Con la muerte del historiador cubano Manuel R. Moreno Fraginals a los ochenta años el pasado mes de mayo, la profesión ha perdido una de sus voces más singulares. Empresario, académico, abogado y revolucionario, la carrera de Moreno Fraginals abarca una variada gama de profesiones y países. Con 22 años obtuvo su título de Derecho en la Universidad de La Habana y poco tiempo después se marchó a El Colegio de México, donde se graduó en Historia en 1948. Volvió a Cuba al año siguiente y durante un tiempo trabajó en la Biblioteca Nacional. En ese período comenzaron a aparecer sus primeras publicaciones sobre la historia nacional cubana. De esos primeros trabajos, el más sobresaliente es su ensayo José Antonio Saco. Estudio y bibliografía, publicado en 1953. En los primeros años cincuenta dejó por un tiempo su actividad académica y se convirtió en empresario en Venezuela, pero a raíz del triunfo de Fidel Castro en 1959 volvió a Cuba y se dedicó ya totalmente a la investigación histórica.

El año 1983 se celebró un seminario donde una nueva generación de economistas revisaba aspectos centrales de la historia económica española, ha mayoría de los trabajos aparecieron dos años después recogidos en un volumen titulado La Nueva Historia Económica de España (Madrid, Tecnos, 1985), editado por Pablo Martín Aceña y Leandro Prados de la Escosura. Según sus editores, el libro consagraba la madurez de la disciplina y tuvo un carácter de manifiesto generacional. Los colaboradores en aquel volumen son hoy catedráticos de las principales universidades españolas y aquélla no fue la única vez que colaboraron juntos en publicaciones, seminarios y congresos. Aquellos jóvenes historiadores económicos son hoy menos jóvenes y la nueva historia económica que defendían, ciertamente ya no es nueva, pues constituye la forma habitual de practicar la historia económica.

Rondo Cameron murió el primer día del tercer milenio, de un ataque al corazón, después de una larga y penosa enfermedad; con él se pierde un gran estudioso de la historia económica, y una gran persona. Para quien esto escribe, además, desaparece un gran maestro y amigo.

Nacido en un pequeño pueblo de Texas (Linden), de una familia de origen escocés, Rondo fue piloto durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, y estudió Economía en Yale gracias al llamado GI bill, ley que permitía la matrícula universitaria gratuita a los veteranos de guerra. Tras obtener el grado de Masters de Yale en 1949, se doctoró en Economía por la Universidad de Chicago en 1952, con una tesis sobre la inversión francesa en el extranjero, cuya investigación en París fue posible gracias a una beca Fulbright, y cuya dirección corrió a cargo de Earl J. Hamilton. Esta tesis, completada y redondeada, más tarde se convertiría en su primer libro, aclamado internacionalmente y traducido a muchos idiomas, entre otros el español y el francés: Francia y el desarrollo económico de Europa. En este libro se mostraban ya varias características del trabajo de Cameron: investigación minuciosa, amplitud de horizontes, excelente estilo literario, interés por la historia bancaría y por los factores culturales del desarrollo económico, y amor por Europa, y en especial por Francia.

The aim of this work is to analyse the spatial distribution of the interregional migration in Spain during the period of economic development and structural change from the last decades of the XIXth century to 1930. The empirical approach reveals that a large part of migrants moved towards very close destinations. We also find that the spatial distribution of the internal migration shows a high spatial focusing, most in-migrants are moving selectively to only a few destinations while most out-migrants are leaving only a few origins. Finally, comparing with the less focused migration in 1960–1970, it is argued that these findings are related with the process of geographical concentration and the later dispersion of the Spanish economic development and employment opportunities during the XIX and XX centuries whose turning point is around 1950 or 1960.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of the control of the exchange rate vellón-silver over the prices in the Castile Crown's short-run credit. It compares the official price rates with the prices signed in the credit contracts of foreign financiers during the first half of the XVII century. The paper uses concepts from the price control theory and research done on black markets. There are many evidences that suggest that the official rates did not work to control the price of precious metals. In fact, the Crown had to pay the costly real price of the silver when it needed. Nevertheless, this policy served to change the behaviour of the financiers in the markets.

