Full text of DOI:10.1111/1468-0289.00162

Economic History Review, LIII, 2 (2000), pp. 309–330
European emigration in the late
nineteenth century: the paradoxical
case of Spain1
´
By BLANCA SANCHEZ-ALONSO
he period 1870-1914 witnessed convergence in income per caput
which was linked to the integration of the international economy,
T
but Spain remained a peripheral country and progressed more slowly
than other European societies towards higher standards of living. This
article examines one major obstacle to the international integration of the
Spanish economy, namely the emigration of labour, which remained low
compared with that from other southern European countries such as
Italy. Several historians have claimed that the imposition of tariffs pre-
vented higher emigration during a period which was otherwise entirely
favourable to migration since it was characterized by low transport costs,
higher demands for unskilled labour in New World economies, and large
wage differentials between Europe and the Americas. This article argues
that the major obstacle to the emigration of Spanish labour was not so
much the tariff on wheat as the depreciation of the Spanish currency at
the end of the century. Contrary to the consensus in the subject literature,
it seems that the wheat tariff exercised a positive impact on labour
emigration, rather than a negative one. Within a Heckscher-Ohlin model,
tariffs increased impediments to trade and stimulated the international
mobility of the relatively abundant factor which in the Spanish economy
was labour. More importantly, this article argues that emigration from
Spain may have been income constrained, in which case higher real
wages would have stimulated emigration. However, currency depreciation
during the period under consideration actively discouraged emigration.
The calculations presented here show that in the absence of depreciation,
emigration from Spain could have been more than 40 per cent higher
during the period 1892-1905. The difference is significant because of
‘chains’ that these potential emigrants might have developed, and it may
account in great part for the differences in labour emigration between
Spain and countries such as Italy. Such effects operated because emi-
1 I gratefully acknowledge the helpful criticisms and comments from James Foreman-Peck, Agust´ın
Llona, Leandro Prados de la Escosura, James Simpson, anonymous referees, and, especially, Patrick
O’Brien, Kevin O’Rourke, and Jeffrey Williamson. Participants at the Economic History Workshop
at the LSE, at the Conference ‘Long Run Economic Change in the Mediterranean Basin’ (Istanbul,
June 1998) and at the Economic History Seminar at Universidad Carlos III (Madrid) also made
very useful suggestions. Jeffrey Williamson kindly let me use his new database on Spanish real
wages. Roma´n M´ınguez and Juan Rose´s gave me useful advice on the econometric tests. This article
was written while visiting as a Senior Associate Member at St Antony’s College (Oxford). Financial
support was provided by Spain’s Ministerio de Educacio´n y Cultura, PF 97 05253090.
Economic History Society 2000. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden,
MA 02148, USA.

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gration from Spain at the end of the nineteenth century was income
constrained. Many potential emigrants could not afford the costs of
leaving. Hence the importance of pioneer migrants in financing the move
and start-up costs overseas.
The first section of the article offers a brief comparison with Italy, the
largest supplier of emigrants in southern Europe, and discusses the effects
of the late nineteenth-century agricultural depression on labour mobility.
Sections II and III review the literature, both historical and theoretical,
on the effects of tariffs and currency depreciation on labour mobility,
and specify the article’s central hypotheses. In section IV these hypotheses
are tested econometrically. Conclusions are drawn in a short final section.
I
With the integration of the international economy from the 1870s
onwards, movement of capital and labour between the Old World and
the New increased. Competition from the New World’s primary producers
(especially in cereals) had a strong impact on European agriculture.2
Unable to compete with the New World, European agriculture entered
a period of depression and structural crisis in the late nineteenth century.
One of the effects of this crisis was massive emigration. A comparison
of emigration trends in Spain and in Italy during the period 1880-1914
yields interesting similarities and differences between these two classical
cases of ‘new emigration’. For example, there are two similar periods in
the series: the late 1880s which exhibited a rising trend, and the years
1904-13, which witnessed a more sharply rising trend during which
emigration from Spain and Italy peaked (figure 1).3 But Spain diverges
600,000
500,000
400,000
300,000
200,000
Spain
Italy
100,000
1880
1885
1890
1895
1900
1905
1910
Figure 1. Gross emigration from Spain and Italy, 1880-1914
Note: The vertical scale is logarithmic
Sources: for Spain, Sa´nchez-Alonso, Causas de la emigracio´n, app. A3; for Italy, Rosoli, Un secolo di emigrazione, app.
2 Bairoch, Commerce exterieur, pp. 48-56, but qualified by O’Rourke, ‘European grain invasion’.
´
3 Gross emigration data are used because the main interest is the trends and fluctuation of
emigrant departures.
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from Italy in the 1890s and the early 1900s when the Spanish series falls
while Italian emigration starts to boom.4
Spanish emigration rates remained low and stable between 1892 and
1905, while Italian emigration almost doubled in relation to the previous
period (table 1). It has been argued that Spanish emigration levels were
low during the 1890s partly because the Baring crisis had a strong
negative impact on Argentina, the main country of destination, and also
because Spain’s colonial war against Cuba discouraged emigration. But
Argentina was a common destination for Italians and Spaniards, and
Italian emigration recovered much faster after the Baring crisis.5 In 1895
the population of Buenos Aires included 80,000 Spaniards and more
than 180,000 Italians. Furthermore, Spanish emigration to Cuba had
been relatively low before the revolution and became significant only after
independence and during the sugar boom of the first decade of the
twentieth century.6
Table 1. Rates of gross emigration: Spain and
Italy, 1882-1914 (per thousand population)
1882-1891
1892-1905
1906-1914
Spain
Italy
3.4
3.8
3.9
6.6
9.5
11.2
Sources: For Spain, Sa´nchez-Alonso, Causas de la emigracio´n, app. A.3. For
Italy, Rosoli, Un secolo di emigrazione italiana, app.
In comparative and historical perspective the central problem is to
explain the stagnation of Spanish emigration in the 1890s and its strong
acceleration in the early twentieth century. After all, the 1880s and 1890s
included years in which the agrarian depression was felt intensely across
European agriculture and when competition from New World grain
imports exercised a serious influence on emigration from Europe.7 Unfor-
tunately, there are very few studies which examine the effects of the
depression on agricultural employment in any detail.8 Historians have
been more interested in the impact of falling agricultural prices on
changes in land use and structural change at macroeconomic levels.9
Agricultural historians tend to agree that the fall in agricultural prices
(especially those of cereals) affected rural employment adversely and the
rise in emigration rates in several European countries during the 1880s
seems to confirm this. Nevertheless, the direct impact of the agricultural
depression on European emigration is more difficult to establish, because
4 Hatton and Williamson’s explanation that what really made Spain different after the 1890s was
the economic failure at home seems weak. Hatton and Williamson, ‘Late comers’, p. 66.
