09 Jan 2026

Economic History Review 01

This post is produced by perplexity.

Below is a tightly themed, newsletter-ready mini–literature review centered on how state capacity, shocks, and market integration shape long-run development in economic history, followed by one “latest” article pick from each of the five requested journals.eh

Unifying thread

A useful way to connect many of the newest economic history papers is to treat states and markets as co-evolving: fiscal capacity, monetary credibility, and regulation shape market integration, while external shocks and windfalls (gold discoveries, disasters, wars) stress-test institutions and reallocate resources.eh
Recent work also leans heavily on newly assembled historical microdata (trade records, balance sheets, price indices, migration data), letting authors revisit big debates with sharper identification and broader coverage.eh

Three very recent papers (beyond the 5-journal set)

Irwin (2025) studies how trade policy and exchange rates relate to the “globalization surge” of the 1990s, placing a late-20th-century episode into a longer-run trade-policy perspective often used in economic history.ideas.repec
Dal Bó, Hutková, Leucht, and Yuchtman (2025) link international trade to the rise of Britain’s fiscal-military state over 1689–1823, speaking directly to the “state capacity ↔ external competition” channel in long-run development.ideas.repec
Kenny (2024) constructs new historical GDP estimates for Ireland (1924–1947) and uses them to reassess post-independence performance, emphasizing structural change (especially labor reallocation out of agriculture) in measured growth.quceh

Latest picks from five journals

The table below selects one recent/“latest listed” article from each target journal and summarizes its contribution at the level that can be supported from the publicly listed article information (primarily titles and issue listings).ideas.repec+4

Journal	Featured recent article	What it puts on the agenda (from listing/title)
The Journal of Economic History	Kedrosky & Palma (2025), The Cross of Gold: Brazilian Treasure and the Decline of Portugal cambridge	Examines how Brazil’s eighteenth-century gold discoveries relate to Portugal’s long-run development trajectory; the article description highlights a key role for the gold discovery in long-run development outcomes. cambridge
The Economic History Review	Fohlin & Gregg (2025), Finance capitalism in industrializing autocracies: Evidence from corporate balance sheets in imperial Germany and Russia ideas.repec	Uses corporate balance sheets to study “finance capitalism” under autocratic industrialization, enabling a comparative institutional lens on capital mobilization and firm performance. ideas.repec
Explorations in Economic History	Damron (2025), Gains from factory electrification: Evidence from North Carolina, 1905–1926 ideas.repec	Quantifies productivity (or related) gains from electrification at the factory level in an early electrification setting, highlighting technology adoption as a measurable development mechanism. ideas.repec
European Review of Economic History	Morys (2025), The gold standard, fiscal dominance and financial supervision in Greece and South-East Europe, 1841–1939 ideas.repec	Connects monetary regime choice (gold standard) with fiscal constraints and financial supervision, foregrounding how macro regimes and oversight interact in financially fragile settings. ideas.repec
Cliometrica	Álvarez-Nogal & Prados de la Escosura (2025), Subjective well-being and inequality in Spain’s decline ideas.repec	Brings “beyond GDP” measurement (subjective well-being) together with inequality during a major macro-historical transition (“Spain’s decline”), expanding the welfare metrics used in economic history. ideas.repec

How these papers fit together

Read together, the five journal picks trace a common causal chain: external windfalls and regime constraints (gold flows; gold standard/fiscal dominance) shape state choices, which then condition market outcomes such as finance, technology adoption, and ultimately welfare (including distribution and well-being).ideas.repec+4
Meanwhile, the three additional “recent” contributions reinforce the same architecture from different angles—trade/globalization as a forcing variable, trade capacity feeding state-building, and national accounts reconstruction as the measurement backbone for reassessing development narratives.quceh+1

APA-style reading list (selected)

Álvarez-Nogal, C., & Prados de la Escosura, L. (2025). Subjective well-being and inequality in Spain’s decline. Cliometrica.ideas.repec
Dal Bó, E., Hutková, K., Leucht, L., & Yuchtman, N. (2025). Dissecting the sinews of power: International trade and the rise of Britain’s fiscal-military state, 1689–1823. The Journal of Economic History, 85(2).ideas.repec
Damron, W. (2025). Gains from factory electrification: Evidence from North Carolina, 1905–1926. Explorations in Economic History.ideas.repec
Fohlin, C., & Gregg, A. (2025). Finance capitalism in industrializing autocracies: Evidence from corporate balance sheets in imperial Germany and Russia. The Economic History Review, 78(2).ideas.repec
Irwin, D. A. (2025). Trade policy, exchange rates, and the globalization surge of the 1990s. The Journal of Economic History, 85(2).ideas.repec
Kedrosky, D., & Palma, N. (2025). The Cross of Gold: Brazilian Treasure and the Decline of Portugal. The Journal of Economic History, 85(3).knrajlibrary.wordpress+1
Kenny, S. (2024). Irish GDP Since Independence. Queen’s University Centre for Economic History Working Paper.quceh
Morys, M. (2025). The gold standard, fiscal dominance and financial supervision in Greece and South-East Europe, 1841–1939. European Review of Economic History.ideas.repec

If a preferred theme is given (e.g., “disasters and migration,” “financial crises,” or “inequality and living standards”), the same workflow can be rerun next week with a new theme and non-overlapping issues/articles.