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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2013‒12‒20
eleven papers chosen by |
| By: | Jorge Álvarez (Programa de Historia Económica y Social, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República); Henry Willebald (Instituto de Económia, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración, Universidad de la República) |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to explain the impact of the establishment of the system of landownership on the income distribution and economic growth of settler economies (Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and Uruguay) during the First Globalization. We consider a conceptual framework based on the New Institutional Economic Theory to describe the process of the distribution of the land property rights in historical perspective and to analyze the characteristics of the land tenure system in a comparative perspective. Our results identify two models of distribution of property rights within the “club”. One of them corresponds to Australasia and, the other, to the River Plate countries, and they represented different consequences in terms of productive expansion and inequality. The land rents absorb a much larger part of total output in River Plate than in Australasia and, as result, it represents a negative incentive to productivity growth that contributes to explain the relative failure of Argentina and Uruguay compared to Australia and New Zealand. |
| Keywords: | Land ownership systems, functional income distribution, River Plate, Australasia |
| JEL: | N26 N27 N36 N37 |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ude:doctra:30&r=his |
| By: | Miguel Á. Pérez de Perceval Verde (Universidad de Murcia, Murcia, Spain); Ángel Pascual Martínez Soto (Universidad de Murcia, Murcia, Spain); Andrés Sánchez Picón (Universidad de Almería, Almería, Spain) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the employment of children in the Spanish mining sector at the highest point of its history (golden age). The main source used is Spain’s official Mining Statistics that show that child labour was widely used throughout the Spanish peninsula: an average of 14-17% of total workers between 1860 and 1920. Subsequently, the incidence of child labour reduced steadily and by 1930 had fallen to below 9%. The changes were not a direct result of the legislation that had become increasingly restrictive since 1900, but were brought about by factors related to the organisation of the different activities involved in mining. Furthermore, there was a significant territorial bias whereby south-eastern areas (particularly the provinces of Murcia and Almeria) were characterised by very high levels of child labour (an average of 30% in the second half of the nineteenth century). The paper examines the factors that determine this different distribution, analysing both the specific aspects of child labour and the reasons for using this type of workforce. In addition, the accounts of some of the mines in these two provinces have been used in order to study the evolution of child wages which provides further information to help us understand the mining organisation models. Finally, a case study from the 1870s is presented which measures the contribution that the mining children made to the family economy, with results remarkably similar to those of studies of English and American industrial districts in the nineteenth century. |
| Keywords: | Child labour, Spanish mining, labour legislation, mining wages |
| JEL: | N3 L71 J30 |
| Date: | 2013–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ahe:dtaehe:1310&r=his |
| By: | Jan S. Cramer |
| Abstract: | Earlier analyses of the birth cohorts from 1850 to 1922 from the Historical Sample of the Dutch Population by van Poppel and van Gaalen and Schenk and van Poppel conclude that there is no significant variation of mortality by occupation in those generations. A re-examination of their material with special attention to possible changes over time confirms this conclusion for the birth cohorts from 1850 to 1890. For later cohorts the results are anomalous and perverse, and I can offer no explanation. |
| Date: | 2013–10–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ame:wpaper:1309&r=his |
| By: | Marc Patrick Brag Klemp; Niels Framroze Møller |
| Abstract: | Theories of economic growth hypothesize that the transition from pre-industrial stagnation to sustained growth is associated with a post-Malthusian phase in which technological progress raises income and spurs population growth while offsetting diminishing returns to labour. Evidence suggests that England was characterized by post-Malthusian dynamics preceding the Industrial Revolution. However, given England's special position as the forerunner of the Industrial Revolution, it is unclear if a transitory post-Malthusian period is a general phenomenon. Using data from Denmark, Norway and Sweden, this research provides evidence for the existence of a post-Malthusian phase in the transition from stagnation to growth in Scandinavia |
| Keywords: | Demography, Post-Malthusian Dynamics, Malthus, Pre-Industrial Scandinavia, Demographic Transition, Economic Growth |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bro:econwp:2013-14&r=his |
| By: | Javier Rodríguez Weber (Programa de Historia Económica y Social, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República) |
| Abstract: | Between 1930 and 1970 in Chile, the hacienda system, the most durable institution in Chilean history, underwent decay. As is to be expected, this process resulted in several social and political conflicts in the countryside. One aspect remains unexplored: its impact on real wages and agricultural income distribution. The main purpose of this paper is to present new evidence on wages and income inequality in the Chilean agricultural sector between 1935 and 1971. The paper also discusses some hypotheses about the political economy mechanisms that lead to the tendencies observed. |
| Keywords: | Inequality, wages, Chile, Hacienda system, agriculture |
| JEL: | D31 D72 O13 O15 O54 P48 |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ude:doctra:32&r=his |
| By: | Jorge Álvarez (Programa de Historia Económica y Social, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República) |