5 For the Baring crisis in Argentina, see Ford, Gold standard and Va´zquez Presedo, Problemas
de comercio.
6 Sa´nchez-Alonso, Causas de la emigracion, chap. 4.
´
7 For the Italian case, Sori, L’emigrazione italiana; for Portugal, Pereira, Polıtica y economıa.
´
´
8 Exceptions for Spain are Robledo, ‘Crisis agraria’ and Sa´nchez-Albornoz, ‘Castile, 1830-1930’.
9 For the Spanish case, see Garrabou, ‘Historiograf´ıa de la crisis’, which also discusses Italy and
Portugal. See also Sanz, ‘Crisis triguera’ and Garrabou, ‘Crisis agraria espanola’. For Greece, see
˜
Petmezas, ‘Diverse responses’.
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little work has been done to establish whether the emigrants of the 1880s
and 1890s belonged to the groups most directly affected by the depression
(namely small landowners, tenant farmers, or smallholders).10 In the
Spanish case, Garrabou refers to ‘the brutal impact of the crisis in rural
society’ and points out that, ‘dispossessed of their lands and facing a
weak demand for their labour, smallholders and tenant farmers had as
their only alternative emigration’.11 But Spanish emigration grew at an
annual rate of 2.1 per cent during the period 1880-1900 and at an
extraordinary rate of 11.7 per cent over the years 1900-13. For Italy the
figures are 6.6 per cent and 4.7 per cent, respectively.12 Why then was
mass emigration from Spain a twentieth-century phenomenon and why
were outflows relatively low during the agrarian depression of the late
nineteenth century?
II
Faced with a sharp fall in agricultural prices at the end of the nineteenth
century, most European governments opted for protection and imposed
tariffs on imported agricultural produce, particularly on wheat. The excep-
tions, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Switzerland,
continued to import wheat at low prices and shifted their agricultural
production into livestock farming and dairy production.13
Spain opted for protection and the effects of this policy on Spanish
agriculture, especially on cereals, have been much debated among econ-
omic historians of Spain.14 Following increases in tariffs (first in 1891,
then in 1906, and finally in 1922), the price of Spanish wheat far
exceeded world levels. In a period of falling international prices, the
cultivated area and output of wheat increased in almost all Spain’s
agricultural regions.15 Around 1910 cereals accounted for 33 per cent of
final output from Spanish agriculture.16 According to the literature, tariffs
helped to maintain traditional agriculture, which was inefficient, kept
Spanish wheat prices at artificially high levels, and retarded structural
change within the agricultural sector. The consequences for the growth
of the Spanish economy over the long run were considerable.17
10 Baines suggests that in England and Wales the high emigration of the 1880s cannot be related
to the agricultural depression, because the majority of the emigrants in those years came not from
the rural counties, but from the urban ones: Baines, Migration in a mature economy, pp. 205-10.
11 Garrabou ‘Historiograf´ıa de la crisis’, p. 535.
12 Sa´nchez-Alonso, Causas de la emigracio´n, pp. 140-2. In fact, the rate of gross emigration per
thousand population in 1910-13 was 11 for Spain and 11.7 for Italy.
13 O’Rourke, ‘European grain invasion’.
14 The coming to power of the Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Ca´novas, imposed a
clearly protectionist policy which was to last until the second half of the twentieth century, but
protection was not new to the Spanish economy: Serrano Sanz, Viraje proteccionista, pp. 140-70.
15 Simpson, Spanish agriculture; Garc´ıa-Lombardero, ‘Efectos de la proteccio´n’; GEHR, Los precios
del trigo.
16 Measured in national currencies and compared with 21% in Italy, 19% in Germany, and 22%
in France: O’Brien and Prados de la Escosura, ‘Agricultural productivity’, tab. 3.
17 Prados de la Escosura, De imperio a nacio´n; Tortella, Desarrollo econo´mico.
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What would have been the performance of Spanish agriculture without
the tariff? In Tortella’s words:
if the protection on wheat had not been so high, the growing imports of
cereals would have caused a decrease in the number of wheat farmers, weeding
out the less efficient, . . . the absence of tariffs would undoubtedly have forced
peasants and landowners to switch to crops other than cereals . . . and a
massive exodus of farmers to the urban centres and to foreign countries would
have followed.18
Go´mez Mendoza concurs. ‘Had there been free imports’, he wrote, ‘the
agricultural depression of the late nineteenth century would have been
far more intense and would have increased emigration. In fact, those
who finally did go abroad from the 1950s, would have had to emigrate
earlier.’19 Prados de la Escosura has also pointed out that policies for
the protection of cereals resulted in an inefficient allocation of resources
and help to explain the persistently high share of the labour force in
Spanish agriculture over time.20 Vicens Vives, a historian much more
sympathetic to such policies, remarked that ‘without the protectionism
imposed in 1891 . . . the cereal economy in Castile would have been
devastated by much cheaper wheat imported from Australia and Argen-
tina’.21
Recently, Simpson has developed a different view and argued that
tariffs were not sufficient in themselves to explain the poor performance
of Spanish agriculture.22 Farmers were slow to switch resources out of
cereals, not so much because of tariff imposition, but rather because of
the limited opportunities for the export of alternative crops, especially
olive oil and wine. Simpson argued that if tariffs had encouraged a
significant increase in cereal output, population might be expected to be
retained in precisely those areas where the area planted with wheat
increased, and released where the area contracted. His data show that
this was not the case. Between 1886-90 and 1909-12 the rural labour
force grew faster in those regions where the area under cereals declined
(i.e., the south of the country) mainly because farmers there could switch
to other crops, such as olives and wine.23 Out-migration was high in
cereal-growing areas between 1909-12 and 1930-5. In regions where
small farms predominated (Castile) tariffs encouraged both an extension
in the area cultivated and a large fall in farm population. By contrast, in
18 Tortella, Desarrollo economico, p. 59; idem, ‘Econom´ıa espanola’, p. 139. (The translation is mine
´
˜
for all the Spanish quotations.) Nevertheless, the migration of labour to the towns in response to a
negative agricultural shock would depress urban wages, lowering the incentive to move.
19 Go´mez Mendoza, ‘De la harina al automovil’, p. 181.
20 Prados de la Escosura, De Imperio a nacion, p. 102. However, although it is true that protecting
´
a sector does attract resources from other sectors, this does not necessarily mean that overall
employment will rise. The outcome depends on what happens to employment in other sectors, for
example, the export sector.
21 Vicens Vives, Manual de historia economica, p. 655.
´
22 Simpson, ‘Did tariffs stifle agriculture?’.
23 According to the estimates by O’Brien and Prados de la Escosura, ‘Agricultural productivity’,
tab. 6, agricultural output per male worker in Spain declined from 38% in 1890 to 32% in 1910
(UK = 100).
