Comparative European Institutions and the Little Divergence, 1385–1800

António Henriques and Nuno Palma
Additional contact information
António Henriques: Universidade do Porto

Journal of Economic Growth, 2023, vol. 28, issue 2, No 3, 259-294

Abstract: Abstract 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.

Keywords: Atlantic traders; New institutional economics; The little divergence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N13 N23 O10 P14 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10887-022-09213-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Comparative European Institutions and the Little Divergence, 1385-1800 (2022)
Working Paper: Comparative European Institutions and the Little Divergence, 1385-1800 (2022)
Working Paper: Comparative European institutions and the Little Divergence, 1385-1800 (2021)
Working Paper: Comparative European Institutions and the Little Divergence, 1385-1800 (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jecgro:v:28:y:2023:i:2:d:10.1007_s10887-022-09213-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... th/journal/10887/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10887-022-09213-5

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Growth is currently edited by Oded Galor

More articles in Journal of Economic Growth from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().