Rafael Dobado González

Complutense University of Madrid | UCM · Departamento de Historia e Instituciones Económicas II (Historia Económica)

This volume reflects the increasing interest on the Early Globalization among historians and economic historians. By the term early globalization we refer to the centuries-long process that multiplied interactions of many types—e.g., biological, demographic, cultural, technological, economic, religious and political—between all the most populated p...

This chapter intends to test the hypothesis that silver production in New Spain/Mexico (before and after 1821, respectively) had a significant influence on the evolution of prices across the whole world. Silver played a protagonist role in a bimetallic international monetary system and circulated across the global economy of the eighteenth and nine...

This book presents an unusual view on one of the most influential periods in world economic history: the Early Globalization. By this term, the notion that a process of genuine globalization took place in the Early Modern Era is defended. The authors propose that the canonical globalization—that of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—was p...

This article shows some important aspects of a worldwide, historical phenomenon: the globalization of commerce and art which started in the second half of the sixteenth century and had the American, Asian and European territories of the Hispanic Monarchy as main protagonist during the Early Modern Era. The international exchanges -basically, Americ...

This article presents new evidence and analysis on age heaping—a proxy for numeracy and therefore for human capital—in New Spain during the Enlightenment. Human capital plays an important role in economic growth and welfare. It is also one of the dimensions of inequality. Our results are at odds with many of the usual assumptions on which most Mexi...

Using new information obtained in a thorough research in the Archive of Public Notaries in Mexico City, we explore the main financial market of New Spain/Mexico. With improved series of silver production and outflow, we try to determine whether silver production had any influence on the level of interest rates. We also try to compare the situation...

Anthropometric literature on the American territories of the Hispanic monarchy before their independence is still scarce. We attempt to expand the field with a case study that includes some important novelties. Albeit our main source, the military records of the Censo de Revillagigedo (conducted in the early 1790s), has already been used, the sampl...

This paper attempts to establish a debate between alternative views of living standards in Spanish America during the viceregal period. Since 2009, a growing literature has shared a «common language» based on a similar, though not identical, methodology. As never before, this «new generation» of studies is built upon long series of quantitative dat...

This paper addresses two important topics in recent economic historiography: globalization and the great divergence. We first present a search for statistical evidence in the Far East of an “Early Globalization” comparable to the one ongoing in the West since the mid-eighteenth century. Moreover, we analyze the extent of the integration of rice mar...

RESUMEN Este artículo muestra algunos aspectos destacados de un fenómeno histórico de dimensiones planetarias: la globaliza-ción comercial y artística que, iniciada en la segunda mitad del siglo XVI, tuvo como principal protagonista durante la Edad Moderna a los territorios americanos, asiáticos y europeos de la Monarquía Hispánica. Los intercambio...

Me tomo la libertad de comenzar dándoles un consejo que probablemente van a agradecerme, no dejen de comprar y de leer este libro. Aunque, en realidad, a quien debemos estar todos agradecidos es al autor y al editor por poner esta obra a nuestro alcance. Se trata de unos de esos libros que uno desearía poder escribir y que los historiadores económi...

This paper extends our previous work on grain market integration across Europe and the Americas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Dobado, Garcia-Hiernaux and Guerrero, 2012). By using the same econometric methodology, we now present: 1) a search for statistical evidence in the East of an “Early Globalization” comparable to the one ongoing...

Globalization, if defined as the integration of international commodity markets, started in the eighteenth century and progressed gradually and with some setbacks into the nineteenth century, instead of suddenly appearing at some point after the 1820s. We use grain prices in Europe and the Americas to determine the extent and dynamics of market int...

This paper offers new quantitative evidence on living standards in Bourbon America through the study of wages and heights. Neither were wages low nor were heights short by the international standards of the period. Thus, living standards of the Spanish Americans compare favourably with those of other regions of the world, including Europe. As in ma...

