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As a significant trade item on the ancient Silk Road, the evolution of mug shapes represents a confluence of Eastern and Western economic history and cultural-artistic exchanges, also reflecting the flourishing export culture of Guangzhou. This paper analyzes the functional and social factors influencing the morphological changes of Lingnan mugs from 1616 to 1949 from the perspective of quantitative typological analysis. The overall design trend of these mugs transitioned from complex to simple, enhancing user comfort, while variations in mug scale reflect the diversity of consumer classes and regional drinking cultures. Among the 30 mugs analyzed, the average capacity was 356ml, with a range of 1588ml. Common shapes included cylindrical bodies and ear-shaped handles. Morphologically, the belly of the mugs transformed from arc-barrel bodies (emphasizing heat retention) to bulbous bodies, and eventually to cylindrical bodies (combining heat retention, practicality, and economy), with handles also showing signs of East-West integration. The analysis of the mug body' s inclination, with handle-side junction angles ranging from 34° to 53° and wall-side junction angles from 50° to 90°, indicates that these features are associated with stability in placement, aesthetic design, and practicality in liquid containment. These morphological evolutions reflect genuine responses to market demands and advancements in production technology, manifesting as products of market orientation and societal needs. By measuring changes in morphology, scale, volume, and external contour curves, this paper addresses how social factors shape material morphology in an academic context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes several key questions that should be unavoidable in the research on history of economic sanctions. Four key questions are identified. The first one is what the aim of the sanctions is; what are they supposed to achieve? The second question relates to the mechanisms of sanctions. The third question is, are sanctions effective, i.e. do they produce economic impact and what is its magnitude? The fourth question is, are sanctions efficient, i.e. has the aim been achieved? All these questions are further developed into several more specific questions. Crucial methodological obstacles to answering all these questions are identified and guidelines for overcoming them are provided. The answers to the proposed key questions should be only the starting point in research on history of economic sanctions. Some preliminary answers to these questions were given for the case of February 2022 sanctions against Russia, imposed after it invaded Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Science Policy & Practice is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Throughout history, schools of economic thought have defined political economy—or economics—and its object of study in multiple ways. This paper reflects on the definitions of economics by schools of economic thought and also proposes the concepts of value and scarcity as key concepts to explain the differences between them. The most important findings of the paper are: (a) the ontological and epistemological characteristics of the concept of value and scarcity have shaped the definitions of economics; (b) the boundaries of the study object of economics have been expanded since today's mainstream economics deals with multiple topics as diverse as crime, education, development, health, etc. However, the methodological tools used in mainstream economics have been narrowed since approaches such as the philosophical, ethical, historical, and institutional approaches have been left behind; (c) the part of reality that mainstream economics can grasp have left behind important issues of the contemporary world, such as gender, social, and environmental issues. A clear understanding of the scope and boundaries of economics could help to define more realistic research questions for economic science, and it would help to define new economic paradigms that address the contemporary issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of International Relations / Medzinarodne Vztahy is the property of University of Economics in Bratislava, Faculty of International Relations and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

From its foundation as a private corporation in 1694, the Bank of England extended large amounts of credit to support the British private economy and to support an increasingly centralised British state. The Bank helped the British state reach a position of geopolitical and economic hegemony in the international economic order. In this paper, we deploy recalibrated financial data to analyse an evolving trajectory of connections between the British economy, the state, and the Bank of England. We show how these connections contributed to form an effective and efficient fiscal–naval state and promote the development of a system of financial intermediation for the economy. This symbiotic relationship became stronger after 1793. The evidence that we consider here shows that although the Bank was nominally a private institution and profits were paid to its shareholders, it was playing a public role well before Bagehot's doctrine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on Socio-Economic History Society is one of the oldest and largest academic communities of economic historians in Japan. Topics include Society was founded in 1930 as the first nationwide organization and began publishing its periodical Shakai-Keizaishigaku (Socio-Economic History) in the following year; and promote studies in economic history and related fields such as legal history, political history, social history.

