Marc Badia-Miró

• Phd Economic History
• Lecturer at University of Barcelona

Regional trade in South America since independence has long been much smaller than would be expected if geography were the only constraint on trade. Several potential explanations exist, including low technological and demand complementarities; low productivity; and high natural and policy barriers to trade. Focusing on the latter explanations, pol...

The relationship between natural capital and economic growth is an open debate in the field of economic development. Is an abundance of natural resources a blessing or a curse for economic performance? The field of Economic History offers an excellent vantage to explore the relevance of institutions, technical progress and supply-demand drivers. N...

Regional trade in South America since independence has long been much smaller than would be expected if geography were the only constraint on trade. Several potential explanations exist: low technological and demand complementarities; low productivity; high barriers to trade. We first argue that none of these are mutually exclusive and different ex...

Mining cycles have had an enormous impact in the evolution of the localisation of economic activity, in particular of industry, in Chile. The nitrate cycle was characterised by a labour-intensive extraction process and activity which was geographically very concentrated. The copper cycle was geographically more dispersed and its activity more capit...

We present a model of vine-growing specialization that explains the key agricultural change carried out before and throughout the Catalan industrialization. The results confirm the role played by a “Smithian” market-pull force exerted from the Atlantic demand, together with the “Boserupian” population-push on land-use intensification. They jointly...

More than six decades ago, Aníbal Pinto Santa Cruz (1959) published his pivotal work, Chile, a case of frustrated development. Almost sixty-five years later, this concept has reborn under the massive protests and social unrest of 2019, the COVID pandemic, and the new lithium cycle. Chile, the former "Latin American Miracle", became an unstable and...

Data constraints determine the scope of historical research. The gradual digitalization of large sources has increased the number of approaches that can be applied to comprehend the past. Here, we show an example of how trade data can shed new light to better understand growth patterns of Latin America at the end of nineteenth century. Latin Americ...

Leveraging an original dataset on coastal shipping and invoking a new economic geography framework, we study the effects of domestic and international trade costs on industrial concentration and productivity growth in interwar Brazil. In the great wave of globalization before 1914, international trade costs were low and domestic costs high. Economi...

Primera Globalización (1870-1920) ha sido un tema ampliamente tratado en la bibliografía. La dependencia del mercado británico y el creciente viraje hacia los EE. UU. en el caso latinoamericano, o el comercio intraasiático y la expansión de Japón como nueva potencia regional en el caso de Asia-Pacífico, han sido temas destacados. Menor atención ha...

In the context of exports expansion, we want to evaluate the ability of natural resource-abundant countries to reduce their dependence on natural resource exploitation in the long run. Specifically, we measure exports diversification in Chile and Norway in order to measure how they responded to global markets during the First and Second Globalizati...

As a first approach to the comparison between the Andean and the Nordic countries, it is their specialisation on natural resource exportation. But even though both regions exported similar commodities at the beginning of the nineteenth century, how similar were they really? In this article, we analyse the copper exportation of Chile and Norway in o...

This article presents fresh improved aggregated data on coffee-growing regional specialization in Costa Rica between the 1950s to the 1980s and discusses the determinants of the expansion of that coffee cropping frontier with amodel that combines environmental and geo-economic drivers. The model performs amultiregression analysis that includes agro...

Chile ha sido uno de los países latinoamericanos más ricos desde el siglo XIX. Dotado de enorme cantidad de Recursos Naturales (NNRR), su crecimiento está ligado a la explotación de estos recursos y exportaciones relacionadas con el sector económico primario, pese a ello, el sector industrial ha jugado un papel relevante en este país y su desarroll...

Appendix (annex 2 and 3) to the article: Geographic expansion and intensification of coffee-growing in Costa Rica during the Green Revolution (1950-89): Drivers and outcomes.

This chapter aims at contributing to the international literature on the long-term evolution of regional inequality by analysing the case of Mexico from 1895 to 2010. Economic differences among Mexican regions are substantial and have been increasing for a long time. The study of the Mexican case confirms that regional inequality in low- and middle...

