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Did industrialisation improve standards of living in interwar industrial Spain? We seek to contrast this empirically with high frequency data from 1914 until 1936 for the Bilbao area, an emerging industrial centre. Contrary to existing historiography suggesting that overall standards of living improved, we find that welfare ratios remained at the same level and, at times, fluctuated significantly below sustenance levels. Demographic and socioeconomic variables were highly responsive to short-term real wage shocks driven by food price increases and the delay in nominal wage increases. Interwar industrialisation provided improvements, but did not provide protection from recurring deprivations and these may have constituted an important part of future political and socioeconomic polarisation and violence.

The Spanish Second Republic was a unique experiment of democratization in interwar Europe, which was characterized by extreme levels of political uncertainty. We find that investors responded to shifts in uncertainty by selling stocks in favor of government bonds—a behavior known as flight-to-safety. Additionally, we find that political uncertainty caused stock market stress and induced significant differences in the cross-section of expected stock returns, consistent with the exposures to political uncertainty. The fact that investors recurrently scuttled to shelter into government bonds suggests that they did not perceive a radical change in the political regime as an immediate and credible threat.

The Spanish Second Republic was a unique experiment of democratization in interwar Spain, which was characterized by extreme levels of political uncertainty. In response to this uncertainty, we find that investors sold stocks in favor of government bonds. In fact, political uncertainty had a negative effect on the aggregate stock market index, a positive effect on stock market volatility, and significant differences in the cross-section of stock return, consistent with their exposure to the uncertainty. This suggests that Spanish investors did not seem to perceive a soviet-style social revolution as a credible threat.

What drove social conflict in Spain’s industrial areas in the period before the Spanish Civil War? This paper is concerned with contrasting the determinants of working-class conflict in northern Spain at the beginning of the twentieth century. Our hypothesis is that the key determinant of conflicts in emerging industrial areas during the interwar period was the struggle to obtain satisfactory family income in a context of combined high price fluctuation, unemployment and economic boom and bust. We suggest two new ways to decipher how economic factors interact with labour conflict. We introduce the family as the relevant income unit when considering wage struggles and relative deprivation. And secondly, we study the reactions to short-term variations of income on families by using monthly rather than quarterly or annual data.

This paper presents a long-run analysis of an industrial branch in Europe's periphery. It examines how the Swedish iron and steel industry reacted to the strains of increasing competition on world markets which affected the branch between 1870 and 1940. The first part of the paper presents a breakdown into periods. We then go on to analyse the sources of growth with both a primal and a dual approach and look at the dynamics between factor substitution and relative prices. Finally, we examine the contribution of the different factors during the periods of transition. Overall we find total factor productivity as the main responsible force for overcoming the effects of competitive pressure. Some of this aggregate technological change can also be traced to a more intensive use of inputs and to extensive growth, indicative of structural change in the industry. Throughout the period examined the industry reacted to increased competition by process and organisational transformation.

By contrasting the optimal with the actual location of Spain’s main production centre in Bilbao, we have tried to resolve the enigma that mislocation introduced an important welfare loss in Spain’s industrialisation. This analysis considers the optimal location for integrated steel mills in Spain from their origins (1880s) until the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). The first part of this article introduces the relevant aspects for formalising a model, while Section 2 applies the methodology. The numerical results show how the major technical change – the reduction of coal consumption – affected each of the alternative sites. They also allow us to identify ‘the overall optimum site’, which was not Bilbao. Our final conclusions confirm that the actual centre of iron and steel production during the period considered was a second-best location. The cost in terms of direct welfare loss, in terms of captive markets and rent-seeking used to maintain this second-best solution, and the ultimate consequences of mislocation, point to an inefficiency which has changed the course of modern Spanish industrialisation. Publicado

