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What caused the recovery from the British Great Depression? A leading explanation – the 'expectations channel' – suggests that a shift in expected inflation lowered real interest rates and stimulated consumption and investment. However, few studies have measured, or tested the economic consequences of, inflation expectations. In this paper, we collect high‐frequency information from primary and secondary sources to measure expected inflation in the United Kingdom between the wars. A high‐frequency vector autoregression suggests that inflation expectations were an important source of the early stages of economic recovery in interwar Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the political economic consequences of the disappearance of the Spanish silver peso standard in Spanish America, the longest monetary union that ever existed. With the Napoleonic invasion of Spain in 1808, the fiscal and political structure of the empire imploded and most colonies became independent. Regional competition for revenues exacerbated budget shortfalls driven by military expenditure. Local elites established in former colonial Treasury districts started highly diverse monetary experiments to procure funds. Those in control of mint houses started minting their own coins or debased existing silver currency. Elsewhere, inconvertible paper currency was also created to meet budget deficits. As a result, the most valuable feature of the Spanish American silver peso, its quality standard, was broken and the standard that had organized the early modern international economy for more than 300 years ceased to exist altogether. In Spanish America, as diverse monies co-existed within a formerly highly integrated economic space, a widespread Gresham's law effect exacerbated the conflict among local and regional elites. This fostered the political fragmentation of colonial Spanish America into an increasing number of political and monetary sovereign entities during the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a reassessment of the origins and derivation of many of Sir William Petty's economic ideas, based on an analysis of his unpublished papers. Petty's archive makes clear what a large part Ireland played in his writings, and it is suggested that this preoccupation is essential to an appreciation of him as an economist. It also demonstrates the point that Petty was not principally a theorist but rather a practical political economist whose schemes for the enrichment of the king's dominions were inspired by the underdevelopment which he experienced at first hand in Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eric Williams placed the Caribbean centre stage in discussions of Britain's industrial revolution and historians are increasingly persuaded by his intuition that the Atlantic trading system, underpinned by enslaved labour, played a major role. Early critics focused discussion on the profits of the slave trade but his thesis was broader, and more sophisticated, than they acknowledged. It left room for linkages of many kinds and it is now time to take a broader look at the connections between the rise of merchant capitalism, in which slavery played a central role, and British economic growth. This study looks at one small, fast‐growing industry, wrought copper, largely through the lens of William Forbes, a London smith. Quantitative data from output and trade records are combined with Forbes's business records to show how the demands of sugar cultivation, a particularly concentrated form of agro‐industrial activity, stimulated the development of a supply network which chained thousands of workers in Cornwall, South Wales, Bristol, and London to enslaved labour in the fields and factories of the Caribbean. Market opportunities allowed Forbes to amass great wealth but also directed investment, innovation, and the accumulation of skills that shaped Britain's particular path to industrial revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europeans at the end of the eighteenth century had settled across the globe, from North and South America to Australia to the southern tip of Africa. While theories of institutional persistence explain the 'reversal of fortunes' between settled and unsettled regions, few studies consider the large differences in early living standards between settler societies. This paper uses newly transcribed household‐level tax censuses from the Dutch and British Cape Colony and the United States shortly after independence to show comparative levels of income and wealth over four decades both between the two regions and within them. Cape farmers were, on average, more affluent than their American counterparts. While crop output and livestock were more unequally distributed at the Cape, ownership of enslaved people in America was more unequal. There was little indication of an imminent reversal of fortunes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When and why did Sterling Area countries stop holding sterling as the majority of their foreign exchange reserves? This paper takes a comparative approach to examine the relative importance of various determinants of adherence to sterling in its declining years as an international currency. Using an original cross‐national panel dataset covering the period 1965–79, we conduct survival analysis which systematically evaluates a comprehensive set of economic and political factors, at the country level as well as in international relations, about when and why countries chose to diversify their reserves away from sterling. Our results highlight the significance of international transactional factors in influencing adherence to sterling, while the effects of British geopolitical retrenchment, Commonwealth cultural ties, and distributional issues were more ambiguous and sensitive to local conditions. We also find that domestic political and historical factors, such as democracy and imperial legacy, played a role in sterling's international unravelling. Finally, we use our results to examine the experience of individual sterling countries and their decisions to diversify. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the causal relationships and interdependence between inflation and globalisation over centuries: in the sixteenth century, in the age of Spanish silver; then in the first age of modern globalisation from in the middle of the nineteenth century; and finally in the new globalisation that took off in the 1970s. In the latter cases, inflation was a response to a negative supply shock, and eventually generated policy decisions on economic opening. Both recent globalisations may be explained as technologically driven, and some of the most important productivity gains involved the cost of transport, but the fundamental innovations substantially pre‐dated the moment at which they were economically transformative. Scarcity dramatically changes relative prices, but not the overall price level. Initially inflation became a policy solution, an attractive way of meeting the challenges of scarcity, but then its increasing costs became apparent, and more, rather than less, global integration looked like a way of reducing costs and minimising social pressure. Policy choices were involved in generating the globalised world: not only the removal of impediments to commerce, but also a consensus around a stable and internationally applicable monetary framework, whether the gold standard in the late nineteenth century or a modern inflation targeting regime in the late twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on a comment on the paper "Anachronistic Economics: Grain Storage in Medieval England," by J. Komlos and R. Landes that appeared in the 1991 issue of the journal "Economic History Review." The notion was that English fields were diverse enough that insurance against disaster was achieved by holding plots on the hill and in the valley, in the sands and in the clay. Meanwhile, economist S. Fenoaltea criticized the original notion, on the grounds that storage might be possible. As a theoretical possibility, Fenoaltea noted, if one could store grain cheaply they would not need to inconvenience themselves while growing it. Seven years of storage is good insurance against seven years of dearth and scattering would be unnecessary. Fenoaltea offered little evidence either at the time or later for the low cost of storage. If storage were very costly, then Fenoaltea's speculation could be set aside, and the insurance theory of scattering would gain in credence. It is of course not possible to construct direct measures by adding up such components as the rate of interest and the rate of rotting: medieval bond rates are difficult to interpret and no one knows how much of the peasant's crop rotted.