This work aims to evaluate the extent of State intervention in the process of the redefinition of property rights. By studying the evolution of municipal woodlands in Extremadura, my main objective is to analyse the two mechanisms of intervention in the area of publicly held property: the definitive privatisation of property and the technical inspection of production. Even if we play down the effect of legislation, the present investigation confirms the full success of the privatisation formula employed in the Sapnish Southwest. State control over production, however, was far less efficient. Precisely in this area we can see how difficult it is for the State to enforce a comprehensively policy throghout its territory.

Wood has always been and will continue being a material used bay man in thousands of different ways, but it has barely received the attention it descrves from economic historians. This article aims to show the great variety of economic problems related to wood as well as to illustrate the need to carry out further research on this matter. Forest, industrial and commercial aspects of wood in Spain from mid-XIX to mid-XX century, taking into account the changes produced in wood use and in the evolution of international markets, are analysed. The most important conclusions of die study include die «lumbering» of Spanish forest production, the increase and spread of sawmills, the complementing of national production with imported timber and die self-sufficient descapitalisation of die autharchic years.

The distinctive character of the Spanish monarchy all along the modern age was the domination on the main producing zones of silver and mercury in the planet, which provided practically uncontestable a comparative monetary advantage to her, specially during the period of century and a half following the introduction of the silver-standard in the Ming's China, during which the bimetallic relation was extremely favorable for the silver. This allowed the imperial power to rest on an very simple combination of extractive, logistic and financial policies, whose privileged indicator is the market of the mercury, that reconstructs in this work.

This paper reconstructs and examines the growth strategies displayed by the German chemical industry in Spain between 1880 and 1936: exports and direct investment. Elsewhere both became instrumental for the transfer of technology and managerial skills, particularly after World War I. In order to understand why the effects of the first world chemical investor were so poor on the Spanish industry, the German strategies are analyzed in the light of those followed elsewhere. Furthermore, those policies applied both by the Spanish firms and Administration to encourage the rise and development of the local industry are also examined.

The main objective of this research has been to identify the determinants of durable and semi-durable goods' consumption in Castile between 1750 and 1850. These patterns of family consumption are very different and heterogeneous. It is necessary to distinguish those related with economic variables —family rent and its components (wages and taxes, for example)— and those related to the economic evolution, changes in rent distribution, credit faculties, inflation and other aspects of cultural, social and institutional character. First of all, I will explain some critical aspects on the probate inventories, the criteria adopted in their selection and the validity of the sample. An econometric approach that allows to identify the elements that had influenced in the consumption of durable and semi-durable goods has been employed.

This paper presents two new hypothesis. Firsth, that the fiscal programme of the government in 1845 experienced a conservative modification in the parliamentary process. Second, that the tax reform of 1845 was followed by a counter-reform, which took place between 1846 and 1852. The changes in the government's plans and such a counter-reform modified the nature of the proposed tax system and of that approved by the Parliament, and also of its implicit model of economic growth and distribution of tax burden. The counter-reform guaranteed the feasibility of the tax system, but this moved away from the fiscal ideals of 1845 reformers.

The present paper deals with regional grain market integration in Spain during the Old Regime. Using mostly published price and production series, the author employs straightforward statistical techniques, ranging from correlations and standard deviations of detrended series to distributed lag models. These techniques show the existence of a clear covariation in the price of grain on different regional markets, as well as both simultaneous and delayed effects of grain production on prices both locally and at considerably greater distances. The author concludes that regional grain markets on the peninsula were modestly but increasingly integrated over the period, especially during the eighteenth century, and that existing institutions were a partial buffer for the immediate effects of harvest failures. The paper concludes by suggesting the potential timing for the progressive intergration of grain markets taking place throughout much of the nineteenth century in Spain.

