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This article presents information on several papers and studies, which deal with the economic history of Great Britain. Two studies of general interest concern secular trends in the late medieval economy. The concept of the thirteenth century as a period of boom forms the target for a lively onslaught by E. Miller, "The English Economy in the Thirteenth Century: Implications of Recent Research" in the periodical "Past and Present." For all the signs of expansion, he argues, thirteenth-century England did not enjoy a growth economy in the technical sense. People increased more rapidly than the capacity to produce, and society faced a progressive crisis, in which average production per head was falling. Yet this does not permit us to go to the opposite extreme and make the period after 1350 an epoch of economic growth. Another paper discussed is "Monetary Movements and Market Structure: Forces for contraction in Fourteenth-and Fifteenth-Century England" by H.A. Miskimin that was published in a previous issue of the periodical "Journal of Economic History." In a discussion in fact confined to the fourteenth century, Miskimin attempts to reconcile the demographic and monetary theories of recession. Population changes caused a secular shift in demand, altering market structure and prices.

This article presents response of the author on comments made by writer J.D. Gould on the paper "Inflation of Prices in Early Sixteenth-Century England" that was published in a 1961 issue of the periodical "Economic History Review." In his comment on the paper related to prices in Tudor and Stuart England, Gould, while in agreement with the general contention, rejects the section dealing with grain-price fluctuations. His objections are mainly based upon the following three points, that the theoretical model of Brenner I is irrelevant and inappropriate, that the author's statistical evidence is presented in an inconsistent form and does not cover the whole period in a uniform manner and that the author contradicts himself with regard to an upward trend and a downward trend in the coefficient of variation of grain prices. He quite agrees with Gould's improved model in his paper, and in the absence of any satisfactory historical evidence to support either his or mine, the author finds his by far the most convincing. Were it not for the fact that the author had spent two years in West Africa examining price behavior in regions where rapid economic transition is taking place, he should has accepted Gould's model without hesitation.

The article focuses on statistics of coal output in southwest Lancashire, England during 1590-1799. No one doubts the central role of coal in the Industrial Revolution, but statistics of coal output before the mid-nineteenth century are meager on both the national and the coalfield scales. Moreover, that those which do exist contain potentially serious flaws is admitted by their authors and by those who have subsequently used them. No comparable body of coalfield estimates exists for the eighteenth century. Regional statistics could not be used to corroborate or refute national estimates. It has not yet been demonstrated that there was an English economy rather than a collection of self-contained or trading regions within England by the end of the eighteenth century, and even if a cohesive national economy did exist regional rates of economic growth would differ. In such a situation national aggregate data are of chimerical value, and regional statistics are more useful for testing hypotheses about the role of coal production in the Industrial Revolution.

This article presents information on the contrast between the underlying economic trends in the twelfth century and the thirteenth century in England. There is a real and substantial contrast between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; but there is much to suggest that it is one rooted in the policies and attitudes of landlords rather than in the basic economic situation. Both centuries, despite short-term periods of dislocation, were centuries of economic expansion. For that reason the policies followed by landlords during the twelfth century are not easily explained in terms of analogies with the later Middle Ages, even though, just as in the fourteenth century, twelfth-century demesnes crumbled, labor services were commuted, and manors were leased. These common features of two disparate centuries, however, seem to be compatible with very different economic circumstances. In the late Middle Ages landlords had learned to adjust their policies to the play of rewards and costs. In the twelfth century, on the other hand, manorial dissolution was sometimes a consequence of the farming of manors; and the farming of manors looks like a traditional method of land management which had grown up during a time when subsistence was the end in view, when the rate of economic advance was relatively slower, and when unused resources were relatively abundant.

The article provides information on the causes of the industrial revolution in medieval England. It also presents information on the consequences of the industrial revolution and the problem of determining the reason for the occurrence of the revolution. The twentieth century has been remarkable for historical productivity, for the increasing quantity and range of source materials available, for the growing sophistication of techniques, and for the large-scale growth in numbers of professional economic historians, with their own societies, journals, university departments and degrees, but there still is relative ignorance about many major problems of the industrial revolution, and in lieu of detailed investigation into their solutions, inevitably much speculation. On any historical accounting, the industrial revolution is one of the great discontinuities of history; it would not be implausible indeed, to claim that it has been the greatest. Economic history has always been concerned largely with the documentation, description and explanation of what the economists call economic growth, and with so much empirical and theoretical literature on growth by the economists now available, some historians are turning towards the economists for guidance.

The article presents the author's comments on the world trade cycle and the role of the banking system of London, England in this regard. It is stated that there cannot a trade cycle in the absence of a link between the price levels of different countries. The author holds that London controls leadership in the international credit system.