|
on Business, Economic and Financial History |
|
Issue of 2008‒06‒13
thirteen papers chosen by |
| By: | Guillaume Daudin; Matthias Morys; Kevin H. O'Rourke |
| Abstract: | This paper surveys the causes and consequences of late 19th century globalization, as well as the anti-globalization backlash of that period. |
| Keywords: | Trade, Migration, Capital Flows, History |
| JEL: | N73 N33 N23 |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:wpaper:395&r=his |
| By: | David Galenson |
| Abstract: | The back story of twentieth-century art concerns the changing intellectual, economic, and technological setting that would cause the art of the past century to be fundamentally different from that of all earlier times. The single most important change involved the structure of the market for advanced art. Innovation had always been the hallmark of important art, but since the Renaissance nearly all artists were constrained in the degree to which they could innovate by the need to satisfy powerful individual patrons or institutions. The overthrow of the Salon monopoly of the art market in Paris and the rise of a competitive market for art in the late nineteenth century removed this constraint, and gave advanced artists an unprecedented freedom to innovate. Conspicuous innovation subsequently became necessary for important modern art. All artists recognized the increased demand for innovation, but it would be conceptual artists who could take advantage of it more quickly than their experimental counterparts. Early in the twentieth century Pablo Picasso became the prototype of the conceptual innovator who maximized the economic value of his inventiveness in the new market setting, and during the remainder of the century, a series of young conceptual artists followed him in producing more radical innovations, and engaging in more extreme new forms of behavior, than had ever existed before, making this an era of revolutionary artistic change. |
| JEL: | J01 |
| Date: | 2008–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14066&r=his |
| By: | Kevin H. O'Rourke; Leandro Prados de la Escosura; Guillaume Daudin |
| Abstract: | This paper surveys the rise and fall of the European mercantilist system, and the transition to the modern, well-integrated international economy of the 19th century. It also surveys the literature on the links between trade and economic growth during the period, and on the economic effects of empire. |
| Keywords: | trade, empire, history |
| JEL: | N43 N73 |
| Date: | 2008–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:whrepe:wp08-09&r=his |
| By: | Antonella Fazio Vargas; Antonella Fazio Vargas y Fabio Sánchez Torres |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to analyze the effects of land concentration prompted by the distribution of disentailed Church land during the second half of the 19th century on the accumulation of human capital, in early 20th century Colombia1. Utilizing existing primary sources on the process of land disentailment and the 1912 National Census, descriptive statistics and econometric evidence show a significant and negative relationship between the amount of disentailed land during the 1870s at municipal level with literacy and school enrollment rates of males in 1912. |
| Date: | 2008–05–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000089:004716&r=his |
| By: | Congleton, R.D. |
| Abstract: | Constitutional democracy in the United States emerged very gradually through a long series of constitutional bargains in the course of three centuries. No revolutions or revolutionary threats were necessary or evident during most of the three century–long transition to constitutional democracy in America. As in Europe, legislative authority gradually increased, wealth-based suffrage laws were gradually eliminated, the secret ballot was introduced, and the power of elected officials increased. For the most part, this occurred peacefully and lawfully, with few instances of open warfare or revolutionary threats. A theory of constitutional exchange grounded in rational choice models provides a good explanation for the distinctive features of American constitutional history, as it does for much of the West, although it does less well at explaining the timing of some changes. |
| Date: | 2007–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:0764&r=his |
| By: | Tetsuji Okazaki (Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo) |
| Abstract: | The Japanese aircraft industry, which had been in a very small scale before the Second World War, became the largest manufacturing industry at the end of the War. In this paper, we explored the basis of the growth of the aircraft industry during the war, focusing on No.5 Works of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Co.. It was made clear that the supply of basic inputs sharply increased. Labor force and "machinery parts" were sufficiently supplied and either of them was not a binding constraint of production. The binding constraint was given by supply of "special parts." To put it differently, expansion of aircraft production was realized, as the supply of "special parts" increased. Increase of "special parts" supply and still faster increase of "machinery parts" supply were achieved thorough expansion of supplier network both in terms of number of suppliers and the geographical area they were located. |
| Date: | 2008–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tky:fseres:2008cf566&r=his |
| By: | Ciccarelli, Carlo; Fenoaltea, Stefano |
| Abstract: | This paper presents national and regional time-series estimates of metalmaking production in post-Unification Italy. The former broadly confirm their immediate predecessors; the latter are altogether new. The regional series evidence the industry's geographic concentration: the significant producers were Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, Tuscany, Umbria, and Campania, but production per capita significantly exceeded the national average only in Liguria and, in the later years, in Umbria and Tuscany. |
| JEL: | N63 L61 N13 |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:8983&r=his |
| By: | Katja Rost; Emil Inauen; Margit Osterloh; Bruno S. Frey |
| Abstract: | The corporate governance structure of monasteries is analyzed to derive new insights into solving agency problems of modern corporations. In the long history of monasteries, some abbots and monks lined their own pockets and monasteries were undisciplined. Monasteries developed special systems to check these excesses and therefore were able to survive for centuries. These features are studied from an economic perspective. Benedictine monasteries in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and German speaking Switzerland have an average lifetime of almost 500 years and only a quarter of them broke up as a result of agency problems. We argue that this is due to an appropriate governance structure, relying strongly on the intrinsic motivation of the members and on internal control mechanisms. |
