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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2013‒12‒15
39 papers chosen by |
| By: | Matthias Morys; Martin Ivanov |
| Abstract: | Relying on dynamic factor business cycle indices for five South-East European countries (Austria(-Hungary), Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Serbia/Yugoslavia), we document steadily increasing synchronisation as part of a pan-European business cycle before 1913 and the emergence of a regional business cycle (including and radiating from Germany) in the interwar period. These dynamics were largely driven by trade, involving initially England, France and Germany but increasingly centred on Germany. Our results also show that the Balkan countries travelled a long way from an economic backwater of Europe in the 1870s to a much more integrated part of the European economy six decades later. |
| Keywords: | South-East European business cycle, national historical accounts, common dynamic factor analysis |
| JEL: | N13 N14 C43 E32 |
| Date: | 2013–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yor:cherry:13/01&r=his |
| By: | Robert Allen |
| Abstract: | This paper compares historical poverty baskets to modern food security and poverty lines.� Changes in the historical baskets and indexing methods are proposed to bring historical studies into better alignment with modern measures as well as with historically based estimates of energy requirements.� In addition, it is argued that modern poverty measures could be improved by emulating the historical methods. |
| Keywords: | poverty measurement, poverty line, subsistence ratio, nutritional standards, food security |
| JEL: | I32 N30 O15 |
| Date: | 2013–12–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:wpaper:685&r=his |
| By: | Kevin D. Hoover |
| Abstract: | Trygve Haavelmo’s The Probability Approach in Econometrics (1944) has been widely regarded as the foundation document of modern econometrics. Nevertheless, its significance has been interpreted in widely different ways. Some modern economists regard it as a blueprint for a provocative, but ultimately unsuccessful, program dominated by the need for a priori theoretical identification of econometric models. They call for new techniques that better acknowledge the interrelationship of theory and data. Others credit Haavelmo with an approach that focuses on statistical adequacy rather than theoretical identification. They see many of Haavelmo’s deepest insights as having been unduly neglected. The current paper uses bibliometric techniques and a close reading of econometrics articles and textbooks to trace the way in which the economics profession received, interpreted, and transmitted Haavelmo’s ideas. A key irony is that the first group calls for a reform of econometric thinking that goes several steps beyond Haavelmo’s initial vision; while the second group argues that essentially what the first group advocates was already in Haavelmo’s Probability Approach from the beginning. |
| Keywords: | Trygve Haavelmo, econometrics, history of econometrics, the probability approach, econometric methodology, Cowles Commission |
| JEL: | B23 B40 C10 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hec:heccee:2012-4&r=his |
| By: | Paul, Duguid |
| Abstract: | In 1863, a one-term senator introduced a trademark bill to the California legislature that the Daily Alta California at first reported as of little more than parochial interest. In fact, when seen in local context, the bill might seem to have been aimed primarily at the senator's own business interests. Yet the ensuing law represents the first trademark registration law in the common law jurisdictions. As such, the law is particularly intriguing, because standard histories of law and business usually credit manufacturing interests and states for pioneering trademark law, and in 1863 California was hardly a classic manufacturing state. This essay thus attempts to explore the background of this law in order to answer the questions why California and why then? |
| Keywords: | trademark registration, California, Second Industrial Revolution, wine |
| JEL: | K0 L2 N4 |
| Date: | 2013–10–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:51854&r=his |
| By: | Kirill Levinson (National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia). Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities.) |
| Abstract: | This article analyzes a discussion involving members of the Prussian and the Imperial German cabinets in the early 20th century which concerned the protests of Prussia’s Polish-speaking citizens against the Germanization of their proper names’ spelling. The discussion reflected ministers’ varying approaches to the issue. For the purpose of this study, these approaches are categorized as ‘legal’, ‘political’ and ‘bureaucratic’ discourses, respectively. The author shows how these different sorts of reasoning led, each in its own way, to the final decision-making. Although the practice at issue concerned the spelling of a language that was not even German, it was about a very German problem of relationships between the nation-state and one of its ethnic minorities, a problem that was to dominate a whole epoch and lead to a number of global historical cataclysms. |
| Keywords: | history, Germanization, spelling, German Empire, Prussia, Silesia |