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areas of latifundia, in the south of the country, the extension of cultivation
was accompanied by an increase in the labour force. Simpson’s expla-
nation for this paradox is that for the family farm to remain viable in
Castile, it was necessary to augment the land-labour ratio and that this
was done by releasing labour and increasing the area cultivated. Simpson
concluded that any simple argument that represents tariffs as the major
obstacle to rural out-migration is incorrect. It can be contended, however,
that without the protection to cereals Castilian family farms would have
had to switch more quickly to different crops, and the release of labour
could have been faster and greater. Higher out-migration would in turn
have increased the land-labour ratio even more rapidly. Furthermore,
neither adherents of the consensus view that tariffs slowed the rural
exodus nor critics of that view (such as Simpson) have formulated an
explicit model of their critique of agrarian protectionism in Spain or
tested it econometrically.
Thus, the traditional literature argues that tariffs stifled emigration.
This assumes that tariffs increased real wages, thereby reducing emigration
because the wage gap between home and destination countries also
narrowed. Through migration Spanish economic growth could have pro-
ceeded more rapidly.24 But the traditional view may be flawed for two
reasons. First, it is theoretically unclear whether tariffs increased or
lowered real wages. Only by thinking in terms of a specific-factor model
and assuming that the negative effect on demand for labour dominated
can an inverse relationship between tariffs and emigration be expected.25
O’Rourke and Williamson suggest that in peripheral countries with large
agricultural sectors the labour demand effects might have dominated
when cheap imported grain lowered real wages.26 Second, even in that
case, the effects on emigration from Spain are still not clear because it
may have been income constrained, in which case lower wages would
have made it difficult to finance the costs of moving abroad. Cheap grain
could have stimulated migration within the country by lowering real
wages in agriculture, but at the same time that would have reduced
emigration from Spain by increasing the cost of long-distance moves. If
following imposition of a tariff wages did not decline, since emigration
was income constrained, agricultural labour could finance emigration
more easily.
As Hatton and Williamson have suggested, potential emigrants from
the poorest European countries could be so constrained by their poverty
that they could not afford the move; as real wages rose at home, the
constraint was slowly released.27 In their model of European emigration
24 The idea is clearly stated in Prados de la Escosura, De imperio a nacio´n. It concurs with
Kindleberger, Europe’s postwar growth, p. 106, which states that emigration ‘is the force, which above
all others (rising exports, closer association with the rest of the world, capital investment and foreign
aid) has been responsible for the rapid growth of all Mediterranean countries’ in the postwar period.
25 Caves et al., World trade, ch. 6. For a good summary of this model applied to historical events,
see O’Rourke, ‘European grain invasion’.
26 O’Rourke and Williamson, ‘Around the European periphery’.
27 Hatton and Williamson, Age of mass migration, ch. 2.
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these authors reject that hypothesis for the Latin countries in general and
for Italy in particular, but it could still be that Spain did not closely
resemble Italy in that respect. As previous research has shown, one of
the most powerful forces explaining regional emigration rates from Spain
was the increase in agricultural wages; that is, for many Spanish regions,
higher wages had a direct impact on emigration.28 There is also some
contemporary qualitative evidence of young people waiting to receive part
of the family inheritance in order to finance the trip to Argentina more
easily than by saving from their wages.29 Furthermore, Hatton and Willi-
amson suggest that if a poverty constraint did affect potential emigrants
from Italy, ‘it seems to have been released through remittances from
previous emigrants rather than through rising real wages at home’.30
Since in the Spanish case, ‘previous emigrants’ were very few in the
1880s and the 1890s, it is possible to consider Spanish emigration as
being income constrained in the nineteenth century.
The ‘sector-specific model’ most historians of Spain have in mind
clearly predicts a conflict between land and capital because free trade
has an uneven impact on returns to different factors of production.
Capitalists should have become free traders. Though that happened in
Britain, it did not in Germany, Italy, or Spain where protectionist alliances
of industrialists and landowners dominated the making of commercial
policy in the late nineteenth century. Thus, there is a paradox in land
and capital being protectionist; this is considered below.
However, it is hard to believe that Prime Minister Ca´novas and the
Conservative Party tried deliberately to hurt capital and benefit land-
owners when they introduced the 1891 tariff in Spain, although land-
owners formed a powerful pressure group at the time.31 From the writings
of Ca´novas it appears that what he had in mind was a ‘conservative
social welfare function’ supplemented with nineteenth-century national-
ism.32 Tariffs will protect unskilled labour and low incomes whenever a
sector position is significantly threatened.33 Throughout history the aim
of protection has been the maintenance of sectional incomes and interest.
Some historians have argued, however, that the Spanish government had
no clear view of commercial policy and that the shape of the protectionist
regime in Spain was the outcome of pressure group activity. The model
to apply to the formation of Spanish commercial policy would then be
the Olsonian model where special groups (landowners and industrialists),
28 Sa´nchez-Alonso, Causas de la emigracion espanola, tab. 6.2, p. 257; idem, ‘Those who moved’.
´
˜
29 Fernandez de Pinedo, ‘Movimientos migratorios vascos’.
30 Hatton and Williamson, Age of mass migration, p. 106.
31 Varela Ortega, Amigos polıticos.
´
32 Ca´novas del Castillo, ‘De co´mo yo he venido a ser’. On the concept of ‘conservative social
welfare function’, see Corden, Trade policy.
33 The ‘urgent necessity to protect labour and national production’ is clearly stated in Ca´novas
del Castillo, ‘De co´mo yo he venido a ser’, but although the issue of unemployment is usually
raised by protectionists, there is little evidence in economics that tariffs are useful for protecting
overall employment: Caves et al., World trade; Corden, ‘Cost and consequences’; idem, Trade policy.
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acting as rent-seekers, ‘invest’ rationally in order to secure protection
from the state.34
How is it possible to explain the paradox that Spanish capitalists
conceded protection to agriculture and also demanded protection for
themselves? Instead of considering free trade and protection in Spain
within the framework of the specific-factor or classical Ricardian models,
a simple Heckscher-Ohlin model might be more useful and illuminating
in respect of Spanish protection and its effects on labour mobility during
the period 1890-1914.
In the Heckscher-Ohlin model both capital and labour are mobile,
while in the sector-specific model only labour and changes in commodity
prices produce effects on rents and wages.35 The Heckscher-Ohlin model
can be summarized briefly. First, patterns of trade reflect the relative
endowment of factors of production. Thus, countries in which labour is
relatively abundant tend to export labour intensive commodities, and
those in which capital is relatively scarce tend to import capital intensive
commodities. Second, free trade tends to equalize commodity prices
between countries and also to equalize wages and rents in the home
country with those abroad. This is the ‘factor price equalization theorem’.
What matters for Spanish economic history is the insight of the
Heckscher-Ohlin model that commodity trade can serve as a substitute
for factor mobility. In other words, international trade and international
labour migrations are partial substitutes.
