For fifteen years economic historians have discussed whether the German economy suffered from a ‘crisis before the crisis’ during 1925–29, and if so, why. Apart from wages, the most widely debated issue is Weimar's investment record. The contributions so far have relied on the database of Walther Hoffmann which allows a comparison of Weimar's net investment and net product with the pre-World War I period. In this paper, alternative time series for gross fixed investment and gross national product are compiled for the period 1901–32. These data confirm Weimar's poor overall economic growth. However, it appears that Weimar's aggregate investment ratio was quite ‘normal’, if compared both intertemporally with the late Empire and internationally with other major economies in the 1920s. It is argued that further discussion of Weimar's investment record should focus on the productivity of private and especially of public investment rather than on its aggregate level.

The article compiles measures of the Human Development Index and also growth rates of real GDP/person adjusted for changes in mortality and leisure for 16 advanced economies since 1870. It is argued that relatively low life expectancy implies that the high income countries of 1870 had lower living standards than most of today's Third World but that since 1870 imputations for reductions in market work time have added more to growth than decreases in mortality. Overall, it seems clear that conventional measures of economic growth seriously understate the rate of improvement in living standards since 1870.

Finland offers a good opportunity to study how international trade contacts were established and how they developed. Having been denied trading rights, several Finnish ports were granted direct access to foreign trade in 1765. The hypothesis is that the old business relations with Stockholm traders, the role played by the shipmaster and the government-based consulate networks were crucial in the development of the merchant network abroad during the eighteenth century. Business networks developed from interpersonal contacts towards interorganisational relationships during the nineteenth century. The business networks were in many cases, especially in the home town and with neighbouring towns, based on kinship or family relations, and they were long-term by nature.

This article surveys cliometric research on the development of the French economy, with special emphasis on the fiscal and monetary history of the Revolution, the alleged retardation of the French economy in the nineteenth century, and the question of agricultural productivity in the early modern and industrial age.