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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2005‒12‒01
thirty papers chosen by |
| By: | Gregorio Núñez (Department of Economic Theory and Economic History (University of Granada) and “Grupo de Estudios Históricos sobre la Empresa”); Luís González Ruiz (Department of Economic Theory and Economic History (University of Granada)) |
| Abstract: | The systematic study of the statistics concerning the Corporations Profit Tax from the first decades of the 20th century allows the analysis of complex questions about Andalusian and Spanish business history in the critical stage of the emergence of the modern financial system and the diffusion of the organizational revolution represented by the modern corporation. |
| Keywords: | Business history – Andalusia – Spain - 20th century, Fiscal statistics – business corporations – Spain – 20th century ,Local and regional history – Andalusia – Spain ,Business corporations – Zip’s Law |
| Date: | 2005–11–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gra:wpaper:05/22&r=his |
| By: | Andrés Ferrari; André Moreira Cunha |
| Abstract: | In this paper we look for the historical genesis of Argentina's crisis. We argue that the economic liberalization model, implicit of the Convertibility Plan, has its roots in establishment of the agro-exporting economy on which, between the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, a prosperous country was formed. On the other hand, the 1990 decade introduced a social heterogeneity that holds no relation to the main heritage of the previous liberal model. |
| JEL: | N16 O54 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:023&r=his |
| By: | Natalia Chernyshoff; David S. Jacks; Alan M. Taylor |
| Abstract: | Did adoption of the gold standard exacerbate or diminish macroeconomic volatility? Supporters thought so, critics thought not, and theory offers ambiguous messages. A hard exchange-rate regime such as the gold standard might limit monetary shocks if it ties the hands of policy makers. But any decision to forsake exchange-rate flexibility might compromise shock absorption in a world of real shocks and nominal stickiness. A simple model shows how a lack of flexibility can be discerned in the transmission of terms of trade shocks. Evidence on the relationship between real exchange rate volatility and terms of trade volatility from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century exposes a dramatic change. The classical gold standard did absorb shocks, but the interwar gold standard did not, and this historical pattern suggests that the interwar gold standard was a poor regime choice. |
| JEL: | F33 F41 N10 |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11795&r=his |
| By: | William Roberds (Research Department Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta); Stephen Quinn |
| Keywords: | Central banking, commodity money, debasement |
| JEL: | E42 N13 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed005:318&r=his |
| By: | Alexandre Mendes Cunha; Rodrigo Ferreira Simões; João Antonio de Paula |
| Abstract: | This paper intends to contribute to the theoretical and methodological debate on regionalization and history. Firstly, it starts discussing the very concept of region on its several related approaches: geography, political economy, history and historiography. Then, a methodological issue is analyzed, that is to say: the paper tries to articulate the most important criteria of spatial segmentation embedded on regionalization (analytical functionalism, heterogeneity and homogeneity) with: a) the necessity of non-anachronism; and b) the necessity of a historical dynamic approach on definition of regional boundaries. |
| JEL: | N01 N96 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:025&r=his |
| By: | Robert J. Gordon; Todd vanGoethem |
| Abstract: | Tenant rental shelter is by far the most important component of the CPI, because it is used as a proxy for owner-occupied housing. This paper develops a wide variety of current and historical evidence dating back to 1914 to demonstrate that the CPI rent index is biased downward for all of the last century. The CPI rises roughly 2 percent per year slower than quality-unadjusted indexes of gross rent, setting a challenge for this research of measuring the rate of quality change in rental apartments. If quality increased at a rate of 2 percent per year, the CPI was not biased downward at all, but if quality increased at a slower rate of 1 percent per year, then the CPI was biased downward at a rate of 1 percent. Our analysis of a rich set of data sources goes backward chronologically, starting with a hedonic regression analysis on a large set of panel data from the American Housing Survey (AHS) covering 1975-2003. Prior to 1975, we have large micro data files from the U. S. Census of Housing extending back to 1930. In addition to the hedonic regression data, we stitch together data on the diffusion of important quality attributes of rental units, including plumbing, heating, and electrification, over the period 1918-73. Our final piece of evidence is based on a study of quality-adjusted rents in a single local community, Evanston IL, covering the period 1925-99. Our overall conclusions are surprisingly consistent across sources and eras, that the CPI bias was roughly -1.0 percent prior to the methodological improvements in the CPI that date from the mid-1980s. Our reliance on a wide variety of methodologies and evidence on types of quality change and their importance, while leaving the outcome still uncertain, at least in our view substantially narrows the range of possibilities regarding the history of CPI bias for rental shelter over the twentieth century. |
