New Economics Papers
on Business, Economic and Financial History
Issue of 2014‒07‒13
twenty-two papers chosen by



  1. The Dynamics of Subcenter Formation: Midtown Manhattan, 1861-1906 By Jason Barr; Troy Tassier
  2. Engineers, Innovative Capacity and Development in the Americas By Maloney, William F.; Caicedo, Felipe Valencia
  3. The GDP per capita of the Mexican regions (1895-1930): new estimates By José Aguilar-Retureta
  4. Marshall, los Webb y Schumpeter en Estados Unidos: descubriendo una nueva realidad económica By José Luis Ramos Gorostiza
  5. Issues in Identifying Economic Crises: Insights from History By Xavier De Scheemaekere; Kim Oosterlinck; Ariane Szafarz
  6. The Wind of Change: Maritime Technology, Trade and Economic Development By Pascali, Luigi
  7. Bowling for fascism: social capital and the rise of the Nazi Party By Shanker Satyanath; Nico Voigtländer; Hans-Joachim Voth
  8. Behavioural Labour Economics: Advances and Future Directions By Dohmen, Thomas
  9. Tales from the Bretton Woods By Michael D. Bordo
  10. Mainstream Aversion to Economic Methodology and the Scientific Ideal of Physics By Drakopoulos, Stavros A.
  11. The geography of stock exchanges in Imperial Germany By Burhop, Carsten; Lehmann-Hasemeyer, Sibylle H.
  12. The water footprint of the spanish agricultural sector: 1860-2010 By Rosa Duarte; Vicente Pinilla; Ana Serrano
  13. Growing Income Inequality as a Challenge to 21st Century Capitalism By Josef C. Brada; El-hadj Bah
  14. The Brasilia experiment : road access and the spatial pattern of long-term local development in Brazil By Bird, Julia; Straub, Stephane
  15. Dissecting the Act of God - An Exploration of the Effect of Religion on Economic Activity By Jean-François Carpantier; Anastasia Litinia
  16. The Reaction of Elites in a Democratization Process: Evidence from Brazil By Raphael Bruce; Rudi Rocha
  17. El ciclo económico del Uruguay, 1998-2012 By Luis Bértola; Fernando Isabella; Carola Saavedra
  18. Antinomias del capitalismo: Una reseña sobre El malestar en la globalización de Joseph Stiglitz By Estrada, Fernando
  19. Hacia una nueva comprensión de un viejo problema: una propuesta metodológica para la medición del desempeño institucional de largo plazo By Sabrina Siniscalchi
  20. The Relationship between Population Growth and Economic Growth Over 1870-2013: Evidence from a Bootstrapped Panel-Granger Causality Test By Tsangyao Chang; Hsiao-Ping Chu; Frederick W. Deale; Rangan Gupta
  21. Economic Impact of Selected Conflicts in the Middle East: What Can We Learn from the Past? By Randa Sab
  22. The logic of the violence in the civil war: The armed conflict in Colombia By Estrada, Fernando

  1. By: Jason Barr; Troy Tassier
    Abstract: Midtown Manhattan is the largest business district in the country. Yet only a few miles to the south is another district centered at Wall Street. This paper aims to understand when and why midtown emerged. We have created a new data set from historical New York City directories that provide the employment location, residence and job for several thousand residents in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We supplement this with data from historical business directories. The data allow us to describe how, when and why midtown emerged as a center of commerce. We find that midtown arose because of economies of scale related to shopping, rather than congestion in lower Manhattan or wage differentials across the city. Specifically, the evidence suggests that firms moved to midtown to be near retail businesses and other commercial activity in order to be closer to customers, who had been moving north on the island throughout the 19th century. Once several industries moved from lower Manhattan it triggered a spatial equilibrium readjustment in the 1880s, which then promoted the rise of skyscrapers in midtown around the turn of the 20th century, several years before the opening of Grand Central Station in 1913.
