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Market transaction data are used to estimate the quantity of specie in circulation. This estimate is used to provide the first comprehensive measure of a colony''s money supply and, along with data on population and prices, to retest the quantity theory of money and measure output growth using the equation of exchange. Output growth is found to depend on periodization and the extent that rising commercialization increased the velocity of circulation. Specie was becoming relatively less scarce as the Revolution approached, and movements in specie and paper currency both offset and reinforced each other depending on the period of analysis. (JEL N11, N21, E42, E51) [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper analyzes the impact of infrastructure investment on Spanish economic growth between 1850 and 1935. Using new infrastructure data and VAR techniques, this paper shows that the growth impact of local-scope infrastructure investment was positive, but returns to investment in large nation-wide networks were not significantly different from zero. Two complementary explanations are suggested for the last result. On the one hand, public intervention and the application of non-efficiency investment criteria were very intense in large network construction. On the other hand, returns to new investment in large networks might have decreased dramatically once the basic links were constructed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper contributes to the debate on globalization and the great divergence with a comprehensive analysis of the integration of Asia in the world market from 1800 to the eve of World War II. We examine the patterns of convergence in prices for a wide range of commodities between Europe and the main Asian countries (India, Indonesia, Japan and China) and we compare them with convergence between Europe and the East Coast of the United States, hitherto the yardstick for the 19th century. Most price convergence occurred before 1870, mainly as a consequence of the abolition of the European trading monopolies with Asia, and, to a lesser extent, the repeal of duties on Atlantic trade. After 1870, price differentials continued to decline thanks to falling freights and to better communication after the lay-out of telegraph cables. There was only little disintegration in the inter-war years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has been absent from recent debates about comparative long-run growth owing to the lack of data on aggregate economic performance before 1950. This paper provides estimates of GDP per capita on an annual basis for eight Anglophone African economies for the period since 1885, raising new questions about previous characterizations of the region's economic performance. The new data show that many of these economies had levels of per capita income which were above subsistence by the early twentieth century, on a par with the largest economies in Asia until the 1980s. However, overall improvements in GDP per capita were limited by episodes of negative growth or "shrinking", the scale and scope of which can be measured through annual data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impacts of banking market structure and regulation on economic growth using new data on banking market concentration and manufacturing industry-level growth rates for U.S. states during 1899-1929--a period when the manufacturing sector was expanding rapidly and restrictive branching laws segmented the U.S. banking system geographically. Unlike studies of developing and developed countries today, we find that banking market concentration generally had a positive impact on manufacturing sector growth in the early twentieth century United States, with a somewhat stronger impact on industries with smaller establishments, lower rates of incorporation, and less reliance on bond markets (and, hence, relatively more reliance on banks). Because regulations affecting bank entry varied considerably across states and the industrial organization of the U.S. banking system differs markedly from those of other countries, we consider the impact of other aspects of banking market structure and policy on growth. Even after controlling for differences in the prevalence of branch banking, deposit insurance, and other aspects of policy and market structure, we find that market concentration boosted industrial growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nexus between trade and economic growth in Italy has been widely debated by historiography. However, there are no long run analyses on this topic that cover the whole span from Unification to present days. This paper contributes to fill this gap by investigating the relationship between real exports, imports and GDP in Italy from 1863 to 2004 by using cointegration analysis and causality tests, The outcome suggests that these variables comove in the long run but the direction of causality varies across time, In the period prior to the First World War import growth led GDP growth that in turn led export growth. Conversely, in the post-Second World War period we have a strong bidirectionality between imports and exports consequent on the increase in intra-industry trade. We also find a weak support for export-led growth and growth-led imports. This suggests that exports were not the only or the main driver of economic growth. There was probably a multiplicity of factors at work, among which high rates of capital formation and the expansion of internal demand probably stood out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The balance of payments can act as a constraint on the rate of growth of output, since it puts a limit on the