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This open access book presents the evolution of the Spanish economy over the past seven centuries since the end of the Reconquest and examines how much economic progress has Spain achieved, as well as its impact on living standards and income distribution over the very long run. It shows that preindustrial Spain was far from stagnant, although levels of output per head in the early nineteenth century were not much different from those on the eve of the Black Death (1348). It further discusses how phases of simultaneous per capita output and population expansion and shrinkage alternated, lending support to the recurring growth and frontier economy hypotheses. While a collapse in the 1570s gave way to sluggish growth and higher inequality after a long phase of sustained growth and lower inequality, the book shows how real per capita income has improved substantially over the last two centuries, driven by increased labor productivity, and derived from more intense andefficient use of physical and human capital per worker. Presenting exposure to international competition as a stimulus for this development, the book sheds light on the underperformance of Spain up to 1950 in a European comparison and describes the catch-up of Spain’s economy with more advanced countries until 2007. Finally, the book explains how modern economic growth is associated with an increase in the material well-being of its inhabitants, as the most dynamic economic phases of the last century have been associated with an improvement in income distribution, although the relationship between growth and inequality has not been linear. This book is a must-read for students, researchers, and scholars of economics and economic history interested in a better understanding of cliometrics, long-run analyses, economic development, economic growth, as well as the Spanish economy.

This open access book examines the long-term impact of Christian missionaries in Zambia, and sub-Saharan Africa more generally, on education, health, and economic development. It examines how Christian missionaries provided Western-style education and healthcare within sub-Saharan Africa during the 20th century and how this was provided along unequal gender and regional lines. With sub-Saharan Africa currently facing challenges in the provision of essential public goods and services, the legacy of Christian missionaries in Zambia provides an insightful case study for better understanding how gendered education and regional health inequality have hindered economic development in this region. This book offers a new perspective on colonialism and the economic challenges faced within Africa. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested development economics and economic history.

This Open Access book examines the long economic boom experienced in Ireland between the late 1980s and 2007, analysing why this boom occurred. The book situates Ireland as a relative latecomer to economic development, with specific challenges and advantages inherent to this position. It discusses the risks involved in remaining reliant on foreign companies, exploring how in Ireland’s case the rapidly growing economy required active, interventionist and imaginative policy measures rather than relying primarily on free market forces. The book also offers an estimation of the value of the net foreign earnings associated with different categories of exports after deducting the profit outflows and payments for imported inputs, revealing a number of findings about the importance of Irish indigenous companies and services during this time. It shows that Irish indigenous companies, assisted by industrial policy measures, played a significant part, as did the services sector,alongside the more visible and widely recognised role of foreign multinationals in high-tech manufacturing. Offering fresh insights and analyses more than 15 years after the long boom ended at the precipice of the global financial crisis, this book will be a useful resource for economic historians, scholars of political economy and macroeconomic policy, as well as those interested in modern Irish history more broadly.

This open access book is the first to provide an analysis of the Dutch paper industry over a period encompassing six centuries. Responding to a trend of renewed scholarly interest in paper industries and production, the book seeks to illuminate the factors behind this relatively small national industry’s centuries-long survival. Previous historical research has shown that sets of colonial, trade, merchant and family networks, tightly interwoven through a dense web of capital, were crucial for paper production and trade in early modern Europe. This book situates the Dutch paper industry within these overlapping contexts and their shifting dynamics over time, and historicizes the challenges and obstacles it had to overcome through four phases of capitalism: the rise of Dutch capitalism (1580–1815), Dutch monarchic liberalism (1815–1914), Fordism (1914–1980), and post-Fordism (1980 until now). Each chapter covers not only technological advancements in the industry, but its development alongside further determining dimensions, such as state-industry relations (industry policies), labour-capital relations (unions) and competition and cooperation, overall painting a picture of how the industry adapted to and endured changes in national and global networks surrounding the industry. This book will be of broad interest to scholars of economic and business history, as well as industrial history, political economy, and management studies.

This is the first Open Access book introducing more than 20 of Japan’s leading innovative entrepreneurs from the 17th century to the present. The author outlines the innovative business models created by entrepreneurs including SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, Fast Retailing (Uniqlo)’s Yanai Tadashi, Honda’s Soichiro Honda, Sony’s Akio Morita, Panasonic’s Konosuke Matsushita, and Toyota’s Kiichiro Toyoda, as well as their predecessors including Takatoshi Mitsui of Mitsui Zaibatsu, Shibusawa Eiichi of Daiichi Bank. While introducing the innovators, the author also raises three broader questions: 1. Why did Japan industrialize earlier than any other country outside Europe and the United States? 2. Why was Japan able to realize unsurpassed economic growth between the 1910s and the 1980s? 3. Why has Japan’s economy stagnated for more than 30 years since the 1990s? Drawing upon analytical concepts including Schumpeter’s breakthrough innovation, Kirzner’s incremental innovation, and Christensen’s disruptive innovation, the author contends that Japan’s successes were based on unique and systematic breakthrough innovation and an accumulation of incremental innovation, while it later fell victim to a combination of breakthrough innovation from advanced countries and disruptive innovation by developing nations.

