Abstract Government regulation of the banking sector is pervasive, making it difficult to empirically analyse when banks would voluntarily choose to issue equity if there were no minimum requirements on capital adequacy. A unique historical setting occurred in the late nineteenth‐century United Kingdom when joint‐stock banks were free to choose their capital structures. We show that during this era, banks were willing to issue equity as part of restructuring processes, but were reluctant to do so on a regular basis to offset increases in liabilities. We find that large issues of uncalled capital were made as a replacement for unlimited liability, and this uncalled capital continued to restrain risk‐taking as shown by an analysis of bank loan books. Banks were also willing to issue stock to finance mergers and acquisitions, but this was generally just used to absorb the equity of target banks so did not increase aggregate paid‐up capital. Equity issuance did not keep pace with deposit growth, leading to the erosion of capital adequacy over the long run.
Abstract The present article employs probate records to analyse private wealth accumulation and distribution in Montevideo between 1760 and 1825. The results reveal four major findings. Firstly, there was a sustained rise in average wealth over time, even in the face of independence‐related wars. Secondly, asset portfolios became more complex and urban‐oriented. Thirdly, wealth inequality declined over the period under study. Finally, Montevideo exhibited relatively low levels of inequality in comparison with other contemporary global regions. The distribution of urban real estate and enslaved individuals, in particular, became more equitable, revealing a distinctive pattern of slave ownership. Notwithstanding these more general improvements, the top decile continued to accumulate significant fortunes. The findings are consistent with the importance of frontier conditions, institutional frameworks, and warfare for understanding distributive outcomes in this setting. The case of Montevideo highlights the historical contingency of inequality trajectories over time.
Abstract The fate of the handloom cotton textile industry is one of the most debated topics in the economic history of India. This paper presents novel employment estimates for cotton textile handweaving and spinning in the period 1800–1940. I put together plausible values for labour productivity and combine these with aggregate input usage to generate employment estimates. I then examine a number of related topics: the regional question, the relationship between handloom and power‐loom cloth from the consumer's perspective, the standard of living of handloom weavers, and the impact of technological progress within the handloom industry.
Using existing and new price data sets, we provide the first estimates of market integration across England over the entire 200 years of the industrial revolution. We document a significant, though not huge, integration improvement for markets furthest from London. Full integration was achieved by the 1830s. Our price data sets vary in quality (type of average, price rounding, frequency of stale prices). We show that this severely biases some standard statistical tests of market integration, and we develop and implement new techniques to ensure valid inference. We discuss the application of these techniques to other historical data sets.
Using newly collected discount rate data for six Swiss cities from 1846 to 1893, we find no evidence of increasing integration during a 30-year period of lightly regulated free banking. We attribute this to two structural issues: banks had incentives to ward off competitors by protecting their local monopolies or forming cartels, and there was always a risk (which varied across banks) that banknotes were not accepted or converted at par. We use a novel counterfactual to show that these issues increased discount rate dispersion, and argue that as a result, public regulation of payments infrastructure was necessary for money market integration.
This paper investigates how kinship and professional networks shaped labour market outcomes in the guild-based labour market of early modern Genoa. Using a newly constructed dataset of more than 8,000 apprenticeship contracts (1451-1530), I examine the extent to which family and guild connections influenced apprentices' chances of attaining mastership. Using a probabilistic record-linkage strategy to reconstruct individual career trajectories, I show that apprentices embedded in kinship or guild networks were substantially more likely to become masters. These advantages operated through multiple channels, including shorter apprenticeship contracts and greater flexibility in training careers, and persisted even during periods of economic contraction, suggesting that apprenticeship in Genoa combined formally open access to training with strong informal mechanisms that structured advancement within skilled trades. The findings contribute to debates on the role of guilds and social networks in pre-industrial labour markets, highlighting how institutions could simultaneously support skill formation and reproduce inequality.
We study the market for common white bread in the city of Toledo through a new 266-year-long series of bread prices, obtained from the cash purchases and wholesale bread-for-wheat contracts of large institutions. Our data are strongly consistent with fragmentary evidence on retail price regulation, as well as with shorter series from other regional markets, suggesting they can be considered representative of consumer bread costs for a broad area of New Castile. We show that, in different periods, Toledo's bread prices were substantially lower than two common series used in the comparative literature. We also explore the role of urban institutions in stabilizing prices. We econometrically demonstrate that Toledo's wheat price fluctuations were consistent with a 1-year storage cycle, suggesting that urban supply management systems were effective at smoothing the extreme fluctuations in early modern harvest yields. The amount of bread in a respectability basket was generally within reach of urban wage earners up to 1750. Resurgent inflation and the breakdown in regulatory institutions resulted in a marked deterioration in the affordability of bread in the second half of the eighteenth century.
This article uses the township-level data on welfare expenditure and provision gathered by parish officers in England and Wales at three points between 1776 and 1815 to illuminate regional and local differences during the period. These data have been linked to geographic information system (GIS) mapping systems, facilitating the mapping of parish/township level welfare data across a wide range of variables. Appropriate linkage to the 1801 and 1811 census data and the 1815 income tax property valuations also permits new village-level estimates of the prevalence, affordability, and typology of welfare provision. The results challenge current hypotheses about regional differences in how the Poor Law was administered.
When studying French prices between 1938 and 1949, economists and historians face a paradox: whilst a vast black market shaped daily life, official indices recorded only state-controlled prices. This article addresses the issue by introducing a new consumer price index that incorporates both official and black market prices. Drawing on extensive new data, it quantifies black market activity and estimates household reliance on it. As a result, the price dynamics have been considerably under-evaluated between 1940 and 1944, and equally considerably over-evaluated between 1944 and 1948. The index reshapes our understanding of price dynamics by challenging the common narrative that the Vichy regime successfully tamed wartime inflation whilst the postwar democratic regime failed to control it. Instead, the apparent postwar acceleration of inflation is revealed as a statistical illusion. Consequently, we show that real wages dropped dramatically during the German Occupation of France, which proves much more consistent with contemporary testimonies.
To persuade creditors to lend, cities in the Low Countries relied on a community responsibility system that made all citizens personally liable for public debt. This exposed itinerant citizens to significant risks: their merchandise could be confiscated by creditors, and they could even be imprisoned for debt. Although it is usually difficult to assess how such sanctions were enforced in practice, this study examines a unique account of a group of creditors actively pursuing repayment. Their principal debt collector was a monk of the Carthusian order who travelled tirelessly throughout the Lower Rhine region in search of inhabitants of the county of Holland. This monk-turned-bounty-hunter primarily targeted merchants and their goods but also sought to seize financial instruments and real estate owned by Hollanders. Whilst existing literature emphasizes reputation-based mechanisms to explain polities' access to credit, this evidence suggests that sanction-based mechanisms were equally important: reprisals proved effective in recovering debts. Considering that the community responsibility system exposed merchants to sanctions, its survival into the early modern period is quite striking. I argue that the creation of public debt secured political and economic privileges that cities valued more highly than the safety of their merchants.