    Keywords: Manhattan, spatial equilibrium, poly-centric urban development, urban spatial structure
    JEL: R14 R23 R33 N91
    Date: 2014–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:run:wpaper:2014-002&r=his
  2. By: Maloney, William F. (World Bank); Caicedo, Felipe Valencia (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
    Abstract: Using newly collected national and sub-national data and historical case studies, this paper argues that differences in innovative capacity, captured by the density of engineers at the dawn of the Second Industrial Revolution, are important to explaining present income differences, and, in particular, the poor performance of Latin America relative to North America. This remains the case after controlling for literacy, other higher order human capital, such as lawyers, as well as demand side elements that might be confounded with engineering. The analysis then finds that agglomeration, certain geographical fundamentals, and extractive institutions such as slavery affect innovative capacity. However, a large effect associated with being a Spanish colony remains suggesting important inherited factors.
    Keywords: innovative capacity, engineers, technology diffusion, human capital, growth, development, history
    JEL: O1 O31 O33 O4 N1
    Date: 2014–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8271&r=his
  3. By: José Aguilar-Retureta (Universitat de Barcelona,Barcelona,Spain)
    Abstract: So far, apart from Appendini (1972) for 1900, there were no Mexican regional GDP estimates for the period before 1930. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap by presenting new Mexican regional GDP pc estimates for several benchmark years between 1895 and 1930. The paper presents the methodology and sources used to estimate the new series, compares them with the previous estimates, and offers a first long-term picture of Mexican regional pc GDPs (1895-2010).
    Keywords: Palabras clave: Mexican Regional GDP, Regional Inequalities, Economic History Growth.
    JEL: N16 N96 R11
    Date: 2014–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ahe:dtaehe:1415&r=his
  4. By: José Luis Ramos Gorostiza (Departamento de Historia e Instituciones Económicas I. Facultad de CC. Económicas y Empresariales Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
    Abstract: Marshall, los Webb y Schumpeter, tres grandes nombres de la historia del pensamiento económico, viajaron a Estados Unidos en distintos momentos de la llamada Época Dorada del capitalismo, entre comienzos del último tercio del siglo XIX y la Gran Guerra. Este periodo coincidió con la fase de ascenso de Estados Unidos al indiscutible liderazgo conómico internacional, tras una rápida e intensa transformación desde una sociedad aún esencialmente agraria y rural a otra industrial y urbana. Marshall visitó Estados Unidos en 1875, los Webb en 1898, y Schumpeter en 1913. Los tres descubrieron una nueva realidad económica que contrastaba con la vieja Europa, pero las diferencias de percepción fueron notables, tanto porque visitaron el país en tres momentos distintos de su rápido proceso de transformación, como porque contemplaron la novedosa realidad que se les presentaba desde tres miradas bien dispares.
    Abstract: Marshall, Schumpeter, and the Webbs, three great names in the history of economic thought, traveled to the United States at different times of the so-called Golden Age of capitalism, between the beginning of the last third of the nineteenth century and the Great War. This period coincided with the ascent of the United States to the undisputed world economic leadership. Marshall visited the young country in 1875, the Webbs in 1898, and Schumpeter in 1913. The three discovered a new economic reality that contrasted with the old Europe, but the differences in perception were remarkable, because they visited the country in three different times of its rapid and intense process of transformation from an agrarian and rural society to an industrial and urban one, and also because they watched this new economic reality from very disparate looks.
    Keywords: Marshall, Webb, Schumpeter, Estados Unidos, Época Dorada, United States, Golden Age.
    JEL: B00 B10 B30
    Date: 2014–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucm:doctra:14-02&r=his
  5. By: Xavier De Scheemaekere; Kim Oosterlinck; Ariane Szafarz
    Abstract: Economists have been blamed for their inability to forecast and address crises. This paper attributes this inability to intertwined factors: the lack of a coherent definition of crises, the reference class problem, the lack of imagination regarding the nature of future crises, and sample selection biases. Specifically, economists tend to adapt their views on crises to recent episodes, and omit averted and potential crises. Threshold-based definitions of crises run the risk of being ad hoc. Using historical examples, this paper highlights some epistemological shortcomings of the current approach.