| JEL: | C23 E22 L74 N12 N62 |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11776&r=his |
| By: | Ulisses Ruiz de Gamboa |
| Abstract: | This paper tests the sustainability of the Brazilian public debt throughout its history as an independent nation (1823-2004) by the use of cointegration tests. Since the sample period covers a historical period highlighted by a great deal of political, economic and institutional shifts, recursive tests have also been carried out in order to evaluate the constancy of the cointegrating rank. Initially, the traditional intertemporal budget model (Ricardian Equivalence model) has been suposed, and thus testing the cointegration of government expenditures and revenues. However, the presence of consecutive default or debt restructuring situations concerning the Brazilian public debt, throughout its republican period, suggests an alternative model, in which the sustainability of public debt is achieved by "debt repudiation" ("New Ricardian Equivalence" model). The cointegration tests based on such an alternative model have included dummies for each default or renegotiation period of the public debt ("default dummies"). As a conclusion, one might postulate that the fiscal policy implemented in Brazil during almost all its history as an independent nation, oscillated between authentic sustainability periods (Imperial period) and moments when fiscal sustainability was achieved through debt default or renegotiation (republican period from 1889 to 1943 and from 1983 to 1993) or seigniorage revenues (republican period from 1944 to 1982). |
| JEL: | E62 H60 C32 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:050&r=his |
| By: | Roel Beetsma; Alex Cukierman; Massimo Giuliodori |
| Abstract: | We provide empirical evidence on two, major war-related, regularities of U.S. fiscal policy. First, while during and around World War I there is a positive correlation between defense spending and civil non-defense spending, this correlation becomes negative during World War II. This may be explained by a combination of complementarities between defense and civilian spending that decrease with the size of government in conjunction with marginal tax distortions that increase with government's size. Second, during and around World War II there are, war-related, ratchets in transfers, veteran spending, taxes and revenues in the following sense. Invariably, the share of taxes and revenues in GDP goes up, and the share of transfers goes down, when the share of defense expenditures goes up. But taxes go down less and transfers go up more per unit change in defense expenditures when those expenditures go down at the war's conclusion than the amounts by which taxes go up and transfers go down during the buildup in defense expenditures at the beginning of the war effort. There is no evidence of such ratchets during and around World War I. Two, not necessarily mutually exclusive, explanations for these findings are: 1. The substantially higher franchise during World War II interacted with the crisis induced by the war to cause a permanent expansion of the welfare state. 2. The Great Depression permanently changed the norms of social justice and the interaction of this change with the experience of the War led to a more generous welfare state. |
| Keywords: | World War I and II; ratchet; defense spending; civilian spending transfers; taxes; revenues; franchise. |
| JEL: | E62 E65 N11 N12 |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dnb:dnbwpp:057&r=his |
| By: | Roger Backhouse; Mauro Boianovsky |
| Abstract: | The paper investigates the rise and fall of the disequilibrium approach in macroeconomics between the mid 1960s and the late 1970s. During that period macroeconomists became attracted to the interpretation of unemployment phenomena based on the notion that markets are not in equilibrium. It was believed that such an approach could result in supply and demand functions distinct from those of conventional theory. However, by the late 1980s disequilibrium macroeconomics had largely disappeared from view, while approaches influenced by New Classical Macroeconomics and New Keynesian Economics became dominant. The present paper examines the contributions of the main authors - Patinkin, Clower, Leijonhufvud, Barro, Grossman, Solow, Stiglitz and Malinvaud - in order to offer a new pwerspective on the reasons for its sudden disappearance. |
| JEL: | B22 B31 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:012&r=his |
| By: | Hortlund, Per (Dept. of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | The working of the”asset currency” provided by the Swedish note banking system in 1878–1901 is described. Natural and institutional conditions caused the demand for currency to peak in March and September, with troughs in July and January. The paper investigates how the Enskilda banks provided liquidity to solve the problem. This is done by describing how the volume of notes varied over the year, and how other balance sheet items co-moved with them. Strong seasonal co-variation is found particularly between lending and foreign payments media, varying like communicating vessels over the sailing season in May–October (when the sea was ice free and shipments were made). |
