When does collective memory influence behavior? We highlight two conditions under which the memory of past events comes to matter for the present: the associative nature of memory and institutionalized acts of commemoration by the state. During World War II, German troops occupying Greece perpetrated numerous massacres. Memories of those events resurfaced during the 2009 Greek debt crisis, leading to a drop in German car sales in Greece, especially in areas affected by German reprisals. Differential economic performance did not drive this divergence. Multiple pieces of evidence suggest that current events reactivated past memories, creating a backlash against Germany. This backlash also manifested in political behavior, with vote shares of anti-German parties increasing in reprisal areas after the start of the debt crisis. Using quasi-random variation in public recognition of victim status, we show that institutionalized collective memory amplifies the effects of political conflict on economic and political behavior.

The defaults of Philip II have attained mythical status as the origin of sovereign debt crises. We reassess the fiscal position of Habsburg Castile, deriving comprehensive estimates of revenue, debt, and expenditure from new archival data. The king's debts were sustainable. Primary surpluses were large and rising. Debt-to-revenue ratios remained broadly unchanged during Philip's reign. Castilian finances in the sixteenth century compare favorably with those of other early modern fiscal states at the height of their imperial ambitions, including Britain. The defaults of Philip II therefore reflected short-term liquidity crises, and were not a sign of unsustainable debts.

For many years, Greg Clark was mainly known amongst economic historians for two things – his devasting book reviews are as witty as they are insightful. He also invented a signature recipe for academic articles. Start with a fresh puzzle. Chop some theory and carefully knead into puzzle. Gently squeeze some data and mix well. Garnish with a racy dressing of Cambridge-honed essay-writing skills, while stirring the pot. Then, turn up the heat and watch how the puzzle slowly mushrooms into an ever larger paradox. Wrap into some mystery and serve as is.

We document the transition from goldsmith to banker in the case of Richard Hoare and his successors and examine the operation of the London loan market during the early eighteenth century. Analysis of the financial revolution in England has focused on changes in public debt management and the interest rates paid by the state. Much less is known about the evolution of the financial system providing credit to individual borrowers. We show how this progress took time because operating a deposit bank was new and different from being a goldsmith. Learning how to use the relatively new technology of deposit banking was crucial for the bank's success and survival.

In May 1927, the German central bank intervened indirectly to reduce lending to equity investors. The crash that followed ended the only stock market boom during Germany's relative stabilization 1924–1928. The evidence strongly suggests that the German central bank under Hjalmar Schacht was wrong to be concerned about stock prices—there was no bubble. Also, the Reichsbank was mistaken in its belief that a fall in the market would reduce the importance of short-term foreign borrowing and improve conditions in the money market. The misguided intervention had important real effects. Investment suffered, helping to tip Germany into depression.

Based on six sets of witnesses' accounts from the North of England and London over the period 1760 to 1830, new estimates of male labor input during the Industrial Revolution are derived. I present a new method of converting witnesses' activities into estimates of labor input, and derive confidence intervals. Working hours increased considerably. Moderate gains in per capita consumption during the Industrial Revolution have to be balanced against this decline in leisure. This adds further weight to pessimistic interpretations: I calculate that consumption per capita, adjusted for changes in leisure, remained essentially unchanged between 1760 and 1830.

Economic historians and development economists have exploited links between nutrition, health status and physical stature to argue that evidence about height can be used to supplement conventional economic indices of well-being. Evidence on stature may be available for time periods when conventional economic indices are not. It may also exist for sections of populations for which only aggregate income data is available, and so expose variations in living standards within populations: indeed this may be its most important contribution. Moreover height is an aggregate function of many aspects of well-being, including real income, work intensity and the disease environment. Unlike real income data it can reflect net environmental factors such as arduous employment at an early age that is not fully offset by inputs of food and health care.

This article exploits these potentially useful attributes of the anthropometric approach to explore a neglected aspect of inequality in early industrial Britain and to try to capture evidence of the net effect of relative deprivation through cross-sectional analyses of heights. Children in families headed by women comprise the subsample on which we focus. Considerable qualitative and some quantitative evidence exists to suggest that children in such families were relatively deprived. Female-headed households were impoverished by the relatively low earning power of women, which was only partially offset by poor relief. But oppressive poverty was not alone in making these children's lives hard. Evidence suggests that they comprised a disproportionate share of child workers in the mines and manufactories of early industrial Britain. They were put to work early and at jobs which involved long hours and although their efforts augmented family incomes, given the poverty within which such families remained it is unlikely that the children's claim on resources was sufficiently boosted to offset the energy required by their employment.

Witnesses' accounts are used to analyze changes in working hours between 1750 and 1800. Two findings stand out. The article demonstrates that the information contained in witnesses' accounts allows us to reconstruct historical time-budgets and provides extensive tests of the new method. Estimates of annual labor input in 1749/63 and 1799/1803 are presented. It emerges that the number of annual working hours changed rapidly between the middle and the of the eighteenth century. These findings have important implications for the issue of total factor productivity during the Industrial Revolution.

This article offers a new interpretation of the low level of investment in Germany during the interwar period. Earlier contributions attributed the slow expansion of capital stock either to excessive wages due to state intervention and unionization or to the high cost of capital. These hypotheses are tested by estimating a cointegration model of investment. Counterfactual simulations demonstrate that lower wages would have lowered investment still further and that high interest rates acted as the main brake on investment during the second half of the 1920s.