For fifteen years economic historians have discussed whether the German economy suffered from a ‘crisis before the crisis’ during 1925–29, and if so, why. Apart from wages, the most widely debated issue is Weimar's investment record. The contributions so far have relied on the database of Walther Hoffmann which allows a comparison of Weimar's net investment and net product with the pre-World War I period. In this paper, alternative time series for gross fixed investment and gross national product are compiled for the period 1901–32. These data confirm Weimar's poor overall economic growth. However, it appears that Weimar's aggregate investment ratio was quite ‘normal’, if compared both intertemporally with the late Empire and internationally with other major economies in the 1920s. It is argued that further discussion of Weimar's investment record should focus on the productivity of private and especially of public investment rather than on its aggregate level.

On average, the poor European periphery converged on the rich industrial core in the four or five decades prior to the First World War. Some, like the three Scandinavian economies, used industrialization to achieve a spectacular convergence on the leaders, especially in real wages and living standards. Some, like Ireland, seemed to do it without industrialization. Some, like Italy, underwent a less spectacular catch-up, and it was limited to the industrializing North. Some, like Iberia, actually fell back. What accounts for this variety? What role did trade and tariff policy play? What about emigration and capital flows? What about schooling? We offer a tentative assessment of these contending explanations and conclude that globalization was by far the dominant force accounting for convergence (and divergence) around the periphery. Some exploited it well, and some badly.

Mass emigration was one key feature of the Great Irish Famine which distinguishes it from today's famines. By bringing famine victims to overseas food supplies, it undoubtedly saved many lives. Poverty traps prevented those most in need from availing of this form of relief, however. Cross-county data show that the ratio of emigration to deaths was higher in richer than in poorer counties. Another key feature of the Famine emigration was that it was irreversible. The Famine thus had a permanent impact on Ireland's population in a transitory fashion. Famine emigration spurred post-Famine emigration by eliminating poverty traps; the result was a sustained decline in the Irish population, and a convergence of living standards both within Ireland and between Ireland and the rest of the world.

This paper examines the determinants of migration from 19 southern counties to six major destinations in England and Wales from 1861–70 to 1891–1900. I find that, while the size of origin-destination wage gaps and the distance between origin and destination areas were important determinants of migration flows, as expected, migration was also strongly influenced by the number of previous migrants from an origin county living in a destination. The assistance provided by previous migrants to friends and relatives contemplating migration led to a perpetuation of earlier migration patterns, and helps to explain the continued dominance of London as a destination for migrants in the 1890s.

The article compiles measures of the Human Development Index and also growth rates of real GDP/person adjusted for changes in mortality and leisure for 16 advanced economies since 1870. It is argued that relatively low life expectancy implies that the high income countries of 1870 had lower living standards than most of today's Third World but that since 1870 imputations for reductions in market work time have added more to growth than decreases in mortality. Overall, it seems clear that conventional measures of economic growth seriously understate the rate of improvement in living standards since 1870.

This paper surveys West Germany's export performance since the 1950s, focusing on geography, the exchange rate regime, and international specialisation. It emphasises the importance of Europe as a ‘natural trading bloc’, with Germany at its centre. It challenges the claim that Germany's export boom of the 1950s and 1960s can be mainly explained by relatively low domestic cost increases. It further challenges the claim that Germany's export position has been transformed from early maturity to relative decline.

Between 1870 and 1913 economic convergence among present OECD members (or an even wider sample of countries) was dramatic, about as dramatic as it has been over the past century and a half. What were the sources of the convergence? One prime candidate is mass migration. This paper offers some estimates which suggest that migration could account for very large shares of the convergence in labour productivity and real wages, though a much smaller share in GDP per capita. One might conclude, therefore, that virtual cessation of convergence in the interwar period could be partially explained by the imposition of quotas and other barriers to migration.

The exportation of labourers and capital from old to new countries, from a place where their productive power is less to a place where it is greater, increases by so much the aggregate produce of wealth of the old and the new country.… Colonization, in the present state of the world, is the best affair of business, in which the capital of an old and wealthy country can engage.

–John Stuart MillMill (1929 [1848])

It must be emphasized that without the change in the proportions of the factors of production that occurs as a result of migration or population growth, differences in factor prices in various countries will persist, and the factors of production of the world as a whole will not be used to their best advantage.

–Eli F. HeckscherFlam and Flanders (1991, 59). Heckscher understood that with impediments to trade or with specialization outside cones of diversification (a failure of ‘harmonic equilibrium’, in his words), factor price convergence would be incomplete and factor migration necessary to obtain factor price equalization.

Finland offers a good opportunity to study how international trade contacts were established and how they developed. Having been denied trading rights, several Finnish ports were granted direct access to foreign trade in 1765. The hypothesis is that the old business relations with Stockholm traders, the role played by the shipmaster and the government-based consulate networks were crucial in the development of the merchant network abroad during the eighteenth century. Business networks developed from interpersonal contacts towards interorganisational relationships during the nineteenth century. The business networks were in many cases, especially in the home town and with neighbouring towns, based on kinship or family relations, and they were long-term by nature.

This paper challenges the widely held view that tariff protection was the major factor in explaining the poor performance of Spanish agriculture in the half century prior to the 1936 Civil War. After examining the general level of tariffs, it is argued that these were not sufficient in themselves to explain either the poor diets or weak demand for manufactured goods. Secondly, farmers were slow to switch resources out of cereals, not so much because of the tariffs, but rather because of the limited export opportunities for alternative crops, especially olive oil and wine. Finally, the evidence suggests that those areas which saw a significant increase in the area of cereals were just as likely to see a decline in the agricultural population as those that did not, suggesting that the rural exodus was determined by factors other than the tariff.

This article surveys cliometric research on the development of the French economy, with special emphasis on the fiscal and monetary history of the Revolution, the alleged retardation of the French economy in the nineteenth century, and the question of agricultural productivity in the early modern and industrial age.

This paper sets out the evolution of Anglo-German comparative labour productivity levels since 1870, using a nine-sector disaggregation. Germany caught up with and overtook Britain in terms of aggregate labour productivity largely by shifting resources out of agriculture and improving her relative productivity position in services rather than by improving her position in manufacturing. The key role attributed by many economic historians and growth economists to technology transfer in manufacturing as a major factor driving convergence of productivity and living standards is called into question.

Trade policy constitutes one of the most important chapters in any economic history account of the early years of this century. To assess its impact on the economic development of individual countries we need comparative measures of protection at the sectoral level. This paper offers what appears to be the first attempt to construct such measures for 1913 based on the Heckscher-Ohlin trade model. It uses a newly constructed data set on net trade flows and factor endowments covering fourteen ‘old world’ and four ‘new world’ economies. In contrast to previous studies, the measures suggested here are, first, objective in the sense of not attempting to classify a priori the trade regime of some country based only on its tariff legislation. Second, they reflect all types of trade interventions. Third, they are constructed as continuous measures. Finally, and most importantly, they are comparable across countries and sectors.

This paper surveys recent scholarship on the economic growth of Europe during its Golden Age, 1950–73, as represented by three recent collections of essays. The essays generally agree that rapid economic growth in the Golden Age originated in reconstruction from World War II. They explore several different arguments to explain why the Golden Age continued after reconstruction was complete and use a variety of economic tools to argue that the Golden Age was a transitory historical phenomenon. There is far more agreement on the origins of the Golden Age than on its demise. I suggest that insights from new growth theory are limited and that the end of the Golden Age may have been brought about by the ‘shock’ of restrictive monetary policies used to combat inflation after the oil crises of the 1970s.