Although the Heckscher-Ohlin model has been criticized on empirical
grounds, from Leontief onwards, economic historians have recently shown
that for the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the model is
useful for the explanation of world trade patterns.36 The model also
accounts for trends in relative factor prices over the decades before the
First World War.37 An important extension of the Heckscher-Ohlin model
is the Stolper-Samuelson theorem which predicts that ‘any interference
that drives up the local import price must unambiguously benefit the
productive factor used intensively in producing the import competing
good.’38 Thus, protection will benefit owners of factors of production
with which a given society is poorly endowed, as well as producers who
use that scarce factor intensively. Conversely, protection depresses the
income of relatively abundant factors of production.39 European workers,
as the abundant factor, should, according to Stolper and Samuelson,
have favoured free trade and resisted tariffs. In fact, a majority of
Socialist parties in Europe opposed agricultural protection. Furthermore,
34 Fraile, Industrializacion y grupos de presion.
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´
35 This argument is based on Caves et al., World trade.
36 For an empirical test of the model, see Estevadeordal, ‘Measuring protection’.
37 See O’Rourke and Williamson, ‘Late nineteenth century’; O’Rourke et al., ‘Mass migration’;
O’Rourke et al., ‘Factor price convergence’; Estevadeordal, ‘Historical essays’; Taylor and William-
son, ‘Convergence’.
38 Stolper and Samuelson, ‘Protection and real wages’, p. 68.
39 It is important to note that whereas the assumption that countries have identical technologies
is crucial for the factor price equalization theorem, it is not necessary for the Stolper-Samuelson the-
orem.
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impediments to trade (for example, a tariff) operate to stimulate factor
movements (for example, labour). This is most clearly stated in Mundell’s
work: ‘The effect of any trade impediment is to increase the scarcity of
the scarce factor and, hence, make more profitable an international
redistribution of factors’ and therefore, he concludes, ‘tariffs will stimulate
factor movements’.40 Economists generally assume that capital is more
mobile than labour, but over the period 1870-1914 labour was also
highly mobile. Recently, O’Rourke and Williamson have shown from an
examination of the three Scandinavian economies with different degrees
of protection (Sweden being the one with highest tariffs in the late
nineteenth century) that lower tariffs made ‘a bigger contribution for
trade and a smaller contribution for foreign factor flows in Denmark and
Norway, and a smaller contribution for trade and a bigger contribution
for factor flows in Sweden . . . exactly the kind of substitution between
trade and international factor mobility that Heckscher and Ohlin envis-
aged.’41
Considering the Spanish case in the light of a Heckscher-Ohlin model,
land as the relatively scarce factor should have benefited from the intro-
duction of a tariff, and at the same time, increased levels of protection
could be expected to be positively related to labour outflow.42 Thus, it
could be the case that by introducing the tariff of 1891 Ca´novas stimu-
lated the international migration of Spanish labour, the abundant factor
in the country’s economy; this was the reverse of what his policy aimed
to achieve. By the end of the nineteenth century the Spanish economy
was relatively short of capital as well as land. The Heckscher-Ohlin model
and the Stolper-Samuelson theorem predict that protection benefits land
and capital (the scarce factors) and harms labour (the abundant factor
of production). Thus, the paradox of a protectionist alliance between
land and capital is resolved. Rogowski’s work shows that in countries
where both land and capital were scarce and only labour was relatively
abundant, an alliance of capitalists and landowners was likely to develop.43
In Spain, the outcome of a strongly protectionist regime (even the
coalition itself) survived until the second half of the twentieth century,
when capital became less scarce.44
40 Mundell, ‘International trade’, p. 330.
41 O’Rourke and Williamson, ‘Education, globalization and catch-up’, p. 308, tab. 5.
42 Land/labour ratios were 6.9 hectares per worker in 1890 and 6.7 in 1910 for Spain, compared
with 39.2 and 44.1 for the US in the same years: O’Brien and Prados de la Escosura, ‘Agricultural
productivity’, tab. 3. The ratio of wages to land values was 123.2 in 1890 and 67.5 in 1910 for
Spain (1901 = 100), compared with 84.9 and 115.4 for Britain in the same years (free trader in
the Old World), and 103.2 and 64.0 respectively for the US: O’Rourke et al., ‘Factor price
convergence’, tab. 2.
43 Rogowski, Commerce and coalition, ch. 1. This model is quite convincing for the German, Italian,
and Spanish case, but not for France, which ‘is a case where you realized that other things also
mattered’: p. 69. This model also predicts class conflict: workers will end up being politically radical
and, where much of the labour is rural, demanding agrarian reform: Rogowski, ibid., p. 38 and
passim. For a model based more soundly in political science and applied to French commercial
policy, see Verdier, Democracy and international trade.
44 From the theoretical point of view, it can be argued that a country’s commercial policy is the
result of its underlying factor-ownership distribution. The Heckscher-Ohlin model, which is highly
aggregated and frequently associated with long-run production structures, seems most useful in
explaining long-run changes in the overall tariff structure: Mayer, ‘Endogenous tariff formation’.
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Prados de la Escosura and Tena have also noted that, at the turn of
the century, the scarce factor in Spain (land) benefited from an increased
demand flowing from protection as it was the factor used intensively in
the import-competing sector.45 Relative to the New World, Spain can be
represented as a country in which labour was abundant and land and
capital were scarce. Furthermore, since in theory, international trade is
a substitute for international factor mobility, it might well be the case
that tariffs stimulated the export of Spain’s abundant labour. This is an
unexpected and counterintuitive implication of theories widely accepted
in other contexts, and it means that Simpson’s observation that tariffs
encouraged a fall in farm population in cereal areas no longer seems
paradoxical because impediments to trade led to an outflow of labour.
Other arguments—for instance, that regions of high emigration in the
north of Spain which were not cereal producers could not have been
affected by tariffs on cereals—are also explained. In such areas, free trade
would have lowered grain prices which is exactly what farmers in the
north wanted so that they could feed their animals more cheaply. Lower
grain prices might well have reduced emigration from the north of Spain.
Finally, a more realistic model with three factors of production may
be considered: two of them, labour and capital, are mobile but the
other, land, is immobile. There are two sectors: agriculture using labour
intensively to produce food, and industry using capital intensively to
produce manufactures. Let the country be labour abundant and capital
scarce, relatively, and assume an increase in the prices of imported food
from the imposition of a tariff. This would increase rents paid to land-
owners, as in the sector-specific model, but also wages in agriculture
because in the Heckscher-Ohlin model labour gains when the relative
price of labour-intensive goods rises.46 Since agriculture is labour inten-
sive, an agrarian tariff benefits not only landowners but agricultural
workers as well. However, industry will also demand protection because
it produces goods by the intensive use of the relatively scarce factor,
capital. In addition, industry faces higher wages following the imposition
of tariffs on food, so industry demands and obtains protection as well.
