Publications

Seminal literature has documented broadly the living conditions of Mexican workers before the Revolution of 1910. Various authors argue that a continuous deterioration of real wages in the preceding years of the Mexican revolution contributed to the social unrest that lead to the armed conflict. Yet, most of the quantitative evidence has focused on aggregate estimates overlooking the regional wage dynamics. Through regional historical data, this article reevaluates quantitatively the patterns of Mexican regional real wages providing new estimates for the period 1877-c.1910. The analysis reveals that a divergent pattern between sectors and regions emerged during these years. However, the study also shows that in general, locally-adjusted regional real wages remained relatively stable throughout the period.

The long-term productivity dynamics of Latin America have been the focus of vast research looking to understand the origins of the growth underperformance of the region. Based on new estimates from official industrial censuses from 1935 to 1975, this paper reassesses whether there was a process of structural change within the manufacturing industries of Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. It presents a quantitative reassessment of the dynamics of productivity in these industries providing a new decomposition of labor productivity growth at a more disaggregated level. The overall results from a shift-share analysis are unable to find substantial evidence of structural change within manufacturing in these countries over the period.

This paper examines the long-run fiscal sustainability of the colonial finances of Spanish America. Using econometric tests of intertemporal stability and a macroeconomic budget constraint framework, the analysis revisits how the long-run fiscal dynamics of the colonial treasuries adjusted for inflation changed over time. Findings suggest that in spite of historical breakpoints associated to major financial difficulties during wartime, in general the treasuries achieved sustainable fiscal balances. However, there was a shifting pattern of fiscal sustainability between the treasuries across the colonial period.

This article revisits the key developments of the experience of Latin American countries with structural economic reforms since the decade of the 1980s. It discusses the historical and policy dilemmas that these countries have faced upon the economic consequences of the policy prescriptions from the so-called ‘Washington Consensus’. It is argued that despite the initial meager benefits from these policies, recent economic progress can be seen as redemption for the region.

The Danish colonial project in Greenland during the nineteenth century has been subject to a polarizing debate in the current Danish and Greenlandic public sphere. On the one hand, there are observers depicting the colonial administration as a benevolent and socially-inclusive, whereas others regard it as a socially-exclusive regime. Using a newly collected dataset of Protestant mission’s marriage registers from four West Greenlandic towns (Nuuk, Qaqortoq, Qeqertasuaq and Aasiaat) this paper investigates empirically the hypothesis whether Greenlanders experienced an upward intergenerational occupational mobility over the colonial period. The analysis identifies fathers and sons (grooms) occupational attainment to document quantitatively how the structure of the labor market changed over time. We discuss how the colonial labor market became a key ladder for social mobility after the introduction of administrative reforms and a new institutional agenda in the second half of the nineteenth century. We add to the literature by providing further evidence on the link between historical social mobility and the emergence of inclusive institutions in an arctic indigenous society.