| JEL: | Z |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:39hum2013&r=his |
| By: | Roger Owen |
| Abstract: | The article uses comparative Indian material from British India and later, the Pakistani Punjab to ask new questions of the standard accounts of Egypt’s post-1890 cotton boom. It also argues for the particular relevance of the rich Punjabi green revolution data to the Egyptian case, and more generally, for the rewards to be obtained from an academic dialog between selected aspects of late nineteenth and of late twentieth century globalization. Topics analyzed include the impact of the various agricultural revolutions on social and regional inequalities, the issue of sustainability, the role of experts and the impact on health of long-term environmental degradation. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qsh:wpaper:47146&r=his |
| By: | Kevin D. Hoover |
| Abstract: | Modern growth theory derives mostly from Robert Solow’s “A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth” (1956). Solow’s own interpretation locates the origins of his “Contribution” in his view that the growth model of Roy Harrod implied a tendency toward progressive collapse of the economy. He formulates his view in terms of Harrod invoking a fixed-coefficients production function. This paper, first, challenges Solow’s reading of Harrod, arguing that Harrod’s object in providing a “dynamic” theory had little to do with the problem of long-run growth as Solow understood it, but instead addressed the medium run fluctuations. It was an attempt to isolate conditions under which the economy might tend to run below potential. In making this argument, Harrod does not appeal to a fixed-coefficients production function – or to any production function at all, as that term is understood by Solow. The paper next traces the history of the dominance of Solow’s interpretation among growth economists. These tasks belong to the history of economics. The paper’s final task belongs to economic history. It offers an informal reexamination of economic history through the lens of Harrod’s dynamic model, asking whether there is a prima facie case in favor of Harrod’s model properly understood. |
| Keywords: | economic growth, Roy Harrod, Robert Solow, dynamics, dynamic instability, knife-edge, warranted rate of growth, natural rate of growth |
| JEL: | B22 O4 E12 E13 N1 B31 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hec:heccee:2012-1&r=his |
| By: | Bruce Caldwell |
| Abstract: | In the paper I offer some vignettes on my relationship, both professional and personal, with Mark Blaug, and by way of example reflect on his impact on the history of economics. |
| Keywords: | Mark Blaug, history of economic thought, economic methodology, Karl Popper, falsificationism, Imre Lakatos |
| JEL: | B2 B31 B4 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hec:heccee:2012-6&r=his |
| By: | Galor, Oded; Klemp, Marc |
| Abstract: | This research presents the first evidence that moderate fecundity was conducive long-run reproductive success within the human species. Exploiting an extensive genealogy record for nearly half a million individuals in Quebec during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the study traces the number of descendants of early inhabitants in the subsequent four generations. Using the time interval between the date of marriage and the first live birth as a measure of reproductive capacity, the research establishes that while a higher fecundity is associated with a larger number of children, an intermediate level maximizes long-run reproductive success. The finding further indicates that the optimal level of fecundity was below the population median, suggesting that the forces of natural selection favored individuals with a lower level of fecundity. The research lends credence to the hypothesis that during the Malthusian epoch, natural selection favored individuals with a larger predisposition towards child quality, contributing to the onset of the demographic transition and the evolution of societies from an epoch of stagnation to sustained economic growth. |
| Keywords: | Demography, Evolution, Natural Selection, Fecundity, Quantity-Quality Trade-Off, Long-Run Reproductive Success, Development, Growth |
| JEL: | J10 O10 |
| Date: | 2013–12–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:52049&r=his |
| By: | Kenneth Rogoff; Sue Collins; Carol Graham |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qsh:wpaper:15025&r=his |
| By: | Roger Owen |
| Abstract: | This essay is a comparison of Egypt's three 19th century statistical regimes, with particular emphasis on the third established by the British before WW1, and culminating in the holding of the 1917 census. It is argued that the organizer of this census used it self-consciously to encourage the production of statistical data as an essential tool of modern government. He also provided officials with a method of integrating their findings through the use of a national model based on the balance between population and resources. Foucault's notion of governmentality is deployed to provide a framework within which to understand the central processes at work. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qsh:wpaper:47131&r=his |
| By: | Le Bris, David |