In a Heckscher-Ohlin model a rise in the prices of the capital-intensive
commodities must lower wage rates. In turn, the incentives to move from
agriculture to industry have diminished because wages have increased,
relatively speaking, in agriculture. Assuming that Spain’s potential emi-
grants of the late nineteenth century were income constrained, higher
wages in agriculture could have assisted emigration, by enabling labourers
to afford the cost of travel; at the same time, lower wages in industry
also stimulated emigration to a country with large wage differentials such
as Argentina.47 Thus, protection for Spanish agriculture and Spanish
45 Prados de la Escosura and Tena, ‘Protectionism in Spain’.
46 This result contrasts with the sector-specific model where a mobile factor such as labour cannot
significantly alter its real wage through changes in commodity prices, although specific factors
definitely can.
47 However, this implies that internal migration and emigration from a country were substitutes,
which is not always the case.
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spanish emigration in the late nineteenth century
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industry in the late nineteenth century created conditions for a positive
connection between protection and emigration from that country.
To sum up: relations between protection and emigration are not as
clear cut as historians of Spain have suggested. Thinking in terms of a
specific-factor model and assuming that the negative effect on demand
for labour was dominant, an inverse relationship between tariffs and
emigration can be expected. But since emigration could be income
constrained, following an agrarian tariff, wages did not decline and labour
could finance emigration more easily. In a Heckscher-Ohlin model, tariffs,
as impediments to trade, stimulated international factor mobility. In the
context of the international economy of the late nineteenth century, a
direct relationship between tariffs and emigration could be expected. The
same result could be expected in the case of a combination of the
two models.
III
Tariffs were not the only feature conducive to isolation of the Spanish
economy from international markets. The Grupo de Estudios de Historia
Rural (hereafter GEHR) has called attention to the role of currency
depreciation in reinforcing the impact of the 1891 tariff, and Corte´s
Conde also pointed out that between 1890 and 1904 the protection
derived from the depreciation of the peseta turned out to be more
significant than the impact of the tariff delaying emigration from agricul-
ture.48 Thus, according to the literature, it was a combination of the
1891 tariff and currency depreciation from 1895 until 1905 that reduced
emigration from Spain.49
The external value of the peseta remained stable between 1883 and
1895, in spite of the abandonment of gold convertibility in 1883.50 While
Spain had a de facto fiduciary standard during those years, the govern-
ment tried hard to maintain a fiscal and monetary discipline similar to
that prevailing under the gold standard.51 Furthermore, and until 1891,
the stability of the peseta was also linked to net inflow of foreign capital.52
Unfortunately, from 1895 (the beginning of the Cuban War) until 1905,
the peseta depreciated by approximately 30 per cent, in consequence of
a combination of fiscal disorder, monetary expansion, and a flexible
exchange rate.53 According to Sarda´ and Tortella, abandoning the gold
standard was the best option for a backward country such as Spain, but
Tortella recognized that a flexible standard reinforced the impact of the
48 GEHR, Los precios del trigo; Corte´s Conde, ‘Migracio´n, cambio agr´ıcola’.
49 Sa´nchez-Alonso, Causas de la emigracio´n, ch. 5.
50 Spain never officially adopted the gold standard. Convertibility of paper money into gold and/or
silver was maintained until 1883, when it was suspended, and never resumed. Mart´ın Acena, ‘Spain
˜
during the classical gold standard’.
51 Tortella, Desarrollo econo´mico, ch. 7.
52 As shown by a recent estimate of the Spanish balance of payments: L. Prados de la Escosura,
‘El sector exterior y el atraso econo´mico espanol, 1815-1913’ (unpub. paper, 1997).
˜
53 Mart´ın Acena, ‘Espana y el patro´n oro’; idem, ‘Spain during the gold standard years’.
˜
˜
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1891 tariff by increasing the isolation of the Spanish economy.54 Mart´ın
Acena added that to be off the gold standard isolated Spain from
˜
the world economy, especially from the inflows of international capital
investment in the 1880s and 1890s, an argument further developed by
Bordo and Rockoff, so currency instability following the abandonment of
the gold standard helped to isolate Spain from international capital
markets.55 Inflows resumed after 1904-5 when the peseta recovered rap-
idly following a conversion of the external debt and the introduction of
fiscal reform.
The combined impact of devaluation and tariffs made imports more
expensive during the decade from the mid-1890s. According to the
GEHR, before 1890 and after 1906 tariffs played the leading role in
protecting Spanish farmers from cheap grain, but between 1892 and
1905 devaluation of the peseta was more important. Those years became
‘a period of absolute protectionism’.56 The effects of depreciation were
not alleviated by differing rates of inflation between Spain and the rest
of the world.57 When the peseta recovered after 1904, foreign wheat once
again became a serious threat to Spanish farmers and the government
raised tariffs in 1906.58 After the 1906 tariff imposition, emigration
reached its peak once the peseta began to recover from its depreciation.
This view implies that Spain in those years enjoyed a kind of ‘exchange
rate protection’.59 Figure 2 correlates fluctuations of emigration and the
rate of exchange.
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
140
120
100
80
Emigration
Rate of exchange
60
1885
1890
1895
1900
1905
1910
Figure 2. Indexes of emigration from Spain and real rate of exchange of
peseta, 1880-1914 (1913 = 100)
Sources: for emigration, Sa´nchez-Alonso, Causas de la emigracion, app. A3; for rate of exchange, Prados de la
´
Escosura and Tena, ‘Protectionism in Spain’
54 Sarda´, Polıtica monetaria; Tortella, Desarrollo economico, pp. 176-7.
´
´
55 Mart´ın Acena, ‘Spain during the gold standard years’; Bordo and Rockoff, ‘Gold standard’.
˜
56 GEHR, Los precios del trigo, p. 98.
57 Prados de la Escosura and Tena, ‘Protectionism in Spain’.
58 Ibid.
59 Corden, ‘Exchange rate protection’. For the purpose of the present argument, the distinction
between currency depreciation and devaluation is irrelevant.
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Depreciation changes the relative price of traded goods, whether exports
or imports, relative to non-tradables. Furthermore, devaluations are
expected to have a clearly expansionary effect on output and employment.
Devaluation increases the price of tradables and hence lowers real wages
if nominal wages are sticky. Migration theory predicts that the lower the
wage the higher the emigration, but if emigration is income constrained
the relationship between low wages and low emigration will be positive.
The inverted-U model for emigration from a country developed by Hatton
and Williamson predicts a direct relation between low real wages and
low levels of emigration.60 Thus large wage gaps between home country
and country of destination can be consistent with low emigration rates.
