A set of historical national accounts for the province of Holland in 1510/14 is estimated, including estimates of the size and composition of the labour force. This evidence shows that the economy of Holland was already very modern at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the result of a transformation of its economic structure between 1350 and 1500, and that structural transformation and per capita growth between 1510/14 and the beginning of the nineteenth century were limited. These results are confirmed by independent evidence about the long term development of real factor prices (rents and wages).

A general equilibrium arbitrated by prices arising from consumers and firms interacting in markets is a core idea in economic analysis and provides powerful insight into many historical issues. Modern computational models permit investigators to exploit the insights of general equilibrium. This article outlines the ideas of general equilibrium and of computational general equilibrium models. In the process, strengths and limitations are discussed. The discussion is given focus by using the Harley-Crafts model as its focus and explores briefly the consequences of changing the allocation principals in the agricultural sector of the model from a capitalist arrangement to a peasant arrangement.

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.

Previous researchers argue that the legal and regulatory environment helped shape the German financial system in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, with particular emphasis on the damaging effects of the stock exchange law of 1896. This article finds that the stock exchange law of 1896 exerted little measurable impact on the growth and concentration of the universal banking system or on the business turnover of universal banks relative to securities markets. The article also shows that the English commercial banking sector and the German universal banking sector underwent similar movements toward concentration between 1884 and 1920 (both accelerating after 1912), despite no corresponding regulatory changes in England – further suggesting that consolidation of universal banking resulted from factors other than the 1896 law.

Every two years the European Historical Economics Society awards a prize for the best dissertation in economic history submitted in the preceding two years. The Prize is named after Gino Luzzatto (1878-1964), one of the most distinguished Italian economic historians. Luzzatto, a professor at the University of Venice, was forced by fascism to resign as Rector (President) of the University on account of his Jewish origins. He was reinstated after the war. Luzzatto's scholarship, spanning two millennia, was devoted to the history of the Italian economy and to that of the Republic of Venice. The prize was endowed by Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Venezia and by Sistemi Operativi s.r.l.

The 2001 prize was awarded jointly to Yadira Gonzalez de Lara and Liam Brunt, with Regina Grafe as runner-up. Summaries of these dissertations appear in the following pages.

My dissertation uses historical records and a context-specific mechanism-design model to investigate the institutional and contractual arrangements that facilitated long-distance trade in late medieval Venice.This dissertation was awarded by the Department of Economics at the European University Institute under the inspiring supervision of Professors Avner Greif and Ramon Marimon with support from the Social Science History Institute at Stanford University. I also wish to thank Andrea Drago, Gavin Wright, Jaime Reis, and Leandro Prados de la Escosura for their help in various ways. The mobilisation of capital and the sharing of risk in long-distance trade could potentially promote economic prosperity, but it required that merchants were able to commit ex-ante not to breach their financial contracts ex-post. Financial contracting entails the exchange of tangible funds for the promise of future payments, but promises can be broken. Therefore, the set of financial relations that actually transpire in a society depends on the society's institutions for contract enforcement, meaning the constraints that ensure compliance with the promised future payments.Institutions are viewed as constraints that enable merchants to commit. For a definition of institutions, see Greif (forthcoming) and North (1990). Distinct institutional arrangements enforce different sets of contractual forms, among which particular ones can be chosen. The selection of various contracts, and their underlying institutional foundations, has significant efficiency effects. The dissertation thus integrates a historical institutional analysis of the emergence and transition of various contracts with the study of their efficiency attributes. This approach enables me to address the following questions: What institutions for contract enforcement enabled the Venetians to commit to the sea loan (a debt-like contract) and the commenda (an equity-like contract)? What caused the transition from the former to the latter? Did the Venetians attain an efficient allocation of risk?

A defining feature of the Industrial Revolution in England is the transfer of labour resources from the agricultural sector to the industrial sector.Crafts (1994, pp. 44–59). This transfer was exceptionally early by international standards.Crafts (1985, pp. 57–60). It was facilitated by high labour productivity in English agriculture, which enabled the industrial workers to be fed without an explosion in food imports.O'Brien (1996, pp. 213–49).

Economic and historical studies have long focused on trans-Atlantic expansion as one decisive explanatory variable for the success and failure of European economies' performance in the early modern period. This is particularly true for Spain. However, more recently internal economic developments, most notably the very distinct economic paths of Spain's regions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have been emphasised as a major reason for Spain's poor economic development. Surprisingly, few systematic attempts have been made to discuss the links between the external and internal factors in Spanish economic history.