The article is divided into three parts. In the first one we test for the hypothesis of existence of a “weak definition” of “mining-Ied-growth” in the New Spain economy in the 18th century and a “moderately optimistic” version of the relationship between mining expansion and economic growth is defended. In the second part, we analyze the determinants of the silver production, among them we include economic policy variables (mercury price and consignaciones for the Mines of Almadén, as well as the stock of mercury available in New Spain and the price of corn; we also show some of the positive effects of the new role of mercury Monopoly in the Crown's finances. Finally, a quantitative exercise intended to estimate the economic cost for Mexico of the Independence is presented. This cost seems to have been high and attributable, following Coatsworth's terminology, no only to “the achievement of the independence” but to the “independence in itself.”

Conceived as special types of preindustrial economies, the economies of the mountain areas had many distinctive features. Based on this assumption, three traditional ideas are discussed: that the rural economy in the Ancien Regime was limited to agrarian activities; that the pre-industrial economy functioned independently of, or outside the market and that die mountain areas were a marginal environment. For this reason, this work is based on die analysis of die sierras of La Rioja in the middle of die 18th Century, with special emphasis on multiple occupation (pluriactivity), die role of die market, approaches based on family economies and die importance of communal institutional frameworks.

Industrial Revolution advance supposed the loss of a great part of traditional olive oil markets, however it caused some other possibilities, other markets, that up to that moment, the were unknown or the had such a small size that they were not considerable for this industry. This is the case of tinned fish, where olive oil was one of the most important inputs. This work has the following aims: first, to analyse the behaviour of Spanish olive oil in this market, paying attention to Norwegian tinned industry; second, to value the meaning of the companies and regions that take part; third, to compare the exports to this country with the exports to more important markets for Spanish olive oil.

Recently in Colombia has emerged a new interest in explaining some facts in economic history within the context of cliometrics. However, the analysis of transportation infrastructure and its impact on the Colombian's economic development has not received enough attention. The objective of this paper is to close this gap, after all transportation developments is a central topic in the study of country's economic history. This paper provides a new database that contribute to the study of transportation developments in Colombia. The main contribution is to demonstrate that railroads did not play an overwhelming role in Colombia's economy during the first half of the twentieth century.

To explain the large differences in prices between Spanish and British cotton goods I measure the relative cost of raw materials and estimate relative TFP levels. Both calculations lead to a relation between Spain's poor performance in international markets and high levels of protection. Thus, I find that inadequate specialization, which was consequence of high tariffs, reduced TFP levels in Spain because local factories produced goods too sophisticated for the abilities of their workforce.

This article offers a survey of the theoretical and empirical literature on economic convergence. It also carries out a first attempt to characterize the evolution of relative per capita GDP levels across European countries before IWW (1870–1913). Cross section analysis confirms the inexistence of β-convergence but the acomplishment of β-convergence hipothesis in a model that allows the consideration of different steady-states across countries. Time series analysis confirms that, during the period 1870–1913, only countries with medium per capita GDP levels converged on those having the highest income levels in 1870.

The main aim of this paper is to analyse the policy of the Tucuman's branch of the Bank of London and River Plate before the WWI. The historiography has stated that the Bank of London had a very conservative attitude related to the manufactures and it was more concerned about agro-export business. This policy, followed by all the private banks, and the underdeveloped capital market share the responsibility for the Argentine industrialization failure. However, this is not the whole story. I show in this paper the case of the sugar industry in Tucuman that, circumscribed to the domestic market, obtained important benefits from the Bank of London. This fact was due to the financial boom caused by the increase in exports at the beginning of the century and to the economic, social and ideological realms in Tucuman which led the Bank of London to a policy shift.

The telegraph has been of great importance in the development of commerce, both as a technical support of railways and as a means of accelerating the transmission of information and of cutting transaction costs in the firms. This article places the Spanish case, seldom considered by the literature, in a European context. It outlines the economic and institutional factors which affected the first Spanish telegraphic system. Unlike what happened with the railways and the telephone, the telegraph was state constructed and owned. For different reasons, Spain lagged behind other European countries in the evolution of the telegraphic service.