    Keywords: Economic Crisis; Single-Case Probability; Epistemology; Economic History
    JEL: B40 G00 N00
    Date: 2014–06–23
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sol:wpaper:2013/171717&r=his
  6. By: Pascali, Luigi (Department of Economics, University of Warwick)
    Abstract: The 1870-1913 period marked the birth of the first era of trade globalization. How did this tremendous increase in trade affect economic development? This work isolates a causality channel by exploiting the fact that the steamship produced an asymmetric change in trade distances among countries. Before the invention of the steamship, trade routes depended on wind patterns. The introduction of the steamship in the shipping industry reduced shipping costs and time in a disproportionate manner across countries and trade routes. Using this source of variation and a completely novel set of data on shipping times, trade, and development that spans the great majority of the world between 1850 and 1900, I find that 1) the adoption of the steamship was the major reason for the first wave of trade globalization, 2) only a small number of countries that were characterized by more inclusive institutions benefited from globalization, and 3) globalization exerted a negative effect on both urbanization rates and economic development in most other countries. Key words: Steamship ; Gravity ; Globalization JEL classification: F1 ; F15 ; F43 ; O43
    Date: 2014
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:warwec:1049&r=his
  7. By: Shanker Satyanath; Nico Voigtländer; Hans-Joachim Voth
    Abstract: Social capital is often associated with desirable political and economic outcomes. This paper connects a growing literature on the “dark side” of social capital with institutional change. We examine the downfall of democracy in interwar Germany. Using new data on Nazi Party entry in a cross-section of cities, we show that dense networks of civic associations such as bowling clubs, choirs, and animal breeders went hand-in-hand with a more 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: N44 P16 Z10
    Date: 2014–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:uceswp:007&r=his
  8. By: Dohmen, Thomas (University of Bonn)
    Abstract: In the past decades, behavioural economics has become an influential and important field of economics. Interest in behavioural economics derives from unease with standard economic models that are based on restrictive assumptions, which confine the nature of human motivation. Although Adam Smith, the founding father of modern economics, had highlighted the multitude of psychological motives that drive human behaviour, and despite the fact that many influential economists thereafter believed in tenets of modern behavioural economics, the homo economicus assumption became prevalent, until this construct was challenged by compelling evidence on social, cognitive and emotional factors that drive decision-making and social interaction. Since human interaction is germane to labour markets, one would expect behavioural economics to be highly relevant for labour economics. This paper gauges whether and how behavioural economics has left its mark on labour economics, considers the timing and structure of this development, and contemplates its future impact on labour economics.
    Keywords: behavioural economics, labour economics, behavioural labour economics
    JEL: J00 J01 D03
    Date: 2014–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8263&r=his
  9. By: Michael D. Bordo
    Abstract: An analogy has been made between the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 and the recent Eurozone crisis. The build up of TARGET balances in the Eurosystem of Central Banks after 2007 with the GIPS (deficit countries having large liabilities) and Germany (a surplus country) with large claims is seen as similar to the rising and persistent balance of payments deficits and declining gold reserves by the United States as center country of the BWS gold dollar standard in the 1960s. This paper argues that a better Bretton Woods analogy is between the UK which ran persistent balance of payments deficits reflecting low productivity growth and overly expansionary financial policies (an analogy to the GIPS) countries with West Germany which ran persistent balance of payments surpluses reflecting high productivity and conservative financial policies (analogous to Germany today). However Bretton Woods is very different from the Eurozone in many dimensions. An even better analogy than BWS is a comparison of the clearing mechanism in the U.S.—The Gold Settlement account— with the Target payments mechanism for the Eurozone. In the early 1930s massive gold flows from the interior, hard hit by banking panics, to New York City were similar to the payments imbalances within the Eurozone in the recent crisis. The Federal Reserve did little to accommodate the demands for liquidity leading to a collapse of the payments system in March 1933. By contrast the build up of TARGET reflected full accommodation of the liquidity demands of the member states. TARGET represented an institutional innovation that prevented a repeat of the 1930s payments crisis.
    JEL: N1
    Date: 2014–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20270&r=his
  10. By: Drakopoulos, Stavros A.
    Abstract: There is a persistent aversion towards methodological discourse by most mainstream economists. Frank Hahn (1992) exemplified this attitude and provoked a number of reactions concerning the role and the reasons for methodological aversion. After offering a categorization of the main explanations for methodological aversion, the paper suggests an explanation that is based on the role of the physics scientific ideal. It argues that the strive to achieve the high scientific status of physics by following the methods of physics, contributed to the negative mainstream attitude towards economic methodology. This can be reinforced by examining the writings of extremely influential mainstream economists such as Irwin Fisher and Milton Friedman. These works clearly imply that the hard science status of economics renders methodological discussions and especially methodological criticism, rather pointless. Given that the existing prescriptions for making economic methodology more attractive do not give much thought to this important aspect of mainstream economics, the paper also argues for a more systematic discussion of this issue.
