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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2013‒11‒09
thirteen papers chosen by |
| By: | Leonor Freire Costa; Nuno Palma; Jaime Reis |
| Abstract: | Newly assembled macroeconomic statistics for early modern Portugal reveal one of Europe’s most vigorous colonial traders and at the same time one of its least successful growth records. Using an estimated model in the spirit of Allen (2009) we conclude that intercontinental trade had a substantial and increasingly positive impact on economic growth. In the heyday of colonial expansion, eliminating the economic links to empire would have reduced Portugal’s per capita income by roughly a fifth. While the empire helped the domestic economy it was not sufficient to annul the tendency towards decline in relation to Europe’s advanced core which set in from the 17th century onwards. We conclude that the explanation for Portugal’s long-term backwardness must be sought primarily in domestic conditions |
| Keywords: | The European Little Divergence , Early Modern Economic Growth , Economics of Empires |
| JEL: | N10 N13 N70 N74 O47 O57 |
| Date: | 2013–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:whrepe:wp13-07&r=his |
| By: | Remi Jedwab; Alexander Moradi |
| Abstract: | What is the impact of modern transportation technology on long-run economic change in poor countries with high trade costs? Rail construction in colonial Sub-Saharan Africa provides a natural experiment: 90% of African railroad lines were built before independence, in a context where headloading was the dominant transportation technology. Using new data on railroads and cities over one century within one country, Ghana, and Africa as a whole, we find large permanent effects of transportation technology on economic development. First, colonial railroads had strong effects on commercial agriculture and urban growth before independence. We exploit various identification strategies to ensure these effects are causal. Second, using the fact that African railroads fell largely out of use post-independence, due to mismanagement and lack of maintenance, we show that colonial railroads had a persistent impact on cities. While colonial sunk investments (e.g., schools, hospitals and roads) partly contributed to urban path dependence, evidence suggests that railroad cities persisted because their early emergence served as a mechanism to coordinate contemporary investments for each subsequent period. Railroad cities are also wealthier than non-railroad cities of similar sizes today. This suggests a world where shocks to economic geography can trigger an equilibrium in which cities will emerge to facilitate the accumulation of factors, and thus have long-term effects on economic growth. |
| Keywords: | Transportation Technology; Development; Path Dependence; Growth |
| JEL: | R4 R1 O1 O3 N97 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:csa:wpaper:2013-17&r=his |
| By: | Martha J. Bailey; Melanie E. Guldi; Brad J. Hershbein |
| Abstract: | Dramatic fertility swings over the last 100 years have been the subject of large literatures in demography and economics. Recent research has claimed that the post-1960 fertility decline is exceptional enough to constitute a “Second Demographic Transition.” The empirical case for a Second Demographic Transition, however, rests largely on comparisons of the post-1960 period with the baby boom era, which was itself exceptional in many ways. Our analysis of the U.S. instead compares the fertility decline in the 1960s and 1970s to the earlier twentieth century fertility decline, especially the 1920s and 1930s. Our findings affirm that both periods experienced similar declines in fertility rates and that the affected cohorts averaged the same number of children born over their lifetimes. In contrast to conventional wisdom, the mean age of household formation (by marriage or non-marital cohabitation) and first birth are almost identical for women reaching childbearing age in the 1920s and 1930s and today. Three features, however, distinguish the post-1960 period: (1) the convergence in the distribution of completed childbearing around a two-child mode and a decrease in childlessness; (2) the decoupling of marriage and motherhood; and (3) a transformation in the relationship between the educational attainment of mothers and childbearing outcomes. These three features of the twentieth century fertility decline have implications for children’s opportunities, children’s educational achievement, and widening inequality in U.S. labor markets. |
| JEL: | J01 J1 J11 J12 J13 N3 N32 |
| Date: | 2013–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:19599&r=his |
| By: | KIYOTA Kozo; OKAZAKI Tetsuji |
