The article analyses the rapid development of the Soviet economy during the first three Five Year Plans. A simulation model is used to determine the importance of three distinctive Soviet institutions/policies – the concentration of investment on heavy industry, the collectivisation of agriculture, and the use of ambitious output targets in conjunction with soft budget constraints to guide business activity. It is shown that the investment strategy and the planning system were responsible for rapid industrialisation, including a significant rise in the standard of living. Collectivisation did increase the rate of growth over the 1930s but by only a small amount.

The article argues that for a region adopting a technology from elsewhere, an existing stock of (relevant) human capital was essential to the rapid and successful adoption of the technology. But once the technology has been fully assimilated, increments to human capital would not be expected to be important in its further growth. Thus, Catalan industrialisation was possible because the level of human capital present in industry was enough to adopt and modify new technologies. Human capital stock was mainly the result of past investments in on-the-job training, and children's informal education took place in the workplace rather than the schoolroom. Therefore, the level of human capital present in the workforce was higher than literacy and schooling rates showed. However, evidence is also presented on the low contribution made by human capital to growth rates.

This paper examines the effects of Germany's inter-war reparation agreements in the framework of the Keynesian transfer problem. According to conventional wisdom, with free capital mobility reparation transfers are necessarily under-effected. I argue that while this is true for the Dawes Plan period between 1924 and 1929, the Young Plan for German reparations after 1929 created an external credit constraint such that during the depression, no counteracting capital flows could come forth and reparations were fully (or over-) effected. This is consistent with the so-called Borchardt hypothesis, which claims that stabilisation policy in Germany during the Great Depression was credit constrained and that lack of budgetary discipline during the preceding years was instrumental in creating this constraint. Accounting for the foreign credit restriction created by the Young Plan, Germany's deflationary policies during the slump can be interpreted as the austerity reaction to an imminent foreign debt crisis. The balance of payment stabilisation required by the Young Plan explains most of the decline in German national product during the depression if Keynesian import functions are assumed and suitably parameterised. Simulation of various different transfer profiles suggests that with tighter macroeconomic policies during the Dawes Plan period after 1924, a large part of the income contraction after 1929 could have been avoided. The results imply that both parts of Borchardt's hypothesis hold up even under plainly Keynesian assumptions.

This paper aims at measuring as precisely as possible the changes in the level of protection in Italy from the 1870s to the 1920s – i.e. during the first phase of the country's industrialisation. It shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, protection was quite low – with the possible exception of a short spell of time in the late 1880s–90s. Therefore the static welfare losses were small, but also the alleged dynamic role of protection in fostering industrialisation seems small as well. In the last section of the paper we speculate on the implications of these findings for other countries. This evidence is not conclusive, but it does cast some doubts on the relevance of protection in 19th century Europe.