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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2014‒11‒07
25 papers chosen by |
| By: | O Grada, Cormac (University College Dublin) |
| Keywords: | economic history, science, human capital |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:205&r=his |
| By: | Pedro Garcia Duarte |
| Abstract: | Frank P. Ramsey (b. 1903 – d. 1930) was a Cambridge mathematician who interacted closely to leading economists of his time such as Arthur Cecil Pigou, John Maynard Keynes and Roy Harrod. In the 1920s he was considered by many as a brilliant student who was clearly integrated to the elite group of Cambridge and who knew and was friend of such luminaries as G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and also Lytton and James Strachey, Virginia Woolf, Lionel Penrose, Kingsley Martin, Richard Braithwaite, I. A. Richards, and C. K. Ogden. Despite being few in numbers, his contributions to mathematics, logic, philosophy and economics are considered by practitioners in these areas as the most profound and original work in the first half of the twentieth century. This canonization was initiated soon after the untimely death of Ramsey, before completing 27 years of age. Economists portray Ramsey as a sleeping giant, someone with almost no impact until the 1950s, when they finally learned the mathematical tools necessary to apprehend his ideas. Building on my previous works on Ramsey this article surveys his life and work, focusing on economics, and shows how this provides interesting historical windows both to the Cambridge milieu of the 1920s and to the important transformations of economics after World War II. |
| Keywords: | Frank Ramsey; University of Cambridge; Arthur Cecil Pigou; John Maynard Keynes; Paul Samuelson |
| JEL: | B31 B22 B16 B23 |
| Date: | 2014–10–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spa:wpaper:2014wpecon17&r=his |
| By: | Julia Cage (Département d'économie); Valeria Rueda (Département d'économie (ECON)) |
| Abstract: | This article delves into the relationship between newspaper readership and civic attitudes, and its effect on economic development. To this end, we investigate the long-term consequences of the introduction of the printing press in the 19th century. In sub-Saharan Africa, Protestant missionaries were the first both to import the printing press technology and to allow the indigenous population to use it. We build a new geocoded dataset locating Protestant missions in 1903. This dataset includes, for each mission station, the geographic location and its characteristics, as well as the educational and health-related investments undertaken by the mission. We show that, within regions located close to missions, proximity to a printing press significantly increases newspaper readership today. We also document a strong association between proximity to a printing press and contemporary economic development. Our results are robust to a variety of identification strategies. |
| Keywords: | historical persistence, printing press, Protestant missions, newspaper readership, political participation, economic development. |
| JEL: | D72 N37 N77 O33 Z12 Z13 |
| Date: | 2014–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/453m2eks408pdoss8agfiaocu6&r=his |
| By: | Nuno Ferraz (Economic Advisor at the Portuguese Parliament and PhD Student at ISEG, Portugal); António Portugal Duarte (Faculty of Economics, Uniuversity of Coimbra and GEMF, Portugal) |
| Abstract: | The end of the 19th century was marked by several events which were extremely important to Portugal. The consequences of these events would later be responsible for the fall of the Monarchy and, thus, for the birth of the Republic. The first Republic was officially proclaimed on the 5th October 1910, and had a relatively short lifetime. This regime was later abolished by a military dictatorship. During most of its duration, the First Republic was marked by economic, financial, political and social instability. However, the Portuguese economic scenario started to change and improved by the end of this regime and, consequently, before the beginning of the Military Dictatorship, which ended up taking advantage of the ‘new’ and more favourable economic situation of the country. Additionally we find evidence that in the first two civil years of the Military Dictatorship, the real GDP grew sharply and above our prediction, and the public debt as percentage of GDP, had a more significant reduction then predicted. |
| Keywords: | Economic growth, First Republic, Public finance, Portugal. |
| JEL: | C01 H63 N13 O11 |
| Date: | 2014–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gmf:wpaper:2014-18.&r=his |
| By: | Christian Stohr |