| Abstract: | Law and finance theory emphasizes the negative consequences of civil law on financial and, subsequently, economic development. Before the Revolution, French territory was strictly divided according to the legal regime. Since the Middle-Ages, the southern part of France was under Justinian civil law and the north was under customary laws which, as with common law, gave more flexibility to judges and less right to the state. This dichotomy offers the unique opportunity to test the law and finance theory free from cross-country bias. Using fiscal revenues across 79 Departments from 1817-1821, we test if Departments under civil law, over the centuries and up to 15 years ago, exhibit lower financial and economic outcomes. We find that civil law Departments do exhibit lower economic performances but this difference is not robust when controlled for fundamental factors. The civil law appears even to have a positive effect in many specifications. Old Regime France does not confirm the law and finance theory. |
| Keywords: | Law and Finance, Economic development, France, history. |
| JEL: | N23 N43 O1 O43 P48 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:52123&r=his |
| By: | Gregory Afinogenov |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qsh:wpaper:38248&r=his |
| By: | Ager, Philipp; Brückner, Markus |
| Abstract: | We examine the effect of genetic diversity on economic development in the United States. Our estimation strategy exploits that immigrants from different countries of origin differed in their genetic diversity and that these immigrants settled in different regions. Based on a sample of over 2250 counties, we find that increases in genetic diversity of US counties that arose due to immigration during the 19th century had a significant positive effect on US counties' economic development. We also detect a significant positive long-run effect of 19th century immigrants' genetic diversity on contemporaneous measures of income. |
| Keywords: | Economic Growth, Genetic Diversity, Immigration, Melting Pot |
| JEL: | J11 O51 Z13 |
| Date: | 2013–12–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:51906&r=his |
| By: | Andrey Shcherbak (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | The late 1980s and early 1990s were characterized by the sudden rise of nationalist movements in almost all Soviet ethnic regions. It is argued that the rise of political nationalism since the late 1980s can be explained by development of cultural nationalism in the previous decades, as an unintended outcome of communist nationalities policy. Soviet political and cultural nationalism is studied in historical and comparative perspective. All ethnic regions are examined throughout entire history of the Soviet Union (49 regions, 1917-91), using the structural equation modeling approach. This paper aims to make at least three contributions in the field. Firstly, it is a methodological contribution for studying nationalism: a ‘quantification of history’ approach. Quantitative values are assigned to historical trends and events. Having constructed variables from historical data, I use conventional statistical methods like SEM. Secondly, this paper contributes to the theoretical debate about the role of cultural autonomy in multiethnic states. The results rethink the notion of ‘cultural autonomy’ as solution of interethnic conflict. Cultural nationalism matters, it indirectly reinforces political nationalism. In both cases concessions in the cultural domain has not stopped the growth of political nationalism in the late 1980-s. Finally, the paper statistically proves that the break between early Soviet and Stalinist nationalities policy explains the entire Soviet nationalities policy. In fact, the late Soviet nationalities policy was inherited from the Stalin’s rule period. This finding revealed in other studies now gets statistical evidence. |
| Keywords: | nationalism, ethnicity, culture, USSR, SEM |
| JEL: | H77 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:27/soc/2013&r=his |
| By: | Kurosaki, Takashi |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the growth performance of agriculture in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh in the twentieth century. The use of unusually long-term data that correspond to the current borders for the period 1901-2002 and the focus on crop shifts as a source of growth distinguish this study from the existing ones. The empirical results show a sharp discontinuity between the preand the post- independence periods in all three countries: growth rates in total output, labor productivity, and land productivity rose from zero or very low figures to significantly positive levels, which were sustained throughout the post-independence period. The improvement in aggregate land productivity explained the most of this output growth, of which approximately one third was attributable to shifts to more lucrative crops. |
| Date: | 2013–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:hitcei:2013-06&r=his |
| By: | Ken Froot; Kenneth Rogoff |