| Abstract: | This paper attempts to provide a systematic analysis on the effects of industrial policy in postwar Japan. Among the various types of Japanese industrial policy, this paper focuses on the removal of de facto import quotas through the foreign exchange allocation system. Analyzing a panel of 100 Japanese manufacturing industries in the 1960s, we find that the effects of the quota removal on productivity were limited—the effects were significantly positive, but time was required before they appeared. On the other hand, the effects of tariffs on labor productivity were negative although insignificant. One possible reason for this is that the Japanese government increased tariff rates before removing the import quotas and maintained high tariff rates afterward. As a result, the effects of the Japanese industrial policy in the 1960s might be smaller than widely believed in the Japanese economic history literature. |
| Date: | 2013–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:13093&r=his |
| By: | Farley Grubb (Department of Economics,University of Delaware) |
| Abstract: | The purpose of Chapter 3 is to convince the reader that the Continental dollar was a zero-interest bearer bond and not a fiat currency—thereby overturning 230 years of scholarly interpretation; to show that the public and leading Americans knew and acted on this fact, and to illustrate the ideal performance of the Continental dollar as a zero-interest bearer bond. The purpose of establishing the ideal performance is to create a benchmark against which empirical measures of depreciation can be evaluated. |
| Keywords: | Bearer Bonds, Continental Congress, Credible Commitment, Depreciation, Discounting, Legal Tender Laws, Paper Money, War Finance |
| JEL: | E51 E52 E61 E63 H56 H63 N11 N21 N41 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dlw:wpaper:13-10.&r=his |
| By: | Hoyt Bleakley; Louis Cain; Joseph Ferrie |
| Abstract: | This study examines a wide range of health and economic outcomes in a sample of Irish- and African-American Civil War veterans during the postbellum period. The information in our data is from a variety of circumstances across an individual’s life span, and we use that to attempt to explain whether the disparities in mortality are related to disparities in life experiences. We find evidence of disparities between Irish and blacks and others in such variables as occupation and wealth, morbidity, and mortality. The data do not reveal disparate outcomes for all blacks and Irish; they only reveal inferior outcomes for slave-born blacks and foreign-born Irish. For the freeborn blacks and native-born Irish, for whom the historical tradition suggests discrimination and prejudice, the data only hint at such problems. |
| JEL: | N11 |
| Date: | 2013–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:19605&r=his |
| By: | Nguyen Thang DAO (CORE, Université catholique de Louvain, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium and Vietnam Centre for Economic and Policy Research (VEPR), Hanoi, Vietnam); Julio DÁVILA (CORE, Université catholique de Louvain, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium and Paris School of Economics, Paris, France) |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a unied growth model capturing issues of endogenous economic growth, fertility, and technological progress considering the effects of geographical conditions to interpret the long transition from Malthusian stagnation, through demographic transition to modern sustained growth, and the great divergence in GDP per capita across societies. The paper shows how the interplay of size of "land" and its "accessibility" and technological progress play a very important role for an economy to escape Malthusian stagnation and to take off. Thus differences in these geographical factors lead to differences in take off timings, generating great divergence across societies. |
| Keywords: | Geographical land, land accessible, level of technology, human capital, fertility |
| JEL: | J11 O11 O33 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dpc:wpaper:1713&r=his |
| By: | Emanuele Felice (Departament d'Economia i d'Història Econòmica, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona); Josep Pujol Andreu (Departament d'Economia i d'Història Econòmica, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | The article presents and discusses long-run series of per capita GDP and life expectancy for Italy and Spain (1861-2008). After refining the available estimates in order to make them comparable and with the avail of the most up-to-date researches, the main changes in the international economy and in technological and sociobiological regimes are used as analytical frameworks to re-assess the performances of the two countries; then structural breaks are searched for and Granger causality between the two variables is investigated. The long-run convergence notwithstanding, significant cyclical differences between the two countries can be detected: Spain began to modernize later in GDP, with higher volatility in life expectancy until recent decades; by contrast, Italy showed a more stable pattern of life expectancy, following early breaks in per capita GDP, but also a negative GDP break in the last decades. Our series confirm that, whereas at the early stages of development differences in GDP tend to mirror those in life expectancy, this is no longer true at later stages of development, when, if any, there seems to be a negative correlation between GDP and life expectancy: this finding is in line with the thesis of a non-monotonic relation between life expectancy and GDP and is supported by tests of Granger causality. |