| Keywords: | Corporate Governance, Principal-Agency-Theory, Psychological Economics, Monasteries, Benedictine Order |
| JEL: | D73 G3 L14 Z12 |
| Date: | 2008–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:iewwpx:374&r=his |
| By: | Aidt, T.; Jensen, P.S. |
| Abstract: | The introduction of income taxation was a landmark in the development of the fiscal state in Western Europe and elsewhere. This paper presents an event history study of the adoption of the income tax in 11 Western European countries between 1815 and 1941. We find evidence that social learning, reductions in tax collection costs and to a lesser extend spending pressures played a significant role for the adoption decision. Surprisingly, we also .nd evidence that the extension of the franchise reduced the likelihood of adoption of the income tax. |
| Keywords: | Voting franchise, social learning, tax collection technology, public finance, income taxation. |
| JEL: | D7 H1 |
| Date: | 2007–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:0766&r=his |
| By: | Gregory Clark; Kevin H. O'Rourke; Alan M. Taylor |
| Abstract: | For two decades, the consensus explanation of the British Industrial Revolution has placed technological change and the supply side at center stage, affording little or no role for demand or overseas trade. Recently, alternative explanations have placed an emphasis on the importance of trade with New World colonies, and the expanded supply of raw cotton it provided. We test both hypotheses using calibrated general equilibrium models of the British economy and the rest of the world for 1760 and 1850. Neither claim is supported. Trade was vital for the progress of the industrial revolution; but it was trade with the rest of the world, not the American colonies, that allowed Britain to export its rapidly expanding textile output and achieve growth through extreme specialization in response to shifting comparative advantage. |
| JEL: | F11 F14 F43 N10 N70 O40 |
| Date: | 2008–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14077&r=his |
| By: | Golden, M.; Picci, L. |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the political determinants of the distribution of infrastructure expenditures by the Italian government to the country’s 92 provinces between 1953 and 1994. Extending implications of theories of legislative behavior to the context of open-list proportional representation, we examine whether individually powerful legislators and ruling parties direct spending to core or marginal electoral districts, and whether opposition parties share resources via a norm of universalism. We show that when districts elect politically more powerful deputies from the governing parties, they receive more investments. We interpret this as indicating that legislators with political resources reward their core voters by investing in public works in their districts. The governing parties, by contrast, are not able to discipline their own members of parliament sufficiently to target the parties’ areas of core electoral strength. Finally, we find no evidence that a norm of universalism operates to steer resources to areas when the main opposition party gains more votes. |
| Keywords: | Pork barrel, distributive politics, electoral systems, Italy, public spending, infrastructure. |
| Date: | 2007–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:0767&r=his |
| By: | Scheltjens, Werner |
| Abstract: | In this paper, I present an attempt to generalize the results of a historical case-study on the foundation of St. Petersburg and its influence on Dutch maritime shipping in the Gulf of Finland and Archangel in 1703-1740. In order to do so, I present the case itself first, followed by a description of the methods applied to its study and a detailed overview of the analytical results. The interplay of local and regional economic policies, infrastructural developments and the location of industries plays a major role in the organization of maritime shipping destined to the places and regions that were affected by it. The actual effect on the organization of maritime shipping, however, can be rather unexpected. The results of this case-study show that the impact of a new port on the organization of maritime shipping is anything but straightforward. The reason for this is that maritime shipping is an economic activity in its own right: maritime shipping is defined not only by the nodes it connects nor by its own social structures exclusively, but by both elements at the same time. In adopting organizational strategies varying from flexibility to repetitiveness in the choice of both cargoes and routes, maritime shipping is bounded by the origin of the shipmaster, the size of his ship and the type of cargo that he was specialized in. Thus, in order to understand the impact of a new port on the organization of maritime shipping it is necessary to take into account both the interplay of economic geographical circumstances and the complex organizational structure of maritime shipping. Three types of generalization are possible on the basis of the results of this case-study. From a historiographical point of view, the analytical results of this paper serve as an answer to existing assumptions about specialization in early-modern maritime shipping. On a methodological level, it is possible to generalize the resuls of this case-study in the form of a taxonomy of organizational strategies and behaviour of populations of shipmasters. This, in turn, is proof of the successful application of evolutionary theory to a profoundly economic historical topic. |
| Keywords: | early-modern maritime shipping; evolutionary economics; methodology; evolutionary framework; homo sapiens oeconomicus |
| JEL: | N01 N0 N7 |
| Date: | 2008–04–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:9054&r=his |
| By: | Miguel Alonso Sarzosa |
| Abstract: | En Colombia la democracia ha sido el mecanismo normal para acceder al poder. Sin embargo, desde los albores de la república los enfrentamientos bélicos partidistas y los cambios constitucionales fueron una constante. Este trabajo muestra cómo en el siglo XIX en Colombia, los cambios constitucionales estaban íntimamente relacionados con la popularidad del partido que gobernaba. A través de cambios constitucionales y utilizando el voto censitario económico, dicho partido buscaba seleccionar la masa votante con la que maximizaría su probabilidad de ganar las siguientes elecciones. El trabajo demuestra la existencia histórica del fenómeno, proponiéndolo como un mecanismo de manipulación electoral diferente al clientelismo o el populismo, y luego desarrolla un modelo teórico, a partir del modelo de votación probabilística, que muestra los incentivos que tenían los políticos para cambiar las constituciones. |
| Date: | 2008–06–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000089:004714&r=his |