| Abstract: | This paper reviews the large and growing literature which tests PPP and other models of the long-run real exchange rate. We distinguish three different stages of PPP testing and focus on what has been learned from each. The most important overall lesson has been that the real exchange rate appears stationary over sufficiently long horizons. Simple, univariate random walk specifications can be rejected in favor of stationary alternatives. However, we argue that multivariate tests, which ask whether any linear combination of prices and exchange rates are stationary, have not necessarily provided meaningful rejections of nonstationarity. We also review a number of other theories of the long run real exchange rate -- including the Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis -- as well as the evidence supporting them. We argue that the persistence of real exchange rate movements can be generated by a number of sensible models and that Balassa- Samuelson effects seem important, but mainly for countries with widely disparate levels of income of growth. Finally, this paper presents new evidence testing the law of one price on 200 years of historical commodity price data for England and France, and uses a century of data from Argentina to test the possibility of sample-selection bias in tests of long-run PPP. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qsh:wpaper:32027&r=his |
| By: | Sambit Bhattacharyya; Jeffrey G. Willliamson |
| Abstract: | Abstract. This paper studies the distributional impact of commodity price shocks over the both the short and very long run. Using a GARCH model, we find that Australia experienced more volatility than many commodity exporting developing countries over the periods 1865- 1940 and 1960-2007. A single equation error correction model suggests that commodity price shocks increase the income share of the top 1, 0.05, and 0.01 percents in the short run. The very top end of the income distribution benefits from commodity booms disproportionately more than the rest of the society. The short run effect is mainly driven by wool and mining and not agricultural commodities. A sustained increase in the price of renewables (wool) reduces inequality whreas the same for non-renewable resources (minerals) increases inequality. We expect that the initial distribution of land and mineral resources explains the asymmetric result. |
| Keywords: | comodity price shocks, commodity exporters, top incomes, inequality |
| JEL: | F14 F43 N17 O13 |
| Date: | 2013–07–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:wpaper:oxcarre-research-paper-117&r=his |
| By: | Amélia Branco; João Carlos Lopes |
| Abstract: | This paper is about the relative economic performance of clustered and non-clustered companies in the different phases of the cluster life cycle. It starts with the explanation of a puzzling localization behaviour, namely that most of the Portuguese cork manufacturing firms are concentrated in Santa Maria da Feira, a small county in the north of the country, whereas the bulk of the cork is produced in the south (Alentejo and Ribatejo). The historical roots and past and path dependence of the trajectory of this cluster are examined, as well as the identification of its life cycle phases. A comparative analysis of the economic performance of firms localized in Santa Maria da Feira and in other regions of the country is then made, using labour productivity data for a long time span of several decades. This exercise is a quantitative illustration of the crucial importance of history for the understanding of cluster dynamics, as well as many other (evolutionary) economic phenomena. |
| Keywords: | Cork Industry, Cluster Life Cycle, Santa Maria da Feira, Portugal. |
| JEL: | R12 L73 N60 O14 |
| Date: | 2013–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ise:isegwp:wp262013&r=his |
| By: | Roger Owen |
| Abstract: | The growth and transformation of Middle Eastern manufacturing industry has been little studied for the period before the advent of tariff autonomy, and thus protectionism, in the early 1930s The reasons for this are various but must have much to do with the many difficult problems involved. There is an obvious lack of data, particularly about the activities of the craft or small-scale sector which, even to this day, is regularly under-counted by government statisticians. There are also serious problems of definition which hage generally been ignored by the vast majority of economic historians who remain content to analyse manufacturing activity in terms of such simple dichotomies as modern/factory/capitalist versus traditional/workshop/pre-capitalist, a method which not only masks the fact that there are a whole range of activities which do not fall into such apparently neat categories but also — to introduce the major theme of this essay — makes it impossible to examine the complex interrelationship between plants of different size and degree of capitalisation. Finally, much of what passes for a ducussion of manufacturing activity has, in fact, got muddled with the much larger debate about the whole process of industrialisation, about whether particular areas of the Middle East could have developed their own industrial base before 1930, and about why they might have been prevented from doing so. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qsh:wpaper:47121&r=his |
| By: | Roger Owen |