| Keywords: | Free banking; Elastic currency; Asset currency; Clearing mechanism; Note competition; Needs of trade; Lender of last resort; Sailing season |
| JEL: | G21 N13 N23 |
| Date: | 2005–11–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:hastef:0613&r=his |
| By: | José Antônio P. de Souza; Leonardo Burlamaqui; Nelson H. Barbosa-Filho |
| Abstract: | This paper tries to explain the dynamics of Brazilian industrial catch-up in the last 60 years by discussing its background institutional conditions as well as its main macroeconomic features. After a brief introduction, the second section describes how after the institutional innovations introduced during the Vargas's and Kubitschek's administrations, a Brazilian version of the Developmental State was created, releasing the growth potential of the economy during the 1950s. The third section analyses the inflationary crisis and institutional inertia of the mid-1960s, and its solution through the introduction of a new of wave of institutional innovations and conflict management devices, which lead to the Brazilian growth miracle, until the debt crisis of early 1980s signaled its end. The fourth section analyses why the financial crisis, coupled with ineffective institutional changes and unsuccessful macroeconomic stabilization plans lead growth to a halt. It also includes an analysis of the pro-market reforms from the early 1990s onwards. The fifth section concludes the paper offering a brief sketch on how the analytical narrative fits the conceptual framework within which it was carried. |
| JEL: | O54 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:064&r=his |
| By: | Mauricio Drelichman |
| Keywords: | sixteenth century, Castile, Spain, nobility, rent seeking, local government, litigation |
| JEL: | N0 N4 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed005:91&r=his |
| By: | Robert J. Gordon |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a new analysis of the U. S. economy in the 1920s that is illuminated by contrasts with the 1990s, and it also re-examines the causes of the Great Depression. In both the 1920s and the 1990s the acceleration of productivity growth linked to the delayed effects of previously invented "general purpose technologies" stimulated an increase in fixed investment that became excessive and proved to be unsustainable, while the productivity acceleration helps to account for low inflation in both decades. The uncanny parallel of the stock market boom, bubble, and collapse in 1995-2001 as in 1924-1930, reminds us that business cycles emerge from the complex interplay of multiple factors, not just one. Common elements between the two decades are overshadowed by differences, including the much larger share of agricultural output in the 1920s, the weakness of farm prices throughout the decade, and the role of collapsing farm prices in the pervasive post-1929 downward shift in aggregate demand. Another partly related difference was a high volatility of inventory accumulation that reflected the larger share of agriculture and manufacturing in the economy of the 1920s. Failures of public policy in the 1920s included the absence of deposit insurance, the unit-banking regulations that prevented the diversification of financial risk across regions, and the low margin requirements that exacerbated swings in stock market prices. Further, the 1920s witnessed the advent of protectionism and the sharp curtailment of immigration. The stability of the American economy after the 2000-01 collapse of investment and the stock market proves that good public policy matters, going beyond the narrowly defined operations of monetary and fiscal policy. Such highly diverse policies as banking regulation, deposit insurance, margin rules, reduction of tariffs, and loose restrictions on immigration all combine to make today's American economy more stable and less fragile than in the 1920s. |
| JEL: | E0 E21 E22 E32 N00 N12 |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11778&r=his |
| By: | Mauro Boianovsky |
| Abstract: | The paper investigates Dennis Robertson's effort to defend the Cambridge utilitarian tradition against the so-called "new welfare economics" in the 1950s. Robertson's sustained and isolated endeavor to rescue Marshallian cardinal utility attracted the attention of economists at the time. According to Robertson, welfare economics should be based on cardinal utility, and the ordinalist revolution in the consumer and welfare theories should be rejected. It was only by sticking to the study of the economic or material aspects of welfare under the assumption of measurable utility that the economist would regain its ability to approach economic welfare as an objective of economic policy. |
| JEL: | B21 B31 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:010&r=his |
| By: | Eurilton Araújo; Luciane Carpena; Alexandre Cunha |
| Abstract: | We studied the cyclical and growth properties of Brazilian per capita output from 1850 to 2000. Contrary to the experience of some developed countries, we did not find large changes in the volatility of per capita output. However, we obtained evidence that the oscillations in economic activity became more persistent after World War II. |
| JEL: | C22 E32 N40 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:030&r=his |
| By: | Neville Francis; Valerie A. Ramey (Economics University of California, San Diego) |
| Keywords: | hours, long-run trends, schooling |