Economic development in Latin America from the end of the nineteenth century shows highly diverse patterns across countries and periods. Argentina, for instance, experienced rapid growth until World War I, following an export-led model, and a relative decline afterwards, whereas economic growth in Brazil and Mexico was faster in the second half of...

This book represents a contribution in, at least, three dimensions: quantitative, historical and conceptual. From a quantitative point of view, the volume presents an extensive data set corresponding to 9 countries, 182 regions (states, provinces, departments) and around 14 benchmark years from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of...

Chile is characterized as a country with an extreme concentration of economic activity around Santiago, the administrative capital. Despite this, and in contrast to what is found in most of the industrialized countries, income levels per inhabitant in the capital have been below the country average and far from the levels in the wealthiest regions....

En este artículo se analiza por primera vez el crecimiento y la evolución de la desigualdad regional a lo largo del proceso de desarrollo económico de nueve países de Latinoamérica (Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, México, Perú, Uruguay y Venezuela) entre 1895 y 2010. Para ello, en primer lugar se verifica la presencia de un proceso de...

BOOK REVIEWS - CRÍTICA DE LIBROS - CRÍTICA DE LIVROS Kim Anderson and Vicente Pinilla (Eds.): Wine Globalization: A New Comparative History Marc Badia-Miró Eric L. Jones: Landed Estates and Rural Inequality in English History: From the Mid-Seventeenth Century to the Present Enric Saguer Clemens Zimmermann, Gunter Mahlerwein y Aline Maldener (Eds.):...

Commodity prices and their secular trends are at the core of many different development theories, particularly relevant for the Latin American region, like the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis, the natural resource curse theory or the somehow malthusian scarcity prediction. In this article we review the international copper price indices available in the...

Portugal is a small and peripheral European economy, and as such its main economic and political developments have been much related to its connection to Europe and to the world economy. First, in the constitution of the Portuguese Empire, then in the efforts done to preserve it, and more recently in the best way to integrate into the European and...

The long-term impact on income inequality of agricultural commercial specialization is still an open-ended discussion. Diverse economic models and approaches offer competing views, while historians increasingly stress the contingent nature of the paths followed in the various contexts. Applying common inequality indices like the Theil index along w...

This research note discusses the accuracy of the main sources used to study the foreign sector during the export-led growth process in Chile. Chilean foreign trade statistics are available for the period under analysis (1850-1930) and offered a good overview of products exported and imported. Bilateral trade data are also available providing inform...

Most of the regional inequality in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay stems from differences within the countries rather than from disparities across them. Between the end of the nineteenth century and the second third of the twentieth century, Chile evinced considerable inequality and a U-shaped evolution (reduction of inequality and a slight increase...

The new estimates of the Maddison Project show that GDP per capita ratio at purchasing power parity (ppp) between Bolivia and Finland has changed from 0.68 ca. 1850 to 0.16 in 2015; similarly, that between Chile and Norway from 0.65 to 0.28. The aim of this article is to present a review of the literature and available quantitative evidence to unde...

The new estimates of the Maddison Project show that the p.p.p. GDP per capita ratio between Bolivia and Finland has changed from 0.68 ca. 1850 to 0.16 in 2015; similarly, that between Chile and Norway from 0.65 to 0.28. The aim of this article is to present a review of the literature and available quantitative evidence to understand how these extre...

This chapter explores the effects of nitrate exports on the Chilean economy between 1880 and 1930. Main features of the saltpeter industry are presented and combining quantitative and qualitative means the contribution of nitrate exports to the Chilean economic performance is evaluated. Specifically, the chapter examines the direct contribution to...

Si bien es cierto que Argentina destaca por mostrar una clara diversificación de largo plazo, también es destacable la presencia de una moderada tendencia hacia la concentración entre 1875 y 1886. El índice HH argentino osciló entre un máximo de 0,25 en 1886 a un mínimo de 0,06 en 1902. En el caso de Perú sólo disponemos de datos para el período 19...

