This paper provides a reconstruction of the yearly values of Mexico's foreign trade within the period 1870–1929, the era of liberal capitalism. It uses the Mexican official statistics as well as those published by Mexico's main trading partners: the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany. The article assesses de quality and consistency of the Mexican sources and applies explicit criteria to rectify the official figures and to fill the gaps in the available information. It also proposes a new breakdown of trade values, which allows distinguishing between commodity trade and specie movements. As a result, the article provides widi complete annual series of commodity trade and specie flows, as well as a yearly estimate of the trade balance throughout the period.

The aim of this paper is to show the evolution of Spanish wheat output in the last decades of XIX century. The paper evaluates both the advances in statistical methods achieved by provincial agricultural scientists in the 80's, and the statistic consumption data published by the Ministry of Public Works in 1868. The main conclusion is that consumption and output of wheat between 1868 and 1890 were similar to those obtained for the period 1890–1896. This suggest that the Spanish and Italian cereal sectors behaved quite alike. The paper also proves that the tariff aproved by Cánovas had a powerful effect on the wheat pattern of consumption of the Spanish peasantry.

Taking as an example the island of Mallorca, the authors identify the different socioenvironmental, institutional and economic factors that influenced the feudal colonization of this island in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This study also suggests, by comparing this case with others, that the petrification of the late medieval agrarian structures introduced a sort of path dependence which favoured certain patterns of development to the detriment of others.

In this article the author pays attention to the role of credit in the negotiation of wool sales by big and small flockowners in the region of Soria during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. He proves that the small flockowners always sold their wool several months in advance of its delivery, in order to borrow money from the merchants that bought it. Next he proves that during the sixteenth century the big flockowners usually sold their wool to the merchants on conditions and could delay the payment for a long period of time; they also obtained favorable very good prices for their products. Finally he proves that in the course of the seventeenth century the big flockowners of Soria had to face increasing financial difficulties that forced them to borrow money with increasing frequency in order to be able to preserve their flocks.

The «rentas provinciales» were a group of indirect taxes that provided an important part of the Spanish fiscal revenues. This taxes were criticized specially for being a constraint upon economic development. Several studies abaut «rentas provinciales» have used net revenues, in most cases not distributed among the twenty-two Castile provinces. This article shows gross revenues, administrative costs and net revenues obtained from «relaciones generales de valores» made by «administradores generales de las provincias», available at Archivo General de Simancas. Using this data, it is possible to obtain new conclusions about the quantitative evolution of this taxes and about its influence in the economic growth of the Castile Crown in XVIIIth-century.

Rice was one of the crops that improved agricultural yields under the restrictive conditions of the mediterranean world. However the expansion of its cultivation demanded deep changes in the use of water and new forms of government intervention because of the sanitary effects of the crop. The introduction of rice in the existent agrarian structures was not easy. However it facilitated the use of difficult agrarian areas such as the Valencián Albufera, the delta of the Ebro and the Marismas of the Guadalquivir. From the second half of the XIX century rice production had to adapt to the competition of the Asian countries. This was done through the intensification of the production under high and protective tariffs. The paper shows that the Spanish yields were among the highest in the world in the XX century.

In the first years of the XXth century, the most significant Spanish electrical companies were established. The availability of hydroelectricity allowed this companies to overcome the traditional power deficit of the country. At the same time the new energy resources provided new opportunities for the reallocation of firmns and bussines in general. In this article we study the origin and the evolution of Hidroeléctrica Española, one of the most important companies in the electrical sector. The role of Hidroeléctrica was decisive in transforming the industrial structure of various regions and also to foster economic growth.

One of the consequences of transformations in Spanish land properties in the 19th century was the constitution of an extensive (6.6 million hectares) public forest patrimony —still kept— dependent on the Central Administration. In this article, an overview of the main features, as well as the management and production forms of such a patrimony, is presented. State intervention is divided into four stages and, considering their results rather than their initial goals, two main conclusions are reached. First, given their characteristics, public forests were not adequate for the government to be able to lead this part of the forest national economy. Second, the central administration applied not one but several public forest policies, according to changes in the markets and to the economic situation, and social and ecological conditions where forests were found.

Historians have generally considered the fiscal documents relative to the payment of Direct Contribution, not very useful as a source to study the Bue nos Aires economy. In this paper the quality of these documents for the year 1839 is evaluated. It was verified that, at least for this year fiscal statements contain valuable information that can be employed to approach different aspects of the rural economy of Bue nos Aires in a period for wich we lack alternative statistical sources. In the paper we also offer some conclusions for the Argentine economy using a new set of data gathered from the information included in the documents of the Direct Contribution.

This paper shows that the German economist Karl Heinrich Rau (1792–1870) deserves to be credited as precursor of the marshallian well-known diagram of the supply and demand, or Marshall's scissors diagram. Marshall was aware of Rau's work at an early stage in his economic studies, but he referred to him in an incomplete way and not where he should, silencing his pioneering graphic description of competitive equilibrium. The paper concludes by asserting that the well-known schumpeteriam claim on Marshall's lack of generosity with all those whose work was closely related to his own applies likewise to the case of Rau.

