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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2006‒02‒19
six papers chosen by |
| By: | Murat Iyigun (University of Colorado, Sabanci University and IZA Bonn) |
| Abstract: | This paper emphasizes that the evolution of religious institutions in Europe was influenced by the expansionary threat posed by the Ottoman Empire five centuries ago. This threat intensified in the second half of the 15th century and peaked in the first half of the 16th century with the Ottoman Empire’s territorial expansion in Eastern Europe. Various historical accounts have suggested that the Ottomans’ rise helped the Protestant Reform movement as well as its various offshoots, such as Zwinglianism, Anabaptism and Calvinism, survive their infancy and mature. In an attempt to conceptualize these effects, I develop a model in which social, cultural or religious affiliation between otherwise heterogenous and conflicting groups can lead to cooperation (at the very least, to a secession of hostilities) when such groups are faced with the threat of potentially stronger rivals of a different affiliation. The overall patterns of conflict in continental Europe as well as those between the Protestant Reformers and the Catholic Counter-Reform movement between the 15th and 17th centuries support the idea that Ottoman military conquests in Europe significantly reduced intra-European feuds. |
| Keywords: | cooperation, conflict, religion, institutions, economic development |
| JEL: | C72 D74 N33 N43 O10 |
| Date: | 2006–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1973&r=his |
| By: | Galor, Oded; Mountford, Andrew |
| Abstract: | This research argues that the rapid expansion of international trade in the second phase of the industrial revolution has played a major role in the timing of demographic transitions across countries and has thereby been a significant determinant of the distribution of world population and a prime cause of the 'Great Divergence' in income per capita across countries in the last two centuries. The analysis suggests that international trade had an asymmetrical effect on the evolution of industrial and non-industrial economies. While in the industrial nations the gains from trade were directed primarily towards investment in education and growth in output per capita, a significant portion of the gains from trade in non-industrial nations was channelled towards population growth. |
| Keywords: | demographic transition; growth; human capital; industrial revolution; international trade |
| JEL: | F11 F43 J10 N30 O40 |
| Date: | 2006–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5490&r=his |
| By: | Ivan Paya (Universidad de Alicante); David A. Peel (University Management School) |
| Abstract: | Hegwood and Papell (2002) conclude on the basis of analysis in a linear framework that long-run purchasing power parity (PPP)\ does not hold for sixteen real exchange rate series, analyzed in Diebold, Husted, and Rush (1991) for the period 1792-1913, under the Gold Standard. Rather, purchasing power parity deviations are mean-reverting to a changing equilibrium -a quasi PPP (QPPP) theory. We analyze the real exchange rate adjustment mechanism for their data set assuming a nonlinear adjustment process allowing for both a constant and a mean shifting equilibrium. Our results confirm that real exchange rates at that time were stationary, symmetric, nonlinear processes that revert to a non-constant equilibrium rate. Speeds of adjustment were much quicker when breaks were allowed. |
| Keywords: | Purchasing Power Parity, ESTAR, Bootstrapping. |
| JEL: | F31 C15 C22 C51 |
| Date: | 2004–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ivi:wpasad:2004-24&r=his |
| By: | Toshihiro Okubo (IUHEI, The Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva) |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this paper is to discuss the trading system in the interwar period concerning the Japanese Empire by means of border effect analysis in the gravity model. The results show sizeable and steadily increasing trading bloc border effects from the 1910s through the 1930s. This sizeable border effect might have resulted from many possible factors: trade diversion and creation due to increased protectionism and industrialisation in Korea and Formosa, certain political factors, and Japanese migration to Korea and Formosa, which contributed to a 52% increase of bloc border effects in mainland Japan. |
| Keywords: | Trade Blocs; Gravity Model; Bloc Border Effect; Trade Diversion and Creation, Migration. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gii:giihei:heiwp03-2006&r=his |
| By: | Czarniawska, Barbara (Gothenburg Research Institute); Gustavsson, Eva (Gothenburg Research Institute) |
| Abstract: | In this text, we examine Donna Haraway’s idea of a liberating potential of cyborgization first in the subsequent versions of Stepford Wives (the novel, the 1975 movie, and the 2004 movie), and second in the evolution of the character of a cyberwoman, from the book, Do androids dream electric sheep? (1977), through its film version, Blade Runner (1983), to William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) and Idoru (1996), ending with Trinity from Matrix trilogy. We show that cyborgization does not automatically denote liberalization; and suggest that the much greater popularity of Matrix films compared to the intellectual projects of William Gibson show that stereotypes and strong plots survive, finding ever new forms of expression. We end the paper pointing out the relevance of popular culture models for work in contemporary homes and other workplaces. |
| Keywords: | cyberwoman; cyborgization; stereotypes; strong plots |
| Date: | 2006–02–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhb:gungri:2006_002&r=his |
| By: | Simon Deakin |
| Abstract: | It is widely believed that the legal institution of the contract of employment is currently undergoing a conceptual crisis as a result of changes in labour markets, the organisation of production, and the form of the enterprise. A historical and comparative perspective, however, indicates that conceptual crises of this kind are nothing new, and have occurred periodically in the systems of western Europe since the industrial revolution. The employment form serves important functions in a market economy even in an era of deregulation and liberalization, and is unlikely to be replaced by a radically new model in the near future. |
| Keywords: | labour law, contract, employment relationship |
| JEL: | J28 K31 |
| Date: | 2005–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cbr:cbrwps:wp317&r=his |