El año 1983 se celebró un seminario donde una nueva generación de economistas revisaba aspectos centrales de la historia económica española, ha mayoría de los trabajos aparecieron dos años después recogidos en un volumen titulado La Nueva Historia Económica de España (Madrid, Tecnos, 1985), editado por Pablo Martín Aceña y Leandro Prados de la Escosura. Según sus editores, el libro consagraba la madurez de la disciplina y tuvo un carácter de manifiesto generacional. Los colaboradores en aquel volumen son hoy catedráticos de las principales universidades españolas y aquélla no fue la única vez que colaboraron juntos en publicaciones, seminarios y congresos. Aquellos jóvenes historiadores económicos son hoy menos jóvenes y la nueva historia económica que defendían, ciertamente ya no es nueva, pues constituye la forma habitual de practicar la historia económica.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of the control of the exchange rate vellón-silver over the prices in the Castile Crown's short-run credit. It compares the official price rates with the prices signed in the credit contracts of foreign financiers during the first half of the XVII century. The paper uses concepts from the price control theory and research done on black markets. There are many evidences that suggest that the official rates did not work to control the price of precious metals. In fact, the Crown had to pay the costly real price of the silver when it needed. Nevertheless, this policy served to change the behaviour of the financiers in the markets.

The main objective of this research has been to identify the determinants of durable and semi-durable goods' consumption in Castile between 1750 and 1850. These patterns of family consumption are very different and heterogeneous. It is necessary to distinguish those related with economic variables —family rent and its components (wages and taxes, for example)— and those related to the economic evolution, changes in rent distribution, credit faculties, inflation and other aspects of cultural, social and institutional character. First of all, I will explain some critical aspects on the probate inventories, the criteria adopted in their selection and the validity of the sample. An econometric approach that allows to identify the elements that had influenced in the consumption of durable and semi-durable goods has been employed.

Conceived as special types of preindustrial economies, the economies of the mountain areas had many distinctive features. Based on this assumption, three traditional ideas are discussed: that the rural economy in the Ancien Regime was limited to agrarian activities; that the pre-industrial economy functioned independently of, or outside the market and that die mountain areas were a marginal environment. For this reason, this work is based on die analysis of die sierras of La Rioja in the middle of die 18th Century, with special emphasis on multiple occupation (pluriactivity), die role of die market, approaches based on family economies and die importance of communal institutional frameworks.

To explain the large differences in prices between Spanish and British cotton goods I measure the relative cost of raw materials and estimate relative TFP levels. Both calculations lead to a relation between Spain's poor performance in international markets and high levels of protection. Thus, I find that inadequate specialization, which was consequence of high tariffs, reduced TFP levels in Spain because local factories produced goods too sophisticated for the abilities of their workforce.

There are many studies about the export failure of the Spanish cotton industry, but they are mainly focused on specific features of the Spanish economy. This article applies new trade theories to this topic. Taking into account this theoretical framework, the main hypothesis is the imperfect competition of international cotton textile markets in 1913. The econometric model employed in this paper measures the influence of variables such as historical and geographical dependencies, home market effect and product differentiation strategies. This international approach shows new explanations to the lack of an export orientation of the Spanish cotton industry.

This paper presents an annual series of the Spanish infrastructure stock between 1844 and 1935 and tries to ascertain to what extent it responded to the needs of the Spanish economy. A comparison with other European economies of die time, both in monetary and in physical terms, shows a situation of relative infrastructure shortage in Spain, which progressively deteriorated during the period under analysis. That shortage did probably set a constraint on the Spanish economic growth during die century prior to die Civil War.

This paper presents an analysis of the relationship between foreign sector and growth in the Spanish economy, through Granger causality tests for exports and income, and imports and income, along three periods: 1870–1935, 1940–1959 and 1964–1995. The results confirm a positive mutual influence, which works from exports to growth from the 1940s onwards, and begins only in the 1960s in the case of imports and growth. Our interpretation for the absence of causality from trade to growth between 1870 and 1935 stems mainly from the composition of Spanish trade at the time.

This article applies an anthropometric study to Spanish conscripts between 1893–1954 in order to explore a proxy for living standards in Spain. The first part of the article introduces the importance of height as an indicator of levels of nutrition and epidemiological enviroment, and its determinants. The second part uses the conscripts files to calculate average heights at a national and regional level and by socio-professional categories. This section shows changes and differences in Spanish living standards. A second finding is the strong correlation between height, income and sanitary conditions. Finally, height can be used as an indicator of the evolution of the degree of inequality in material living conditions which in the case of Spain shows a divergent behaviour between regions and socio-professional categories.

This article tries to provide a specific analytical framework which includes labour as an essential factor within die internal and external set of relations defining the competitiveness of firms and their strategies to adapt to the environment in which they operate. Special attention is given to the Spanish case, taking into consideration its regional and sectorial diversity. Instead of studying labour as an input to be bought and applied, or the history of the conflict between employers and employees, this article analyses the evolution of how different forms labour have been organised within firms. Labour is considered as an element with the potential to provide an incentive, to impede, facilitate, delay, and mainly adapt technological change to the different factor endowments. The emphasis is put on human capital —mainly shopfloor skills, organisation skills and research skills— instead of physical capital to explain the competitiveness of firms. Special attention is reserved to the institutional context and the interaction between business and governments on labour issues, analysing the state as an employer, regulator and intermediary in the transmission of skills and knowledge.

This paper analyses new balance of payment data for Spain in the autarkic period. New evidence suggests that import restrictions where relaxed to a certain extent during die first half of die 1950s thanks to an increase of the entry of foreign currency. This increase was due to the rise of exports of goods and services beginning in 1949. The paper studies several explanatory factors for this increase. In particular the effect of a hypothetical change in commercial policy and the influence of the international context are considered.

What was the impact of American aid to Spain during the 1950s? This article revisits this question, addressing it from a rather different perspective to the focus on the relief of supply bottlenecks that dominates the existing Spanish economic historiography. It suggests that there is a prima facie case for the aid programme to have had a positive effect on private agents' expectations. The American backing, as part of the process of international acceptance of the Franco regime, may have provided a «commitment technology» that solved problems of credibility, which would have otherwise hindered investment and hence the resumption of economic growth. The paper concludes with an agenda for further research.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the sources of growth of real product in the Spanish economy over the period 1964–1973. This is decomposed into five components: capital stock, quality of capital stock, hours worked, quality of hours worked and TFP. The methodology is based on the transcendental logarithmic production function and distinguishes growth in quality and quantity of inputs. We find that the main component of the growth in output is total factor productivity.