Employing DEA productivity analysis and the Malmquist index, this article investigates the productivity differences and its sources across a set of banks during the last years of the liberal era of the Spanish banking system (1900–1914), which was characterised by major qualitative and quantitative changes in the banking industry. We find evidence of an overall increase in efficiency consequence of increasing competition across banks. Also, our estimates suggest that differences in productivity could serve to explain, at least in part, the subsequent evolution of the different regional banking groups.

This paper explains the so-called «Spanish railways problem» as a consequence of the new competition that this traditional mean of transport suffered from the rapid development of the automobile industry. Road transportation more than any other factor was the cause of the financial difficulties of the railways companies before the Civil War. We also study the reaction of these firms and the failures of all measures that were taken.

An abundant literature has insisted on the oligopolistic character of the Spanish banking system during the Francoism, a phenomenon led by the great institutions with undesirable consequences on the credit supply. In addition, oligopoly would have been backed by the authorities. Nevertheless, new documentation from bank's archives shows that collusion was full of difficulties and breaches, and also that the behaviour of the Government not always responded to the demand of the big banks.

This article shows the first results of a research project that attempts to analyse the relations between the business groups, the institutional framework and the economic development in 20th century Spain. It employs a microeconomic perspective, a historical-institutional analysis and private archival sources. The article focuses on the businesses of the Aznar family from 1937 (when they took over the management of the firms that formerly belonged to the Sota and Aznar group) to 1983 (when Naviera Aznar, the most important firm of the group, broke out and ceased business). Out of this empirical evidence, the article tries to underline the consequences that an industrial organization based on business groups and on an institutional framework characterized by the State's extreme interventionism and discretionality had on the capabilities and the competitiveness of Spanish firms and industries, and, by extension, on the economic development of Spain during the Franco's regime and the first Governments of the transition to democracy.

Soy, lo confieso, uno de los escépticos sobre la Nueva Historia Económica Institucional. En términos generales, nada tengo que objetar al aspecto económico. ¿Quién podría tenerlo? La idea de que las tasas de beneficios marginales privados y sociales han de converger como condición necesaria para el crecimiento económico no es exactamente una idea novedosa, no digamos ya polémica, al menos en los círculos especializados. Pero hasta ahí llega aproximadamente mi coincidencia. Con excesiva frecuencia, me temo, el componente histórico de la empresa es bastante débil. Pregunten a un medievalista sobre el libro de North y Thomas, Rise of the Western World y es probable que la respuesta sea una mirada perpleja; eso con suerte. Sin ella, es posible que te obsequie con algún comentario pintoresco sobre «historia que realmente existe», o, si es más compasivo, con una simple negativa. Yo he tenido experiencias de esa índole con los análisis sobre los comienzos de la historia de América Latina. Mi predilecta atañe a un historiador económico español (sin nombres, por favor) que respondió a un trabajo sobre la encomienda mexicana —explicada como resultado de una estrategia de maximización por parte de la Corona española— con la muy coloquial exclamación en inglés: «You're kidding!» (¡Estás de broma!»). Pues no, el autor no lo estaba, pero tampoco lo estaba la revista que lo publicó. Así pues, seamos sinceros al respecto. Puede que fuera economía histórica, pero historia económica, desde luego, no era.

La primera biografía de Keynes la publicó Harrod (1951), cinco años después de su muerte; el autor de la segunda fue Moggridge (1976), gran conocedor de la obra de Keynes y responsable de la mayor parte de los Collected Writings (CW), obra que completaría en 1992 con la magnífica Maynard Keynes. An economist' biography. Otros libros biográficos con planteamientos menos generales son los de Hession (1984), Mini (1994) y Felix (1999). Los artículos biográficos son muy numerosos; los más importantes están recogidos en el volumen I de los Critical Assessments, editados por Cunnigham Wood (1983), y en la primera parte del libro de M. Keynes (1975).

Durante la primera mitad del siglo XX, es decir, antes de que el viajar a nuestro país se convirtiera en un fenómeno de masas, el Estado español no fue indiferente con respecto al turismo. Es cierto que su desarrollo no fue nunca algo prioritario para las autoridades, pero por la importancia social, cultural, política y, sobre todo, económica del turismo, todas las administraciones públicas que se sucedieron a lo largo del período se preocuparon por fomentarlo y controlarlo. Aunque, naturalmente, no siempre con los mismos medios, ni con los mismos instrumentos, ni, por supuesto, con el mismo éxito. La etapa más interesante de cara al desarrollo del turismo fue la de la Dictadura de Primo de Rivera. Hasta que se produjo el levantamiento militar, la actuación de la Administración pública en materia turística había sido bastante limitada.