growth in the level of demand to which supply can adapt. In this paper, we examine this issue for the case of Spain. using time series data extending over the period 1850-2000. Overall, the external deficit does not seem to have worked as a constraint on the growth of the Spanish economy over the long run, unless some shorter and specific subperiods, such as 1940-1959 and 1959-1974. The Spanish economy seems to have used external deficits to smooth her level of aggregate consumption, which would be supported by the finding of sustainability of current account deficits along the period of analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper measures productivity growth in seventeen countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. GDP per worker and capital per worker in 1985 US dollars were estimated for 1820, 1850, 1880, 1913, and 1939 by using historical national accounts to back cast Penn World Table data for 1965 and 1990. Frontier and econometric production functions are used to measure neutral technical change and local technical change. The latter includes con-current increases in capital per worker and output per worker beyond the highest values achieved. These increases were pioneered by the rich countries of the day. An increase in the capital-labor ratio was usually followed by a half century in which rich countries raised output per worker at that higher ratio. Then the rich countries moved on to a higher capital-ratio, and technical progress ceased at the lower ratio they abandoned. Most of the benefits of technical progress accrued to the rich countries that pioneered it. It is remarkable that countries in 1990 with low capital labor ratios achieved an output per worker that was no higher than countries with the same capital labor ratio in 1820. In the course of the last two hundred years, the rich countries created the production function of the world that defines the growth possibilities of poor countries today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents new time series estimates of GDP, capital stock and education-adjusted employment, and uses a growth accounting approach to analyze GDP growth during 1880-2008. The growth of capital stock, employment and educational attainment explained almost all of GDP growth. During key growth periods 1900-29 and 1975-97, Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth was on balance negative. TFP growth was substantial during some sub-periods, particularly 1933-41, 1951-61, 1967-74 and 2000-08. Each followed a major economic downturn that slowed capital stock growth and required a more efficient use of productive resources, supported by changes in economic policy that enhanced productivity and efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper investigates the evidence for convergence in per capita incomes across 115 economies during the period 1950–1998 and examines the impact that international trade had on this process. Drawing on trade-conditioning within a distribution dynamics framework, that explicitly models frequency distributions of the cross sections of economies over time, this study suggests that trade patterns in the Golden Age were conducive to the formation of middle and high income groups or clubs of economies, but similar trade patterns (dominated by the rich economies) do not seem to explain the perpetuation of these group formations in the post-Golden Age period. If foreign trade is a key aspect of globalisation, why does it matter in accounting for the observed dynamics of the international income distribution during the Golden Age, but not during the decades since the first oil-shock? Further, the evidence from the ergodic (long-run equilibrium) distribution suggests that in the long term the established trade patterns favoured the growth of the rich at the expense of the poor economies across the world. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In several articles published in the 1990s, de Long and Summers argued that investment in producer durables had a high propensity to generate externalities in using industries, resulting in a systematic and substantial divergence between its social and private return. They maintained, moreover, that this was not the case for structures investment. Together, these claims constitute the equipment hypothesis. This paper explores the degree to which the history of US economic growth in the 20th century supports it. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper investigates the long-term relationship between financial market development and economic development in Belgium. We use a new data set of stock market development indicators to argue that financial market development substantially affected economic growth. We find strong evidence that stock market development caused economic growth in Belgium, especially in the period between 1873 and 1935. Institutional changes affecting the stock exchange explain the time-varying nature of the link between stock market development and economic growth. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper establishes that there are serious problems with the hypothesis that the Victorian climacteric was driven by the decline phase of steam as a General Purpose Technology. This is primarily because steam’s contribution to industrial output and labour productivity growth was stronger after 1870 than before and that the non-steam-intensive sectors exhibited an inverted U-shape in trend output growth through the 19th century, experiencing a marked slowdown between 1830 and the 1870s. Seeking to base an account of 19th century British growth primarily on the implications of steam is thus misconceived. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]