| Abstract: | This article addresses the fact that little is known about the performance of the Iraqi economy after the 1970s due to a number of reasons including great official secrecy, the impact of repeated wars and, most important of all, the system of disaggregated economic management put in place by the Bathi regime in which many important parts of the system were managed, off-budget, as discrete units. While acknowledging the great difficulties in reconstructing the overall effect of such a system, Owen suggests ways by which we might begin to understand its logic as a preliminary to the team effort needed to reconnect the economic history of the last thirty years with what went before. This, he argues, is vital not only for a proper study of Iraq's development effort but also as a benchmark against which to judge present efforts at economic reconstruction and recovery. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qsh:wpaper:47151&r=his |
| By: | Antonio Navas (Department of Economics, The University of Sheffield) |
| Abstract: | This paper creates a theory of endogenous growth with endogenous institutional change to analyse the impact that trade openness has on economic growth through a change in institutions in pre-industrial societies. An elite (landowners) controlling the political power expropriates another social group (capitalists). This reduces investment in physical capital, the source of endogenous growth. The rival group (capitalists) can take a military action to expel the group in power. I study optimal expropriation, growth and institutional change under two scenarios, autarky and free trade. The simulation results suggest that for a vast majority of cases economies open to trade generally experience higher growth and earlier institutional change. This is the consequence of the fact that the elite reduces the expropriation rate when the economy opens up to trade. In addition, economies specialising in manufacturing products tend to grow more and introduce institutional change earlier. This is consistent with the divergent pattern in growth and institutions that Western European Economies were experiencing during the modern era and the industrial revolution. |
| Keywords: | trade; institutions; growth in the very long run |
| JEL: | F43 O43 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:shf:wpaper:2013018&r=his |
| By: | Lisandro R. Rodríguez; Luis E. Blacha |
| Abstract: | The production of yerba mate was a determining factor in the colonisation of the province of Misiones (Argentina) and is a central point in its economy. The period studied here begins in 1926, when President Marcelo T. de Alvear passed a number of decrees allowing the first agricultural colonies to be founded, and ends with the ‘provincialization’ of the National Territory in 1953. Michel Foucault’s analytical tools are used to examine the implementation of the disciplinary practices that simultaneously delineated space and population. In this frontier territory, which was sparsely populated and a long way from urban areas, State policies led to the appearance of what Foucault names ‘biopower’. |
| Keywords: | Yerba Mate, power, colonization, population, territory |
| JEL: | N36 N56 Q2 Q5 |
| Date: | 2013–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:seh:wpaper:1308&r=his |
| By: | Samuli Leppälä |
| Abstract: | Following the development of knowledge economies, there has been a rapid expansion of economic analysis of knowledge, both in the context of technological knowledge in particular and the decision theory in general. This paper surveys this literature by identifying the main themes and contributions and outlines the future prospects of the discipline. The wide scope of knowledge related questions in terms of applicability and alternative approaches has led to the fragmentation of research. Nevertheless, one can identify a continuing tradition which analyses various aspects of the generation, dissemination and use of knowledge in the economy. |
| Keywords: | knowledge, information, belief, uncertainty, innovation, intellectual property rights, scientific research, technological change |
| JEL: | D80 O30 I20 B00 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hec:heccee:2012-5&r=his |
| By: | Farley Grubb |
| Abstract: | Forensic accounting techniques are used to construct new data series on emissions, redemptions, and bills outstanding for colonial New Jersey paper money. These components are further separated into the amounts initially legislated and planned, and the amounts actually executed. Not only are these data improvements over the prior data in the literature, but they provide a more complete and nuanced accounting of colonial New Jersey’s paper money regime than what has been done previously for any British North American colony. Enough detail of the forensic accounting exercise is given for scholars to reproduce the data series from the original sources. |
| JEL: | E51 N11 |
| Date: | 2013–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:19710&r=his |
| By: | Antonio Cortese |
| Abstract: | Pushed by the spirit of the âMegà li Idèaâ (the Great Idea), Greece launched a military offensive against Turkey in the attempt to incorporate the Western coastal territories of Asia Minor occupied for centuries by âGreekâ communities. This military undertaking resulted in the so‐called Asia Minor Catastrophe, in which Greece was forced to accept a compulsory exchange of populations. The paper sheds light on the geographical areas in Turkey from where about 1,300,000 people were forced to leave as well as the Greek territories which hosted them; the work also looks into the consequences derived, with a lens on the demographic impact and the urbanization process triggered in the Hellenic capital since then. |
