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This review article examines the development of state capacity—the extractive and productive power of states— in European history. To explain the historical evolution of state capacity, I focus on the role of political innovations. I relate state capacity improvements to long-run economic growth and the establishment of twentieth-century welfare states. The article concludes with historical lessons for developing nations today. “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”James Madison (1788, p. 257) [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses a new series of prices and wages stretching back to 1827 for the provinces of the Habsburg Empire. These real wage series are the first continuous and consistent indicator of changing living standards in this part of Europe during industrialization. They show that while the living standards stagnated throughout the monarchy prior to 1850s, the West (unlike the East) was able to launch onto a path of continuous growth in the second half of the century. The empire experienced little convergence onto the living standards of its neighbors and even internally the convergence record is mixed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article documents and examines the integration of markets across the early modern/late modern divide, exploiting the largest dataset compiled to date on grain prices, spanning one hundred European cities evenly spread across land-locked and low-land areas, Using those series, it studies various measures of integration across distances and regions, and relies on principal component analysis to identify market structures. The analysis finds that European market integration was a gradual and step-wise rather than sudden process, and that early modern market structures were shaped by geography more directly than by political borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By analyzing a newly compiled database of exchange rates, this article finds that in Central Europe money markets integrated cyclically during the fifteenth century. The cycles were associated with monetary debasements. Long-distance financial integration progressed in connection with the rise of the territorial state, facilitated by the synergy between princes and emperor, which helped to avoid coordination failures. For Central Europe, theories of state formation and market integration should therefore take interstate actors into account. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the factor markets of capital, land, and labor in Northern Italy and Europe's Low Countries from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries, stressing economic interactions between urban and rural areas. It examines urbanization, sharecropping, and the deterioration of the manorial system. The author comments on landownership, property rights, and credit markets. The roles of urban elites, farmers, and peasants are explored. The article particularly focuses on Holland, Tuscany, and Flanders.

Presents a proxy approach to estimate the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in the Habsburg successor states in the period 1870-1910 in order to fill the gap on national income figures in present-day Central and Eastern Europe. Approach; Estimating the structural equation from European data; Comparing new estimates with existing estimates; Implications.

The article reports on a conference on commercial crimes in the Mediterranean region from the 16th to the 19th century, held in Basel, Switzerland, from September 28-29, 2012. Topics of discussion included deceitful practices regarding the nationality of captains of the merchant marine of the Papal States, trade and smuggling networks for Greek wine, and British strategies to circumvent the Continental System during the Napoleonic Wars.