This article deals with the consumption and marketing of textiles in some Castilian areas during the first decades of the 17th century. The study uses a new documentary source: the 1618 inquiry. Part one describes the main characteristics of this documentary source. The second part analyzes textiles sales according to the fibre the different fabrics were made of. The third part presents some notes on the typology of the textiles sold in the country. This allows us to describe the marketing areas of two highly representative products of the Castilian woollen industry: the Segovian and Andalusian cloth. Finally, in the fourth and last part we have estimated the consumption of textile fabrics by household. This analysis has also been completed with a study of the terms of trade between grain and some textile fabrics between 1614 and 1616. The results support the hypothesis of a higher consumption of textile products in Andalusia than in Old Castile at the beginning of the 17th century.

The impact that the new energy source, electricity, had on the economic growth of a number of countries –USA, UK, France, Italy, Spain and Canada– characterised by their different coal endowments is the principal objective of this article. The new energy, amongst its other advantages, reduced the dependence on natural resources of coal as it could be generated out of different primary energies: namely water or coal. In order to assess the importance of this reduced dependence, a coal-and-electricity energy database is presented for all six countries. We show that the relative prices electricity-coal were low in countries with poor coal endowments, and we find that there was a negative relationship between relative prices electricity-coal and economic growth. Moreover, there was a relationship between the industrial electrification process in countries with no coal deposits and their investment process, their labour productivity increase, their economic and manufacturing industry growth, and the structural change they underwent.

In this article, we present an analysis of the institutional evolution of firing in Spain. We explain how a certain path-dependence has been created by historical accidents and how this is the mechanism behind the current system of a costly employment at will. The incentives of firms, workers and governments to sustain such a system are also discussed. We show the main inefficiencies of the system: a substantial increase in severance pay, a distorted use of the legal framework, and limitations to give a rapid answer to a big negative shock. Finally, we discuss how the unemployment benefits reform of 2002 can be understood as the culmination of Spain's policy of costly employment at will.

This paper illustrates the spread of Jean-Baptiste Say's entrepreneur theory in Spain –a last contribution within the French tradition in which Richard Cantillon and A. R. J. Turgot were predecessors. We attempt to demonstrate that this is a special case, because, even though J. B. Say was the most important author from a publishing point of view, his economic theory of entrepreneurship had very little influence. The spread of economic ideas by way of translation and Spanish authors which employed J. B. Say's economic theory, give possible explanations to a paradox which had left economic policy without a theoretical reference. We analyse how Say's entrepreneur theory was received among Spanish authors in the 19th century, its degree of comprehension and the analytical additions made, and attempt to identify the real source of transmission.

This article explores the behavior of exchange rates in Spain during the 18th century. We analyze the exchange rates quoted in London on three Spanish cities between 1699 and 1826. After a brief review of how the Spanish monetary system worked and how exchange rates were determined, we assess to which extent the exchange rate responded to market fundamentals by testing two theoretical models of exchange rate determination. The results suggest that purchasing power parity held during the 18th century, with the exchange rate tracking quite closely the behavior of inflation differentials. Deviations from PPP appeared at the end of the century, due mostly to changes in the real exchange rate caused by the bilateral trade between Spain and Great Britain and, maybe, due to productivity differentials.

La economía evolutiva ha experimentado en los últimos años un notable auge en el ámbito científico europeo, desarrollando una amplia panoplia de modelos y teorías destinadas a estudiar diversos aspectos de los procesos económicos. Aunque la economía evolutiva se caracteriza como tal por utilizar los modelos poblacionales de la biología evolutiva, adopta elementos cruciales de las obras de Schumpeter y Simon, lo que dota a su trabajo de una gran originalidad y profundidad analítica. La presente nota tiene por objeto examinar la estructura y alcance de esta escuela de pensamiento a través de sus referentes intelectuales, con el fin de evaluar el alcance de sus construcciones teóricas.