CEF.UP – ECO Webinar

Friday – January 8^th, 2021  3:00 p.m.

Comparative European Institutions and the Little Divergence, 1385-1800

Nuno Palma –   Manchester University (joint work with António Castro Henriques)

Abstract:

Why did the countries which 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 Atlantic trade explain Iberian divergence. In this paper, we build new quantitative measures which allow 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 spreads for public debt. We find no evidence that the political institutions of Iberia were worse at least until the English Civil War.