| Abstract: | This paper combines various data sources on value added and GDP for Switzerland in order to construct long-¬â€term series from 1851 to 2008. I provide an extensive discussion of deflation methods and show that the recent update of the Swiss GDP per capita series in the Maddison database relies on a statistical artifact. This update suggests that Switzerland was already an extremely rich country in 1851 and that it was by far the richest economy in the world for practically the whole period between 1890 and 1980. Important relative price changes have occurred in Switzerland between 1945 and 1990. Double-¬â€deflated GDP estimates like those of the recent update are erroneous, when price indices are not regularly rebased, and even then, they do not account for gains and losses from relative price changes. In the case of Switzerland, this leads to significant underestimation of the growth rate and, since GDP is constructed backward from the 1990 benchmark, to a GDP level, which is between 40 and 70% too high for the whole period before 1945. I propose an alternative GDP series, which is deflated by the consumer price index. This series suggest that Switzerland was not all that rich. The contributions of this paper are three-¬â€fold. First, it provides a GDP series for Switzerland that builds on reliable sources and is very much in line with other types of evidence (international benchmark comparisons and international wage comparisons). Second, it points out a methodological problem of double deflation that might also be a source of error in the GDP series of other (small open) economies. Third, it throws a different light on the development trajectory of Switzerland shifting the accent from proto-¬â€industry and the first industrial revolution to the second industrial revolution and the post-¬â€WWII boom. This has also an incidence on the identification of the possible sources of Swiss growth shifting the focus from protestant immigration to market integration during the second half of the 19th century and the post-¬â€1945 boom. Limited openness might be responsible for the Swiss growth slack between 1973 and 2000. |
| Keywords: | economic history, Switzerland, national accounting, double deflation |
| Date: | 2014–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gen:geneem:14091&r=his |
| By: | Davide Fiaschi; Tamara Fioroni |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a model inspired by the Unified Growth Theory, where reductions in adult mortality together with improvements in technological progress are the deep causes of the transition from a Traditional (Malthusian) Regime to a Pre-Modern Regime, characterized by the accumulation of fixed capital only, and finally, to a Modern Regime, characterized by the joint accumulation of both fixed and human capital. A calibrated version of the model is able to reproduce the dynamics of the UK economy in the period 1541-1914, matching both the periods of transition and the pattern of main macroeconomic variables. UK growth before the mid-nineteen th century ap- pears to be mainly due to technological progress, while thereafter, the decline in adult mortality and factors accumulation played the major role. Finally, fertility decline during the nineteenth century has only a marginal impact on growth because it is more than balanced by the increase in adult survival. |
| Keywords: | Unified Growth Theory, Human Capital, Adult mortality, Nonlinear Dynamics, Endogenous Fertility, Industrial Revolution. |
| JEL: | O10 O40 I20 |
| Date: | 2014–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pie:dsedps:2014/186&r=his |
| By: | Bruce Caldwell; Leonidas Montes |
| Abstract: | F. A. Hayek took two trips to Chile, the first in 1977, the second in 1981. The visits were controversial. On the first trip he met with Genera l Augusto Pinochet, who had led a coup that overthrew Salvador Allende in 1973. During his 1981 visit, Ha yek gave interviews that were published in the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio and in which he discussed authoritarian regimes and the problem of unlimited democracy. After each trip, he complained th at the western press had painted an unfair picture of the economic situation under the Pinochet regime. Drawing on archival material, interviews, and past research, we provide a full account of this controversial episode in Hayek's life. |
| Keywords: | F. A. Hayek, Chile, Chicago Boys, Augusto Pinochet, Salvador Allende, Milton Friedman, Centro de Estudios Publicos (CEP), El Mercurio |
| JEL: | B1 B2 B25 B21 B3 B4 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hec:heccee:2014-12&r=his |
| By: | Graziella Bertocchi; Monica Bozzano |
| Abstract: | We investigate the determinants of the education gender gap in Italy in historical perspective with a focus on the influence of family structure. We capture the latter with two indicators: residential habits (nuclear vs. complex families) and inheritance rules (partition vs. primogeniture). After controlling for economic, institutional, religious, and cultural factors, we find that over the 1861-1901 period family structure is a driver of the education gender gap, with a higher female to male enrollment rate ratio in upper primary schools being associated with nuclear residential habits and equal partition of inheritance. We also find that only the effect of inheritance rules persists over the 1971-2001 period |
| Keywords: | Education gender gap, Italian Unification, family types, inheritance, institutions, religion, convergence. |
| JEL: | E02 H75 I25 J16 N33 O15 |
| Date: | 2014–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mod:recent:103&r=his |
| By: | Jeff E. Biddle |
| Abstract: | The modern concept of labor hoarding emerged in early 1960s, and soon became a standard part of mainstream economists’ explan ation of the working of labor markets. The concept represents the convergence of three importa nt elements: an empirical fi nding that labor productivity was procyclical; a framing of this fi nding as a “puzzle” or anomaly fo r the basic neoclassical theory of the firm, and a proposed resolu tion of the puzzle based on optimizing behavior of the firm in the presence of costs of hiring, firing, and training workers. Th is paper recounts the history of each of these elements, and how they were woven together into the labor hoarding concept. Each history involves people associated with various research traditions and motivated by an array of questions, many of which were unrelated to the qu estions that the modern labor hoarding concept was ultimately created to address. |
