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New series of Spain's capital stock and input are provided for the last one and a half centuries for the first time. Capital stock and input grew at average rates of 3.5 and 3.7 percent per year, respectively, but not at a steady pace since rates accelerated dramatically during the “Golden Age.” Two major structural changes accompanied this process. The composition of the capital stock and returns to it changed gradually as the contribution of producer durables rose while that of structures declined. Capital deepening took place in the long run. Although the capital–output ratio increased over time, in phases of accelerated growth the productivity of capital rose.

Did the expansion of democratic institutions play a role in determining central government spending behavior in the 19th and 20th centuries? The link between democracy and increased central government spending is well established for the post-Second World War period, but has never been explored during the first “wave of democracy” and its subsequent reversal, that is 1870–1938. The main contribution of this paper is the compilation of a dataset covering 24 countries over this period to begin to address this question. Utilizing various descriptive techniques, including panel data regressions, we explore correlations between central government spending and the institutional characteristics of regimes. We find that the data are consistent with the hypothesis that democracies have a broader need for legitimization than autocracies as various measures of democracy are associated with higher central government spending. Our results indicate that the extension of franchise had a slight positive impact on central government spending levels, as did a few of the other democracy variables. We also find that early liberal democracies spent less and monarchies more than other regimes; debt increases spending; and participation in the Gold Standard reduced government spending substantially.

In recent decades, interconnections between countries have increased substantially worldwide as the process of integration and globalisation intensifies, with a positive impact in terms of economic development, but, also with a vulnerability to external shocks, such as the financial contagion phenomenon. The analysis of this research field becomes even more relevant in the context of a new major exogenous shock, but which, this time, has different specificities, being a sanitary crisis. Thus, the chapter aims to investigate the impact of crises on capital market volatility for the period of 1995–2021, using the bibliometric analysis highlighting the dynamics of the literature and potential future research directions through a science mapping that enables investigating scientific knowledge. In order to explore the development of the research field in terms of publications, author impact, affiliated institutions and countries, citation patterns, trending topics, relationship between keywords–authors–journals, abstracts’ analysis, authors and documents clustering by coupling, multiple correspondence analysis of major research themes, keyword analysis, co-citation analysis and authors, institutions and countries collaboration analysis have been applied. Hence, almost 500 publications from Web of Science database covering the period 1995–2021 have been extracted. The empirical findings emphasise the conceptual structure, with clusters focussing mainly on long-term receivables, market efficiency, volatility, dynamic conditional correlation (DCC)-GARCH models, asymmetric effects. According to the intellectual structure of the field, Lambertides N., Zopiatis A., McAleer M. or Savva C. S. are the most representative authors for the sub-area of volatility topic; whilst Balcerzak A. P., Pietrzak M. B., Zinecker M., Meluzin T. and Faldzinski M. are the reference names for the whole spectrum of DCC-GARCH models’ topic. Jayasekera R., Lundblad C., Choundhry T., Gupta R. and Demirer R. are the authors mostly associated with asymmetric effects’ topic, whilst Thorp S., Bouchaud J. P. and Dungey M. with the quantitative finance. The Journal of Banking & Finance, the Journal of International Money and Finance and the International Review of Financial Analysis as well as Economic Modelling, Research in International Business and Finance and the International Journal of Finance & Economics are the most prolific journals in the field of capital flow and financial crises. This chapter’s main contribution is to build a structure of knowledge for the impact of crises on capital market volatility, elaborate and classify empirical research into relevant dimensions that can be used as a reference for comprehensively developing research. Finally, the bibliometric analysis results may provide insight into future research prospects. Our conclusions offer some recommendations for market practitioners and policy-making.

When the 13 colonies in North America, the slave colony of Saint-Domingue, and the colonial territories of the Portuguese and Spanish Americas all rose against their imperial rulers, a new postcolonial order seemingly emerged in the Western Hemisphere. The reality of this situation forced political theorists and practitioners of the early 19th century to rethink the way in which they envisioned the nature and dynamics of international order. But a careful analysis of this shift reveals that it was not the radical break with prior notions of sovereignty and territoriality, often described in the literature. This was not the emergence of a new postimperial system of independent, nationally anchored states. Rather, it reflected a creative rethinking of existing notions of divided sovereignty and composite polities, rife with political experiments – from the formation of a new multi-centered empire in North America to the quasi-states and federations of Latin America. This moment of political experimentation and postcolonial order-making presented a distinctly new world repertoire of empire and state-building, parts of which were at least as violent and authoritarian as those of the old world empires it had replaced. The most radical ideas of freedom and liberty, championed by the black republic of Haiti, remained marginalized and sidelined by more conservative powers on both sides of the Atlantic.

The objective of this chapter is to outline an integrating picture of the situation, representativeness, contradictions, and challenges that the treatment of diversity assumes in Brazilian society and in its organizations. The aim is to reply to the research question: “How are public policies and organizational practices constructing ways of inserting and valuing the diversity of Brazilians?” We provide a brief background of the changes in the global and Brazilian contexts over the last few decades and analyze the demographic data presented in the 2010 Census and in studies on diversity that were published in the main periodicals in the Administration area in Brazil, between 2000 and 2014 with regard to the segments most widely studied in the academic literature: Afro-descendants, homosexuals, the elderly, Indians, women, and people with a disability. The conclusion reached is that, in a short period of time, Brazil has made great strides in constructing the mechanisms and legal devices for recognizing the rights of its diverse population and that private companies are in the initial stages of introducing diversity programs.

COVID-19 has spread so quickly and uninterruptedly that it has put great pressure on the capacities of emerging countries, especially the Latin America area. Its impacts that will have on businesses and entrepreneurs, it can be inferred that the duration of this crisis is still uncertain; thus, the aim on this chapter is to aggregate the current knowledge on how COVID-19 has impacted the entrepreneurship, and their expectations in the short and medium term. We examined 37 articles published between 2020 and 2021. To develop the discussion, we conducted descriptive review including year, affiliation of the first author, type of study, research methods in reviewed papers, and the origin of the empirical sample. We follow our thematic analysis within four broad categories: (1) crisis; (2) digitalization; (3) education; and (4) employment. Our results show that the call to address grand challenges, particularly relate to digitalization, public policies focused on supporting entrepreneurs and education in entrepreneurship in the Latin America context.

We are experiencing a period of adaptation of our agri-food systems to the context of climate change, thus witnessing the incorporation of several more ecological and socially inclusive practices. In this sense, this chapter seeks to understand the role of civil society in promoting sustainable food systems based on Brazilian experiences over the last three decades. First, the role of civil society in the construction of new agroecological markets is discussed, bringing the experience of the consumer cooperative COOLMEIA, which started the construction of the first agroecological fair in Brazil, the Ecological Farmers Fair in Porto Alegre. Then the civil society activism engaged on establishment of the Human Right to Healthy and Adequate Food is discussed, highlighting the importance of social movements and civil society organisations in the construction of a democratic political system. At last, the trajectory of the civil society as actors participating in the formal instance of State governance through their performance in the National Council for Food Security and Nutrition – CONSEA, presenting the historical context, achievements and struggles. Finally, the chapter concludes with a section reviewing lessons learned and possible challenges for civil society participation in the debate on agri-food systems in the future.