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This article presents new evidence and analysis on age heaping -a proxy for numeracy and therefore for human capital- in New Spain during the Enlightenment. Human capital plays an important role in economic growth and welfare. It is also one of the dimensions of inequality. Our results are at odds with many of the usual assumptions on which most Mexicanist historiography is based. Age heaping levels of males and females and ethnic groups across locations in Central New Spain are estimated and compared through ad hoc indicators with other countries. We infer that a more empirical emphasis on the institutional legacy of the viceregal period and more attention to human capital since pre-Conquest times will benefit the progress of Hispanic American economic history.

This article shows some important aspects of a worldwide, historical phenomenon: the globalization of commerce and art which started in the second half of the sixteenth century and had the American, Asian and European territories of the Hispanic Monarchy as main protagonist during the Early Modern Era. The international exchanges –basically, American silver in return for more or less luxurious goods from Asia- that followed the discovery by Urdaneta, in 1565, of the “tornaviaje” between Manila and Acapulco had a profound influence on the forms of production and consumption in both the Old World and the New. Spanish economists and economic historians have probably underscored the historical significance of these unprecedented interactions. The central role played by the Viceroyalty of New Spain in this globalization has perhaps not been properly valued either.

This paper extends our previous work on grain market integration across Europe and the Americas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Dobado, García-Hiernaux and Guerrero, 2012). By using the same econometric methodology, we now present: 1) a search for statistical evidence in the East of an “Early Globalization” comparable to the one ongoing in the West by mid eighteenth century; 2) a study on the integration of grain markets in China and Japan and its functioning in comparison to Western countries; 3) a discussion of the relevance of our findings for the debate on the Great Divergence. Our main conclusions are: 1) substantial differences in the degree of integration and the functioning of grain markets are observed between East and West; 2) a certain degree of integration may be reached through different combinations of factors (agents, policies, etc.) and with dissimilar effects on long-run economic growth; 3) the absence of an “Early Globalization” in the East reveals the existence of some economic and institutional limitations in this part of the world and contributed to its “Great Divergence” with the West from at least the eighteenth century.

This paper attempts at contributing to the ongoing debate on the historical roots of the high economic inequality of contemporary Iberian America. Basically empirical, our approach departs from mainstream scholarship. We show new data on wages and heights in several viceroyalties that: 1) suggest relatively medium to high levels of material welfare among the commoners in Bourbon Hispanic America; 2) allow us to build indexes of economic inequality. An international comparison of those indexes casts some doubts on the widely accepted view that Viceroyal America’s economy was exclusively based on extremely unequal or extractive institutions, as it has been popularized by the influential works by Engerman and Sokoloff (1994, 2002, 2005), Acemoglu et al. (2002).

This paper attempts at contributing to the ongoing debate on the historical roots of the high economic inequality of contemporary Iberian America. Basically empirical, our approach departs from mainstream scholarship. We show new data on wages and heights in several viceroyalties that: 1) suggest relatively medium to high levels of material welfare among the commoners in Bourbon Hispanic America; 2) allow us to build indexes of economic inequality. An international comparison of those indexes casts some doubts on the widely accepted view that Viceroyal America’s economy was exclusively based on extremely unequal or extractive institutions, as it has been popularized by the influential works by Engerman and Sokoloff (1994, 2002, 2005), Acemoglu et al. (2002).[RESUMEN] Este trabajo pretende contribuir al debate sobre las causas históricas de la alta desigualdad económica en la Iberoamérica contemporénea y lo hace en forma básicamente empírica, lo que es bastante inusual. En él se muestran nuevos datos sobre salarios y estaturas de varios virreinatos que: (1) sugieren niveles de bienestar material relativamente medios o altos para grupos no privilegiados de la Hispanoamérica borbónica; y (2) permiten la construcción de índices de desigualdad económica. La comparación internacional de esos índices arroja dudas sobre la verosimilitud del ampliamente extendido supuesto de que la economía de la América española se basada exclusivamente en instituciones extremadamente desiguales o extractivas, que ha sido popularizada por los influyentes trabajos de Engerman y Sokoloff y Acemoglu et al.

In this work it is shown evidence supporting the idea that, if globalization is defined as the convergence of commodity prices between distant markets, the process started and advanced gradually in the eighteenth century instead of suddenly appearing after 1820, as claimed by the canonical version developed in a series of important works by O’Rourke and Williamson (1999, 2002, 2004). We use long time-series of grain prices for several markets in Western Europe and the Americas to explore the extent and dynamics of market integration across the Western Hemisphere throughout the eighteenth century. An innovative methodology, consisting in studying the standard deviations of the innovations in the ARMA model of pairwise relative prices between markets, is used. A general decrease in price dispersion is observed when the early eighteenth century is compared with the three decades preceding 1793. Neither Argentina nor Mexico participated in this general trend towards closer market integration across the Western Hemisphere. From 1793 to 1828 we observe a substantial increase in dispersion between markets. After this first backlash, globalization resumed at an unprecedented pace since it was favored by the transport revolution and other factors.