| Keywords: | Migrazioni internazionali (International Migration), Scambio forzato di popolazioni (Compulsory Exchange of populations), Processo di urbanizzazione (Urbanization Process). |
| JEL: | F22 F53 |
| Date: | 2013–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rtr:wpaper:0185&r=his |
| By: | Cook, C. Justin |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the role of two important food sources, potatoes and milk, in explaining the large population growth experienced throughout the Old World in the 18th and 19th centuries. Nunn and Qian (2011) show that the introduction of the potato from the New World has a significant explanatory role for within country population and urbanization growth over this period. We expand on this by considering the role of milk consumption, which is hypothesized to be a complement of potatoes due to a differential composition of essential nutrients. Using a country-level measure for the suitability of milk consumption, the frequency of lactase persistence, we show that the marginal effect of potatoes on post-1700 population and urbanization growth is positively related to milk consumption. As the frequency of milk consumption approaches unity, the marginal effect of potatoes more than doubles in magnitude compared to the baseline estimate of Nunn and Qian. |
| Keywords: | Historical Growth; Population; Land Productivity; Milk; Potato |
| JEL: | J1 N1 N5 O13 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:51885&r=his |
| By: | Judith Spicklsey |
| Abstract: | Despite the fact that slavery existed historically in almost all known societies, historians have as yet been unable to identify any shared values from which the institution could have arisen. This article reconstructs slavery as a form of debt or obligation, by suggesting that slavery occurred when an individual with no apparent alternative but that of imminent death offered the sum total of his life services in exchange for the chance to survive. Slavery may then have emerged in response to the threat of famine, as a result of judicial punishment, or through situations of conflict, for example. The slave trade was likely to have been a later development, as groups requiring additional labour supplies sought to sell or exchange subject individuals for an agreed price. This transfer of a life debt , which encapsulated within it all the future labour services of the debtor (slave), supported the development of a market in lives that is now recognized as the cornerstone of slavery as an institution. Distraint on the body of the debtor was the earliest form of debt recovery. Enslavement then appears as a peculiarly exploitative form of distraint, with obligation as its primary justification. |
| Keywords: | debt, obligation, slavery, distraint, slave trade, dependence, labour, law |
| JEL: | N30 P48 |
| Date: | 2013–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yor:cherry:13/02&r=his |
| By: | Rong Qian; Carmen M. Reinhart; Kenneth Rogoff |
| Abstract: | This paper uses a data set of over two hundred years of sovereign debt, banking and inflation crises to explore the question of how long it takes a country to “graduate†from the typical pattern of serial crisis that most emerging markets experience. We find that for default and inflation crises, twenty years is a significant market, but the distribution of recidivism has extremely fat tails. In the case of banking crises, it is unclear whether countries ever graduate. We also examine the more recent phenomenon of IMF programs, which sometimes result in “near misses†but sometimes end in default even after a program is instituted. The paper raises the important theoretical question of why countries experience serial default, and how they might graduate. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qsh:wpaper:14879&r=his |
| By: | Rolf Sternberg (Institute of Economic and Cultural Geography, Leibniz University, Hannover) |
| Abstract: | This paper compares the publication and citation behaviour of economic geogra- phers and geographical economists. Based on a unique data set and consciously limited to researchers in the German-speaking world, empirical analyses show more parallels than expected. Convergence of scholars from both disciplines over time can be observed, as younger papers are more similar to each other than older ones. Publication together with foreign scholars is also becoming more frequent. Joint publications of both disciplines are still a rare, but increasing phenomenon. There seems to be a cooperation dividend if the lion and the butterfly write joint articles. |
| Keywords: | publications, citations, economic geography, geographical economics |
| JEL: | Y80 R10 |
| Date: | 2013–12–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pum:wpaper:2013-13&r=his |
| By: | Piet Clement (Bank for International Settlements); Ivo Maes (National Bank of Belgium, Research Department; Université catholique de Louvain, Robert Triffin Chair; ICHEC Brussels Management School) |
