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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
|
Issue of 2014‒03‒22
thirty papers chosen by |
| By: | Natacha Postel-Vinay (London School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | An explanation of the Great Depression based on mortgage debt via the banking channel has been downplayed due to the conservatism of mortgage contracts at the time. Indeed, maturities were particularly short compared to today's average terms (around three years), and loan-to-value ratios often did not exceed 50 per cent. Using newly-discovered archival documents and a newly-compiled dataset from 1934, this paper uncovers the darker side of 1920s U.S. mortgage lending: the so-called “second mortgage system.” As borrowers often could not make a 50 per cent down payment, a majority of them took on second mortgages at usurious rates. As theory predicts, debt dilution, even in the presence of seniority rules, can be highly detrimental to both junior and senior lenders. The probability of default on first mortgages was likely to increase, and commercial banks were more likely to foreclose. Through foreclosure they would still be able to retrieve 50 per cent of the property value, but often after a protracted foreclosure process - a great impediment to bank survival in case of a liquidity crisis. This paper is thus a timely reminder that second mortgages, or “piggyback loans” as they are called today, can be hazardous to lenders and borrowers alike. It provides further empirical evidence that debt dilution can be detrimental to credit. |
| Keywords: | Great Depression, Commercial Banks, Portfolio Choice, Mortgage |
| JEL: | G11 G21 N22 |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0053&r=his |
| By: | Forrest Capie |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:auu:hpaper:026&r=his |
| By: | Sumner La Croix (Department of Economics, University of Hawaii at Manoa) |
| Abstract: | Social scientists argue that post-World War II land reforms in East Asia were critical ingredients in the region’s strong economic growth, but pay little attention to how large-scale land confiscations might affect the security of property rights in each country. A review of the history of large-scale land confiscations in early modern Europe, the United States and Hawai‘i provides a foundation for understanding the nature of modern land reform policies. The key insight is to recognize that East Asian states after World War II were natural state social orders in which new governments confiscate and redistribute property to bolster their coalition’s position and weaken opponents. In East Asia, land confiscations after World War II followed the pattern observed elsewhere, with victors taking and redistributing land from the losers of the war and subsequent civil wars primarily to bolster their newly installed political coalition and to maintain social order. |
| Keywords: | property, revolution, war, land, confiscation, natural state, open-access order, limited-access order |
| JEL: | Q15 N41 N43 N51 N53 |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hai:wpaper:201406&r=his |
| By: | Mauricio Drelichman; Hans-Joachim Voth |
| Abstract: | Contingent sovereign debt can create important welfare gains. Nonetheless, there is almost no issuance today. Using hand-collected archival data, we examine the first known case of large-scale use of state-contingent sovereign debt in history. Philip II of Spain entered into hundreds of contracts whose value and due date depended on verifiable, exogenous events such as the arrival of silver fleets. We show that this allowed for effective risk-sharing between the king and his bankers. The existence of statecontingent debt also sheds light on the nature of defaults – they were simply contingencies over which Crown and bankers had not contracted previously. |
| JEL: | H1 H63 N43 |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:econwp:145&r=his |
| By: | Emanuele Felice (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain) |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:afc:wpaper:01-14&r=his |
| By: | Toms, Steven |
| Abstract: | The paper re-analyses the evidence presented by pro and anti-regulation interests during the debates on factory reform. To do so it considers the interrelationship between fixed costs, the rate of profit and the length of the working day. The interrelationship casts new light on the lobbying positions on either side of the debate. It does so by comparing the evidence presented in the debates before parliament and associated pamphlets with actual figures contained in the business records of implicated firms. As a result the paper identifies the compromise position of the working day length compatible with reasonable rates of profit based on actual cost structures. It is thereby able to reinterpret the validity of the claims of contemporary political economy used to support the cases for and against factory regulation. |
| Keywords: | Factory Acts, working hours, rate of profit, cost structure, accounting records |
| JEL: | J21 J31 L50 L67 M4 N4 N44 N8 O14 O15 O38 |
| Date: | 2014–03–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:54408&r=his |
| By: | Gilles Pison (INED) |
| Abstract: | On 1 January 1914, the population pyramid of France had a regular bell shape. It was then dented by military losses and a shortfall of births during the First World War. Today, the French population pyramid is returning to a more regular shape, and the century-long scars of WWI have practically disappeared. |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idg:posoce:509&r=his |