| Keywords: | labor hoarding, productivity, business cycles |
| JEL: | B2 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hec:heccee:2014-13&r=his |
| By: | Jean-Luc Gaffard (OFCE Sciences Po; University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, France; Skema Business School) |
| Abstract: | The book of Thomas Piketty "Capital in the XXI Century" is ambivalent. On one hand, too simple theoretical reading, basically a-institutional, considers the growth rate as exogenous, and ignores the heterogeneity of capital, making the distribution of income and wealth a technical data without reverse influence on growth itself. On the other hand, the gathered stylized facts, and insights associated incite to the reflection on the ins and outs of the distribution of income and wealth in the perspective of giving it a central place in economic theory and to restore its social dimension. |
| Keywords: | capital, distribution, growth, rent, wealth |
| JEL: | D30 H20 O40 |
| Date: | 2014–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gre:wpaper:2014-28&r=his |
| By: | Karl Gunnar Persson (Department of Economics, Copenhagen University) |
| Abstract: | This paper addresses two issues. It documents the changes in the publication strategy of the members of the Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen over the last 50 years, away from a broad domestic audience to the international community of peers and scholars. From having been only occasionally present in the world of science the Department has increased its impact from the end of the 1980s.Exploiting data on the impact of journal articles the paper makes a tentative estimate of a spectacular increase in research labour productivity. |
| JEL: | A B |
| Date: | 2014–05–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kud:kuiedp:1414&r=his |
| By: | Eckhard Hein (Berlin School of Economics and Law and Institute for International Political Economy); Daniel Detzer (Berlin School of Economics and Law and Institute for International) |
| Abstract: | We present an investigation into the long-run effects of financialisation on income distribution before the financial and economic crises for Germany, one of the major mercantilist export-led economies. The analysis builds on a Kaleckian approach towards the examination of the effects of financialisation on income distribution, as suggested by Hein (2014a). First, we show that Germany saw considerable re-distribution of income starting in early 1980s, which accelerated in the early 2000s, in particular. Examining the three main channels through which financialisation (and neo-liberalism) are supposed to have affected the wage or the labour income share, according to the Kaleckian approach, we provide evidence for the existence of each of these channels in Germany since the mid- 1990s, when several institutional changes provided the conditions for an increasing dominance of finance. |
| Keywords: | Finance-dominated capitalism; distribution of income; Kaleckian distribution theory, Germany |
| JEL: | D31 D33 D43 |
| Date: | 2014–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fes:wpaper:wpaper62&r=his |
| By: | John Lynham (UHERO, University of Hawaii at Manoa) |
| Abstract: | A unique database was created that describes the methods used to allocate shares in nearly every major catch share fishery in the world. Approximately 54% of the major catch share fisheries in the world allocated the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) solely on the basis of historical catch records, 3% used auctions, and 6% used equal sharing rules. The remaining 37% used a combination of methods, including vessel-based rules. These results confirm the widely-held belief that nearly all catch share programs have ÒgrandfatheredÓ private access to fishery resources: 91% of the fisheries in the database allocated some fraction of the TAC on the basis of historical catch. This publicly available database should be a useful reference tool for policymakers, academics, and others interested in catch shares management in HawaiÔi and across the globe. |
| Keywords: | catch shares, ITQ, allocation, grandfathering |
| Date: | 2013–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hae:wpaper:2013-8&r=his |
| By: | Alessandro Vercelli (University of Siena) |
| Abstract: | The reasons and implications of different understandings of the ongoing financial crisis may be thoroughly assessed by starting the investigation from a taxonomy of the competing visions of the capitalist system and of the approach required to understand it. This paper focuses in particular on the nexus between money/credit/finance (from now on “money”) on one side and the real economy on the other side and is articulated in a sequence of sections grouped in three parts. The first part sketches the historical and conceptual path that leads from the early reflections on money to the recent insights on financialisation, stressing only the basic conceptual options and their implications. The analysis starts from the quantitative aspects of money that have been since long a crucial object of political economy, then economics and finally macroeconomics. Section 2 I sketches a bird’s eye view of the mainstream approach from Hume to Woodford; then section 3 outlines the parallel evolution of the heterodox point of view from Marx to Minsky. Section 