The article focuses on a reply by the authors to a comment by economist Donald N. McCloskey on their paper "Anachronistic Economics: Grain Storage in Medieval England," that appeared in the 1991 issue of the journal "Economic History Review." McCloskey suggests that the main purpose of this paper was to show that the cost of storage was "formidable" in medieval England. The point was to get a rough idea of storage cost (not storage amounts) in which he had only a "desultory" interest. He devotes the first two sections of his paper to the proposition that the storage amounts were small: (1) the direct evidence that storage was small and (2) using prices to show that storage was small. He spells out the significance of interest rates in subsequent sections. He says that the cost was high because the interest rate was high and the significance of high medieval interest rates. His conclusion reiterates his opening premise, namely that the cost of storage and the rate of interest were shockingly high. Stores of grain were therefore very low.

This article presents comments of authors on the criticism of their article on textile machinery by William Lazonick that was published in the February 1987 issue of the periodical "Economic History Review." The article used the records of most of Lancashire, England's textile machinery makers from 1878 to 1920--to document investment in alternative spinning technologies in Lancashire prior to World War I. Lazonick is correct in pointing out that the article on the persistence of the English mule did not include a comprehensive review and critique of his views on the decline of the Lancashire cotton industry. The central problem is that Lazonick does not use the term "constraint" in a consistent or rigorous way. Formally his analysis appears at first to be an attractive escape from the sterility of the debates over entrepreneurial failure: British managers made choices which were rational and appropriate given their constraints, but the industry collectively failed to transform its organization and technology so as to relax the constraints facing individual producers. The difficulties noted by Lazonick in his present comment relate exclusively to the case of existing spinning firms attempting to sell ring-spun weft yarn in the open market.

The article examines the long-term growth of the banking sector in Great Britain and money stock in the period 1844-1880. Detailed estimates of long-term monetary and banking growth in the country exist for the years after the late 1870s, although controversy remains as to their precise accuracy, but even reasonably accurate figures for the greater part of the nineteenth century have proved elusive. It is here that this paper makes a contribution by drawing heavily upon archive material to present new estimates for England and Wales for part of that early period, 1844-80. New estimates are made for commercial bank liabilities to the public and long-term trends in the growth of the money stock are calculated. Data for the number of banks and banking offices are readily available from 1844 in the directory "Banking Almanac," providing one measure of the growth of the commercial banking sector with some breakdown as to the institutional nature and geographical location of firms within the sector. However, they can provide but a crude measure of the growth and density of banking services.

The article discusses the role of the Bank of England in the supply of credit during the period of the suspension of cash payments in the country from 1797 to 1821. The Bank of England played a key role in the supply of credit during the Suspension of Cash Payments. In London, the hub of the nation's commercial and financial affairs, the cessation of private issues in the 1770s had given it a monopoly of the note circulation. Bank notes were used as the basis of all sizable transactions and increasingly, as gold coins disappeared after 1797, for small payments. The Bank made advances principally through investments in government securities, the so-called private loans and discounts of commercial paper. For much of the period, the government advances were uncontrollable because the directors felt obliged to satisfy the urgent wartime demands of the Treasury. To some extent, the private loans can similarly be considered essential, designed as they were to assist subscribers to war loans and to tide solvent firms over temporary difficulties. They comprised a fluctuating but generally much smaller portion of Bank credit than the other two categories.