| By: | Teerapa Pirohakul; Patrick Wallis |
| Abstract: | This paper studies demand for commercial medical assistance in early modern England. We measure individual consumption of medical and nursing services using a new dataset of debts at death between c.1670-c.1790. Levels of consumption of medical services were high and stable in London from the 1680s. However, we find rapid growth in the provinces, in both the likelihood of using medical assistance, and the sums spent on it. The structure of medical services also shifted, with an increase in ‘general practice’, particularly by apothecaries. The expansion in medical services diffused from London, and was motivated by changing preferences, not wealth |
| Keywords: | health; service sector; health care; Britain; seventeenth century; eighteenth century |
| JEL: | O52 I3 |
| Date: | 2014–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:wpaper:56053&r=his |
| By: | Giuseppe Albanese (Bank of Italy); Guido de Blasio (Bank of Italy) |
| Abstract: | We empirically investigate the role of civic capital (proxied by voter turnout) in Italy's economic development in the second half of the Twentieth century. Using a unique dataset at the city level, we show that over a fifty-year span voter turnout was steadily correlated with economic development and that this reflected some causality running from the former to the latter. We also find that the impact of civic capital was greater in the period immediately after the Second World War and gradually waned in the following decades. |
| Keywords: | civic capital, development, Italy |
| JEL: | O10 O43 |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:workqs:qse_32&r=his |
| By: | Klovland, Jan Tore (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration) |
| Abstract: | This paper reviews some methodological and practical problems encountered in the construction of historical price indices. The underlying data sets in such studies are often characterized by heterogenous and incomplete price series. It is shown that by using the repeat sales method for constructing the subindices for individual commodity groups some of the main problems can be overcome. The procedures are illustrated by material from the construction of monthly price indices for Norway from the year 1777 to 1920. The price indices shed new light on two great wartime in ationary episodes in Norway: 1807-1817 and 1913-1920. In spite of a 61-fold increase in the price level in the rst period and a 4-fold increase in the second, it is found that, after in ation had been brought under control, prices reverted to a level consistent with the purchasing power parity principle. |
| Keywords: | Price index; price history; purchasing power parity. |
| JEL: | E31 N13 N14 |
| Date: | 2014–03–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2014_005&r=his |
| By: | Neil Hart (Industrial Relations Research Centre, the University of New South Wales); Peter Kriesler (School of Economics, Australian School of Business, the University of New South Wales) |
| Abstract: | This paper, in honour of John King, addresses the question raised by him in his A History of Post-Keynesian since 1936, reflected in the title. Initial surveys of post-Keynesian economics defined it in term of the Keynesian, Kaleckian and Sraffian strands. However, subsequently, it has become less clear that the Sraffian stream should be included under the ‘broad church’ known as post-Keynesian economics. Serious and irreconcilable methodological differences exist between Sraffians and post-Keynesians about the validity of comparisons of long-run equilibrium positions, the role of historical time and the importance of uncertainty. |
| Keywords: | Keynes, post-Keynesians, Sraffians, methodology, path determinacy, traverse |
| JEL: | B2 B41 B5 D4 D5 |
| Date: | 2014–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:swe:wpaper:2014-06&r=his |
| By: | Geoff C. Harcourt (School of Economics, Australian School of Business, the University of New South Wales); Peter Kriesler (School of Economics, Australian School of Business, the University of New South Wales) |
| Abstract: | David Ricardo’s key place in the history of economic thought is well established. However, both the understanding of his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation and its role in the development of economic analysis is much more controversial. Cambridge economists have contributed significantly to both of these issues. They have played an important part in two extremely divergent interpretations of Ricardo’s place in the development of economic thought. Understanding how Ricardo has been viewed in Cambridge does not result in homogeneity, but in a spectrum of interpretations. In this paper, we focus on the role of Ricardo’s Principles in the development of economics as seen by Cambridge economists. |
| Keywords: | Ricardo, Cambridge School, History of economic thought, short period, long period |
| JEL: | B12 B20 B41 E10 |
| Date: | 2014–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:swe:wpaper:2014-04&r=his |