The article titled "Economic History of the Mexican Peso: From the Global Market to the Political Management of Currency" is a book that addresses the evolution of money in Mexico from colonial times to the late 20th century. The Bank of Mexico has aimed to provide the country with national currency and promote the development of payment systems. The book highlights the importance of security and trust in money for it to fulfill its functions properly. It also mentions moments of transition in the political management of currency, such as the financial bankruptcy of the Viceroyalty and the reintegration of the Mexican peso into the global economy after Independence. During the 19th century, different forms of political currency management emerged, including the introduction of copper coins and the use of paper money. The text provides a summary of Mexico's monetary history from the late 19th century to the present, highlighting the adoption of a floating exchange rate regime and the relevance of the Mexican peso as a global currency. The importance of understanding monetary history to effectively face future challenges is emphasized. [Extracted from the article]

This paper introduces the Special Issue 'Minorities and Grain Trade in Early Modern Europe'. While an area's traditional supply circuits benefitted from satisfactory harvests and a stable food demand, minorities' contribution became crucial during crisis. Due to their commercial networks, facilities, and capital, minorities and their agents were able to cope with market disruption, especially when inflation and the reconfiguration of supply areas rendered 'traditional' grain merchants unable to face the emergency. The papers included in the Special Issue focus on the geographical and financial scope of legal grain-trading minorities' businesses and their degree of specialisation and analyse how political authorities' reliance on minorities to face food scarcity not only represented an economic opportunity for minorities but also contributed to shaping their relationship with public authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary relevance of Adam Smith is evidenced by continued reference to his name. Computational analysis identifies over 700 mentions of Smith and his two famous works— The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations —in post-World War 1 House of Commons debates. We find some parliamentarians appreciate Smith's complex ideas, but most references are 'ornamental'. Charting Smith's use over the decades, this paper builds on Kirk Willis' idea that studying parliamentary debates are an ideal way to understand how, at best, policy ideas, germinate and disseminate over time, or, at worst, how 'complex ideas became slogans'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Argentina de Antropología Biológica is the property of Revista Argentina de Antropologia Biologica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Recent research in economic history has found that mortgage debt in relation to GDP has taken off in the historical long run ("great mortgaging"), as growing banking assets have been redirected into mortgage credit. This paper maps the parallel long-run investment history of private (life) insurance as the much overlooked second pillar of the financial system. Drawing on in-depth studies of the US and Germany, it finds that a "great de-mortgaging" took place in insurers' portfolios, with mortgages falling from up to 90 percent in the 19th century to below 5 percent today in favor of fixed-income securities. A parallel shift to secondary mortgage bonds has hardly offset this decline, while direct real estate remained largely a residual investment class. Banks' great mortgaging is thus partly an institutional substitution effect. The paper sees insurers' asset shift itself as mainly driven by long-run changes in capital demand and competition with banks and pension funds. It extends these findings to other long-term institutional investors and other OECD countries in the historical long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of energy prices on macroeconomic stability is analyzed in this paper. Energy prices represent significant supply-side shocks, which have been leading cyclical fluctuation triggers through economic history. The analysis includes the countries that were the members of the former SFRY, as well as the countries the members of the Višegrad Group. The indicators under observation are presented for the EU27 for the purposes of comparison. In accordance with economic theory, the main conclusion of the paper is that supply-side shocks can be a significant source of cyclical fluctuations and an inflation trigger. Therefore, policymakers have a complex task to minimize the effects of these shocks. Nowadays, when energy prices are reaching historically high levels, the scientific contribution of supply-side shocks can be found in the deep analysis and well-grounded estimations of the role of those shocks in the preservation of macroeconomic stability and the economic policy measures necessary for the minimization of their negative effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with three important book and journal publications of Andor Sas, the well-known Hungarian author from Slovakia after his death, their afterlife, and their evaluation. The cited attested sources can further clarify the author and his life's work, which are erroneously or not factually recorded in the common knowledge. According to this paper, the most valuable part of the author's lifework is probably his research on economic history, although the most important work published in this field is described by the profession as an archival review. It would also seem useful to compile a bibliography of the Sas-reviews of the early 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the new dataset Cohort Component Population Estimates for Ireland, 1911–1920 (www.doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-854673). The dataset provides vital statistics and cohort component population estimates at a spatially-disaggregated level for the island of Ireland for the period 1911–1920. The raw data were digitised by the authors using official UK government