This paper presents the first results of our most recent research on the Bilbao Stock Exchange (BSE) from its foundation in 1890 up to the Spanish CivilWar.We examine the origin of the Exchange and follow its evolution over the first half-century of existence. To this end we introduce some of the stock exchange indexes we have calculated for Bilbao and put them into comparative perspective with the existing series on general economic and industrial activity and the indexes for other Spanish exchanges for the period considered. These comparisons show Bilbao's evolution from a public debt-dominated market to an industrial exchange very much tied to regional development. Finally, we contrast the degree of financial market integration associated with the existing Spanish exchange indexes. Our analysis finds strong support for considering the BSE index as an industrial index and little evidence of capital market integration between the principal Spanish exchanges before the 1920s. Este artículo presenta los primeros resultados de nuestra investigación más reciente sobre la Bolsa de Bilbao desde su creación en 1890 hasta la Guerra Civil Española. El trabajo examina los orígenes de este mercado bursátil y su evolución durante sus primeros cincuenta años. Para ello presentamos algunos de los índices que hemos calculado para Bilbao, y los situamos en perspectiva comparada con las series de actividad económica general y los índices de otras bolsas españolas. Estas comparaciones muestran su evolución desde un mercado dominado por los valores públicos a una bolsa industrial muy vinculada a su desarrollo regional. Finalmente, contrastamos también su grado de integración con otros mercados financieros. Nuestros resultados avalan la hipótesis de que la Bolsa de Bilbao fue un mercado dominado por la contratación de valores industriales, y aportan poca evidencia de una integración financiera de las principales plazas españolas antes de los años veinte Rojo Cagigal and Houpt acknowledge the financial support from the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia projects ECO2009-13331-C01-01 & SEJ2006-08188/ECON and the Dirección General de Universidades e Investigación, Consejería de Educación, Comunidad de Madrid, project 06/HSE/140/2004. Houpt also acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación project «Consolidating Economics» within the Consolider-Ingenio 2010 programme.

Debo admitir que me ha costado reconocer mi hipótesis de trabajo, su contraste y mis conclusiones tal y como aparecen reflejadas en la nota que publica Antonio Escudero en este número. Trataré en pocas líneas de centrar el debate de nuevo en el tema de mi artículo y explicar algunos de los aspectos que pueden haber llevado a una lectura confusa de mi investigación.

Editada en la Fundación SEPI El propósito de este trabajo es el de proporcionar un análisis comparativo de la actuación empresarial productiva de la moderna industria siderúrgica española desde sus inicios hasta la Guerra Civil Española. Se estudian tres aspectos: en qué medida la industria tuvo el potencial para competir en los mercados mundiales, si las fábricas aplicaron las innovaciones que podrían haber reestablecido o mantenido su competitividad e identificar los elementos que limitaban o incrementaban la competitividad de sus productos en el exterior. El estudio muestra una «ventaja revelada» de los productos intensivos en mineral de hierro. Parte de la ventaja comparativa provenía de contratos preferenciales de suministro de mineral. A su vez, estos contratos eran limitados e introducían unos fuertes incentivos para no aumentar la escala de producción. El origen de la captación de los mercados nacionales por parte de la empresa dominante. Altos Hornos de Vizcaya, podría residir en esta limitación. Los elevados beneficios que aportaban, por un lado, la cartelización del sector y, por otro lado, el generoso margen de beneficio que implicaba producir dentro de la escala de los contratos preferenciales de mineral, dan una explicación alternativa a la actuación de la siderurgia española en este periodo. This article presents a comparative analysis of the productive performance of the modern Spanish iron and steel industry botn its origins up to the Spanish Civil War. Three aspects are examined: the extent to which the industry had the potential to compete in world markets, whether or not Spanish mills applied new technologies to re-establish or maintain their competitivity and which elements limited or increased the advantage of their products. The analysis shows a revealed advantage in products intensive in iron ore. Part of this advantage can be traced back to preferential ore supply contracts. The limits to these preferential contracts introduced incentives for maintaining the reduced scale of Spanish installations. The attempt to gain control over home markets on behalf of Altos Hornos de Vizcaya may be related to these contractual limitations. The high profits reaped through the cartelisation of the industry and the wide margin of benefit obtained by producing within the scale of the preferential ore supply contracts provide an alternative explanation for the industry's performance in the period. Publicado

INTRODUCTION Discussions related to the concept of nationalism have given rise to a great deal of recent academic work not only in Spain but also in most of Europe. Part of this is due to the fall of the Iron Curtain, which has led to the kindling of nationalist cinders still alive in former eastern European countries. A second element has been the growing federalism in western Europe. More and more decision-making power has been delegated either to a supranational or to a municipal level, thereby putting national policies into jeopardy. The different formulae of nationalism that have evolved in the past have led to additional confusion relating to the concept itself. A minimal definition of nationalism includes at least four overlapping meanings: patriotism, a world order based on the right of each nation to determine its policies unhindered by others, a struggle for national independence, and a system demanding national conduct of all industries. Each of the above phenomena is present to some extent in the recent history of Spain, although it is perhaps the latter one which best defines the most determinant of the four: ‘economic nationalism’ ' a strain that went hand in hand with economic backwardness in Spain throughout part of the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century. The concept of nationalism has evolved considerably in the last two centuries. Originally, the French revolutionaries put the nation before the patrimonial state of the absolute monarchy.