Colonial Mexico's economy experienced a long phase of growth during the eighteenth century. Around 1800, silver exports and fiscal surplus remittances from the colony rose to unprecedented levels. We study the contribution of the Spanish imperial state's policy to the expansion of silver production and the leading role of mining in economic growth...

This paper attempts at contributing to the ongoing debate on the historical roots of the high economic inequality of contemporary Iberian America. Basically empirical, our approach departs from mainstream scholarship. We show new data on wages and heights in several viceroyalties that: 1) suggest relatively medium to high levels of material welfare...

This basically empirical paper departs from an authoritative neo-institutional scholarship since it merely attempts at exploring and widening the limited available quantitative evidence on wages (nominal and real) and on physical statures in Bourbon Hispanic America. While we take advantage of other authors’ works on prices and wages, our significa...

This basically empirical paper departs from an authoritative neo-institutional scholarship since it merely attempts at exploring and widening the limited available quantitative evidence on wages (nominal and real) and on physical statures in Bourbon Hispanic America. While we take advantage of other authors’ works on prices and wages, our significa...

In this work it is shown evidence supporting the idea that, if globalization is defined as the convergence of commodity prices between distant markets, the process started and advanced gradually in the eighteenth century instead of suddenly appearing after 1820, as claimed by the canonical version developed in a series of important works by O’Rourk...

En este trabajo se hace una crítica empírica de lo que puede denominarse “nueva ortodoxia” interpretativa de los problemas económicos contemporáneos de Iberoamérica (crecimiento lento y gran desigualdad). Más concretamente, son Acemoglu, Johnson y Robinson (2001a y 2002) y Engerman y Sokoloff (1994, 2002 y 2005), que encuentran en la herencia insti...

Based on substantial empirical work, our paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the historical causes of contemporary Latin America problems of development (slow growth and high inequality). It shows solid quantitative evidence on wages and heights for Bourbon Hispanic America that, in our opinion, challenges mainstream assumptions about the –a...

Like the rest of the poor periphery, Mexico fought with de-industrialization in the century before the 1870s. Yet, Mexican manufacturing defended itself better than did the rest of the poor periphery. Why Mexican exceptionalism? This article decomposes the sources of de-industrialization into productivity events abroad, globalization forces connect...

Like the rest of the poor periphery, Mexico had to deal with de-industrialization forces between 1750 and 1913, those critical 150 years when the economic gap between the industrial core and the primary-product-producing periphery widened to such huge dimensions. Yet, from independence to mid-century Mexico did better on this score than did most co...

En este artículo se analizan las fuentes de la excepcionalidad de México con una desindustrialización. Descompone las fuentes en las que la productividad atribuibles a los acontecimientos en el núcleo de las fuerzas de la globalización y de la conexión básica a la periferia, y los atribuibles a las fuerzas específicas de Mexico. Se utiliza un model...

This article deals with the economic and demographic inequalities within the Spanish provinces from the 19th to the 20th centuries. It draws attention to the striking differences existing not so much in terms of per-capita product, which are also important even now, but specially in terms of territorial extension, product, population, economic dens...

We are grateful for the excellent research assistant support supplied by. We also have benefited from help with the data, useful advice and criticism offered by Abstract Like the rest of the poor periphery, Mexico had to deal with de-industrialization forces between 1750 and 1913, those critical 150 years when the economic gap between the industria...

This article aims to cover an important aspect of the economic history of Porfirian Mexico: the integration of agricultural domestic markets. Because corn was the staple crop of the commercial agricultural sector, it becomes the protagonist of this story. Panel techniques are applied to a price-convergence model. Although still unfinished on the ev...

Las desigualdades económicas espaciales en España han constituido –y siguen constituyendo- un objeto preferente de atención para economistas e historiadores económicos; y subyacen al omnipresente debate político contemporáneo sobre la “cuestión regional” -para la mayoría de ciudadanos- o también “cuestión nacional” -para una minoría cualificada y g...