Mientras Chile y Perú parten de niveles altos de concentración geográfica en la década de 1880, se observa una tendencia hacia la diversificación. En cambio, Argentina se mantuvo en niveles de alta diversificación geográfica durante todo el período, aumentando moderadamente su concentración hacia el final. En 1875, Argentina tenía un índice HH de 0...

The English Agricultural Revolution began during a period of climate change in which temperatures decreased significantly. Lower temperatures meant less bacterial activity, a slower release of mineral nitrogen into cultivated soils, and a shorter growing season for crops—a combination that tended to diminish yields. The English farmers reacted by i...

Resumen: La Globalización económica es un tema central en cualquier curso de historia económica de América Latina. En esta comunicación mostramos una propuesta docente a través de tres asignaturas de Historia Económica de América Latina impartidas en dos masters, el Master de Historia Económica por la Universidad de Barcelona, la Universidad Autóno...

El estudio del comportamiento de las exportaciones de Argentina, Perú y Chile durante la Primera Globalización arroja un panorama de coincidencias, a la vez que diferencias. El análisis estadístico muestra la gran complejidad de su inserción a los mercados internacionales, y comprueba que la diversificación en uno de los ángulos de análisis, produc...

Chile is characterized as being a country with an extreme concentration of the economic activity around Santiago. In spite of this, and in contrast to what is found in many industrialized countries, income levels per inhabitant in the capital are below the country average and far from the levels in the wealthiest regions. This was a result of the w...

Purpose: Functionality of feedback in pedagogical processes has been broadly analyzed in face-to-face learning, although to a lesser extent than in the on-line learning. Narciss (2004, 2008) distinguishes two dimensions within the feedback, the semantic dimension and the structural dimension. This article aims to analyze, from the student’s perspec...

The importance of technological change for economic growth explains the huge efforts invested in its analysis. Among all the possible elements to consider, our paper is focused in the analysis of the main mechanisms underlying the spatiotemporal diffusion of technology (Rogers, 2003). Specifically , we are interested in mechanisms that explain the...

The long run development of Chile and the Natural Resources curse. Linkages, policy and growth, 1850-1950. Abstract: This chapter analyses the effects of Natural Resources on the Chilean economy in the long run (1850-1950). Specifically, the authors focus their attention on the mining cycles (nitrates and copper) and their impact on the mining acti...

In this work, we highlight the “lessons from history” that can be drawn from a historical discussion and understanding of the past and present of resource-rich developing economies to obtain conditions for successful natural resources-based development. The conceptual core of our answer to those questions will be based on three key ideas. First, ab...

This chapter analyses the effects of Natural Resources on the Chilean economy in the long run (1850-1950). Specifically, the authors focus their attention on the mining cycles (nitrates and copper) and their impact on the mining activity. We also compare it with the evolution of the industry and whole economy, and how this has affected the economic...

This article presents new evidence on the evolution of regional inequality in Iberia from 1900 to 2000 from a geographical perspective. To do so we introduce a new historical dataset of regional gross domestic products (GDPs) for Spanish NUTS III and Portuguese Historical Districts, synthetic indices of regional inequality, and different measures o...

The analysis of population levels in Latin America plays an important role in the regional historiography. The estimated series appeared until now offers huge discrepancies, therefore, we believe essential to provide homogeneous series for the 19th and the 20th centuries. In our work we shed new light on this issue, from an exhaustive study of the...

We present here a teaching innovation project that has been developed under the economic support of the University of Barcelona. The main goal of the experience has addressed basic general skills of the first year students of economics. The teaching team has been composed by teachers of different disciplines, such as Mathematics, History, Economic...

The analysis of population levels in Latin America plays an important role in the regional historiography. The estimated series appeared until now offers huge discrepancies, therefore, we believe essential to provide homogeneous series for the 19th and the 20th centuries. In our work we shed new light on this issue, from an exhaustive study of the...

New teaching technologies represent an opportunity to gain access to a global network of knowledge. Potentially it could fully change the location inequalities derived from having studied in different countries. But perhaps that's not going to happen in the near future. Lack of mass basic education on the developing countries, difficulties in the a...