4 discusses the main views of orthodox and heterodox economists on money as structure. Section 5 investigates why the different paradigms mentioned above lead to different understandings of the meaning and role of financialisation. The second part sketches the conceptual path that leads from the early reflections on economic crises to different understandings of the great crises and to contrasting views on the sustainability of the economic system. Section 6 I discusses the foundations and implications of different views on business-cycle crises while section 7 I considers the main approaches to the understanding and control of great crises. Finally section 8 examines the concepts of sustainability associated to the paradigms analysed above. The third part investigates the interaction between financialisation and sustainability from the synchronic point of view (section 9), and then from the diachronic point of view (section 10), focusing on their broad policy implications. Section 11 concludes. |
| Keywords: | financial crises, financialisation, sustainability |
| JEL: | B10 B20 B E32 E44 G10 G20 Q01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fes:wpaper:wpaper46&r=his |
| By: | Bordo, Michael D. (Rutgers University); Humpage, Owen F. (Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland); Schwartz, Anna J. (Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we describe the evolution of the Federal Reserve’s swap lines from their inception in 1962 as a mechanism to forestall claims on US gold reserves under Bretton Woods to their use during the Great Recession as a means of extending emergency dollar liquidity. We describe the Federal Reserve’s successes and failures. We argue that swaps calm crisis situations by both supplementing foreign countries’ dollar reserves and by signaling central-bank cooperation. We show how swaps exposed the Federal Reserve to conditionality and raised fears that they bypassed the Congressional appropriations process. |
| Keywords: | Swap lines; Federal Reserve; Bretton Woods; Intervention; Mexico; Lender of last resort |
| JEL: | F3 N2 |
| Date: | 2014–10–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwp:1414&r=his |
| By: | Nicolas Barbaroux (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 (UCBL)) |
| Abstract: | In the aftermath of the sovereign debt criss, open-market interventions prevailed within the central bank's policy answers known under the label unconventional monetary policy measures. During interwar period, France was an isolated case, among the leading countries, by everlastingly rejecting open-market operations in its monetary policy toolset. The present study analyzes the French monetary policy history by explaining why Bank of France had been so old-fashioned in monetary policymaking for too long time. Moreover, the article provides an explanation of the latter point by raising five major arguments of explanation : (1) the irrelevancy of the French interwar monetary reforms which enabled the Bank of France to conduct open-market operations per se; (2) the French conservatism throughout the insiders' view from the Bank of France leaders (not only governors and deputy governors, but also the General Council's members at the head of the French central bank); (3) the legacy of a metallist vision, embodied by Charles Rist, within the French economists of that time (4) the negative public opinion regarding open-market operations which were seen as being an inflationist public debt financing instrument and lastly (5) the unfair competition that occurred between the discounting operations and the open-market operations in the Bank of France's balance sheet. |
| Keywords: | Open-market; Monetary policy; Central banking |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-01069286&r=his |
| By: | Valdés, Alberto; Foster, William E. |
| Abstract: | This paper presents what is known about the role of agrarian reform and the subsequent counter reform in producing a successful dynamic evolution of Chilean agriculture. |
| Keywords: | Agricultural policies, Land tenure, Farm structure, Agrarian reform, Incentives, collective farms, asentamientos, |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:1368&r=his |
| By: | Badics, Judit; Kiss, Karoly Miklos; Stenger, Zsolt; Szikszai, Szabolcs |
| Abstract: | The paper aims to study the evolution of the financial regulation and supervision in Hungary from 1987, the year when the foundations of the two-tier banking system were laid. After a brief overview of the history of the Hungarian financial system we turn our attention to the history of the financial regulation. We investigate systematically the main areas of the national financial regulation and discuss the implementation of the financial directives of the European Union in Hungary. Our analysis on the development of the Hungarian legal system concludes that it is almost fully harmonized with the European legislation. |
| Keywords: | banking system, Hungary, financial crisis, financial institution, financial system, regulation |
| JEL: | G01 G20 G21 G23 G28 N24 |
| Date: | 2014–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fes:wpaper:wpaper64&r=his |
| By: | Beestermöller, Matthias; Rauch, Ferdinand |
| Abstract: | We show that the countries of the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy trade significantly more with one another in the aftermath of the collapse of the Iron Curtain than predicted by a standard gravity model. This trade surplus declines linearly and monotonically over time. We argue that these findings suggest that decaying cultural forces explain a significant part of trading capital. We document the rate of decay of these cultural forces. |