    Keywords: Economic Methodology; History of Economic Thought; Economics and Physics.
    JEL: B0 B3 B4
    Date: 2014–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:57222&r=his
  11. By: Burhop, Carsten; Lehmann-Hasemeyer, Sibylle H.
    Abstract: 23 Stock Exchanges were in operation in Germany in 1913. We provide new data about the number of listed firms, their market value, and the number of IPOs between 1897 and 1913 for all exchanges. We assess reasons why a firm opts to be listed at a certain exchange. Large firms tend to be listed and tend to go public at the Berlin Stock Exchange, while the regional stock exchanges were important hosts for small and medium-sized firms. Borders and distance affect listing decisions, suggesting that a patriotic home bias and asymmetric information between issuer and investors affected listing decisions. --
    Keywords: Financial development,Regional stock exchanges,IPOs,Germany,Economic history
    JEL: N23 G23 R12
    Date: 2014
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:fziddp:892014&r=his
  12. By: Rosa Duarte; Vicente Pinilla; Ana Serrano
    Abstract: From 1860 the Spanish agricultural sector has gone through an intensive process of development resulting in important structural changes, not only in the sector itself, but also regarding the relationship of the agrarian system with natural resources. These changes were closely related to the growing per capita income in the long term, an increasing degree of integration in international markets and profound political changes. During the last 150 years, the volume of Spanish agricultural production experienced a great increase, notably affecting the consumption of domestic water resources and entailing the need for the construction of waterworks, key for the development of irrigation. In this context, this paper studies the evolution of domestic water consumption as a consequence of the increasing agricultural production, as well as the impact that the growing needs for water had on the construction of infrastructure for irrigation. To that aim, we estimate the water footprint of the Spanish agricultural sector, that is, we will try to obtain the water consumed in the production of vegetal and animal goods for five different years: 1860, 1900, 1930, 1962 and 2010. From these results, a detailed analysis of the trends on water consumption and changes in compositional patterns is carried out. Moreover, we collect the available information on the building of new irrigation infrastructure to examine to what extent the development of the agricultural sector conditioned the construction of new irrigation infrastructure. Finally, a Decomposition Analysis (DA) is applied to analytically identify and quantify the main explaining factors behind the evolution followed by the increase in agricultural water consumption in the long term.
    Keywords: agricultural production, water footprint, irrigation, decomposition analysis
    JEL: N53 N54 Q10 Q25
    Date: 2014–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:seh:wpaper:1408&r=his
  13. By: Josef C. Brada (Arizona State University); El-hadj Bah (University of Auckland)
    Abstract: Income inequality has increased in both developed and developing countries, and this growing inequality is in large part due to a shift in factor shares in favor of capital and to the detriment of labor. Factor shares have varied systematically over the post-World War II period, rising until the late 1970s and then falling until now. Explanations for the decline in labor’s share include technical progress, globalization, a decline in labor’s bargaining power, and increasing energy prices. These drivers of income change are likely to persist for the foreseeable future, meaning that income inequality will continue to increase. We show that growing inequality tends to reduce political stability and the ability of governments to protect citizens against predation and also to reduce education attainment. Since good institutions and education are key drivers of the growth of total factor productivity, growing inequality thus poses a serious risk for the capitalist system.
    Keywords: factor shares, labor incomes, globalization, technological progress, energy, economic growth
    JEL: D33 D63 J50 P17
    Date: 2014–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ais:wpaper:1402&r=his
  14. By: Bird, Julia; Straub, Stephane
    Abstract: This paper studies the impact of the rapid expansion of the Brazilian road network, which occurred from the 1960s to the 2000s, on the growth and spatial allocation of population and economic activity across the country's municipalities. It addresses the problem of endogeneity in infrastructure location by using an original empirical strategy, based on the"historical natural experiment"constituted by the creation of the new federal capital city Brasília in 1960. The results reveal a dual pattern, with improved transport connections increasing concentration of economic activity and population around the main centers in the South of the country, while spurring the emergence of secondary economic centers in the less developed North, in line with predictions in terms of agglomeration economies. Over the period, roads are shown to account for half of pcGDP growth and to spur a significant decrease in spatial inequality.