| Keywords: | Italy, Spain, GDP, life expectancy, unified growth theory, demographic transition |
| JEL: | N13 N14 N33 N34 O47 O52 |
| Date: | 2013–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aub:uhewps:2013_06&r=his |
| By: | Francisco José Medina Albadalejo (Departament d’Anàlisi Econòmica, Universitat de València); Josep Pujol Andreu (Departament d'Economia i d'Història Econòmica, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | Desde su nacimiento a mediados del siglo XIX en Rochdale (Gran Bretaña), el movimiento cooperativo de consumo se expandió rápidamente por toda Europa. Conocer cómo funcionaron estas entidades puede proporcionar nuevos elementos de análisis sobre el consumo de alimentos, especialmente en aquellas regiones o ciudades donde tuvieron una mayor difusión. Las cooperativas de consumo distribuían alimentos básicos entre sus asociados, por lo que pudieron constituir un importante mecanismo de acceso a los alimentos en las primeras fases de la transición nutricional. En esta investigación se propone una primera aproximación a la evolución del cooperativismo de consumo en España entre mediados del siglo XIX y la Guerra Civil, prestando especial atención a su desarrollo cronológico y geográfico; estructura ideológica; organización y gestión interna; y a su impacto en la dieta. Las primeras conclusiones indican que el cooperativismo de consumo en España se desarrolló más tarde que en otros países de Europa, y que se localizó en las regiones más industrializadas y urbanizadas del país. Este cooperativismo estuvo inicialmente muy vinculado a las organizaciones obreras, y más tarde también bajo la influencia de la Iglesia Católica. Principalmente distribuían alimentos básicos a precios de mercado entre los asociados y sus familiares, a los que además se les ofrecían servicios de tipo asistencial, cultural y educativo. Es decir, eran cooperativas que respondían al modelo rochdaliano y que no ayudaron en gran medida a la difusión de nuevos alimentos en el marco de la transición nutricional, pero sí a mantener los niveles de vida en segmentos de población urbana con bajos ingresos que debían acceder a los productos básicos por vía monetaria. |
| Keywords: | Cooperativismo de consumo, historia de la alimentación, modelo de transición nutricional, España, siglos XIX y XX. |
| Date: | 2013–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aub:uhewps:2013_04&r=his |
| By: | NAOI Megumi; OKAZAKI Tetsuji |
| Abstract: | How did the postwar newer democracies, whose governments faced pressure from both vested special interests and voters, achieve trade liberalization? Exploiting the case of trade liberalization in Japan in the 1960s, this paper addresses this question. Because the benefits and costs of trade liberalization are unequally distributed among the population, generating winners and losers, trade liberalization is inherently a highly political issue. The Japanese government and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leaders used two tactics to build a coalition of legislators for trade liberalization. While they used sequencing of liberalization to buy off support from the legislators of the Upper House, they relied on side payments for the legislators of the Lower House. This strategy choice was consistent with the difference in the sizes of the electoral districts between the Upper House and the Lower House. |
| Date: | 2013–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:13090&r=his |
| By: | Ann Carpenter |
| Abstract: | Communities have faced a variety of crises in recent decades, including more frequent and severe natural disasters. As applied to disasters, resilience entails the ability of a community to rebound following a hurricane, earthquake, or other disturbance. Given the importance of resilience in promoting an effective recovery, the factors that contribute to community resilience are of great interest to scholars and practitioners in many fields. Recent work has examined, for example, socioeconomic indicators that contribute to greater social vulnerability and organizational structures that contribute to a more effective recovery. The importance of strong social networks in resilience is among the most oft-repeated lessons learned in recent scholarship. This paper examines the intersection of three connected threads in the literature to understand one particular aspect of resilience: how the built environment contributes to greater resilience by supporting and encouraging strong social networks. Given that social networks positively influence resilience and that the built environment exerts influence on social networks, this literature review examines evidence linking strong social networks, a varied and integrated built environment, and greater resilience. |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedacd:2013-02&r=his |