This paper assesses whether the disruption of world trade, protectionist policies and industrial growth that dominated South American economic history from 1912 to 1950 permitted an increase in intraregional trade. The paper demonstrates that during this period intraregional trade reached some of the highest levels of the entire 20th century. These...

Aquest Quadern és una introducció a l’ús de rúbriques per a l’avaluació dels aprenentatges en l’Educació Superior. Basat en el curs «Elaboració de rúbriques per a l’avaluació de les competències transversals», organitzat per l’Institut de Ciències de l’Educació de la Universitat de Barcelona, ha recollit el resultat de la participació de professora...

The appearance of the Banco de Barcelona involved the formation of a compact investment network between its directors. In this work we studied how this investment network grew within a larger one, the one formed by the major investors in Catalonia during the period 1815-1866, as well as the role played by the top executives of the Bank within it. O...

Functionality of feedback in pedagogical processes has been broadly analyzed in face-to-face learning, although to a lesser extent than in the on-line learning. Narciss (2004, 2008) distinguishes two dimensions within the feedback, the semantic dimension and the structural dimension. This article aims to analyze, from the student’s perspective, the...

The paper explains a teaching project financed by the University of Barcelona (UB). It focuses on a generic skill of the UB, which is defined as "the learning capability and responsibility”. It follows a multidisciplinary approach including teachers of Mathematics, World Economic Structure and Economic History. The common elements have been to shar...

Since the 1960s there has been an unceasing interest in measuring the size of the industrial sector in Chile in the period prior to the ISI (1870 - 1930). Featured authors have attempted to quantify the weight of industry in the country through various techniques. The most widely accepted estimate by the literature of National Accounts comes from D...

The appearance of the Banco de Barcelona involved the formation of a compact investment network between its directors. In this work we studied how this investment network grew within a larger one, the one formed by the major investors in Catalonia during the period 1815-1866, as well as the role played by the top executives of the Bank within it. O...

During the learning process, understanding some specific topics of the subject’s programme may present great difficulties. The solution to these problems may be more complex in a virtual environment if you just opt for strictly written feedback. Several actions are proposed in order to respond to this situation in a flexible way and to achieve thre...

The analysis of the evolution of the location of economic activity in Portugal between 1890 and 1980 depicts a strong concentration of productive activity in the coastal regions. We estimate data for regional GDP per capita, which show that the evolution of regional inequality followed an inverted U-curve, in line with that observed in other region...

The analysis of population levels in Latin America plays an important role in the regional historiography. The estimated series appeared until now offers huge discrepancies, therefore, we believe essential to provide homogeneous series for the 19th and the 20th centuries. In our work we shed new light on this issue, from an exhaustive study of the...

This paper studies the evolution of regional inequality in Iberia from 1900 to 2000 from a geographical perspective. For doing that the text presents a new dataset of historical regional GDPs for Spanish NUTS III and Portuguese Historical Districts (HD), synthetic indices of regional inequality and different measures of spatial correlation across r...

This methodological study provides estimates of Portuguese regional GDP per capita between 1890 and 1980. These estimates were obtained either by following the Geary and Stark (2002) method for industry or directly from regional production data or proxies thereof where available.

With the exception of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), trade integration is still modest in Latin America, at around 20% of total trade. Surprisingly, these levels were higher in 1945, when the figure for imports stood at 25.6%. Paradoxically, this result shows that trade integration reached its peak before trade integration agreeme...

The main contribution of this paper has been the evidence of the irruption of USA trade into many countries of Latin America before the outbreak of the WWI. Only for few South American countries (Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay), British exports were higher than that of USA in 1913. This finding differs substantially from the common idea about...

El automóvil como bien de consumo duradero se difunde en la América Latina en el primer tercio del siglo XX. El comercio exterior determina su consumo en la región, a excepción de algunos países que en el decenio de los veinte consiguen instrumentar plantas de ensamblaje de automóviles con piezas importadas, lo que ocurre solamente allí donde coinc...