    Keywords: Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Economic Theory&Research,Population Policies,Corporate Law,Urban Slums Upgrading
    Date: 2014–07–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6964&r=his
  15. By: Jean-François Carpantier (CREA, Université de Luxembourg); Anastasia Litinia (CREA, Université de Luxembourg)
    Abstract: This research establishes that religiosity has a persistent effect on economic outcomes. First we use a sample of migrants in the US to establish that religiosity at the country of origin has a long lasting effect on the religiosity of migrants. Second, exploiting variations in the inherited component of religiosity of migrants, our analysis uncovers the causal effect of religiosity on economic activity using a panel of countries for the period 1935- 2000. The empirical findings suggest that i) church attendance has a positive impact on economic outcomes; ii) religious beliefs in the existence of god, hell, heaven and miracles have no systematic effect on economic outcomes, and iii) stronger faith is associated with prosperity. Moreover we extend our analysis to uncover the channels via which religiosity operates. Notably, the positive effect of religious participation and of stronger faith on economic outcomes operates via the creation of social capital and the development of traits, such as hard work and thrift, that are conducive to growth.
    Keywords: Religiosity, Growth, Beliefs, Migration, Culture
    JEL: A1 Z12 Z13
    Date: 2014
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:luc:wpaper:14-09&r=his
  16. By: Raphael Bruce; Rudi Rocha
    Abstract: This paper examines one of the possible channels through which incumbent elites aligned with the Brazilian dictatorship were able to withhold their political power during the democratization in the 1980s. Based on national household survey data and results from legislative elections, we first find that recently franchised illiterate voters who lived in states that were dominated by the elite party during the dictatorship had a higher probability to register to vote than those who lived in other states.We then investigate whether this positive correlation represents a reaction from the incumbent elites in order to keep their political power through voter manipulation or a reaction from these voters in order to remove the power from the oligarchies. We find that, in states dominated by the elite party, illiterates had higher probability of being politically uninterested and uninformed. Our results suggest that a politically motivated reaction from this population is implausible.
    Keywords: Democratization; Elites; Rural Oligarchy
    JEL: D72 D78 I25
    Date: 2014–06–26
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spa:wpaper:2014wpecon9&r=his
  17. By: Luis Bértola (Programa de Historia Económica y Social, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República); Fernando Isabella (Instituto de Economía, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Administración, Universidad de la República); Carola Saavedra (Cámara de Industria del Uruguay)
    Abstract: The paper studies the main features of the economic cycle 1998-2012 in Uruguay. It states that, in spite of very positive and promising results, there still persists a set of structural problems that inhibits us to conclude that Uruguay had broken with the long-run trends of low economic dynamics. The paper also studies changes in the productive structure and the structure of exports, concluding that no significant structural changes took place., which is in line with the idea of the persistence of historical structural features. Finally, the papers tackles the applied productive policies and its relation with the discussed results, concluding that significant progress was made in the policy development and capability building, but that there still exist important weaknesses necessary to be over won in order to improve the prospects for development.
    Keywords: Crecimiento, cambio estructural, políticas productivas, exportaciones, déficit de cuenta corriente
    JEL: E32 F14 H32 N16
    Date: 2014–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ude:doctra:33&r=his
  18. By: Estrada, Fernando
    Abstract: The core issue raised in Globalization and its Discontents, what is the critical evaluation of the IMF's role in the financial crisis in Asian countries and modern Russian transition. The Asian crisis began in July 1997 when the Thai devaluation came to their impact throughout Southeast Asia, as the region plunged into a social setback never seen before. Stiglitz maintains that the main cause of the devaluation of financial liberalization was recommended by Washington in previous years.