| By: | Tomás Peris-Albentosa |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to show that rather than the municipality and the crown playing no role in water management in the Huerta de Valencia (the fertile farming lands around the city of Valencia), they were in fact political authorities that were heavily involved in this decision-making. I argue that it was a formally somewhat different way of exercising local autonomy due to the particular features of municipal power in the big city, which was the capital of the kingdom, but not for that reason was it more comprehensive than in the rest of Valencian irrigation channels. In addition to not being a radically specific exception as is often suggested (“management by autonomous user enterprises” as opposed to the other model of “municipal control”), neither was it an immutable formula. It was subject to a process of early demunicipalisation which, based on more direct and intense involvement of the capital’s council in the 13th and 14th centuries, gradually took hold and culminated in the 18th century bylaws, codes that consecrated the previous practice of governance of the irrigation channels of the Vega by an elected oligarchic board. |
| Keywords: | Huerta de Valencia, irrigation, water management, nested enterprises, commons, municipal involvement |
| JEL: | N53 Q25 D74 O47 |
| Date: | 2014–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:seh:wpaper:1404&r=his |
| By: | Becker, Sascha O. (University of Warwick); Nagler, Markus (University of Munich); Woessmann, Ludger (University of Munich) |
| Abstract: | Why did substantial parts of Europe abandon the institutionalized churches around 1900? Empirical studies using modern data mostly contradict the traditional view that education was a leading source of the seismic social phenomenon of secularization. We construct a unique panel dataset of advanced-school enrollment and Protestant church attendance in German cities between 1890 and 1930. Our cross-sectional estimates replicate a positive association. By contrast, in panel models where fixed effects account for time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity, education – but not income or urbanization – is negatively related to church attendance. In panel models with lagged explanatory variables, educational expansion precedes reduced church attendance. |
| Keywords: | Secularization, education, history, Germany |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:warwcg:186&r=his |
| By: | Csizmazia, Roland Attila |
| Abstract: | Although the economic transition started in the early of 1990s, Hungary had a pioneer role in introducing the two-tier banking system within the former Soviet Eastern Block. The modernization of the banking system was unexpectedly far-reaching as Western banks were allowed to participate in the market. The Hungarian banking system was widely government run before the first commercial bank was opened by the National Bank of Hungary and five foreign commercial banks were established in 1979. The pioneer role was maintained even during the transition years when foreign-owned commercial banks could establish their subsidiaries. This paper attempts to examine the performance of the Hungarian banking sector once foreign investments occurred, and its functions as well as its stability in the transition period before the implementation of the Basel II Accord. It also reveals the doubts policy makers had about the Basel II Accord and its affect on the lending behavior of banks. |
| Keywords: | Basel II; Hungary; privatization; foreign ownership; banking stability; pro-cyclicity |
| JEL: | G21 G28 |
| Date: | 2014–02–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:54343&r=his |
| By: | Shanker Satyanath; Nico Voigtländer; Hans-Joachim Voth |
| Abstract: | Social capital is often associated with desirable political and economic outcomes. This paper contributes to a growing literature on its "dark side". We examine the role of social capital in the downfall of democracy in interwar Germany. We analyze Nazi Party entry in a cross-section of cities, and show that dense networks of civic associations such as bowling clubs, choirs, and animal breeders went hand-in-hand with a rapid rise of the Nazi Party. Towns with one standard deviation higher association density saw at least one-third faster entry. All types of associations – veteran associations and non-military clubs, “bridging” and “bonding” associations – positively predict NS Party entry. Party membership, in turn, predicts electoral success. These results suggest that social capital aided the rise of the Nazi movement that ultimately destroyed Germany’s first democracy. We also show that the effects of social capital were more important in the starting phase of the Nazi movement, and in towns less sympathetic to its message. |
| Keywords: | Social capital, democracy, institutions, associations, networks |
| JEL: | D72 N34 N44 P16 Z10 |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:econwp:147&r=his |
| By: | Giovanni Giusti; Charles Noussair; Hans-Joachim Voth |
| Abstract: | Major bubble episodes are rare events. In this paper, we examine what factors might cause some asset price bubbles to become very large. We recreate, in a laboratory setting, some of the specific institutional features investors in the South Sea Company faced in 1720. Several factors have been proposed as potentially contributing to one of the greatest periods of asset overvaluation in history: an intricate debt?for?equity swap, deferred payment for these shares, and the possibility of default on the deferred payments. We consider which aspect might have had the most impact in creating the South Sea bubble. The results of the experiment suggest that the company’s attempt to exchange its shares for government debt was the single biggest contributor to the stock price explosion, because of the manner in which the swap affected fundamental value. Issuing new shares with only partial payments required, in conjunction with the debtequity swap, also had a significant effect on the size of the bubble. Limited contract enforcement, on the other hand, does not appear to have contributed significantly. |