This open access book explores the history of pellagra, a vitamin deficiency disease brought about by a shift in agriculture to maize, and which was first identified in Italy in the 1760s. With a focus on the insanity that was caused by the disease, the authors examine how thousands of patients were treated in Italian psychiatric asylums, shedding light on the sufferer’s point of view. Setting pellagrous insanity in a wider context of man-made or societal (anthropogenic) disease, where poverty, diet and disease meet, the book contributes to the history of medicine and science, the history of psychiatry, economic and social history, agrarian history, and food and nutrition history. Additionally, the authors aim to transnationalise Italian history by making comparisons with related issues, such as tertiary syphilis in the UK. Drawing from a wide range of printed and archival sources, including the writings of Italian medical investigators, the book examines how medical and scientific research was carried out during the long nineteenth century and the uncertainties that this engendered, in terms of classification, explanation, diagnosis and treatment. Offering a unique perspective on an endemic illness which came to be known as the disease of the four ds: dermatitis; diarrhea; dementia; and death, this book provides an engaging account of one of the most perplexing causes of mental illness.

This open access book explores the history of risk management in medieval and early modern European maritime business, focusing particularly on 'General Average' – a mechanism by which extraordinary expenses regarding ship or cargo, incurred during a voyage to save the venture, are shared between all participants to protect equity. This volume traces the history of this risk management tool from its origins in the pre-Roman Mediterranean through to its use in the shipping sector today. Contributions range from the Islamic Mediterranean to the Low Countries, and taken together, provide a wide-ranging analysis of social, cultural, and political aspects of pre-modern maritime commerce in Europe.

This open access book provides an exploration of the consequences of the ontological differences between natural and social objects (sometimes described as objects of nature and objects of thought) in the workings of causal and agency relationships. One of its important and possibly original conclusions is that causal and agency relationships do not encompass all of the dependent relationships encountered in social life. The idea that social reality is contingent has been known (and largely undisputed) at least since Wittgenstein’s “On Certainty”, but social science, and most notably economics has continued to operate on the basis of causal and agency theories borrowed or adapted from the natural sciences. This volume contains essays that retain and justify the partial or qualified use of this approach and essays that totally reject any use of causal and agency theory built on determined facts (closed systems).The rejection is based on the possibly original claim that, whereas causation in the objects of the natural sciences reside in their properties, human action is a matter of intentionality. It engages with critical realist theory and re-examines the role of free will in theories of human action in general and economic theory in particular.

This open access book provides a panoramic view of the evolution of Spanish agriculture from 1900 to the present, offering a more diverse picture to the complex and multidimensional reality of agrarian production. With a clear transdisciplinary ambition, the book applies an original and innovative theoretical and methodological tool, termed Agrarian Social Metabolism, combining Social Metabolism with an agroecological perspective. This integrative analysis is especially interesting for environmental scientists and policy makers being the best way to design sustainable agroecosystems and public policies capable of moving us towards a more sustainable food system. Spanish agricultural production has experienced impressive growth during the 20th century which has allowed it to ensure the supply of food to the population and even to transform some crops into important chapters in foreign trade. However, this growth has had its negative side since it was based on the injection of large amounts of external energy, on the destruction of employment and the loss of profitability of agricultural activity. But perhaps the most serious part is the strong impact of the current industrialised agriculture model on Spanish agroecosystems, exposed to the overexploitation of hydric resources, pollution of the water by nitrates and pesticides, high erosion rates and an alarming loss of biodiversity; damage which in the immediate future will end up reducing production capacity.

This open access book modifies and revitalizes the concept of the ‘developmental state’ to understand the politics of emerging economy through nuanced analysis on the roles of human agency in the context of structural transformation. In other words, there is a revived interest in the ‘developmental state’ concept. The nature of the ‘emerging state’ is characterized by its attitude toward economic development and industrialization. Emerging states have engaged in the promotion of agriculture, trade, and industry and played a transformative role to pursue a certain path of economic development. Their success has cast doubt about the principle of laissez faire among the people in the developing world. This doubt, together with the progress of democratization, has prompted policymakers to discover when and how economic policies should deviate from laissez faire, what prevents political leaders and state institutions from being captured by vested interests, and what induce them to drive economic development. This book offers both historical and contemporary case studies from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Rwanda. They illustrate how institutions are designed to be developmental, how political coalitions are formed to be growth-oriented, and how technocratic agencies are embedded in a network of business organizations as a part of their efforts for state building.

This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND license. This book addresses the issue of how a country, which was incorporated into the world economy as a periphery, could make a transition to the emerging state, capable of undertaking the task of economic development and industrialization. It offers historical and contemporary case studies of transition, as well as the international background under which such a transition was successfully made (or delayed), by combining the approaches of economic history and development economics. Its aim is to identify relevant historical contexts, that is, the ‘initial conditions’ and internal and external forces which governed the transition. It also aims to understand what current low-income developing countries require for their transition. Three economic driving forces for the transition are identified. They are: (1) labor-intensive industrialization, which offers ample employment opportunities for labor force; (2) international trade, which facilitates efficient international division of labor; and (3) agricultural development, which improves food security by increasing supply of staple foods. The book presents a bold account of each driver for the transition.

This open access book focuses on the concepts, tools and techniques needed to successfully model ever-changing time-series data. It emphasizes the need for general models to account for the complexities of the modern world and how these can be applied to a range of issues facing Earth, from modelling volcanic eruptions, carbon dioxide emissions and global temperatures, to modelling unemployment rates, wage inflation and population growth. Except where otherwise noted, this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0.