| By: | Dixon, Keith |
| Abstract: | Purpose – University academics are important to the discovery and dissemination of knowledge about accounting practice and accounting learning. This article explores the consequences for the Pacific society of New Zealand of how these discovery and dissemination activities have come to be assessed for performance management, formulaic public funding and offshore accreditation. Design/methodology/approach – A longitudinal, bibliometric approach is taken to how knowledge about accounting practice and accounting learning in New Zealand has been disseminated over the past half century. The approach lends itself to the question of whether the trends revealed in the bibliometrics are suited to New Zealand audiences, including students, accountants, policymakers, Aotearoa New Zealand’s indigenous people and its diverse recent-settler populations, and Pacific New Zealand Society. One hundred and sixty accounting journals and several professional magazines are searched for articles based on empirical materials drawn from New Zealand. Findings – The findings relate to the geographical locations of the editors and the rankings of the periodicals that articles have been published in, and the topics the articles cover. The findings are interpreted in the broad contexts of academic activities, university development, and tertiary education policy and funding. Of the three activities associated with accounting in New Zealand universities, research has been the last to develop, starting with occasional articles penned by a small band of professors and published in the Chartered Accountants Journal (CAJ) and The Accounting Review. Now, research is often accorded the highest priority, as reflected in formal individual academic performance measurement systems, and related institutional incentives and penalties (exemplified by the Performance Based Research Fund of 2012). Measurement is conducted at the individual and institutional level, using criteria linked to lists of periodicals that are decidedly Atlantocentric. The CAJ has been deserted in favour of academic journals, virtually all based outside New Zealand. Academics have modified the way they report to suit the foreign editors and readerships. Publication patterns continue to change. Strong incentives and coercements seem to exist for New Zealand-based academics to behave selfishly for short-term survival. These persuaders seem to be wielded by a quasi-indigenous élite seeking to mimic their supposed superior counterparts elsewhere; and to dominate their subjects, and so exercise power and maintain their status. This is regardless of what might be better from a local, societal point of view. To publish about New Zealand, there is some advantage in studying areas in which New Zealand is seen as a “world leader” (e.g., Structural Adjustment, New Public Management, environmental accounting). This contrasts with areas about which the outside world is oblivious (e.g., New Zealand’s multicultural array of people and organisations, including the Maori people) or areas in which New Zealand lacks differences of “world” interest (e.g., financial collapses and director impropriety, what can be learnt from stock exchange data). Research limitations/implications – The research is confined to basic bibliometrics (a publication analysis, rather than citation or co-citation analyses), anecdotes and comparison with secondary sources. Originality/value – This study is concerned with whether knowledge about accounting practice and accounting learning in New Zealand is being disseminated in a way that suits those likely to be most interested and affected. It is distinct from most studies of this ilk, which attempt to rank journals or are about researcher productivity and author placement. |
| Keywords: | Higher education, Bibliometrics, Colonialism, Criticism, Accounting history, Accounting research, New Zealand, Research assessment |
| JEL: | I2 I23 M4 N3 Z18 |
| Date: | 2013–11–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:51100&r=his |
| By: | Thomas C. Baxter, Jr. |
| Abstract: | Remarks at the Committee on International Monetary Law of the International Law Association Meeting, Madrid, Spain. |
| Keywords: | Lenders of last resort ; Banks and banking, Central ; Bank liquidity ; Recessions ; European Central Bank ; Federal Reserve System ; Federal Reserve Bank of New York ; Systemic risk ; Public welfare ; Investment banking ; Bank supervision |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednsp:114&r=his |