Recent research has shown that Spanish wages in some regions were so
low that they hindered emigration from Spain;61 this seems clearly to be
constrained by low levels of income. Up to the 1880s Spanish emigration
levels had remained very low, so few pioneers sent remittances or pre-
paid tickets to finance the moves of relatives and friends. In the Spanish
case chain migration was mainly a twentieth-century phenomenon as the
process of diffusion took place.
In microeconomic terms, the effects of currency depreciation on individ-
ual emigrants are complex. On the one hand, the depreciating ‘home’
currency benefits emigrants already working in the country of destination
and sending remittances home, and is not as beneficial to future emigrants
or those who have already emigrated and do not intend to return with
savings. On the other hand, for potential emigrants still at home, currency
depreciation can be represented as adverse and an obstacle. It clearly
affected the price of tickets, since the main shipping companies fixed
their prices in currencies linked to gold.62 It also lowered the value of
savings of an emigrant searching for a new job in a country of destination.
Emigration from Spain had long been low because low wages provided
surpluses inadequate to finance emigration. Currency depreciation made
the situation worse for potential emigrants. Since the peseta fell in value
on average by nearly 30 per cent between 1892 and 1905, it can be
assumed that emigration costs in those years were 30 per cent higher.
Tickets from Galicia to the River Plate cost approximately £9.8 in the
1880s. In current pesetas, fares increased, as a result of depreciation,
from 250.9 pesetas in the 1880s to 321 pesetas in 1892-1905.63 For an
agricultural worker in Galicia and Asturias (regions of high emigration)
whose daily wage was around 1.65 pesetas in 1896-7, the cost of the
trip, measured in number of working days, increased from 153 in the
60 Hatton and Williamson, ‘What drove the mass migrations?’.
61 Even at the turn of the century an increase in agricultural wages between 1896 and 1908 had
a strong direct effect on provincial rates of emigration by province: Sa´nchez-Alonso, ‘Those who
moved’; idem, Causas de la emigracion, tab. 6.1, p. 257.
´
62 From 1880s onwards most of Spain’s emigrants were transported by British, German, and
French companies: Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, Pacific Steam Navigation Company, Nelson
Steam Navigation Company, Hamburg Amerika Line, Norddeutscher Lloyd, and Chargeurs Re´unis.
Only two companies flew the Spanish flag: Va´zquez Gonzalez, ‘Emigracio´n gallega’, pp. 92-3.
63 Prices refer to the cheapest fares from Galicia to Buenos Aires: ibid.
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1880s to 195 in 1892-1905, with a working year of around 250 days.64
Allowance must also be made for earnings forgone during the trip (around
20 extra days) and the cost of settling in the receiving country.65 Further-
more, the Baring crisis in Argentina (a favoured destination for Spaniards
in the late 1880s) led to a marked depreciation of the Argentinian peso
during the years 1891-9,66 clearly affecting the remittances (including
prepaid tickets) from Argentina. Once the peso recovered, Argentina
regained its position as an attractive destination for Spanish emigrants
although the depreciation of the peseta then increased the costs of mov-
ing.67
Currency depreciation in late nineteenth-century Spain could be
inversely related to emigration from the country. At the macro level,
depreciation could have had the effect of ‘exchange rate protection’ and
maintained levels of employment in agriculture. Depreciation also lowered
real wages and the ratio of wages to ticket cost fell. Both forces seem to
have been at work in the Spanish case. As emigration was income
constrained, depreciation lowered out-migration to the New World, an
effect compounded by the depreciation of the Argentinian peso in the
1890s.
IV
The aim of this section is to test the three main hypotheses outlined
above. Did the tariff protection of agriculture have a negative impact on
labour mobility and retard Spanish emigration, as historians have often
claimed? Did currency depreciation, by increasing the costs of emigration,
also contribute to the slow-down of Spanish emigration at the end of the
nineteenth century? Did these effects operate because Spanish emigration
was income constrained?
Table 2 reports the regression results for the period 1882-1914. Monet-
ary depreciation needs to be separated from tariffs to allow measurement
of their different impacts on rates of emigration.68 Protection is proxied
by the nominal tariff on wheat.69 This was the most important crop
produced by Spanish agriculture, which in turn was the most important
sector of the country’s economy. Trends in agricultural and industrial
protection appear very similar and Tena’s recent work confirms that
64 Agricultural daily wages are taken from Sa´nchez-Alonso, Causas de la emigracion, app.; average
´
working days from Vandello´s, ‘La richesse et le revenu’, p. 119.
65 The length of the trip hardly changed (decreasing from 23 days to 20) between the 1880s and
the 1890s: Moya, Cousins and strangers, p. 38.
66 Corte´s Conde, El progreso argentino, pp. 95-100.
67 Even during the crisis of the 1890s Argentina remained the major destination for Spanish
emigrants. After 1894 Cuba became less attractive because of the war of independence, and Brazil
and Uruguay continued to be secondary destinations: Sa´nchez-Alonso, Causas de la emigracion, ch. 4.
´
68 In an earlier work, Sa´nchez-Alonso, Causas de la emigracion, tabs. 5.2, 5.4, the two variables
were mixed so the result was confusing.
´
69 The figure for nominal average protection (i.e., customs revenues as a share of imports) was
included in preliminary tests but it did not give significant results. It is well known that this is a
poor index of protection as it can conceal the prohibitionist effect of a tariff.
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Table 2. Determinants of Spanish intercontinental emigration,
1882-1914a
Constant
−6.206
(−1.598)
0.303
(1.833)
1.400
(3.537)
−1.187
(−2.134)
2.776
(2.355)
1.924
Deviations from trend in Argentine construction output
Wage ratio Argentina/Spain
Real depreciation of peseta
Nominal wheat protection
Log real wage in Spain
(2.208)
0.421
Lagged emigration rate
(2.116)
R2
0.816
0.772
0.256
2.000
18.444
R2 adjusted
S.E. regression
D.W.
F-statistic
Notes: t-statistics are in parentheses
All the variables are expressed in natural logarithms and lagged (t − 1). Construction output in
Argentina and real depreciation of the peseta are normalized 1913 = 100.
a Unit Root Tests for the variables in the equation are presented in the appendix, below, p. 328.
In all cases the variables considered are integrated of order one. The Johansen Cointegration Test
for the combination of the variables in the equation was carried out and accepts the hypothesis
that the residuals are cointegrated.
Sources: Dependent variable is the rate of gross emigration to population, from Sa´nchez-Alonso,
Causas de la emigracio´n, app. A.3. Construction output in Argentina from Corte´s Conde, La
econom´ıa argentina. Real wage differential between Argentina and Spain from Williamson, ‘Evolution
of global labor markets’. Real depreciation of the peseta is a coefficient of the depreciation adjusted
by the inflation differential, from Prados de la Escosura and Tena, ‘Protectionism in Spain’.