| JEL: | E24 O40 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed005:250&r=his |
| By: | Déborah Oliveira Martins dos Reis |
| Abstract: | This work is based on inventories and manuscript censuses (1831-32) and cover the community of Araxá, in the province of Minas Gerais, between 1816 and 1888. We deal with demographic elements (sex, age, origin) of the slave population and present some of the basic elements concerning the slaveholding structure in Araxá. The question of slave natural reproduction and the slave trade are considered. Before, we show the controversy about the economic and demography of slavery in Minas Gerais in the nineteenth century, when the economy in the province was diversified and oriented largely toward domestic markets. In special, revisionist studies are presented. Araxá was an import part of this economy of Minas Gerais. |
| JEL: | N36 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:018&r=his |
| By: | Gregory Clark |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed005:187&r=his |
| By: | Albrecht Ritschl; Martin Uebele |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the comovement of the stock market and of real activity in Germany before World War I under the effcient market hypothesis. We employ multivariate spectral analysis to compare rivaling national product estimates to stock market behavior in the frequency domain. Close comovement of one series with the stock market enables us to decide between various rivaling business cycle chronologies. We find that business cycle dates obtained from deflated national product series are severely distorted by interference with the implicit price deflator. Among the nominal series, the income estimate of Hoffmann (1965) correlates best with the stock market, while the tax based estimate of Hoffmann and Müller (1959) is too smooth especially before 1890. We find impressive comovement between the stock market and nominal wages, a sub-series of Hoffmann's income estimate. We can show that a substantial part of this nominal wage series is driven by data on real investment activity. Our findings confirm the traditional business cycle chronology for Germany of Burns and Mitchell (1946) and Spiethoff (1955), and lead us to discard later, rivaling business cycle chronologies. |
| Keywords: | Business Cycle Chronology, Imperial Germany, Spectral Analysis, Effcient Market Hypothesis |
| JEL: | E32 E44 N13 |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2005-056&r=his |
| By: | Christopher M. Meissner; Jose Ernesto Lopez Cordova (Economics University of Cambridge) |
| Keywords: | democracy, openness, gravity model |
| JEL: | N20 N40 N70 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed005:112&r=his |
| By: | Farley Grubb |
| Abstract: | The monetary powers embedded in the U.S. Constitution were revolutionary and led to a watershed transformation in the nation's monetary structure. They included determining what monies could be legal tender, who could emit fiat paper money, and who could incorporate banks. How the debate at the 1787 Constitutional Convention over these powers evolved and led the Founding Fathers to the specific powers adopted is presented and deconstructed. Why they took this path rather than replicate the successful colonial system and why they codified such powers into supreme law rather than leaving them to legislative debate and enactment are addressed. |
| JEL: | K10 G20 E50 N21 H10 |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11783&r=his |
| By: | André Luís C. de Lourenço |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes that, in spite of some fundamental invariant aspects, the way of exposition of the Minsky's work central concept - the so called Financial Instability Hypothesis - changed significantly throughout his academic productive period; furthermore it assesses the traditional way this concept is exposed does not incorporate important elements from the latest and more mature Minsky's contributions. The paper still states this canonical way to be insufficient to treat contemporary financial crisis phenomenon for lack of updating which incorporates recent institucional changes. |
| JEL: | B22 B59 B31 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:009&r=his |
| By: | Gabriel Galípolo; Paulo Gala; Danilo Araújo Fernandes |
| Abstract: | The work of Douglass North represents today an important reference for those studying issues related to growth and institutional economics. After the book Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (1990) and the Nobel prize in 1993, his contributions seem to have been incorporated among economists, specially in the debate of growth and its determinants. There are still today some controversies regarding the nature of his contributions. Some would argue that his ideas are clearly from a neoclassical strand, while others would say that much of his work is affiliated with heterodox thinking. The objective of this paper is to contribute to this discussion. We argue here that one of the important influences in the work of Douglass North comes from Marx. North seems to use some of the Marxist concepts in his works of 1981 and 1990 in an inverted manner: he accepts Marxist categories but rejects materialism. North uses Marxist theory heuristically, taking advantage of its elements to build an alternative model to rational choice approaches. |
| JEL: | B31 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:013&r=his |
| By: | Sharon Kozicki; P.A. Tinsley |