A review of periodical literature for 2021 is presented, with topics that include knitwear industry in Scotland, wealth distribution, and British firms' strategic responses to Indianisation.

We assemble the Irish industrial data currently available for the years 1800–1921, the period during which the entire island was in a political union with Great Britain, and construct an annual index of Irish industrial output for 1800–1913. We also construct a new industrial price index. Irish industrial output grew by an average of 1.3 per cent per annum between 1800 and the outbreak of the First World War. Industrial growth was slightly slower than previously thought, especially during the two decades immediately preceding the Great Famine. While Ireland did not experience absolute deindustrialisation either before the Famine or afterwards, its industrial growth was disappointing when considered in a comparative perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decision in 1847 to cut Treasury spending on public relief efforts during the Irish famine is generally attributed by economic historians to the pervasive influence of 'laissez-faire' ideas on the Whig government of Lord John Russell. This article draws on the papers of political leaders and contemporary financial information to argue that economic reasons were the trigger for the change in policy. Robert Peel and Charles Wood's macroeconomic policies of the 1840s, including the gold standard, the Bank Charter Act, and corn law repeal, left the Whigs unable to borrow to finance relief efforts in Ireland without panicking markets. The scaling back of public assistance programmes that resulted from this-and which increased mortality at the height of the Irish famine-was the unintended result of Peel and Wood's economic policies, in the context of the Whig government's parliamentary weakness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the result of a survey on economic history from the participants of the 1994 International Economic History Congress. Geographical, age and sex distribution of the participants; Consideration of the main school of research that can be seen in the congress program; Analysis of the areas and periods on most research; Trends in the discipline and future developments.

The article focuses on effects of wealth and fiscal policy in the economic history of the interwar period. This paper has been concerned with the measurement of the importance of the fiscal stimulus provided by the government deficit during, and following, the slump of the early 1930s. It can be concluded that adjusting for changes in the real value of financial wealth makes little difference to the aggregate demand effects of the government budget. This is not because the sums involved are trivial--they are in fact extremely large--but simply because the consumption elasticities with respect to financial assets are small. An additional conclusion is that fiscal policy was broadly neutral during the early years of the depression but became expansionary after 1934/5. Since recovery was already under way by this date fiscal policy cannot be seen as a causal factor in either the slump itself or the subsequent recovery. Whether the recovery would have been as strong, or been maintained as well, without an accompanying fiscal stimulus is an interesting question for future research.

The article discusses the literature in economic and social history since 1850. A small group of papers looks at the problem of unemployment between the wars. All formally apply economic theory and statistical analysis, although from somewhat different theoretical traditions. Economist D. Matthews employs the Liverpool rational expectations model to test the counterfactual proposition that the Liberals' public works proposals of 1929 could have made a serious dent in the unemployment figures. The model replies in the affirmative, indeed suggests a larger permanent rise in employment than recently employed Keynesian models but only on conditions consistent with the well-known views of economist Patrick Minford and colleagues, that the resulting inflationary price rises would have had to lead to falls in the real value of unemployment benefits and wages. In other words, economist John Maynard Keynes may have been correct in his belief that economist Lloyd George's program could have created jobs, but his theoretical explanation was wrong.

The article examines statistical evidence on industrial horsepower and the accuracy of Factory Return in Great Britain in 1870. The first Factory Act was passed in 1833, following the publication of the reports of the Factory Commissioners. Among other things this Act gave the Factory Inspectors it appointed powers to order the occupiers of factories in the textile industries to furnish any information, including power figures, which they deemed necessary for the execution of their duties under the Act. At this time the Factory Acts applied only to woolen-, worsted-, cotton-, flax- and silk-mills; returns of these were published in the parliamentary papers. In the early 1860s, however, the operation of the legislation was expanded: bleaching and dyeing works were the subject of Acts in 1860 and 1864, as were lace works in 1861. In 1864 the first Factory Acts Extension Act extended the coverage of the legislation outside the textile industries for the first time: now earthenware manufacture apart from bricks and tiles, lucifer match-making, the percussion cap and cartridge trades, paper-staining and fustian-cutting were all brought under the umbrella of the Factory Acts.

The article presents information on several articles and books relating to economics, sociology and forestry. The article provides information on major journals that published articles on rural life more or less regularly. Every year the Congress national des Sode'te's savantes includes many papers on rural history, subsequently published in its transactions. Those for the 89th and 90th congresses, held in Lyons in 1964 and in Nice in 1965, have appeared; those for the 91st congress, held at Rennes in 1966, are still awaited. In 1967, there have been two articles on economic thought which, significantly, were written by foreigners and deal with the second half of the eighteenth century. One of them is a contemporary text by Chydenius, who was a Swedish forerunner of Adam Smith. Some articles on social history touch on the interests of the economic historian, including Albert Soboul's on "Description et mesure en histoire sociale." As always, some French historians have published work on foreign history.