| Keywords: | Financial bubbles, experiments, South Sea bubble, risk-shifting, government debt, equity issuance |
| JEL: | G01 G12 G14 N23 C92 |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:econwp:146&r=his |
| By: | Nellinger, Ludwig |
| Abstract: | William Forster Lloyd's 1833 sketch about poor cattle on the commons and the well-fed animals on the adjacent enclosures published in his 'Two lectures on the checks to population' has hitherto been assessed as one starting point of the economics of renewable resources. In the 20th century the question of the use of common property resources has initially been treated by fisheries economists, at first in unknown publications of Jens Warming in 1911 and 1931, and after a disruption of more than 40 years starting again with the contributions of Gordon and Scott in the 1950s. Important results have been the derivation and presentation of the economic criteria for the open access equilibrium case on the one hand and the private property equilibrium case on the other hand. Garrett Hardin's well known 1968 Sciences article brought a new title and increased awareness to the 'tragedy of the commons' and Elenor Ostrom's 2009 nobel prize in economics finally underlined the importance as well as the diversity of institutional rules to achieve an efficient use of the natural resources - challenging the favored liberal concept of a privatization of scarce resources. Johann Heinrich von Thuenen's contributions on the commons - hidden in an 1831 article about urban agriculture in the journal 'Neue Annalen der Mecklenburgischen Landwirtschaftsgesellschaft' and in an unpublished manuscript - have been totally neglected until now, although he published his article about the core problem of the commons two years earlier than William Forster Lloyd and almost in the clarity of the fisheries economists 80 resp. 120 years later. He not only presented the correct allocation criteria for both property rights scenarios but additionally developed a framework a) how to gain the maximal rent of a resource through an auction system - drafting the first demand table b) how to redistribute the gains to the communal property owners - developing an adequate compensation mechanism c) and finally how to establish this institutional innovation democratically - thereby applying important elements of Elenor Ostrom's Common Property Rights Framework. Due to these contributions Johann Heinrich von Thuenen deserves the title of the founder of the economics of renewable resources. Moreover, in combination with his publications on forestry, land use, soil improvement and agricultural processing industries he should also be seen as the creator of a discipline which got its name but now, the creator of bioeconomics. -- |
| Keywords: | bioeconomics,economics of renewable resources,tragedy of commons,fisheries economics,urban agriculture,factor demand table,auction system |
| JEL: | B13 B15 B16 Q15 Q21 Q22 Q24 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:roswps:135&r=his |
| By: | Andreas Ortmann (School of Economics, Australian School of Business, the University of New South WalesAuthor-Name: Craig Freedman); Benoit Walraevens (Centre for Research in Economics and Management,Université de Caen Basse Normandie) |
| Abstract: | Analyzing the rhetorical structure of The Wealth of Nations (Smith WN) and its context, we make the case for the central importance of its Book V, "Of the Revenue of the Sovereign or Commonwealth”, which tends to be neglected in most accounts of Smith’s oeuvre (even, most recently, Phillipson 2010; see Ortmann & Walraevens 2014) but which in our reading is, rather than a general treatise on optimal taxation and spending, a book focused on the future of an empire being threatened by a Mercantilist system. The Empire in question was, of course, the British one. Book V follows Book IV, in which Smith -- after having documented the slow and unnatural progress of opulence in, among others, England and Scotland in Book III – had undertaken a “very violent attack” (Smith EPS p. 208; Smith Corr., p. 251) on those responsible for the low growth rates (“opulence”) in Scotland and, even more, England: manufacturers and merchants and those politicians who propagated Mercantilist philosophies and practices of the commercial class. Aware that those he targeted would not take kindly to the attack, Smith made his case against the Mercantilist system as well as its colonial policy by marshaling his earlier insights into rhetorical theory and practice. We explain why and how he organized his attack. |
| Keywords: | Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, rhetoric, rhetorical structure of The Wealth of Nations |
| JEL: | B10 B12 C70 C72 |
| Date: | 2014–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:swe:wpaper:2014-11&r=his |
| By: | Konstantin Yanovskiy (Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy) |