statistics. The population estimates were then derived by the cohort component method. These data provide novel intercensal population estimates at the county level that will be beneficial for researchers working in historical demography, as well as in economic and social history. The data provided can be readily reused and extended by other researchers to produce further series and indicators. An example application of the data in this manner is Colvin and McLaughlin (2021) , who combine these population estimates with mortality statistics from the Spanish flu pandemic to demonstrate how demographic composition affects the interpretation of data on public health crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ruch Prawniczy, Ekonomiczny i Socjologiczny (0035-9629) is the property of Adam Mickiewicz University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista de Economia Contemporânea is the property of Revista de Economia Contemporanea and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The main goal of this policy paper is to provide an overview of the basic problems that have impact on healthcare in Croatia and tend to make it unsustainable. The paper points out that the COVID-19 crisis has deepened and exacerbated the already existing problems of financing the health system. The analysis shows that Croatia swept under the rug systemic problems in financing healthcare and ultimately paid the price through frequent financial bailouts. Thus, in the period from 1994-2021, a total of HRK 23.9 billion was spent on bailing out the health service. On the other hand, the COVID-19 crisis can be seen as a chance to start solving the problem and implement certain reforms, both on the revenue and expenditure side of the health system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes fiscal policy sustainability and cyclicality in Croatia. The main novelty of the paper is that our fiscal response function allows for asymmetric behavior over the business cycle. We allow fiscal policy sustainability and cyclicality to differ across the expansionary and recessionary regimes. The overall results suggest that fiscal policy in Croatia is both sustainable and countercyclical. We find evidence of asymmetric behavior of fiscal policy cyclicality. In the expansionary regime, fiscal policy is countercyclical, while in the recessionary regime, it varies between procyclical and acyclical. On the other hand, we find only limited evidence of asymmetric behavior of public debt sustainability. During good times, Croatian policymakers try to keep fiscal policy both sustainable and countercyclical, which is required fiscal policy behavior. In recessionary times, the characteristics of fiscal policy are not so clear, but tend to be procyclical or acyclical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Cultura Económica is the property of Pontificia Universidad Catolica Argentina and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of International Economics / Economia Internazionale is the property of Camera di Commercio di Genova and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The history of retailing has become an area of growing scholarly interest over the last few decades, with publications mainly concerning the national historiography of retail and wholesaling. On the other hand, although the retail sector is considered to be one of the most historically significant sectors of the Greek economy, the economic history of the Greek retail industry remains a notoriously underdeveloped area of inquiry and, as such, is on the margins of economic and social studies in Greek historiography. In this paper, we, attempt to provide a first concise (and certainly not exhaustive) analysis of the historical development of the Greek retail sector from the nineteenth century to the present (in circa) day. Specifically, we aim to analyse the evolution of the Greek retail trade to assess the spatial and social impacts associated with establishing and operating "new forms" of commerce. The focus is on the sectoral and organisational restructuring of the retail trade with the changes in the standards of the spatial location, which relate to the establishment and operation of retail businesses. Students and scholars of the history of retailing would benefit from this worthwhile exercise which for the first time provides a first overview of the historical development of the Greek retail sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Comparative Economic Research is the property of Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Lodzkiego and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper provides an examination of interwar Latvia's national accounts, checking their usability for estimating interwar economic growth performance. According to the authoritative account of Roses and Wolf [(2010). Aggregate growth, 1913–1950. In S. Broadberry, & K. H. O'Rourke (Eds.), The Cambridge economic history of modern Europe, vol 2. 1870 to the present (pp. 183–207). Cambridge UP.], based on indirect estimation methods, Latvia's GDPpc growth rate from 1929 to 1938 was the highest in Europe. However, according to Aizsilnieks [(1968). Latvijas saimniecības vēsture, 1914–1945. Daugava.] interwar national income estimates show that the Latvian economy stagnated in the 1930s. This paper's main findings are that applying historical price indices to the existing interwar output estimates supports the stagnation thesis. However, the national income estimates lack validity and reliability due to unpersistent or unknown methodology. Hence, changes in real output cannot be established without new calculations according to the contemporary System of National Accounts (SNA 2008) framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the Xingke Tiben, this paper assesses the long‐run economic development of China, by constructing a new estimate of male occupational structure during 1734–1898 by sector, sub‐sector pattern, and region. After assessing the source's biases, using this new empirical basis, this paper demonstrates that the national male occupational structure was nearly identical in 1761–70, 1821–30, and 1881–90, suggesting a long‐lasting structural stasis of the national economy, allowing