This paper deals with a polemic and relevant aspect of the economic history of Porfirian Mexico: the integration of agricultural domestic markets. Since corn was the staple product of the commercial agricultural sector and also the main subsistence crop, it is the protagonist of this story. Panel techniques, similar to those used by Barro and Sala-...

Las desigualdades económicas espaciales en España han constituido ¿y siguen constituyendo- un objeto preferente de atención para economistas e historiadores económicos; y subyacen al omnipresente debate político contemporáneo sobre la ¿cuestión regional¿ -para la mayoría de ciudadanos- o también ¿cuestión nacional¿ -para una minoría cualificada y g...

MarichalCarlos y MarinoDaniel (comps.): De colonia a nación. Impuestos y política en México, 1750–1860, México, El Colegio de México, 2001. - Volume 20 Issue 3 - Rafael Dobado

Hispanic American Historical Review 82.4 (2002) 685-718 —Oficiales reales de Pachuca a Julian de Arriaga (1761), Archivo General de Indias, México A comienzos del siglo XVIII, Nueva España, sustituyendo definitivamente a Perú, se convertiría en pieza clave de los flujos financieros que sostenían el Imperio Español. Y ello, gracias al ininterrumpido...

RESUMEN Este trabajo consta de tres partes principales: en la primera se examina la hipótesis consistente en la existencia de una «definición débil» de « mining-led growth » en la economía novohispana del siglo XVIII y se defiende una versión «moderadamente optimista» de las conexiones entre expansión minera y crecimiento económico; en la segunda p...

Este trabajo consta de tres partes principales: en la primera se examina la hipótesis consistente en la existencia de una «definición débil» de «mi-ning-led growth» en la economía novohispana del siglo xvtn y se defiende una versión «moderadamente optimista» de las conexiones entre expansión minera y crecimiento económico; en la segunda parte se an...

Carlo MaríaCipolla: La odisea de la plata española. Conquistadores, piratas y mercaderes, Barcelona, Critica, 1999, 138 pp. - Volume 18 Issue 1 - Rafael Dobado González

Una primera observación a propósito de la última obra del profesor David Landes: la crítica en profundidad de un trabajo de estas características probablemente requiera más cualificaciones de las que dispongo y un espacio del que carezco. Al margen de estas circunstancias particulares, no creo que resulte fácil para nadie la tarea de hacer plena ju...

La investigación aborda el estudio de los aspectos laborales más destacados del proceso productivo del mercurio en las minas de Almadén entre mediados de los siglos XVIII y XIX. Tras pasar revista al papel desempeñado por el azogue en las Finanzas Públicas, se analizan las técnicas mineras y metalúrgicas, la organización del trabajo y la productivi...

LisCatharina y SolyHugo: Pobreza y capitalismo en la Europa preindustrial (1350–1850), Madrid, Akal, 1984, 225 pp. (índice y bibliografía). - Volume 5 Issue 1 - Rafael Dobado

La aparición en España de la última obra de Michio Morishima constituye una agradable sorpresa. Varios son los motivos que obligan a saludar la entrega al lector de lengua castellana de Por qué ha «triunfado» el Japón . En primer lugar, su contenido desborda el marco temático que algunas interpretaciones, tal vez excesivamente restrictivas, asignan...

El presente artículo pretende mostrar el cambio experimentado durante el período 1760–1860 por las actitudes intelectuales dominantes en relatión con los aspectos sociales más estrechamente conectados con el proceso productive del mercurio en las Minas de Almadén. En el transcurso de esos cien años fue publicado un cierto número de obras acerca de...

This paper attempts at contributing to the ongoing debate on the historical roots of the high economic inequality of contemporary Iberian America. Basically empirical, our approach departs from mainstream scholarship. We show new data on wages and heights in several viceroyalties that: 1) suggest relatively medium to high levels of material welfare...