Working papers

Market access, the skill premium and human capital in Spain (1860-1930)
(with Rafael González-Val, Julio Martinez-Galarraga and Daniel A. Tirado-Fabregat)
EHES Working Papers in Economic History, No. 229

This paper explores the relationship between market access and education levels in the context of an industrializing economy, in this case Spain between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Specifically, we examine whether differences in regional accumulations of human capital could be related to market access, which would explain the divergent trajectories of regional economic growth in Spain. To do this, we empirically test the relationship between education variables and market potential for Spanish provinces between 1860 and 1930. We then focus on the mechanism that may be mediating this relationship, i.e. the skill premium. The results suggest that there were sizeable provincial differences in the return on investment in education, the explanation for which would be that those provinces with the highest market potential specialized more in skill-intensive sectors in which higher wages were paid.

Ir al instituto. Secondary education enrollments in Spain, 1860-1930
(Draft available upon request)

This article presents harmonized estimates of enrollment in secondary education for all Spanish provinces between 1860 and 1930, a key period in the construction of the Spanish educational system and, specifically, of the secondary education network. The analysis of the data aims to contribute to the debate about the role of the accumulation of human capital at its various levels in the Spanish industrialization process and the marked differences between territories. The results show a slow growth in the number of students during the 19th century with a great asymmetry between provinces, as well as a progressive takeoff from the beginning of the 20th century that accelerated in the 1920s and 1930s. The analysis of the composition of students by modalities (public, private and private tutoring) allows us to extract some hypotheses about the effects of certain educational policy decisions that could have negatively affected the spread of secondary education in Spain and, therefore, its capacity to transform the economy.