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Drawing on a new data set of monthly observations, this paper investigates similarities and differences in the discount rate policy of 12 European countries under the Classical Gold Standard. It asks, in particular, whether the bank rate policy followed different patterns in core and peripheral countries. Based on OLS, ordered probit and pooled estimations of central bank discount rate behaviour, two main findings emerge: firstly, the discount rate decisions of core countries were motivated by a desire to keep the exchange-rate within the gold points. In stark contrast, the discount rate decisions of peripheral countries reflected changes in the domestic cover ratio. The main reason for the difference in behaviour was the limited effectiveness of the discount rate tool for peripheral countries, which resulted in more frequent gold point violations. Consequently, peripheral countries relied on high reserve levels and oriented their discount rate policy towards maintaining the reserve level. Secondly, interest rate decisions were influenced by Berlin and London to a similar degree, suggesting that the European branch of the Classical Gold Standard was less London-centred than had been hitherto assumed. In establishing general patterns of discount rate policy, this paper aims to contribute to the wider discussion on monetary policy under the gold standard and the core-periphery dichotomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the debate on Europe's modern economic growth using the statistical concept of long-range dependence. Different regimes, defined as periods between two successive endogenously estimated structural shocks, matched episodes of pandemics and war. The most persistent shocks occurred at the time of the Black Death and the twentieth century's world wars. Our findings confirm that the Black Death often resulted in higher income levels but reject the view of a uniform long-term response to the Plague. In fact, we find a negative impact on incomes in non-Malthusian economies. In the North Sea Area (Britain and the Netherlands), the Plague was followed by positive trend growth in output per capita and population, heralding the onset of modern economic growth and the Great Divergence in Eurasia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many people believe that the early development of sovereign debt depended on institutions, but there are two very different ways of presenting this narrative and two very different conclusions one might draw for sovereign debt today. According to the first, this was an impartial story involving executive constraints, shared governance, increased monitoring, and increased transparency — in other words things that sound unambiguously good. According to the second narrative this was a story of distributive politics. States had the best access to credit when institutions gave government creditors privileged access to decision making while restricting the influence of those who paid the taxes to reimburse debts. This was a situation where institutions fostered commitment, but at a cost, and sometimes they may not even have been welfare enhancing. In this paper I present evidence from seven centuries of European history, and I suggest that available data support the distributive politics interpretation. I then draw implications for how we think about the politics of sovereign debt today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pre-modem growth was to a large extent dependent on processes of commercialization and specialization, based on cheap transport. Seminal interpretations of the process of economic growth before the Industrial Revolution have pointed to the strategic importance of the rise of the Atlantic economy and the growth of cities linked to this, but have not really explained why Europeans were so efficient in organizing large international networks of shipping and trade. Most studies concerning early modem shipping have focused on changes in ship design (capital investments) in explaining long-term performance of European shipping in the pre- 1800 period; in this paper we argue that this is only part of the explanation. Human capital - the quality of the labour force employed on ships - mattered as well. We firstly demonstrate that levels of human capital on board European ships were relatively high, and secondly that there were powerful links between the level of labour productivity in shipping and the quality of the workforce. This suggests strongly that shipping was a 'high tech' industry not only employing high quality capital goods, but also, as a complementary input, high quality labour, which was required to operate the increasingly complex ships and their equipment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of capital markets in medieval Europe was shaped for centuries by the religious ban on lending money at interest. This paper examines how this prohibition developed as the outcome of strategic behavior by religious, commercial and political elites. A model is developed to analyze this hypothesis and to examine how the usury prohibition developed over time. It suggests that an important reason for the persistence of the ban was that it created a barrier to entry that enabled secular rulers, the Church, and a small number of merchant-bankers to earn monopoly rents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The paper examines the timing of exit from the interwar gold-exchange standard for a panel of European countries, based on monthly data over the period January 1928–December 1936. I show that exit from gold can be understood in terms of a trade-off between a limited set of factors commonly suggested in the theoretical literature on currency crises. A simple and parsimonious econometric framework that nests various hypotheses allows me to predict the month of exit in the 1930s, except for France. I consider the separate cases of France and Poland to show my results shed light on country-specific debates. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper studies the apparent inconsistency between the evolution of GDP per capita and real wages in pre-industrial Europe. We show that these two measures will diverge when any of the three following factors are present: changes in income distribution, changes in labour supply per capita and changes in relative prices. We propose a methodology for measuring the effects of these three factors and apply it to the case of 18th century England. For this particular episode the gap between the growth of GDP per capita and real wages can be successfully explained and the main explanatory factor is changes in labour supply per capita. Some further conclusions are drawn from the experience of England during the 19th century and Europe during the early modern period. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper explores the long-run relationship between institutions and wage outcomes in Europe and its periphery. I find that cities that exercised stronger institutional protection of private property experienced: (i) higher levels of both skilled and unskilled real wages, as well as (ii) lower levels of inequality as measured by the skilled–unskilled wage ratio. While the first result corroborates existing work on the positive growth effects of better institutions, the second finding is more novel to the literature. Some explanations are proposed for how stronger institutions can cause an increase in the relative supply of skilled workers, thus lowering wage inequality. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]