Alexandra L. Cermeño

This paper uses newly collected data from a large-scale census (Catastro de la Ensenada) to investigate the scale and causes of market integration in eighteenth century Spain. We use wheat prices observed in more than 5,200 municipalities to analyse the local spatial dependence of prices. We detect several regional clusters in the centre and coasts but find that these were not integrated with each other. We then investigate the first nature, second nature, and demand side determinants of these clusters and find that although geographical constrains like terrain roughness play a negatively significant role, the transportation network allowed connected municipalities to alleviate such obstacles. Our results suggest that unfavourable geographical conditions can be overcome by investments in transportation infrastructures. With Carlos Santiago

We examine the relationship between the coming of the railways, the expansion of primary education, and the intro- duction of national school curricula. Using fine-grained data on national school inspectors in Sweden in the nineteenth century, we compare education outcomes in localities that school inspectors could travel to easily with more remote localities. Our findings provide support for the argument that the development of the na- tional railway network enabled school inspectors to monitor remote schools more e↵ectively. In localities that were connected to the railway network, a larger share of children attended school and took classes in state-building subjects such as geography and his- tory. By contrast, the interests of local and religious authorities continued to dominate in remote areas. The railway, one of the defining technological innovations of the First Industrial Revolu- tion, thus had a direct e↵ect on state capacity: the state’s ability to enforce public policies. Currently: R&R in British Journal of Political Science With Johannes Lindvall , Kerstin Enflo

- with Kerstin Enflo, Department of Economic History, Lund University. With Kerstin Enflo

with C. Jara-Figueroa and C. Hidalgo -MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and K. Enflo, Department of Economic History, Lund University

with Carlos Santiago - UC3M With Carlos Santiago