| Abstract: | Historical data on US aid to Israel illustrates incentives of political leaders and special interests, first and foremost in Israel. As on the early stages of Alliance Israel military capabilities could provide valuable services to USA, undermining USSR influence in the Middle East, the current relations are hard to explain by mutual national interests. The paper focus on the political actors' personal incentives, provides explanation for growing exploitation of US Aid by the special interests in Israel, while significance of the aid is approaching to insignificant level and contributes negatively to the country Defense capacity because of political conditionality imposed. The data presented could support a new vision of US-Israel alliance: ceasing of the US Aid programs for Middle East could contribute both countries Defense needs. |
| Keywords: | Political conditionality; Special interests; political leverage |
| JEL: | D74 D78 D72 F35 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gai:wpaper:0090&r=his |
| By: | Ron Boschma |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes an evolutionary perspective on regional resilience. We conceptualize resilience not just as the ability of a region to accommodate shocks, but we extend it to the long-term ability of regions to develop new growth paths. We propose a comprehensive view on regional resilience, in which history is key to understand how regions develop new growth paths, and in which industrial, network and institutional dimensions of resilience come together. Resilient regions are capable of overcoming a trade-off between adaptation and adaptability, as embodied in their industrial (related and unrelated variety), network (open, loosely coupled) and institutional (loosely coherent) structures. |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:1409&r=his |
| By: | VAN DIJCK, Maarten (Flemish Heritage Agency, B-1210 Brussels; Faculty of Business Ecoomics, University of Hasselt); TRUYTS, Tom (CEREC, Saint Louis University; Université catholique de Louvain, CORE, Belgium) |
| Abstract: | After 1875, cheap grain from the United States and Russia flooded the European markets. Many countries like Germany, France, and Sweden turned to agricultural trade protection, while others, like the UK and Denmark, held on to a free trade position. Belgium adopted a middle position, leaving its grain markets open but protecting animal husbandry, dairy production, and the processing of foodstuffs. The econometric analysis of the votes of Belgian Members of Parliament on four proposals to install protectionist measures on agricultural trade seeks to identify which economic or political interests explain the Belgian policy option. |
| Date: | 2014–02–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cor:louvco:2014002&r=his |
| By: | Selwyn Cornish; William Coleman |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:auu:hpaper:027&r=his |
| By: | Arimoto, Yutaka; Lee, Changmin |
| Abstract: | Foreign direct investment (FDI) can deliver both positive and negative spillovers to the local economy. Negative effects such as crowding-out or entry-barrier effects might outweigh the positive ones when the technological gap between foreign and local firms is significant. This paper examines the impact of Japanese direct investment into Korea under colonization in the 1930s on the entry of Korean-owned factories. By using the census of manufacturing factories in Korea, we exploit variations in the share of Japanese factories and their entry rates across counties within the same subsectors. We find that within a subsector, entry rates of Korean factories were higher in counties with higher presence and entry of Japanese factories. Positive correlations are also found between subsectors. The results imply that Japanese direct investment did not suppress the entry of Korean factories and that FDI could exert positive entry spillovers on indigenous firms, even at a very early stage of industrialization. |
| Keywords: | Korean Peninsula, Japan, Foreign investments, Industrialization, Manufacturing industries, Foreign direct investment (FDI), Entry spillovers, Korean industrialization |
| JEL: | F21 F23 M13 N65 O14 |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper450&r=his |
| By: | Robert N McCauley; Catherine R Schenk |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the discussion of a substitution account in the 1970s and how the account might have performed had it been agreed in 1980. The substitution account would have allowed central banks to diversify away from the dollar into the IMF’s Special Drawing Right (SDR), comprised of US dollar, Deutsche mark, French franc (later euro), Japanese yen and British pound, through transactions conducted off the market. The account’s dollar assets could fall short of the value of its SDR liabilities, and hedging would have defeated the purpose of preventing dollar sales. In the event, negotiators were unable to agree on how to distribute the open-ended cost of covering any shortfall if the dollar’s depreciation were to exceed the value of any cumulative interest rate premium on the dollar. As it turned out, the substitution account would have encountered solvency problems had the US dollar return been based on US Treasury bill yields, even if a substantial fraction of the IMF’s gold had been devoted to meet the shortfall at recent, high prices for gold. However, had the US dollar return been based on US Treasury bond yields, the substitution account would have been solvent even without any gold backing. |
| Keywords: | Special Drawing Right, substitution account, reserve currency, foreign exchange reserves; International Monetary Fund |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bis:biswps:444&r=his |
| By: | Karartı, Tuncay |