Nominal wheat protection is the ratio of wheat tariff to wheat price in Spain plus 1, from GEHR,
Los precios del trigo. Real wage in Spain from Williamson, ‘Evolution of global labor markets’ (also
using unpub. 1996 amendment by Williamson, ‘Revision of appendix 1: nominal wage, cost of
living and real wage series’).
nominal protection closely resembled effective protection.70 The income
constrained hypothesis will be tested by including Spanish real wages, a
more relevant variable than per caput income for potential emigrants.
Foreign activity relates to the main country of destination, Argentina.
The variable used is deviations from trend in output construction, a
sector which has high demand for unskilled labour and is very sensitive
to economic fluctuations. Two classical variables used to explain emi-
gration from European countries have also been included: the wage ratio
between Argentina (the main destination for Spanish emigrants) and
Spain and the lagged emigration rate. The rate of natural increase lagged
20 years was also included in previous estimations but it proved not
significant and it is not reported here. The classical hypothesis of demo-
graphic forces driving up emigration can be rejected for the Spanish case,
a result consistent with previous research by Hatton and Williamson.71
70 A. Tena, ‘Proteccio´n y crecimiento econo´mico en la Espana de la Restauracio´n, 1870-1930’
˜
(unpub. MS., 1998).
71 Hatton and Williamson, Age of mass migration, pp. 44-5, tab. 3.5.
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All the variables are lagged one year because it is assumed that potential
emigrants made a delayed response to changes at home and abroad.
Several conclusions can be drawn from table 2. Economic conditions
in Argentina were a significant determinant of the migratory flow. For
example, the influence of construction output (a sector prone to short-
term fluctuations in its demand for unskilled labour) is positive and
significant. Furthermore, the wage differential between Spain and
Argentina is strongly significant. Spanish emigration reacted more than
proportionally to wage differentials in the same way as did that from
Italy or other European emigration countries. Both variables yield results
in line with research done for other countries.72 At the same time,
absolute levels of wages in Spain display a strong effect on emigration,
in fact higher than that of the wage differential. The hypothesis that
Spanish emigration was income constrained is supported by the statistical
results. Given the low levels of income for potential emigrants from
Spain, increases in real wages at home are positively associated with
emigration because such increases allowed the population to finance the
move more easily. A 10 per cent increase in real wages in Spain would
have increased emigration by 0.3 per thousand [(0.1*1.924)/(1 − 0.421)].
The lagged emigration rate is also positively related to emigration, as is
always the case. Hence, earlier emigrants could have released the poverty
constraint, financing the moves of others but not to the extent to which
they apparently did so in Italy.73
The protection variable is positive and highly significant. The emi-
gration variable displays higher elasticity in relation to protection than is
the case for real depreciation. Nevertheless, a positive value would not
be anticipated by most historians of Spain and is not predicted by the
sector specific model unless account is taken of the fact that tariffs
maintained agricultural wages; so, since Spanish emigration was income
constrained, labour could finance the move abroad more easily. But the
result is clearly predictable in terms of the Heckscher-Ohlin model and
the Stolper-Samuelson theorem, both of which predict a direct relation-
ship between tariffs and emigration. The results set out in table 2 confirm
the suggestion that tariffs, by preventing trade, promoted emigration,
particularly for the years after 1900. A 10 per cent increase in protection
would lead to an increase in external emigration of nearly 0.5 per
thousand [(0.1*2.776)/(1 − 0.421)].
Finally, emigration displays a negative and significant relation to the
depreciation of the peseta. Indeed, the depreciation between 1891 and
1905 turns out to be the distinctive feature of the Spanish economy at
the turn of the century compared with economies such as that of Italy.74
Currency depreciation increased the price of the tickets and reduced the
savings on which the emigrants subsisted while searching for new jobs in
72 Ibid., chs. 5, 6.
73 Ibid., ch. 6, p. 106.
74 Although the Italian lire also depreciated at the end of the nineteenth century, it did so to a
lesser extent than the peseta and during a shorter period of time. See Sa´nchez-Alonso, ‘What slowed
down mass emigration?’.
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spanish emigration in the late nineteenth century
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the country of destination, and it was particularly adverse for the majority
of potential emigrants due to low levels of income. A 10 per cent change
in the real depreciation variable would have reduced the emigration rate
by 0.2 per thousand population [(0.1*−1.187)/(1 − 0.421)].
In order to quantify the effects on emigration of depreciation and
protection, a simulation exercise has been carried out based on the
counterfactual scenario that the value of the peseta has remained as it
was in 1882, that is, before the abandonment of gold convertibility, and
that the level of protection had remained unchanged at the level of that
year. This static simulation exercise generates lower bound estimates for
the volume of additional emigration that might have taken place in the
absence of currency depreciation and of tariff changes.
Table 3. Counterfactual emigration under no depreciation and no increase in
protection after 1882a
Panel A. Hypothesis of no
depreciation
(1)
1883-1914
(2)
1883-1891
(3)
1892-1905
(4)
1906-1914
% change in forecast value
Emigration change in absolute
terms (’000)
24.2
738
1.9
11.4
41.5
429
20.8
298
Panel B. Hypothesis of no increase
in protection
1883-1914
1882-1891
1892-1905
1906-1914
% change in forecast value
Emigration change in absolute
terms (’000)
−22.6
−692
−11.2
−66
−24.0
−248
−26.4
−378
Note: a Forecast values were computed by applying the parameters of equation to the yearly values of each
independent variable. Counterfactual values were computed by the same procedure, except for the depreciation
and the protection variable for which the 1882 value was kept fixed alternatively. Spain abandoned gold convertibility
in 1883 and adopted a high protectionist tariff in 1891.
Sources: values from tab. 2
For 1892-1905, when the peseta fell sharply, the values in column (3)
of panel A (table 3) show that, in the absence of depreciation, emigration
could have been over 40 per cent higher. Approximately 400,000
additional people might have emigrated in those years. Figure 3 suggests,
again, that far higher emigration rates could have been attained between
1892 and 1905 in the absence of depreciation. The gross rate of emi-
gration from Spain could have been 5.6 per thousand of population, very
similar to the Italian rate over the period 1890-1904. Furthermore, the
emigration rate for 1906-14, at 20 per cent higher, would have allowed
Spain to reach the Italian rate of emigration in that period, 11 per
thousand (table 1).
For reasons elaborated above, under the counterfactual scenario of no
protection, emigration could have been reduced by nearly 700,000 during
the period 1883-1914 (panel B)—a figure very similar to the increase
simulated for the same period in panel A. Over the whole period the
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14
12
10
8
6
4
Forecast
Counterfactual
2
0
1885
1890
1895
1900
1905
1910
Figure 3. Forecast and counterfactual emigration from Spain (no depreciation),
1883-1914
Sources: see text, section IV
two forces, protection and depreciation, acted to cancel each other out.
