A carregar...
Projeto de investigação
Not Available
Financiador
Autores
Publicações
Anatomy of a premodern state
Publication . Costa, Leonor Freire; Henriques, António; Palma, Nuno
We provide a blueprint for constructing measures of state capacity in premodern states, offering several advantages over the current state of the art. We argue that assessing changing state capacity requires considering the composition of revenues, expenditure patterns, and local-level budgets. As an application, we examine the case of Portugal (1367–1844). Our findings demonstrate that throughout most of this extended period, Portugal maintained comparatively high fiscal and legal capacities. This challenges claims that Portugal’s economic decline from the second half of the eighteenth century was due to low state capacity
Crowding in during the seven years’ war
Publication . Palma, Nuno; Sissoko, Carolyn
We present a financial history of the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) using a new dataset derived from the Bank of England minutes. We argue that the war and the associated actions of the Bank of England led to a trans
formation of the financial system. Additionally, while there was short-term crowding out of private investment
when interest rates rose due to the issue of war-related government debt, in the long-run there was crowding in:
government spending led to an increase in private sector investment.
The rise and fall of paper money in Yuan China, 1260–1368
Publication . Guan, Hanhui; Palma, Nuno; Wu, Meng
Following the Mongol invasion of China, the Yuan (1260–1368) dynasty was the first political regime to introduce a precious metal standard and deploy paper money as the sole legal tender. Drawing on a new dataset on money issues, prices, warfare, imperial grants, taxation, natural disasters, and population, we find that a silver standard initially consolidated the Chinese currency market. However, persistent fiscal pressures eventually compelled rulers to ease the monetary standard, and a fiat standard was adopted. We show that inflation was high in the early and late periods of the dynasty but remained moderate for nearly half a century. We find that military pressure, particularly civil war, generated fiscal demands that led to the over-issuance of money. By contrast, natural disasters and imperial grants did not trigger the over-issue of money. Warfare was much more likely to increase paper money issues under the fiat standard than during the silver standard period.
Comparative European Institutions and the Little Divergence, 1385–1800
Publication . Henriques, Antonio; Palma, Nuno
Why did the countries that first benefited from access to the New World – Castile and Portugal – decline relative to their followers, especially England and the Netherlands? The dominant narrative is that worse initial institutions at the time of the opening of the Atlantic trade explain the Iberian divergence. In this paper, we build a new dataset which allows for a comparison of institutional quality over time. We consider the frequency and nature of parliamentary meetings, the frequency and intensity of extraordinary taxation and coin debasement, and real interest rates together with spreads for public debt. We find no evidence that the political institutions of Portugal and Spain were worse until the English Civil War.
Understanding money using historical evidence
Publication . Brzezinski, Adam; Palma, Nuno; Velde, François R.
Debates about the nature and economic role of money are mostly informed by evidence from the twentieth century, but money has existed for millennia. We argue that there are many lessons to be learned from monetary history that are relevant for current topics of policy relevance. The past is a source of evidence on how money works across different situations, helping to tease out features of money that do not depend on one time and place. A close reading of history also offers testing grounds for models of economic behavior and can thereby guide theories on how money is transmitted to the real economy.
Unidades organizacionais
Descrição
Palavras-chave
Contribuidores
Financiadores
Entidade financiadora
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
Programa de financiamento
CEEC IND 2017
Número da atribuição
CEECIND/04197/2017/CP1426/CT0010