| Abstract: | This study investigates human resource management (HRM) practices in SME sector Turkey vis-à-vis economic system, history and culture. It attributes to discussion on convergence and divergence by appraising traditional values’ impact on shaping HR practices. The study has been conducted under certain journals, articles, and thesis and conference proceedings addressing major human resource functions, specifically training, job analysis, performance-management, recruitment and selection in Turkey. The paper suggests directional convergence’s presence, which means corporations in Turkey follow constant trends prevailing in the USA or Europe; however the presence patterns take issue with relevance Turkish firms’ understanding and implementation of these trends. Collectivism, mental attitude, and uncertainty turning away appear to deeply impact HRM practices in Turkey, decreasing the likelihood of full convergence. HR practices and literature is dominated by U.S. and European-oriented analysis. As this study provides a close, tho' not comprehensive literature review regarding HR practices in Turkey, its conclusions additionally could also be cypher to countries with the same socio-cultural dynamic, more to suggesting avenues for future analysis. |
| Keywords: | Convergence, Divergence, HR Practices, SME, Traditional and Modern HR Application |
| JEL: | M12 M19 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:54389&r=his |
| By: | Bullard, James B. (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) |
| Abstract: | February 19, 2014. Speech at Exchequer Club, Washington, D.C. |
| Date: | 2014–02–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedlps:227&r=his |
| By: | Gilles Pison (Ined) |
| Abstract: | Au 1er janvier 1914, la pyramide des âges de la France a la forme régulière d'une meule de foin. La première guerre mondiale y crée plusieurs encoches liées aux pertes militaires et au déficit des naissances. La pyramide des âges est aujourd'hui en voie de retrouver une forme régulière, les stigmates que la première guerre y a laissés ayant pratiquement disparu après l'avoir marquée pendant près de cent ans. |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idg:posocf:509&r=his |
| By: | Francesco Giavazzi (Bocconi University); Ivan Petkov (Boston College); Fabio Schiantarelli (Boston College; IZA) |
| Abstract: | This paper presents evidence on the speed of evolution (or lack thereof) of a wide range of values and beliefs of different generations of European immigrants to the US. The main result is that persistence differs greatly across cultural attitudes. Some, for instance deep personal religious values, some fam-ily and moral values, and political orientation are very persistent. Other, such as attitudes toward cooperation, redistribution, effort, children independence, premarital sex, and even the frequency of religious practice or the intensity of association with one’s religion, converge rather quickly. Moreover, the results obtained studying higher generation immigrants differ greatly from those obtained limiting the analysis to the second generation, and imply lesser degree of persistence. Finally, we show that persistence is ”culture specific” in the sense that the country from which one’s ancestors came matters for the pattern of generational convergence. |
| Keywords: | Culture, Values, Beliefs, Transmission, Persistence, Evolution, Immigrants, Integration |
| JEL: | A13 F22 J00 J61 Z10 |
| Date: | 2014–03–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boc:bocoec:853&r=his |
| By: | Michel Bellet (GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - CNRS : UMR5824 - Université Lumière - Lyon II - École Normale Supérieure (ENS) - Lyon - PRES Université de Lyon - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Etienne - Université Claude Bernard - Lyon I) |
| Abstract: | L'antiphysiocratie des saint-simoniens peut paraître assez naturelle. En effet, une doctrine saint-simonienne réputée pour son industrialisme utopiste ne pouvait, semble t-il, que s'opposer à ce que Smith a appelé le "système agricole". Cette interprétation, sans être totalement erronée, est une réduction abusive du point de vue saint-simonien. En effet, si, au début du XIXème siècle, les saint-simoniens peuvent être rangés dans la catégorie des "néo-smithiens" qui réfutent la thèse selon laquelle la terre est à l'origine de la richesse, ils le font à partir d'une approche spécifique, opposant oisifs et travailleurs. Cette partition modifie les débats classiques concernant le rôle des diverses classes et des revenus qui y sont associés, tout en légitimant un programme anti-physiocrate, opposé au rôle économique et politique des propriétaires fonciers. Pour autant, les saint-simoniens ne se contentent pas de cette opposition : ils soutiennent la méthode de Quesnay et sa définition de l'économie politique. Selon eux, il faut raisonner à partir d'un système, et une philosophie générale des rapports sociaux doit précéder la science des richesses. Même si la nature de cette philosophie diffère (droit naturel vs évolutionnisme historique et physiologique), cette communauté de vue revendiquée concernant la méthode et le refus d'autonomie de l'économie politique conduit les saint-simoniens à une définition et un usage originaux de leur antiphysiocratie, dans le contexte du premier tiers du XIXème siècle. |
| Keywords: | Physiocracy; Quesnay; Saint-Simonism; Post-Smithian Theory; System |
| Date: | 2014–03–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00956451&r=his |