Focuses on the authorship and dating of the memorandum "For the Understanding of the Exchange." The most telling argument against attributing the memorandum to the author Thomas Gresham is that its whole line of thought runs counter to Gresham's point of view. The treatise argues that the only "naturall exchaunge" is at mint par, making allowances for costs. The Huntington copy of the memorandum apparently contains more material than other copies. The two introductory pages are from a different quire of paper than the rest of the manuscript and bear a different watermark. Furthermore, numbering of the pages begins after the first two pages. The memorandum is full of anachronisms which throw doubt on any effort to infer a specific date between 1553 and 1576. The most glaring is the use of a balance-of-payments account for the year 1354 in a paper written two hundred or more years later. But of all the people who might have written the memorandum, Richard Martin is the only one to be firmly connected with it by documentary evidence of any significance. To sum up, even if the memorandum is not actually by Gresham, it incorporates most of his ideas and suggestions.

Responds to the comment made by economist Paul A. David on the author's paper on agricultural labor productivity in rural England from 1850 to 1914. Attempt of the author to demonstrate the existence of regional variations in farm labour productivity; Factors influencing the pattern of regional differences in productivity; Comment of the author on the analytical style of David.

This article studies the changes that took place in the Bank of England's Restriction‐era policies governing private sector lending. The findings show that the Bank was adapting to novel monetary circumstances, created both by the evolution of the English financial system and by the Restriction itself, and that, although the process was far from smooth, the Bank was learning to act as a central bank: during this period the Bank transformed its internal operating procedures to put regulation‐based constraints on its private sector lending, established regular reviews of its policies and their effects on the money market, and adopted a distinct crisis‐orientated lending policy. In addition to establishing that these core central bank activities developed over this period, the article also shows that for 18 months starting in 1809 the Bank's policies were destabilizing, and that the Bullion Committee probably played a role in a shift in Bank lending policies that took place in mid‐1810. Overall, this study finds that the 1810 crisis was a turning point in the Bank's understanding of its role in the economy: the Bank directors both acknowledged privately the Bank's duty to the public, and restructured its discount policies with a view to promoting financial and monetary stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Using new evidence uncovered from Istanbul court records, this paper shows that Ottoman markets were capable of spontaneous financial innovation before the introduction of modern financial instruments. At the same time, however, it demonstrates that the impact and sustainability of these innovations depended on the underlying political equilibrium. Gediks—entitlements to usufruct rights over the factors of production used in urban commercial and industrial activity—gradually transformed into liquid assets during the late eighteenth century. This transformation was enabled by the coercive power of Janissary‐infiltrated guilds in response to the financial needs of small‐ and medium‐scale actors operating within the confines of the domestic economy. The entry barriers, which enabled gedik markets to exist in the first place, also limited their use for growth‐promoting purposes and thus set them apart from similar financial instruments that emerged in the West. Gedik markets disappeared as the Janissary–guild coalition declined and better financial instruments emerged during the mid‐nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians have generally argued that between the medieval period and the eighteenth century seafarers transformed from collaborative adventurers with a share in their vessel to the first international wage-earning proletariat. This interpretation has drawn upon relatively limited statistical analysis of mariners' wages, and underestimates the variety of seafarers' remuneration and economic activities besides wages themselves. This article undertakes a more sustained analysis of seventeenth-century wage data drawn from the papers of the English High Court of Admiralty, and uses the same evidence to examine other forms of income, both customary payments as part of shipping, and small-scale trade. Seafarers of all ranks carried their own commodities on all shipping routes, offering an opportunity to increase their income considerably. This evidence confirms that the maritime labour market was hierarchical, and that very often seafarers were poor labourers facing economic insecurity of many kinds. However, it refines the previous interpretation by emphasizing the presence of skilled workers even among the lower levels of this labour market, and by introducing a new dimension to mariners' economic agency: they were not simply wage-workers, but also independent participants in a venture economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the archives of the earls of Derby alongside related governmental papers to provide a new perspective on the Royalist land sales. It revisits Thirsk's pioneering work and, while upholding its significance, argues that historians can go further in understanding the social and economic consequences of the land sales. The identity, motivation, and activity of the Interregnum purchasers are re-assessed, and it is suggested that the role of tenants was greater and more complex than has been appreciated. The case study will hopefully shed further light on a part of the Revolution land settlement story which has been underplayed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]