This study makes the first systematic attempt to trace the long‐term development of Latin American numeracy, a phenomenon of great interest to economic historians in that it serves as an accurate gauge of human capital development. In order to approximate basic numeracy we use age‐heaping techniques. We find that Latin America was on a path of convergence with western Europe during the early eighteenth century. During the early nineteenth century, not only did numeracy development stagnate in some Latin American countries but differences among some of them actually increased. While numeracy rates in Argentina, Uruguay, and to a lesser extent Brazil, along with Europe, underwent a significant increase in the late nineteenth century, they declined in Mexico, Ecuador, and Colombia. By performing a regression analysis, we find that, even when we control for investment in education, mass immigration contributed to human capital formation.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte.

When and why did the Portuguese become the shortest Europeans? In order to find the answer to this question, we trace the trend in Portuguese living standards from the 1720s until recent times.We find that during the early nineteenth century average height in Portugal did not differ significantly from average height in most other European countries, but that when, around 1850, European anthropometric values began to climb sharply, Portugal's did not. In a panel analysis of 12 countries, we find that delay in human-capital formation was the chief factor hindering any improvement in the biological standard of living in Portugal.I t was Portugal's fifteenth-and sixteenth-century seafaring scientists and explorers who placed this small country at the cutting edge of maritime science and navigation and thereby transformed the global status of the rest of Europe as well. Their expeditions along the African west coast and to Latin America, not to mention Vasco da Gama's discovery, on his first voyage (1497-9), of the sea route to India, transformed their contemporaries' consciousness of the world that lay beyond the horizon. However, since those glory days the Portuguese have come to feel that their country lags behind the rest of Europe-and they are right, if anthropometry is taken as a welfare indicator: recent data indicate that the Portuguese are on average shorter than any other European nationality.2 When and why did the Portuguese slip to last place in the European height race?To tackle this question, a two-step approach is adopted. First, height development is reconstructed over almost three centuries, from the 1720s to the 1980s, and it is found that at the beginning of that time span Portuguese heights were in

No abstract

Zusammenfassung Bevor endgültige Beweise unter Wasser gefunden worden sind, kann die Identifikation der in der Bucht von Abuqir gelegenen Ruinenstätte nur durch einen Indizienbeweis erfolgen. Für einen solchen bieten sich die Lage der Ruinenstätte und die dort zutage geförderten Kleinfunde an. Beide legen nahe, daß es sich bei der Ruinenstätte nicht um Kanopos, wie zunächst angenommen, sondern um Menouthis handelt. Die Umfassungsmauer TW4 wäre dann die Temenosmauer des berühmten Isieions von Menouthis und die byzantinische Anlage Teil des Pilgerheiligtums von Kyros und Ioannes.