There is a high consensus that one of the key elements to ensure knowledge attainment in a virtual university context is the existence of regulatory processes of learning, which allows students to regularly evaluate their learning process. In asynchronous learning environments one of the usual strategies to facilitate this regulation is the use of...

We apply social networks analysis to the study of an important database on investment and companies' share in the Catalonia (Spain) of the nineteenth century. In contrast with most of the existing related literature, usually addressing power relationships across administration boards, we focus on the structure of interactions among individual inves...

This paper analyses the impact in Catalonia of the grape Phylloxera plague in Europe (1865-90). A statistical model is used to analyse the economic resilience of 35 districts in Catalonia to this external ecological and economic shock, and to explain why districts in the provinces of Barcelona and Tarragona resumed growing wine grapes after the pla...

El colapso del comercio entre América Latina y sus principales socios comerciales a causa del estallido de la Primera Guerra Mundial ha sido un tema ampliamente estudiado en la literatura de la historia económica de América Latina. Sin embargo, la mayor parte de estudios se han centrado sobretodo en el impacto de la reducción de los montantes total...

The extension of banking activities during the XIX century was mainly leaded by certain social groups related to commerce, which took profit from their experience and knowledge to spread their influence among the credit world. In the Spanish historiography, there are some works specifically focused on these people, but very few of them make a class...

Summary The existence of mining sources and the necessity of a connection between suppliers and demander's (in national and international markets), lead that some places play an important role managing their trade movement. In that case, seaport plays an important role due the importance of the sea trade in that kind of commodities (and the geograp...

The statistical accuracy of Historical Foreign Trade Sources has been stated by Federico and Tena (1991) and Tena (1985, 19991 y 1992). This article follows his works in the most suspect-field: geographical distribution. We have use Latin American Coal Trade Data among 1908-1930. Most international trade considering weight, was coal trade; meanwhil...

En el presente trabajo se analiza, desde distintos puntos de vista, la evolución de la localización de la actividad económica en Chile, desde el fin de la Guerra del Pacífico, hacia 1890, hasta el fin del gobierno de la Unidad Popular, en 1973. En la primera parte se analiza la evolución de la localización del comercio interior y exterior de las pr...

We present a statistical model of agrarian vineyard specialization in the province of Barcelona towards 1860, that combines the Boserupian push of population increase, the demand pull of a Smithian-type of growth (measured by the time-distances to the nearest seaport), and the agrological lands suitability for sowing grain or growing vines (as meas...

The statistical accuracy of Historical Foreign Trade Sources has been stated by Federico and Tena (1991) and Tena (1985, 19991 y 1992). This article follows his works in the most suspect field: geographical distribution. We have use Latin American Coal Trade Data among 1908–1930. Most international trade, considering weight, was coal trade; meanwhi...

This paper aims to illustrate the dynamics of coal trade between Latin America and its main trade partners, i.e. the USA, Great Britain and Germany, before and after the enormous disruption caused by the First World War. The coal trade was used as an indicator of modernization for Latin American countries, given that oil was at that time of seconda...

En esta nota de investigación se presentan los primeros resultados del trabajo que sobre las importaciones de relojes y automóviles se ha realizado sobre veinte países de América Latina durante el año 1925. Dos objetivos están en el centro de nuestras preocupaciones, por una parte probar la calidad de las fuentes disponibles para el estudio de las...

We have analyzed the spatial accuracy of European foreign trade statistics compared to Latin American. We have also included USA’s data because of the importance of this country in Latin American trade. We have developed a method for mapping discrepancies between exporters and importers, trying to isolate systematic spatial deviations. Although our...

En este trabajo se describe la metodología, los resultados y las conclusiones obtenidas en la realización de la reconstrucción del paisaje agrario en perspectiva histórica. La información disponible se ha integrado en un SIG para el tratamiento, análisis y obtención de resultados. Las áreas de estudio han sido dos zonas de la provincia de Barcelona...