for fluctuations between benchmark dates. Within agriculture, substantial regional differences in labour organisation are revealed. Three distinct models are found: the Northern Regions model features a high usage of wage labour, the Yangtze Valley model presents a high level of tenancy development, and the Southern Regions model displays the highest share of landowners. All three models saw increasing use of wage labour in 1761–1890 and shrinking landownership in 1821–90. At the regional level, the long‐run estimate for Lower Yangtze suggests that the region as a whole stagnated throughout the entire period, but the overall structural stasis hides dynamic, contrasting long‐run economic change between the region's core and peripheral areas. Comparative analysis with England further suggests that the timing of the Great Divergence between China and England took place before 1734, even in the context of the regional difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks whether history should change the way in which economists and economic historians think about populism. We use Müller's definition, according to which populism is 'an exclusionary form of identity politics, which is why it poses a threat to democracy'. We make three historical arguments. First, late‐nineteenth‐century US Populists were not populist. Second, there is no necessary relationship between populism and anti‐globalization sentiment. Third, economists have sometimes been on the wrong side of important policy debates involving opponents rightly or wrongly described as populist. History encourages us to avoid an overly simplistic view of populism and its correlates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the history of Amélie de Dietrich in her role (1806 to 1855) as the head of one of the oldest family-owned businesses in Europe: the De Dietrich Company. Economic history has long given a very minor place to women entrepreneurs. Recent analyses nevertheless tend to show that women business leaders were not exceptions in the nineteenth century. This paper is a further attempt to bring women entrepreneurs – and their contribution to the industrial take-off – out of invisibility. Amélie de Dietrich took important strategic decisions to adapt the company to the new economic opportunities which arose in the first half of the nineteenth century. Her choices were decisive for the future of the company; what is more, she succeeded in restoring the familial ownership. Drawing on Amélie de Dietrich's own unpublished correspondence, this contribution examines the factors that explain her success in imposing herself as a Maître des Forges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented which discusses various reports within the journal on topics including India's economic history, slave labour on the cotton plantations in the southern U.S., and the role of trade in British industrialisation.

Adam Smith promoted free banking—private, competitive, convertible banknotes. He also supported restrictions on banks. We study Smith's views and the era in which they developed, suggesting his 'regulations' were a backstop against banks' risks to depositors but primarily monetary stability. In modern parlance, Smith supported macroprudential regulations to underpin monetary stability, as did Friedman and Schwartz the US FDIC. We discuss why Smith's vision for banking went unrealised. Bank regulation became microprudential and ran aground in 2008/2009. The prominence of macroprudential regulation now provides a chance to reorientate regulation to support monetary stability. Early signs are not promising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article brings together some of the improvements to GDP estimates from the income side since the publication of Charles Feinstein's 1972 volume National income, expenditure and output of the United Kingdom, 1855–1965. Many of the improvements and refinements were made by Feinstein himself and this paper makes a start in bringing the different elements together, focusing chiefly on reconstructing the income‐based estimates for the period 1841–1920. The new data are then used to comment on several features of the late nineteenth‐century UK economy, considering both the trend and cyclical path of the economy. The new data, coupled with modern de‐trending methods, suggest that there was a long‐term slowing of the UK economy from the late nineteenth century, starting from the 1870s. To undertake the trend–cycle decomposition, we employ a wavelets methodology to describe the time–varying features of trends and cycles over this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ars & Humanitas is the property of Ars & Humanitas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Tiempo y Economía is the property of La Fundacion Universidad de Bogota Jorge Tadeo Lozano and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Ekonomika is the property of Society of Economists 'Ekonomika' and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Tiempo y Economía is the property of La Fundacion Universidad de Bogota Jorge Tadeo Lozano and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Since the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the so‐called New World in 1492, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards settled in Central and South America. This paper assesses the skill selectivity of Spanish migrants who went to Hispanic America during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries for the first time. The age‐heaping method is employed to estimate numeracy levels as a proxy for human capital. With a database of 33 929 individual observations, the findings show that Spaniards who left the country to settle in the Spanish territories were positively self‐selected. Additionally, differences are observed in the human capital of those who chose to settle in Mexico, who had a higher level of numeracy, than those who chose Peru. These differences might be due to the viceroyalty structure and educational institutions that encouraged the emigration of people with greater human capital to Mexico. Finally, when the level of numeracy of Spaniards in Hispanic America is compared with the numeracy of the total population, emigrants