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Cliometrica, Vol. 8, No. 3, 2014: http://www.springer.com/journal/11698Springer Verlag, together with the managing editor, the co-editors, thehonorary members and the associate editors are pleased to announce the onlinepublication of Cliometrica, Vol. 8, No. 3, September 2014:http://link.springer.com/journal/11698/8/3/page/1Péter Földvári, Bas van Leeuwen: Educational and income inequality in Europe,ca. 1870-2000DOI URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11698-013-0105-3Abstract: In this paper, we revisit the relationship between educational andincome inequalities in a historical perspective, using a newly developedannual dataset of average years of education in Europe. Theoretically onewould expect a reduction in educational inequality should, given the positivecorrelation between education level and income, initially increase and then,at a later stage, reduce income inequality. Testing for such a Kuznets-typerelationship between educational and income inequalities yields an unexpectedresult: we find the expected inverse U-curve before the 1950s, but therelationship changes into a normal U-curve afterward. We explain thisobservation by a change in the trend of skill premium during the second halfof the twentieth century due to an increased relative demand for skills,which contradicts the usual assumption of decreasing returns to education.Due to lack of appropriate wage data, we cannot directly capture this effect.Yet, once we use an instrumental variable estimation method to filter out theeffect of the omitted skill premium, the expected inverse U-curve alsoappears for the latter decades of the twentieth century.Riccardo De Bonis, Andrea Silvestrini: The Italian financial cycle: 1861-2011DOI URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11698-013-0103-5Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the main features of the Italianfinancial cycle, extracted by means of a structural trend-cycle decompositionof the credit-to-GDP ratio, using annual observations from 1861 to 2011. Inorder to draw conclusions based on solid historical data, we provide athorough reconstruction of the key balance sheet time series of Italianbanks, considering all the main assets and liabilities over the last 150years. We come to three main conclusions. First, while there was closecorrelation between loans and deposits (relative to GDP) until the mid-1970s,over the last 30 years, this link became more tenuous and the volume of loanshas increased in relation to deposits. The banks covered this “funding gap”mainly by issuing new debt securities. Second, the Italian financial cyclehas a much longer duration than traditional business cycles. Third, takinginto account the deviation of the credit-to-GDP ratio from its trend, anacceleration of credit preceded or accompanied a banking crisis in 8 out ofthe 12 episodes listed by Reinhart and Rogoff (This time is different: eightcenturies of financial folly. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2009). ALogit regression confirms a positive association between the probability of abanking crisis and a previous acceleration of the credit-to-GDP gap. However,there were also periods -such as the early 1970s- in which the growth of thecredit-to-GDP ratio was not followed by a banking crisis.Stefan Oliver Houpt, Juan Carlos Rojo Cagigal: Relative deprivation andlabour conflict during Spain’s industrialization: the Bilbao estuary,1914-1936DOI URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11698-013-0102-6Abstract: What drove social conflict in Spain’s industrial areas in theperiod before the Spanish Civil War? This paper is concerned with contrastingthe determinants of working-class conflict in northern Spain at the beginningof the twentieth century. Our hypothesis is that the key determinant ofconflicts in emerging industrial areas during the interwar period was thestruggle to obtain satisfactory family income in a context of combined highprice fluctuation, unemployment and economic boom and bust. We suggest twonew ways to decipher how economic factors interact with labour conflict. Weintroduce the family as the relevant income unit when considering wagestruggles and relative deprivation. And secondly, we study the reactions toshort-term variations of income on families by using monthly rather thanquarterly or annual data.As accepted papers get typeset, they become available for journal subscribersthrough Springer's Online Program. For access, click on the following link:http://link.springer.com/journal/11698/onlineFirst/page/1I take this opportunity to renew my invitation and warmly encourage all ofyou to submit your own new articles to our journal and of course to motivateyour colleagues to do the same.For all editorial matters, including articles offered for publication, pleasego to: http://www.editorialmanager.com/clio/, or contact me by e-mail:cdiebolt@unistra.fr.Sincerely yours,Claude Diebolt.