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This article exploits the creation of a paradigmatic multi-ethnic state, Yugoslavia, to examine if, to what extent, and why the effect of ethnic ties on trade costs changes over time. We compile and examine a panel of over 550,000 inter-urban price gaps spanning the area of Yugoslavia in the decades before and after the Yugoslav uni?cation of 1918. Controlling for observable trade costs, we ?find that crossing the border between Serbia and Austria-Hungary signifi?cantly increased price gaps before the First World War. Ethno-religious differences explained a large share of this border effect in pre-uni?cation Yugoslavia, but their influence vanished over time. This decline began about twelve years before the uni?cation, and is visible both in city-pairs that were separated by the pre-war border and in those that were not. These patterns suggest that nation-building, rather than a weakening incentive to rely on private order institutions, was the main unifying factor.

Accounts of structural change in the pre-modern British economy vary substantially. We present the first time series of male labour sectoral shares before 1800, using a large sample of probate and apprenticeship data to produce national and county-level estimates. England experienced a rapid decline in the agricultural share between the early seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, associated with rising agricultural and especially industrial productivity; Wales saw only limited changes. Our results provide further evidence of early structural change, highlighting the significance of the mid-seventeenth century as a turning point in English economic development.

We investigate the effect of the decline in trade costs on trade, terms of trade and welfare of Europe (the United Kingdom and the Netherlands) and three large exporters (India, Indonesia and the United States) during the first globalization using a ‘bottom-up’ approach. We measure total route and product specific trade costs for a representative sample of commodities with price gaps predicted by observed trade costs. We use a simple microeconomic model and we buttress our findings with additional econometric testing. We find that price convergence accounted for almost all the improvement in terms of trade of producing countries and increased significantly welfare in both producing and especially consuming countries, while its positive effect on bilateral trade was often swamped by other factors. The findings caution against the substation of proxies to actual measures of trade costs.

This paper addresses two questions. First, when and to what extent did capital markets integrate north and south of the Alps? Second, how mobile was capital? Analysing a unique new dataset on pre-modern urban annuities, we find that northern markets were consistently better integrated than Italian markets. Long-term integration was driven by initially peripheral places in the Netherlands and Upper Germany integrating with the rest of the Holy Roman Empire where the distance and volume of inter-urban investments grew primarily in the sixteenth century. The institutions of the Empire contributed to stronger market integration north of the Alps.

This paper tests whether and how political regimes influenced the cost of public borrowing by comparatively and quantitatively examining a newly compiled dataset on public annuities in early modern Italy. The analysis finds that overall political regimes mattered a lot, but there were important differences across their dimensions. Fiscal centralisation, particularly in the eighteenth century, was not associated with significant decreases in the interest rates. Jurisdictional fragmentation was on the whole the most important variable, with feudalism and to a lesser extent clerical influence significantly increasing the cost of borrowing. Constitution al representation was even more important than jurisdictional fragmentation within republics, but a republican constitution had an ambivalent effect: while it decreased the risk of default it could also lead to an increase in interest rates, depending on the specific institutional setting, contingency and path-dependency.

This paper examines the role of the advent of printing in explaining financial integration in Central Europe until 1520. It finds that printing promoted financial integration because it triggered a fall in the costs of transmitting information, assisted the functioning of the Holy Roman Empire in major centres and significantly increased the financial importance of human capital.

This paper examines the role of the advent of printing and the mining boom in explaining financial integration in Central Europe from the 1460s. It finds that changes in liquidity were not a major determinant of financial integration, but the mining boom fostered financial links between the mining districts and the rest of the region. Printing promoted financial integration mainly because it triggered a fall in the costs of transmitting information rather than because it facilitated human capital formation or institutional change. The financial significance of the advent of printing was comparable to that of the mining boom.

This paper revisits the question of debasement by analysing a newly compiled dataset with a novel approach, as well as employing conventional methods. It finds that mercantile influence on monetary policies favoured relative stability, and wage-payers did not typically gain from silver debasement. Excess demand for bullion was not a major cause of debasement. Yet monetary issues were important. Warfare made the debasement of silver but not of gold more likely. Regime types had an importance comparable to that of warfare: Princes debased silver more often than monetary unions and especially city-states. It is likely that fiscal debasements were more frequent in principalities, not least because princes debased for fiscal reasons also in the absence exceptional needs. The conclusion discusses the implications of the findings.

By analysing a newly compiled database of exchange rates, this paper finds that Central European financial integration advanced in a cyclical fashion over the fifteenth century. The cycles were associated with changes in the money supply. Long-distance financial integration progressed in connection with the rise of the territorial state, facilitated by the synergy between princes and emperor.

In the wake of the resurgence of ethnic tensions, the last twenty years saw the development of a burgeoning interest in the origin of nationalism. The argument that the growth of the modem state was a decisive factor in precipitating nationalism commands wide consensus across the ethnosymbolist/modemist divide. The exact nature of the relationship between nationalism and state formation, on the other hand, is yet to be adequately understood. The centrality of state schooling systems in defining the modem state as an institution and nationalism as a practice renders it a privileged standpoint to address the relationship between nationalism and state formation. The thesis examines the relationship between the rise of Italian nationalism to dominant ideology and the growth of the state schooling system in Piedmont between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The thesis shows that in the central part of the nineteenth century Piedmont witnessed an exceptional development of the state schooling system. Multi-causal analysis is employed to show that nationalism played a key role in explaining Piedmont's particular trajectory of schooling development. The argument is supported through an analysis of the nationalist purposes behind schooling reform, including an examination of policy and practice of language as a medium of teaching and the teaching of history. In accounting for the positive impact of Italian nationalism on Piedmont's schooling developments, the thesis seeks to move beyond the limitations of arguments relying on the constructed nature of modem nations, and shows that the development of nationalist ideology and associated conceptions of citizenship was instrumental to legitimise the development of the state schooling system amid difficulties experienced by Piedmont with legitimising the practice with the language of the social contract. These difficulties are traced to tensions between the logic of state formation entailed by postmercantilist thought, underlying the growth of the state schooling system, and the definitions of society and subjective rights associated to the tradition of the social contract.