    Keywords: Globalization, Stiglitz, IMF, Economic, Asian, Markets
    JEL: H0 H11 H44 I14 I18 O19 O53
    Date: 2014
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:57140&r=his
  19. By: Sabrina Siniscalchi (Programa de Historia Económica y Social, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República)
    Abstract: The measurement of the institutions has been, over decades, a subject refused by a part of the literature which studies the role of institutions in development. Particularly, the New Institutional Economics has focused more on discussing the theoretical channels through which institutions determine growth, than to find ways of measuring them. Most exceptions to this are works that use as a measurement, indicators designed to assess the governance of countries, or the liability of the investment environments, but the reconstruction of them for the long term is almost impossible. This paper presents an alternative way of measuring institutions conceived theoretically from the main tenets of the New Institutional Economic, and with a set of indicators traceable in the long term. Therefore, the Synthetic Indicator of Institutional Performance (SIIP), unlike other indicators, has been constructed taking into account the interaction between political and economic dimensions and emphasizing the importance of analyzing the institutional combinations which best explain each institutional development process.
    Keywords: Institutions, institutional measurements, institutional development.
    JEL: B15 C38 N26
    Date: 2014–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ude:doctra:34&r=his
  20. By: Tsangyao Chang (Department of Finance, Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan); Hsiao-Ping Chu (Department of Business Administration, Ling-Tung University, Taichung, Taiwan); Frederick W. Deale (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria); Rangan Gupta (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria)
    Abstract: This study applies the bootstrap panel causality test proposed by Kónya (2006), which accounts for both dependency and heterogeneity across countries, to test the causal link between population growth and economic growth in 21 countries over the period of 1870-2013. With regards to the direction of population growth-economic growth nexus, we found one-way Granger causality running from population growth to economic growth for Finland, France, Portugal, and Sweden, one-way Granger causality running from economic growth to population growth for Canada, Germany, Japan, Norway and Switzerland, and no causal relationship between population growth and economic growth is found in Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Sri Lanka, the UK, the USA and Uruguay. Furthermore, we found feedback between population growth and economic growth for Austria and Italy. Dividing the sample into two subsamples due to a structural break yielded different results in that for the first period of 1871-1951 we found that population growth Granger cause economic growth only for Finland and France, economic growth Granger cause population growth for Denmark, Japan, and Norway and that there is bidirectional causality between population growth and economic growth for both Austria and Italy. For the period of 1952-2013 we found that population growth Granger cause economic growth only for Sri Lanka, economic growth Granger cause population growth for Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, and Uruguay and that found bidirectional causality between population growth and economic growth only for Japan. Our empirical results have important policy implications for these 21 countries under study as the directions of causality tend to differ across countries and depending on the time period under question.
    Keywords: Population Growth, Economic Growth, Dependency and Heterogeneity, Bootstrap Panel Causality Test
    JEL: C32 C33 O40 Q56
    Date: 2014–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pre:wpaper:201431&r=his
  21. By: Randa Sab
    Abstract: Using narrative-based country-case studies, war episodes in the Middle East were examined to assess their economic impact on conflict and neighboring economies. The paper found that conflicts led to a contraction in growth, higher inflation, large fiscal and current account deficits, loss of reserves, and a weakened financial system. Post-conflict recovery depended on the economic and institutional development of the country, economic structure, duration of the war, international engagement, and prevailing security conditions. The net economic impact on neighboring countries varied according to their initial economic conditions, number and income level of refugees they hosted, economic integration, and external assistance.
    Keywords: Regional shocks;Middle East;Economic recovery;Spillovers;Cross country analysis;Economic indicators;Conflict, post-conflict economic recovery, Middle East
    Date: 2014–06–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:14/100&r=his
  22. By: Estrada, Fernando
    Abstract: This article proposes a reading of the armed conflict from an evolutionary design that takes into account the concept of private protection agencies in the works of Schelling / Nozick / Gambetta. Their aim is to assess the dynamics of conflict and changes from its author’s scientific output. A context of conflicts that includes new expressions of violence and the relative failure of the paramilitary reintegration involves using new analytical models (ar- gumentation, game theory and inconsistent information). The recent evolution of emerging gangs and their expansion into areas that were paramilitary camps requires monitoring not only of the government and the authorities, but those investigating the conflict in the present tense. The author provides heuristic research support from Schelling’s theory of strategy, Nozick’s agencies and the protection, and Gambetta’s recent contributions to the relationship between organized crime and drug cartels.
    Keywords: Schelling, War Civil, State, Gambetta, Leviathan, Cartel Markets, Organized crime
    JEL: D4 D43 D8 D85 Y80
    Date: 2014
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:57160&r=his

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