British Economic Growth, 1270–1870 makes a big leap forward in our understanding of the long-run performance of what became the leading nineteenth-century economy and the workshop of the world. It does so by implementing a giant quantitative enterprise, one that will make it the standard data source for studying the evolution of the British economy for decades to come.

Written by Maurice Obstfeld and Alan Taylor, Global Capital Markets: Integration, Crisis, and Growth was a much-needed book that will be cited extensively by those with interests in the long run evolution of the world financial capital market. The book does not simply assess changes in the efficiency of global capital markets over the past 150 years, but rather adds significantly to debates about instability and crisis, asymmetry between rich and poor countries in the costs of going open, the Lucas Paradox, the connections between foreign exchange and financial capital market regimes, and much more. The book makes far better use of the comparative evidence generated by the three epochs since 1850—the first global century before 1914, the second global century after 1950, and the autarchy in between—than do competitors that focus solely on one regime, whether the gold standard, post–World War II Breton Woods, or the float since. In addition, while the financial literature rarely assesses in any useful empirical way the connection between financial markets and the real economy, this book makes that connection absolutely clear. Global Capital Markets is a stimulating book with a very wide and deep reach.

I. Introduction, 40.—II. A neoclassical approach to labor absorption with factor price variability, 42.—III. Asian history and simulation: a look at the models' predictions, 49.—IV. Estimation with Philippine manufacturing data, 54.—V. Conclusion, 64.

I. Introduction, 93. — II. Economic growth in the Philippines: the initial reconnaissance, 95. — III. Education as a source of PhiHppine growth, 99. — IV. An hypothesis and a comparative evaluation: Asia and Latin America, 105. — V. Summary, 108.

Economic historians have long been interested in the determinants of firm replacement policy under conditions of rapid technological development. This paper develops two models of replacement behavior--one with neutral and one with labor-saving technical change--under conditions of embodiment. Expressions for the optimal life of capital equipment are derived assuming environmental conditions consistent with the British and American textile sectors from the 1820s to the 1850s. The paper explores the influence of technical progress parameters, wages, interest rates, capital goods prices and output prices on the replacement decision. The paper concludes that tariff policy has had a significant impact on replacement and, further, that it helps shed considerable light on the divergent experience of these economies with the growth of industrial productivity.