| Abstract: | In the last ten years, economic historians have become increasingly interested in the effects of the first globalisation (1870 – 1914) on income distribution. It is thought that in regions of European settlement, with abundant land and a scarcity of workers, inequality increased over the period. However, countries like Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and Uruguay not only received immigrants from Europe but also expanded their national frontiers. These countries underwent changing endowments of these factors (population and land) during the first globalization, and this calls for an analysis of the evolution of inequality considering the specific impacts of these contradictory trends. The aim of this article is to present evidence about the evolution of the wage/rental ratio in four provinces in Argentina (Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Entre Ríos and Santa Fé) and four states in Australia (Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia) during the first globalisation of capitalism. We compare these trends with those in two small countries, New Zealand and Uruguay. We also analyse the processes of frontier expansion in each case with a focus on the institutions that regulated the distribution of land ownership rights. The evidence from this approach, which is centred on frontier expansion and domestic institutions, indicates that increasing inequality was the dominant trend in some cases but not all. We also found that, in the context of the first globalisation, domestic institutions contributed to the formation of income distribution patterns that were different in Australasia to those in the River Plate countries. |
| Keywords: | prices of the factors, income distribution, settler economies, River Plate, Australasia, first globalization |
| JEL: | N26 N27 N36 N37 |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ude:doctra:31&r=his |
| By: | M. Casari; M. Lisciandra |
| Abstract: | In the Middle Ages women in the Italian Alps had substantially more rights on collective properties than in the Modern Age. The documental evidence shows a progressive erosion of women’s rights and a convergence toward gender-biased inheritance systems. We tracked the evolution of inheritance regulations on collective land in the peasant communities of Trentino over a period of six centuries (13th-19th). Considering a panel of hundreds of communities, we provide a long-term perspective of institutional change. When population pressure increased, a patrilineal system emerged as a protective measure to preserve the per-capita endowment of collective properties within a community. This study raises general issues about the role of local level versus centralized decision-making in delivering gender equality and about the long-term trade-off between the protection of common resources and a healthy genetic pool at the community level. |
| JEL: | J16 N53 Q20 |
| Date: | 2013–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bol:bodewp:wp914&r=his |
| By: | Wenbiao Cai; B. Ravikumar; Raymond G. Riezman |
| Abstract: | This paper deals with a classic development question: how can the process of economic development – transition from stagnation in a traditional technology to industrialization and prosperity with a modern technology – be accelerated? Lewis (1954) and Rostow (1956) argue that the pace of industrialization is limited by the rate of capital formation which in turn is limited by the savings rate of workers close to subsistence. We argue that access to capital goods in the world market can be quantitatively important in speeding up the transition. We develop a parsimonious open-economy model where traditional and modern technologies coexist (a dual economy in the sense of Lewis (1954)). We show that a decline in the world price of capital goods in an open economy increases the rate of capital formation and speeds up the pace of industrialization relative to a closed economy that lacks access to cheaper capital goods. In the long run, the investment rate in the open economy is twice as high as in the closed economy and the per capita income is 23 percent higher. |
| JEL: | O11 F43 O14 |
| Date: | 2013–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:win:winwop:2013-02&r=his |
| By: | Elise S. Brezis (Bar-Ilan University); Joël Hellier |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes an explanation for the decrease in social mobility that has occurred in the last two decades in a number of advanced economies, as well as for the divergence in mobility dynamics across countries. Within an intergenerational framework, we show that a two-tier higher education system with standard and elite universities generates social stratification, high social immobility and self-reproduction of the elite. Moreover, we show that the higher the relative funding for elite universities, the higher the elite self-reproduction, and the lower social mobility. We also analyse the impacts of changes in the weight of the elite and of the middle class upon social mobility. Our findings provide theoretical bases for the inverted-U profile of social mobility experienced in several countries since World War II and to the ‘Great Gatsby Curve’ relating social mobility to inequality. |
| Keywords: | Elite, Higher Education, Selection, Social mobility, Social stratification |
| JEL: | I21 J62 O15 Z13 |
| Date: | 2013–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:biu:wpaper:2013-12&r=his |
| By: | D’Albis, H.; Bonnet, C.; Navaux, J.; Pelletan, J.; Toubon, H.; Wolff, F. C. |
| Abstract: | We use the National Transfer Accounts methodology to calculate the lifecycle deficit in France for the years 1979‐2005. During this period, consumption profiles were roughly constant over age, while labor income profiles shifted to higher ages. The share of the aggregate lifecycle deficit in GDP rose sharply in the 1980s due to an increase in the mean age of the population. In contrast, the per capita shares of the lifecycle deficit attributed to the population under 20 and over 60 varied little during this period, even though the relative weights of these two age‐segments has shifted continuously in favor of the latter. |
| Date: | 2013–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpm:docweb:1307&r=his |
| By: | Nomaler; Frenken; Heimeriks |
| Abstract: | Internationally co-authored papers are known to have more citation impact than nationally co-authored paper, on average. However, the question of whether there are systematic differences between pairs of collaborating countries in terms of the citation impact of their joint output, has remained unanswered. On the basis of all scientific papers published in 2000 and co-authored by two or more European countries, we show that citation impact increases with the geographical distance between the collaborating counties. |
| Keywords: | citation impact, collaborations, distance, country effects |
| Date: | 2013–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uis:wpaper:1303&r=his |