Historical literacy in Spain is characterised by enormous regional disparities and important differences by sex. This paper addresses these issues, focusing initially on the 1887 census returns and also making use of local empirical data and of in-depth interviews of elderly informants. The goal is to propose an interpretation of historical patterns of literacy based, to a large extent, on the existence of important differences in the perceived value of literacy and education, very high in some regions and very low in others. The author argues that these cleavages go beyond the importance of economic structures, have deep historical roots and continue to be present in contemporary Spain despite the substantial growth in educational attainment taking place during this past century.

Between 1974 and 1986, the intervention of various French governments on both the right and the left—in addition to corporate maneuvering and increased focus on competitiveness and lean production—resulted in foreign direct investment, mergers, plant closures, and bankruptcies among struggling French automotive suppliers. This article will explore why these efforts were unsuccessful by revisiting the first Japanese attempts to enter the European automobile industry. It does so not only through the case of Nissan in the United Kingdom in 1984 but also through the essentially unfamiliar and contemporaneous example of French automotive suppliers.

This paper produces a new estimate of the Argentine cost of living index (COLI) for the period 1912-1943 that amends the oversights of the official series. The lack of an appropriate splice when the shares of the index's components are changed explains the divergence between the official and the Reconstructed COLIs. The 17.3 percentage-point gap for the period 1912-1943 between the official series used by the historiography and the Reconstructed COLI accounts for the oversights of the official estimate. This divergence is also evidenced when generating real wages. Hence, when Juan Domingo Perón arrived at the National Labour Department in 1943, all else being equal, workers of the City of Buenos Aires were worse off economically than the historiography assumes.

This article analyses trends in the development of the stock exchange in Jakarta between its stepwise institutionalisation since 1898 and its closure in 1942. The article contributes to literature on the significance of stock markets in the process of mobilising external capital for investment by private enterprise in emerging economies. It finds that the brokers participating in the stock exchange traded shares and bonds of companies operating in Indonesia and registered in Indonesia or in the Netherlands. Many of these securities were also traded on the much larger stock exchange in Amsterdam. Although formally independent, both securities markets were integrated. Based on estimates of relatively high market capitalisation during 1901–40, the article concludes that the Jakarta and Amsterdam stock exchanges together contributed significantly to the mobilisation of private investment and the development of private enterprise in Indonesia.

Global agro-food trade grew strongly during the first globalisation. The increase in demand, the fall in trade costs, liberal policies and technological advances explain this expansion in trade. Within this context, this study analyses the formation and evolution of the international market of a special product: meat. It is a peculiar product because it is perishable. Furthermore, it is important to point out that the increase in its trade was based mostly on the strong demand in the United Kingdom, which acquired an almost monopsonist position, and also on the diffusion of mechanical refrigeration. This enabled the countries of the Río de la Plata, particularly Argentina, together with Australia and New Zealand to become world leaders in meat exports.

This article provides causal evidence on a long-standing controversy in the finance and labour literature, namely, whether better health and safety in the working environment is in the best interests of firm owners. While, on the one hand, an influential strand of the literature argues that improvements in workers’ health and safety provision can increase costs and harm the market value of equity, another well-consolidated strand of the literature argues that such improvements can reduce costs and create shareholder value. It is empirically challenging to study the relation between the work environment and equity value due to their endogenous relation. To overcome this challenge, I utilize a historic natural experiment that uniquely isolates the effects of mandated investments in health and safety provision on firm market value: on 27 March 1974, the Swedish hung parliament drew a lottery ticket to decide on a legislative proposal that mandated companies to improve their employees’ work environment. The lottery resulted in the approval of the proposal. I find that this outcome led to an immediate and sizable decrease in the market value of Swedish companies that persisted for several days.