Economic historians have devoted enormous attention to the collapse of the interwar gold standard. This article proposes a discrete time duration model (using a panel data set of 24 countries for 1928–1936) to analyze how economic and political indicators affected a country's term on the gold standard. High per capita income, international creditor status, and prior hyperinflation increased the probability of continuation. In contrast, democratic regimes left early. Unemployment, sterling group membership, higher inflation, and the experience of banking crises reduced the time a country remained on the gold standard. This study also predicts sample countries' survival probabilities.

Do political regimes have a significant effect on economic growth? This study builds on the new neoclassical growth model to identify economic determinants of growth, and explicitly tests for the influence of political variables on economic performance for the 1990s. The results suggest that democracies and bureaucracies significantly outperform autocracies. Economic growth is also promoted by increased protection of property rights, and higher investment in education. Moreover, technology has become a requirement for efficient production, and hence, is crucial in promoting growth. Countries can therefore increase the level of economic growth by increasing the levels of education and technology in the economy, and establishing codified laws to foster property rights.

The following paper describes the emergence of cooperative mortgage credit associations, called 'Landschaften' in 18th century Prussia, and thereby tells the history of mortgage-covered bonds. Landschaften facilitated the refinancing of loans for Prussian estates by issuing covered bonds (Pfandbriefe) that were jointly backed by their members. They relied on dual recourse, cooperative structure, joint liability, and local administration to overcome asymmetric information problems related to lending. Their emergence serves as an example for financial innovation in historical mortgage markets. Pfandbriefe exist to this day and are known for their security. Their success goes back to some of the historical features.

This article assesses the role of international markets in the brazilian financial crisis of 1890/91 (the crash of the encilhamento). It looks for the impact of the argentine financial crisis in 1890 (the baring crisis) on brazilian access to capital markets. The history of bond yield fluctuations in london for brazilian and argentine debt, exchange rates, data on investment flows and archival and journalistic accounts reveal a close congruence between the argentine and brazilian crises. The effects of the argentine experience carried over to brazil because the open capital and money markets of the period easily transmitted crisis from one economy to another and because fundamental conditions in both economies rendered them similarly vulnerable to fluctuations in capital flows. The article raises this case as a precedent for the contagious financial crises that emerging markets faced at the end of the twentieth century.

Can economic interdependence pacify the Middle East? While Middle Eastern countries have, for the most part, avoided the global trend of regionalism, this study provides empirical evidence that Middle Eastern countries with significant trade ties to other countries in the region do cooperate more and fight less. In addition to confirming the liberal notion of peace through trade, this study shows that several conditions outlined by the selectorate theory of political survival must be fulfilled if economic interdependence in the Middle East is to be achieved. A case study outlining Israeli and Turkish economic cooperation is used to show the selectorate model's regional compatibility. The regional applicability of the selectorate theory leads us to conclude that politically liberal countries are more likely to maintain economic relations with one another than with autocratic ones. Since liberal countries will be more economically interdependent with one another they will also be more peaceful towards one another. Ultimately, then, this study concludes that political liberalisation is one way of enhancing regional economic interdependence and consequently the prospects for a more peaceful Middle East. Copyright 2007 The Authors Journal compilation 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd .