evidence, and their lack of comparative focus, both within the hemisphere and outside it, and offers a series of arguments against their conclusions. His own evidence in the Colombian case indicates that neither «anarchy» nor deficiencies in property rights constituted significant brakes on the development of the country's economy. He also questions the direction of causation in institutionalist explanations.

The literature on Anglo-South American trade during the first half of the 19th century has taken British exports for granted. There are no specific considerations of textile exports, which were the backbone of British trade to the continent. Accordingly, when explaining the growth of British exports, historians have paid tribute solely to economic developments in South America. Important developments taking place in Britain have long been neglected. This paper provides the first account of the impact that improvements in the packing of textiles to protect against seawater damages had on British exports to distant markets, focusing on the particular markets of Chile and the River Plate c.1810-1859.

This study aims to answer whether empirical records confirm the existence of a secular decline in the terms of trade affecting primary producers (the Singer–Prebisch hypothesis). The paper analyses the evolution of the terms of trade for agricultural and food products in the second half of the 20th century. We obtain sixty new real price indices for internationally traded agricultural products. We conclude, from a long-term perspective, that the deterioration in the terms of trade for agricultural and food products was strong and clear in the second half of the last century. In general, less processed products suffered a very heavy fall in their real prices. However, there was no continuous and persistent deterioration in the terms of trade either as a whole or for the great majority of the agricultural and food product groups (with the exception of natural rubber, textile fibres and other raw materials). Rather, this deterioration occurred in stages.

Grape quality and the nature of market demand played a major role in determining the organizational structure of the wine industry in the three decades prior to 1914. In contrast to Europe where grape growing and winemaking were specialist activities, in the New World winemaking and selling were often integrated. This encouraged the appearance of large industrial wineries producing wines that could be branded. Differences within the New World itself can be attributable to the nature of demand and, in particular, to whether wine was considered an article of primary consumption (Argentina), or whether it competed with other, more popular alcoholic beverages such as beer and spirits (Australia and California).

This paper analyses the system of transportation and discusses the effect of geography and transport infrastructure on transport costs and economic growth in Peru during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Using primary and secondary sources, I find that geography imposed difficult transport challenges on Peruvians during this period. There were no navigable rivers in coastal and highland regions, railroads were scarce and most roads were inadequate for wagons, sometimes even for horses and mules. As a result, transport costs were extremely high, which constituted a barrier to trade, reduced gains from specialisation and retarded economic growth. Therefore, high transport costs seem to be one important factor in explaining the low income levels of Peru in the early 20th century in spite of the country's large endowments of natural resources.

The influence of economic ideas in parliamentary debates has attracted increasing attention in the analysis of the institutionalisation of political economy in the liberal age in the Western world. Within this framework, this paper explores a particular case: the relevance of economic ideas and the role of economists in the debates that took place in the Spanish Parliament in 1869 following the bill issued by the Minister of Finance Figuerola to establish a tax on personal incomes. Economic ideas and parliamentarian economists played a significant role in the design of the income tax as a key tool to modernise Spain's tax system, and in the subsequent parliamentary discussions.

This paper focuses on the analysis of weak states in the international trading system during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic crises, especially on Portugal's trade relations with the United States. We argue that the previous studies of the trade flows during these conflicts have not paid enough attention on smaller actors. Even though the Peninsular War caused severe disruption of agricultural production in Portugal, the United States, despite its strained relations with an ally of Portugal, Great Britain, became a key supplier for the Portuguese market. Clearly, the threatened position of the peninsula, and the need to supply the troops, awarded the Portuguese some room to manoeuvre in the international markets. Total war was not a constraint for all states — economic necessities trumped political and diplomatic concerns during the era of the first real-world wars. This situation was a temporary one, only to change after the conflict.

Studies of Spanish cooperatives date their spread from the Law on Agrarian Syndicates of 1906. But the first legislative appearance of cooperatives is an 1869 measure that permitted general incorporation for lending companies. The 1931 general law on cooperatives, the first act permitting the formation of cooperatives in any activity, reflects the gradual disappearance of the cooperative's «business» characteristics. In this paper, we trace the Spanish cooperative's legal roots in business law and its connections to broader questions of the freedom of association, the formation of joint-stock enterprises and the liability of investors in business and cooperative entities. Our account underscores the similarities of the organizational problems approach by cooperatives and business firms, while at the same time respecting the distinctive purposes cooperatives served.

This article deals with the relations between taxation and prices levels in seventeenth century Castile through an analysis of the influence of royal and municipal taxes on the retail prices of cheap wine in Madrid between 1606 and 1700. First part describes the taxes levied on cheap wine by the Castilian Crown and the town council in Madrid. Both kinds of taxes provided the Royal and the City Treasuries with the most important part of their tax revenues. Second part analyzes how the Royal and the city authorities estimated the monetary value of the taxes and excises levied on this beverage. Lastly, third part shows that the burden of the royal and municipal taxes levied on a litre of cheap wine rose during the period. If in 1606-10 both types of taxes amounted to around 30 per cent of the retail prices of a litre of cheap wine, in the last third of the century this percentage had risen to 60-65 per cent.

This paper studies the role played by different trade barriers (transport costs, customs and currency) in the evolution of Spanish imports during the First Globalization (1870-1913). Through the estimation of several gravity equations with panel data analysis, we obtain the elasticities of imports to each barrier, which allows us to combine them into a single ad valorem measure of barriers to trade (which we call the trade costs tariff equivalent). More interestingly, the contribution of the barriers to the profile of the tariff equivalent, as well as the assignment of an active role to the peseta exchange rate as a barrier, illustrates the existence of a protectionist backlash against the sustained decline in transport costs in the period 1870-1913.

The aim of this article is to measure the advance of agricultural productivity in South Navarra between 1780 and 1900. The construction of several indices of agricultural commodities and factor prices allows us to apply the methodology of Total Factor Productivity (TFP). As distinguished from the thesis of stagnation, our estimate of the annual rate of TFP growth in the long run is close to 0.42 %. This rate was particularly high between 1817 and 1850, in a context of deflation and institutional change. During the second half of the century the cyclical evolution of the curve reveals the obstacles derived from the capital resources supply, especially fertilizers and animal traction.

This article studies the possible effect that education may have upon entrepreneurial success. It uses two data bases, one for Spanish, the other for English entrepreneurs. By means of statistical and econometric analysis, we examine the effects on entrepreneurial behaviour of a series of variables, several relating to education. We compare the Spanish with the English sample. The main conclusions are: education indeed has a considerable bearing upon entrepreneurial success; this bearing is much more evident in the English than in the Spanish samples; both educational systems are quite different; and, lastly, family income seems to have little effect either on entrepreneurial success or on the studies of future entrepreneurs.

This essay considers the literature on the topic of social capital in relation to the economic science, and opens new perspectives of research in this area. This essay starts with a walk through the history of economic thought that has influenced social capital literature. Afterwards, the reader will find a discussion on different perspectives of research that have been followed up to now and some others in relation with the microeconomic foundations of the concept of social capital, and its connexion with economic growth and finance.