still had higher levels of human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The activity of Italian banks in Egypt represents an almost unexplored field of investigation in economic history. This article is the first to attempt to add to the Italian banking literature in this area. At the same time, it contributes to the multinational banking literature on the characteristics of banks belonging to multinational groups, which are subject to a 'liability of foreignness' due to differences between the home country and the host economy. The paper explains the short-lived success of Italian banks, which were able to occupy primary positions in the Egyptian banking sector thanks to an aggressive policy focussed on the cotton market. It then highlights the reasons for the subsequent problems these institutes faced, showing the difficulties of a latecomer and capital-poor country, such as Italy, in carrying out a catching-up process aimed at widening its influence over geographical areas considered strategic in terms of political and commercial penetration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of De Computis is the property of Asociacion Espanola de Contabilidad y Administracion de Empresas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The term neoliberalism is a faithful companion of current public debates. It often serves as a proxy for what is allegedly wrong with society. The term is used to criticize a perceived commodification of spheres of human existence that used to be shielded from a purely economic logic. Recently, the term neoliberalism has become the object of historical research. Its roots have been traced back as far as 1947 or 1918. I argue in this paper that historians have taken a methodologically questionable approach, by departing from the blurry concept of neoliberalism as it is perceived today and trying to trace it back in time as far as possible. Such an approach leads to severe contradictions as economists labelled ex-post as neoliberals were often opposed to neoliberalism as it is currently defined. It is methodologically more sound and analytically more rewarding to start the conception of the term with the economists who self-identified as neoliberals. This approach leads to a more coherent concept of neoliberalism that is better suited for further research and provides a clearer understanding of the history of economic thought in the interwar period and the first postwar years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges Lopes's (2021) view of the socialist calculation debate and his conclusions. In a recent paper, Lopes argues that Oskar Lange provided scientific proof of the feasibility of socialism, according to standard economics, that refuted Mises's theory. Moreover, he contends that the subsequent Austrian rebuttal in the debate diverged from standard economics, thus using unscientific language and political arguments. Following this analysis, Lopes concludes that socialism cannot be scientifically rejected but only politically. In response to Lopes, we maintain that mainstream economics is evolving into complexity economics, and a new scientific consensus points to the infeasibility of central planning and the rejection of Walrasian equilibrium, on which Lange's position is based. Therefore, we conclude that the Lange-Taylor socialism can now be considered unscientific, while the Austrian position can be regarded as a scientific interpretation of the debate, given the parallelism between complexity and Austrian economics. In this way, we reach opposed conclusions to those of Lopes and emphasize that any historical interpretation alluding to the scientific value of a theory needs to account for the evolution of science, since it can entirely change the historical interpretation itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lost decade (1980-1990) for Latin American economies, required an alternative economic model. The Chilean economy case came from a free market economy whose main theoretical support concerning output performance was the Solow Model, with positive macro empirical evidence in advanced economies (USA). But, Solow's growth model is based on the unrealistic assumption of homogeneous capital, despite the fact that capital goods are highly heterogeneous. Consequently, it is not easy to arrive at a steady growth path when there is heterogeneity of capital goods. Besides, its assumption about full employment leads to overestimating output expansion and a negatively biased social policies efficiency due to a lagged response arising from the gap between actual and expected (overestimated) output growth. This paper will review some fundamental weaknesses of that model when applied to less developed economies, such that despite its simplicity in explaining economic growth performance, it lacks the microeconomics foundations to understand the nature of economic growth and its implications for social policies. The main conclusion of this essay deals with the consequences for an LDC's economy to overestimate its output growth trend for setting social policies, business decisions and strategies for internationalization, and the Government's effort to play a reliable fiscal rule policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus triggered a record fall of GDP in Croatia, 8.1% in 2020, one of the largest declines in the EU. The large macroeconomic shock stemming from the pandemic has affected both supply and demand. On the one hand, government measures have imposed unprecedented supply-side restrictions. On the other hand, growing uncertainty affected domestic and foreign demand. Croatia was particularly affected by a plunge in international tourism demand. Such a major macroeconomic shock poses a challenge for estimating potential GDP, which is difficult to estimate even in stable economic conditions. When estimating potential GDP in the context of the corona crisis, the main issue is the breakdown of the shock into a permanent and a temporary part (supply and demand shock). In this paper, we try to give the most logical breakdown of Croatian data and describe possible methodological approaches to the estimation of potential GDP during the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]