| Abstract: | The Latin American debt crisis, which broke out in August 1982, was the first global financial crisis in the postwar period. While the crisis started in the "periphery", it constituted a threat to the "core" of the world economy, as the banking system was under severe pressure. Alongside the IMF, the BIS played an important role in coordinating the international response to the crisis. Moreover, a lot of work at the BIS in the second half of the 1970s had aimed at restraining the debt build-up. Discussions on the rising debt levels were highly influential in shaping the BIS view of financial stability, with the "macroprudential" concept at its core. However, in the analysis of the debt buildup, the role of financial innovations was not really captured. In this paper, we focus on the Latin American debt crisis, discussing first the debt build-up, different initiatives to restrain lending and the BIS role in the management of the crisis. We then turn to the ensuing efforts to strengthen the financial system and the emerging BIS approach to financial stability. |
| Keywords: | Latin American debt crisis, BIS, macroprudential, financial fragility, Lamfalussy |
| JEL: | A11 B22 B32 E3 F02 G10 N10 |
| Date: | 2013–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbb:reswpp:201312-247&r=his |
| By: | Paul Castaneda Dower (New Economic School and Centre of Economic and Financial Research); Andrei Markevich (New Economic School and University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | We study the effect of improvements in peasants’ land tenure, launched by the Stolypin reform, on agricultural productivity in late imperial Russia. The reform allowed peasants to obtain land titles and consolidate plots. We find that land consolidations increased productivity. We argue that changes in peasant de facto land usage rights caused this effect. In contrast, the titling component of the reform was associated with a decrease in land productivity. We present evidence that this negative effect was driven by transaction costs to exit the commune and the outflow of labor from the countryside. |
| Date: | 2013–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cfr:cefirw:w0202&r=his |
| By: | Ager, Philipp; Spargoli, Fabrizio |
| Abstract: | We exploit the introduction of free banking laws in US states during the 1837-1863 period to examine the impact of removing barriers to bank entry on bank competition and economic growth. As governments were not concerned about systemic stability in this period, we are able to isolate the effects of bank competition from those of state implicit guarantees. We find that the introduction of free banking laws stimulated the creation of new banks and led to more bank failures. Our empirical evidence indicates that states adopting free banking laws experienced an increase in output per capita compared to the states that retained state bank chartering policies. We argue that the fiercer bank competition following the introduction of free banking laws might have spurred economic growth by (1) increasing the money stock and the availability of credit; (2) leading to efficiency gains in the banking market. Our findings suggest that the more frequent bank failures occurring in a competitive banking market do not harm long-run economic growth in a system without public safety nets. |
| Keywords: | Bank Deregulation, Bank Competition, Economic Growth, Financial Development, Dynamic Efficiency, Free Banking |
| JEL: | G18 G21 G28 N21 |
| Date: | 2013–11–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:49269&r=his |
| By: | Giovanni Favero (Dept. of Management, Università Ca' Foscari Venice) |
| Abstract: | The research here proposed is a micro-analysis of a business ending in bankruptcy in the aftermaths of the first oil shock, concerning the Italian subsidiary of a German wareenamelling group established in the town of Bassano in 1925. Following the budget reports and the interviews with the former entrepreurs, the company flourished until the 1960s, when managerial and entrepreneurial successions emphasized the growing difficulties deriving from growing labour costs. A tentative reorganization of the company was hindered in 1968 by union resistance and political pressures for the preservation of employment levels. In 1975 the board of directors decided to declare bankruptcy as a consequence of the huge budget losses. However, a subsequent inquiry of the Italian tax authority discovered an accounting fraud concerning hidden profits in 1974 and 1975. The fraud disclosure shows how historical conditions could create the convenience for performance understatement not only for fiscal purposes, but also in order to make divestment possible. However, it is also used here as an element to argue that business sources and the story they tell should not be taken at their face value, and that a different reconstruction of the company's path to failure is possible. The literature concerning the missed recognition of opportunities is then mobilised in order to interpret the inconsistencies that emerge from the triangulation of business archives, press columns and interviews with union representatives and politicians. This allows to put back into perspective what results as an obsession of company management with labour costs, concealing the importance of other competitive elements, such as the increasing specialisation of the producers of home appliances. This 'refractive error' may be typical of businesses operating in (presumed) mature industries at international level, where wage differentials offer the opportunity to pursue quite literally exploitation much further. |