| Abstract: | This paper uses real-time briefing forecasts prepared for the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to provide estimates of historical changes in the design of US monetary policy and in the implied central bank target for inflation. Empirical results and FOMC transcripts support a neglected interpretation of policy during the Great Inflation of the 1970’s. |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedkrw:rwp05-04&r=his |
| By: | Jean-Jacques Friboulet (Chaire d'Histoire et de Politique Economiques) |
| Date: | 2004–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fri:fribow:382&r=his |
| By: | Stephen Redding; Daniel M. Sturm |
| Abstract: | This paper exploits the division of Germany after the Second World War and thereunification of East and West Germany in 1990 as a natural experiment to provide evidenceof the importance of market access for economic development. In line with a standard neweconomic geography model, we find that following division cities in West Germany that wereclose to the new border between East and West Germany experienced a substantial decline inpopulation growth relative to other West German cities. We provide several pieces ofevidence that the decline of the border cities can be entirely accounted for by their loss inmarket access and is neither driven by differences in industrial structure nor differences in thedegree of warrelated destruction. Finally, we also find some first evidence of a recovery ofthe border cities after the re-unification of East and West Germany. |
| Keywords: | Market Access, Economic Geography, German Division, German Reunification |
| JEL: | F15 N94 O18 |
| Date: | 2005–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp0688&r=his |
| By: | Dale W. Jorgenson; Koji Nomura |
| Abstract: | This paper presents new data on the sources of growth for the Japanese economy over the period 1960- 2000. The principal innovation is the incorporation of detailed information for individual industries, including those involved in the production of computers, communications equipment, and electronic components as information technology equipment. We show that economic growth is dominated by investments and productivity growth in information technology, both for individual industries and the economy as a whole. We also show that the revival of total factor productivity growth accounts for the modest resurgence of the Japanese economy since 1995. |
| JEL: | C82 D24 E23 |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11800&r=his |
| By: | José Flávio Motta |
| Abstract: | We study the internal slave trade characteristics in Constituição (Piracicaba) in the period 1861-1880, when the province of São Paulo was under the impact of the coffee culture expansion from the Paraíba Valley to the West. Using the registers of the transactions of slaves, we analyze some demographic (sex, age, origin) and economic (price) variables of the commercialized people. We consider, also, the information about the local of residence of the sellers, buyers, and their eventual attorneys, mapping the distinct attributes of the inter and intra provincial trades. Finally, we analyze some effects of slave legislation, mainly of the Ventre Livre Law of 1871. The results presented are part of a broader research, in which the internal slave trade characteristics are studied in various localities of the province of São Paulo during the last three decades of the Brazilian slavery. |
| JEL: | N36 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:019&r=his |
| By: | Pedro Paulo Zahluth Bastos |
| Abstract: | The paper studies the development strategy in Brazil along Vargas' second term, focusing the interpretations which emphasize either the assumed incoherence of his cabinet, or its alleged economic orthodoxy, associated with Horacio Lafer's term as Minister of Finance. The central argument is that Lafer's role is not, at first, a sign of orthodoxy nor of development incoherence, as long as his ideas and actions were neither orthodox nor controlled all government economic bodies. After evaluating Lafer's postures regarding Banco do Brasil credit policy (lead by Ricardo Jafet), the paper concludes with an evaluation of his ideas and actions related to fiscal and financial policies, consistently articulated to the economic development strategy of Vargas's second term. |
| JEL: | G28 O16 O19 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:020&r=his |
| By: | Paulo Rogério Rodrigues Maduro Júnior; Renato Leite Marcondes |
| Abstract: | This paper showed that the credit market grew not only in amount of money following the population growth of the city, as also supplanting. The financing conditions had also tended to improve in the studied period, with the reduction of the taxes of interests and allonge of the stated period, even so we verify this last one only for the borrowers of bigger fund. The increase of the participation of the banks concomitantly the entrance of small borrowers tended to get worse the concentration indices. Another elucidated important aspect was the form found for the agents to surpass problems of information asymmetry. The personal kinship had made possible in the credit supply, not burdening the functioning of the market. The arbitration possibility also contributed so that these personal characteristics if did not reflect in extraordinary increases of the tax of interests. |
| JEL: | N16 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2005:021&r=his |