Political fragmentation, rural-to-urban migration and urban growth patterns in western Eurasia, 800–1800

Gary W Cox and Valentin Figueroa

Pages 203–222

https://doi.org/10.1093/erehj/heaa008

Prominent scholars argue that Europe’s political fragmentation improved the security of property rights, thereby promoting growth. We explore a complementary mechanism: urban fragmentation—the proliferation of self-governing cities—helped emancipate labor, and freer labor promoted both faster and more correlated town growth. To test these hypotheses, we first show that polities with more self-governing cities offered more protection to runaway serfs against lordly recapture. We then show that more fragmented areas exhibited both faster and more correlated urban growth. While both the property rights and labor freedom mechanisms predict faster growth, only the latter predicts more highly correlated growth.

Erratum to: Without coal in the age of steam and dams in the age of electricity: an explanation for the failure of Portugal to industrialize before the Second World War

Sofia Teives Henriques and Paul Sharp

Page 404

https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/heaa017

Labor shares and inequality: insights from Italian economic history, 1895–1970

Giacomo Gabbuti

Pages 355–378, https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/heaa010

This article develops theoretical and practical motivations for studying the functional distribution of income in the past. Italy is adopted as a case study, because of the availability of long-run estimates on personal inequality and of the long-lasting incidence of self-employment. New labor shares for 1895–1970 show Italian workers accruing a low share of income until 1945; by the end of the 1950s, they rapidly converged to the European average. Italian history shows that functional income distribution deepens our understanding of long- and short-run distributional trends and makes a compelling case for approaching inequality by combining diverse sources and methodologies.

Domestic industrialization under colonization: evidence from Korea, 1932–1940

Yutaka Arimoto and Changmin Lee

Pages 379–403

https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/heaa012

This paper examines whether the influx of Japanese establishments in colonial Korea during the 1930s suppressed the entry of Korean establishments. We construct new subsector–county-level panel data to exploit variations across counties within subsectors. We find that Korean entry rates were higher in counties with a higher presence of Japanese establishments. However, the spillover effects do vary across subsectors, and we find suggestive evidence of negative impacts of Japanese presence in subsectors with more large-scaled establishments. Taken together, Japanese establishments did seem to raise entry barriers in some subsectors but also functioned as a catalyst for Korean entry in other subsectors.

The domestic consumption of firewood in preindustrial Seville, 1518–1775. An intensive bias driven by the Mediterranean diet

Isabel Bartolomé Rodríguez and Manuel González-Mariscal

Pages 280–299

https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/heaa013

Fuelwood was the main domestic fuel in the Mediterranean Basin during the early modern age, although the consumption level was lower than in other latitudes. The calculation of annual real prices and per capita household consumption figures in Seville from 1518 to 1775 reveals a complex evolution connected to a European-wide scenario. As expected, low levels of domestic fuelwood use were maintained in accordance with climate and heating requirements, but contrary to prior assumptions, a substantial increase is evidenced as of 1630. The growing supply of firewood from tree-crops, leading to a decrease in real prices, ran parallel to an early diet shift to pulses and the corresponding extension of cooking times.

Animals and the prehistoric origins of economic development

Ideen A Riahi

Pages 247–279

https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/heaa016

This paper revisits the macro-level relationship between human genetic variation (genetic distance and diversity) and economic development. If other continents were biogeographically more similar to Eurasia, their populations’ capacities to ward off the adverse effects of European colonization would have been much higher and, thus, their economies considerably more prosperous today. At the continental scale, genetic differences between people do not matter for comparative development.

Old wine in new wineskins? Understanding the cooperative movement: Catalonia, 1860–1939

Francisco J Medina-Albaladejo and others

Pages 328–354

https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/heaa014

Different factors have been proposed to explain why in some regions there is a greater tendency to form cooperatives. The debate remains open. In this study, we look at the spread of cooperativism within Catalonia from 1860 to 1939. Catalonia was not just the leading industrial region in Spain but also where cooperatives first emerged and had a greater presence. In line with the existing evidence, we find that cooperativism spread from coastal municipalities to the hinterland. In particular, it seems that local conditions (literacy and social capital) facilitated this process, while accessibility to the transport network and neighbouring effects also played a significant role.

Intergenerational mobility of sons and daughters: evidence from nineteenth-century West Flanders

Vincent Delabastita and Erik Buyst

Pages 300–327

https://doi.org/10.1093/erehj/heaa028

Research on the intergenerational inheritance of occupational attainment has been restricted to sons for a long time. This is remarkable, given the ubiquity of historical settings where female labor force participation was high. This study of civil marriage certificates in nineteenth-century West Flanders investigates a comprehensive sample covering the economic activities not only of fathers and sons but also of mothers and daughters. We find that daughters were more mobile than sons. Daughters, however, enjoyed less growth in terms of intergenerational mobility against the background of a slowly industrializing economy.

Spatial concentration of manufacturing industries in the United States: re-examination of long-run trends

Nicholas Crafts and Alexander Klein

Pages 223–246

https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/heaa027

We re-examine the long-run geographical development of US manufacturing industries using recent advances in spatial concentration measures. We construct spatially weighted indices of the geographical concentration between 1880 and 2007 taking into account industrial structure and checkerboard problem. New results emerge. Average spatial concentration was much lower in the late 20th than in the late 19th century, and it was the outcome of a continuing reduction over time. Spatial concentration did not increase in the early 20th century but declined, and we find no inverted-U shape pattern of long-run spatial concentration. The persistent tendency to greater spatial dispersion was characteristic of most industries.