| Keywords: | Business history, foreign direct investments, family business, accounting fraud, corporate governance |
| JEL: | N84 G34 L21 F23 |
| Date: | 2013–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:vnm:wpdman:63&r=his |
| By: | Arthur Gautier (Chaire entrepreneuriat social - ESSEC Business School); Anne-Claire Pache (Public and Private Policy Department - ESSEC Business School); Imran Chowdhury (Lubin School of Business - Pace University) |
| Abstract: | In this research project we aim to understand the role of institutional entrepreneurship across multiple levels - field, organization, and micro levels - in the institutionalization of a new professional role within organizations. Specifically, we study the rise of the "corporate philanthropy manager," a position inspired by nonprofit values and goals which developed within large French corporations during the period 1979 to 2011. The process of creating, maintaining and legitimizing this new role - philanthropy as a new business function - is the central focus of our study, and we explore how elements of the nonprofit and for-profit worlds came together in this new role, as well as the role of various actors across multiple levels in influencing this combination. |
| Keywords: | Corporate Philanthropy ; Institutional Change ; Institutional Entrepreneurship ; Institutional Work ; Professions |
| Date: | 2013–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00914824&r=his |
| By: | Erik Alencar de Figueiredo; Claudio Shikida; Ari Francisco Araújo Jr |
| Abstract: | This paper aims to examine if the use of modern protocol for time series data analysis corroborates the results found previously in the literature. Specically, we inspect the non structuralists arguments developed in the 1970s about monetary policy eects. The contributions of this paper are-(a) to review the non-structuralist arguments made by Carlos Manuel Pelaez and Wilson Suzigan and in Pelaez's later works and (b) to test the causality between money, output, and prices, as well as the authors central argument on the importance of monetary policy, using the sequential multiple-horizon non-causation test developed by Hill (2007). Pelaez and Suzigan's original results are corroborated, since monetary policy (measured by monetary base) has an effect on nominal rather than on real output. |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ppg:ppgewp:20&r=his |
| By: | Oliveira, Livio Luiz Soares de |
| Abstract: | This work aims to present the Economics of Religion. The methodology used is a literature review. Shows the importance of religion from the perspective of Economics . It addresses the connections between Economics of Religion and Rational Choice Theory. We present the concepts of religious commodity, consumer and religious producers . We discuss the differences between the Economics of Religion and the Secularization Thesis, emphasizing, mainly, the empirical reality of the persistence and intensity of religious factor. Is commented on the level of religious beliefs among researchers of Natural Sciences and Social Sciences in the USA It also presents the origin and subsequent development of the Economics of Religion . Explains the issues on which leans this discipline , ie, its object of study . The main conclusion is that , given the specificity of the Economics of Religion, research linking religion and economics can benefit both disciplines in different ways . |
| Keywords: | Religion, economics, market, rational. |
| JEL: | Z12 |
| Date: | 2013–11–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:52012&r=his |
| By: | Roger Owen |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qsh:wpaper:47106&r=his |
| By: | Francis, Bill B. (Lally School of Management, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); Hasan, Iftekhar (Fordham University and Bank of Finland); Zhu, Yun (Lally School of Management, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides original evidence from institutional investors that political uncertainty during presidential elections greatly affects investment. Using U.S. institutional ownership data from 1981 to 2010, we find that institutions significantly reduce their holdings of common stock by 0.76 to 2.1 percentage points during election years. More specifically, institutions tend to sell large proportions of their positions when Republicans win presidential elections and then keep their positions at below-average levels through the first year of the new administration. Conversely, when Democrats win presidential elections, institutions tend to keep their positions at above-average levels for the first year of the new administration. The difference in ownership rises to 2.4% by the end of the first year of new administration. Changes in institutional ownership in election years are sensitive to the uncertainty of the outcome. Our results also show that institutions benefit from these holding strategies during the pre-election periods. |
| Keywords: | political uncertainty; presidential election; institutional investor; investment |
| JEL: | G23 G28 P16 |
| Date: | 2013–11–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:bofrdp:2013_027&r=his |