Based on substantial empirical work, our paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the historical causes of contemporary Latin America problems of development (slow growth and high inequality). It shows solid quantitative evidence on wages and heights for Bourbon Hispanic America that, in our opinion, challenges mainstream assumptions about the –allegedly negative- effects of Spanish colonialism on the welfare of common people. Purchasing capacity of miners and labourers in terms of grain and, especially, of meat was generally equal to -or higher than- that in most parts of Europe and Asia. Heights of some 5000 recruits in the colonial army and militias show a significant inter-regional variance. In South-eastern New Spain they turn out to be slightly below Western standards whereas in Northern Mexico and Venezuela (Maracaibo) they are comparable to those of Central, Eastern and Southern Europe. Thus, wages of ordinary Hispanic Americans in eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were not low by international standards. Neither were their physical statures always shorter than the European norm in the middle of the eighteenth century. Our results might carry other far-reaching implications. On the one hand, an increasing and influent scholarship characterizes colonial Hispanic America as an extreme case of economy based on extractive institutions and inequality [Engerman and Sokoloff (1994, 2002, 2005); Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2002)]. Was it really the case? Our response is somewhat sceptical. On the other hand, calculating ratios of heights and real wages to GDP per capita estimates [Maddison (2009)] for 1820 converts Hispanic America into a clear outlier within a wide sample of countries. This finding suggests that available estimations on Bourbon Hispanic America GDP per capita should be revised upwards.

En este trabajo se hace una crítica empírica de lo que puede denominarse “nueva ortodoxia” interpretativa de los problemas económicos contemporáneos de Iberoamérica (crecimiento lento y gran desigualdad). Más concretamente, son Acemoglu, Johnson y Robinson (2001a y 2002) y Engerman y Sokoloff (1994, 2002 y 2005), que encuentran en la herencia institucional del colonialismo español en América las claves de los problemas de desarrollo iberoamericanos, quienes reciben una atención especial en este trabajo. Su principal conclusión es que la fundamentación empírica de la “nueva ortodoxia” dista de ser satisfactoria.

En este artículo se analizan las fuentes de la excepcionalidad de México con una desindustrialización. Descompone las fuentes en las que la productividad atribuibles a los acontecimientos en el núcleo de las fuerzas de la globalización y de la conexión básica a la periferia, y los atribuibles a las fuerzas específicas de Mexico. Se utiliza un modelo neo-ricardiano (con los productos alimenticios no comercializables) para la aplicación de la descomposición, y aboga por un enfoque de doble precio, se desarrolla una nueva base de datos de precios y salarios entre 1750-1878.

This paper deals with a polemic and relevant aspect of the economic history of Porfirian Mexico: the integration of agricultural domestic markets. Since corn was the staple product of the commercial agricultural sector and also the main subsistence crop, it is the protagonist of this story. Panel techniques, similar to those used by Barro and Sala-i-Martín (1992), are applied to a price convergence model. Our analysis reveals that Mexico was not an exception in the international panorama of market integration in late 19th and early 20th centuries [O’Rourke and Williamson (1999)]. Although still incomplete on the eve of the Mexican Revolution, corn market integration substantially increased during the Porfiriato and ended up further than estimated by Kuntz (1995a, 1995b, 1996, 1999a and 1999b). Railroads were not only indispensable to the economic growth of Mexico, as Coatsworth (1984) showed, in particular to the export sector, but they also played a positive and significant role in the process of corn market integration.

Las desigualdades económicas espaciales en España han constituido –y siguen constituyendo- un objeto preferente de atención para economistas e historiadores económicos; y subyacen al omnipresente debate político contemporáneo sobre la “cuestión regional” -para la mayoría de ciudadanos- o también “cuestión nacional” -para una minoría cualificada y geográficamente concentrada. Además, lo cierto es que la economía española es espacialmente desigual y no se trata de un fenómeno reciente. Por otra parte, las desigualdades espaciales no tienden a desaparecer, sino más bien al contrario. Bien es verdad que, al menos entre mediados de los años cincuenta y hasta finales de los setenta del pasado siglo, se registra en España un proceso de convergencia interregional de rentas. En los noventa, se ha tornado ya “prácticamente inexistente”.

Editada en la Fundación Empresa Pública Este trabajo consta de tres partes principales: en la primera se examina la hipótesis consistente en la existencia de una «definición débil» de «ming-led growth» en la economía novohispana del siglo XVIII y se defiende una versión «moderadamente optimista» de las conexiones entre expansión minera y crecimiento económico; en la segunda parte se analizan los determinantes de la producción de plata, entre los que figuran variables de Política económica (precio del mercurio y consignaciones de las minas de Almadén), la cantidad de mercurio disponible en Nueva España y el precio del maíz, y se muestran algunos de los efectos positivos que tuvo la reconsideración del papel del Monopolio del mercurio en las finanzas de la Corona; en la tercera se presenta un ejercicio cuantitativo que pretende estimar el coste económico de la independencia de México, que resultaría ser elevado y atribuible, en terminología de Coatsworth, no solo a «lograr la mdependencia» sino a la «propia independencia» The article is dívided into three parts. In the first one we test for the hypothesis of existence of a "weak definition" of "mining-led-growth" in the New Spaín economy in the 18th century and a "moderately optimistic" version of the relationship between mining expansion and economic growth is defended. In the second part, we analyze the determinants of the silver production, among them we include economic policy variables (mercury price and consignaciones for the Mines of Almadén, as well as the stock of mercury available in New Spain and the price of corn; we also show some of the positive effects of the new role of mercury Monopoly in the Crown's finances. Finally, a quantitative exercise intended to estimate the economic cost for México of the Independence is presented. This cost seems to have been high and attributable, foUowing Coatsworth's terminology, no only to "the achievement of the independence" but to the "independence in itself". Publicado