However, during the years of high depreciation, 1892-1905, emigration
would have risen by almost 200,000, even with the countervailing effect
of protection. These counterfactual estimates are, however, a lower bound
conjecture and they do not take into account possible dynamic effects.
It is plausible to suggest that agricultural output per worker and wage
rates could have increased had emigration rates been higher, assuming a
plausible very low marginal productivity of labour employed in agriculture.
The extra emigrants could also have prompted ‘pull’ effects through
remittances, pre-paid tickets, and chain migration. Given that one of the
problems for economic development in the long run was the slow release
of labour from agriculture, higher emigration from Spain during years of
favourable international conditions for international labour mobility could
well have had positive effects both on agricultural development and on
the overall macroeconomic performance of the Spanish economy. In a
period of falling international prices, monetary forces rather than tariff
policies isolated the Spanish economy and reduced emigration from
Spain. The Spanish population missed an opportunity to raise its standard
of living by emigration. However, this is not the sole explanation for low
levels of exodus from the countryside. Institutional factors in Spanish
agriculture must also be taken into account. Slow urban and industrial
development was also, and perhaps mainly, responsible for the lack of
pull from the industrial and urban sectors.75 Indeed, internal migrations
75 Pe´rez Moreda, ‘Evolucio´n demogra´fica’; Tortella, ‘Agriculture’; Prados de la Escosura, De
imperio a nacio´n.
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remained at very low levels until the 1920s and as late as 1930 the rural-
urban wage gap was almost as large as it was in 1860.76
V
This article has attempted to analyse and quantify obstacles to Spain’s
closer integration into the world economy between 1880 and 1914. It
has focused on international labour mobility and it has two central
hypotheses: first, protection of agriculture restrained labour emigration;
second, currency depreciation increased the cost of moving abroad and
slowed Spanish emigration in the late nineteenth century. Underlying
these hypotheses the article has a central assumption, that is, that Spanish
emigration was income constrained.
The subject literature regards the protectionist policies adopted and
followed from 1891 onwards as a major part of the explanations for the
slow out-migration from agriculture. But that view is based upon an
implicit sector-specific model and assumes that the negative labour
demand effect dominated; it concludes that relations between tariffs and
emigration must have been inverse. If, however, the Spanish economy in
the late nineteenth century is represented in terms of the Heckscher-
Ohlin model and the Stolper-Samuelson theorem, it can be shown that
tariffs impeded trade and stimulated labour mobility.
Nevertheless, the most important element in the explanation for the
slow emigration from Spain in 1892-1905 was not so much the tariff,
but the depreciation of the peseta. For income constrained emigrants
currency depreciation increased the cost of moving. Unfortunately, favour-
able international conditions for intercontinental emigration came to an
end with the First World War. Thus, the Spanish economy missed an
opportunity. Furthermore, econometric calculations suggest that if the
peseta had not depreciated, emigration from Spain could have risen by
nearly 25 per cent. These ‘counterfactual emigrants’ could, in turn, have
pulled even more workers across the Atlantic through chain migration,
pre-paid tickets, and remittances. Indeed, without the currency
depreciation, rates of emigration from Spain would have been very similar
to those from Italy over the period 1892-1914. Furthermore, since the
large proportion of labour employed in agriculture is one of the enduring
features of Spanish backwardness, higher emigration from Spain could
have exercised only positive effects on long-term economic development.
Spanish emigrants had to wait until the second age of economic conver-
gence after 1950 when they travelled to destinations within Europe. Even
then, they ‘missed’ opportunities in the 1950s but took them up in the
1960s. That episode is, however, another story.
Universidad San Pablo, Madrid
76 Simpson, Spanish agriculture, tab. 8.7. Between 1887 and 1910 the proportion of the population
living outside the province of birth changed from 8% to 9%: Pe´rez Moreda, ‘Evolucio´n demogra´fica’.
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APPENDIX: Econometrics (table 2)
The order of integration of the variables used has been analysed using the Dickey-Fuller
test, including a constant and a trend. All variables are integrated of order one, I (1),
that is, its first difference does not contain a unit root. The hypothesis of a unit root is
rejected at the 1 per cent confidence level. The results of the tests carried out are
the following:
A. Variables in levels
Variables
Augmented
Dickey-Fuller
t-statistic
MacKinnon
critical values
at 5% level
Durbin Watson
regression
Rate of emigration
−2.11
−1.16
−2.78
−1.89
−0.78
−3.26
−3.56
−3.54
−3.55
−3.55
−3.55
−3.62
1.86
1.98
1.75
2.16
1.96
1.90
Real depreciation of peseta
Nominal wheat protection
Wage ratio Argentina/Spain
Real wage in Spain
Construction output in Argentina
B. Variables in first differences
Variables
Augmented
Dickey-Fuller
t-statistic
MacKinnon
critical values
at 1% level
Durbin Watson
regression
Rate of emigration
−3.89
−4.73
−4.38
−6.06
−4.71
−5.16
−3.55*
−4.26
−4.26
−4.26
−4.26
−3.64
1.86
1.99
1.98
2.25
1.95
2.05
Real depreciation of peseta
Nominal wheat protection
Wage ratio Argentina/Spain
Real wage in Spain
Construction output in Argentina
*Not significant at 1% level, but is so at 5%
The Johansen Cointegration Test for the variables included in the equation presented in
table 2 has then been computed. The cointegration exercise tests whether multiple series
are cointegrated. If it can be shown that the series operating in the equation are
cointegrated, this will be a sign of the stability of the parameters; that is, the cointegration
technique makes it possible to establish whether a group of non-stationary variables can
be combined in a linear form to produce a stationary variable. If this is the case, the
non-stationary variables are cointegrated. Its normal interpretation is as a long-run
equilibrium relationship.
The Johansen Cointegration Test for the equation presented in table 2 is the following:
Eigenvalue
Likelihood ratio 5% critical value 1% critical value
Hypothesized
no. of CE(s)
0.779
128.74 94.15 103.18
None**
** denotes rejection of the hypothesis of no cointegration at the 1% significance level
Footnote references
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1861-1900 (Cambridge, 1985).
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´
´
´
`
Bordo, M. and Rockoff, H., ‘The gold standard as a “good housekeeping seal of approval” ’, J.
Econ. Hist., LVI (1996), pp. 389-428.
Ca´novas del Castillo, A., ‘De co´mo yo he venido a ser doctrinariamente proteccionista’, in Problemas
contempora´neos, 3 (Madrid, 1890), repr. in Revista de Econom´ıa Pol´ıtica, X (1959), pp. 1025-43.
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Caves, R. E., Frankel, J. A., and Jones, R. W., World trade and payments: an introduction (New
York, 1996).
Corden, W. M., Trade policy and economic welfare (Oxford, 1974).
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Kenen, ed., International trade and finance: frontiers for research (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 51-93.
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