| Keywords: | Trade; Gravity; Culture; Borders; Habsburg Empire; Persistence |
| JEL: | F14 F15 N33 N34 N94 |
| Date: | 2014–09–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lmu:muenec:21688&r=his |
| By: | Tanweer Akram; Anupam Das |
| Abstract: | During the past two decades of economic stagnation and persistent deflation in Japan, chronic fiscal deficits have led to elevated and rising ratios of government debt to nominal GDP. Nevertheless, long-term Japanese government bonds' (JGBs) nominal yields initially declined and have stayed remarkably low and stable since then. This is contrary to the received wisdom of the existing literature, which holds that higher government deficits and indebtedness shall exert upward pressures on government bonds' nominal yields. This paper seeks to understand the determinants of JGBs' nominal yields. It examines the relationship between JGBs' nominal yields and short-term interest rates and other relevant factors, such as low inflation and persistent deflationary pressures and tepid growth. Low short-term interest rates, induced by monetary policy, have been the main reason for JGBs' low nominal yields. It is also argued that Japan has monetary sovereignty, which gives the government of Japan the ability to meet its debt obligations. It enables the Bank of Japan to exert downward pressure on JGBs' nominal yields by allowing it to keep short-term interest rates low and to use other tools of monetary policy. The argument that current short-term interest rates and monetary policy are the primary drivers of long-term interest rates follows Keynes's (1930) insights. |
| Keywords: | Japanese Government Bonds (JGBs); Long-Term Interest Rates; Monetary Sovereignty; Nominal Bond Yields |
| JEL: | E43 E50 E60 |
| Date: | 2014–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lev:wrkpap:wp_818&r=his |
| By: | Mary Robertson (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) |
| Abstract: | The paper uses the systems of provision (sop) approach to analyse the transformed presence of finance in the UK housing sop since the 1980s. ‘Sop’ analyses look at the integrated chain of agents involved in providing a good and the structures and processes through which they relate to each other. Such a study of UK housing is carried out from the vantage point of finance, asking how the transformation of mortgage finance since the 1980s has reshaped housing provision. It is argued that the reregulation of mortgage markets, along with increased international capital flows and a sustained period of low interest rates, led to influx of mortgage credit. On the production side, this expansion of mortgage lending has tended to feed prices rather than supply, in part reflecting both the availability of development finance and the use to which it was put. The activities of speculative housebuilders have been increasingly organised around the appropriation of land uplift, over which housebuilders compete with landowners and planners. Labour has suffered from casualisation as a result of housebuilders’ focusing their in-house activities on land acquisition and subcontracting construction. Such processes have also had implications for the availability of skills and other inputs, technological progress, and industry structure. On the consumption side, the transformation of mortgage markets coincided with, and helped to create, increased demand for owner-occupation. The latter was itself the consequence of the legacy of forms of provision throughout the 20th century interacting with a concerted effort on the part of the state to instigate both welfare reform and a cultural shift in preferences over housing. More generally, the state’s influence over the housing sop is pervasive, with the state involved more or less directly throughout the chain of provision |
| Keywords: | financialisation, housing, systems of provision, mortgages |
| JEL: | B50 P16 R31 R38 |
| Date: | 2014–07–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fes:wpaper:wpaper51&r=his |
| By: | Geoffrey Brennan (Australian National University and Duke University); Gordon Menzies (Economics Discipline Group, University of Technology, Sydney); Michael Munger (Duke University) |
| Abstract: | We explicate an iron law of intergenerational transmission of income dispersion. The same mechanism that limited income disparities, as population and prosperity increased through much of the early industrial revolution, will now sharply exaggerate inequality. The reason is that, for the first time in human history, richer parents are having fewer surviving children. Moreover, the effects of this fact in a setting like the current, where average family size is small and economic growth is strong, are quite marked. The social contract implicit in free market liberalism may require ongoing policy intervention to lean against the scolding winds of inequality. |
| Date: | 2014–01–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uts:ecowps:17&r=his |
| By: | Geraldine David |
| Abstract: | During crisis art is often considered as a safe haven both by the scientific literature and the financial advisors. For example, during WWII art markets encountered a massive boom in occupied countries This paper questions this vision of art as a safe investment providing evidence that art has not always supplied a safe investing way during crisis. To do so it constructs, on basis of an original database of 22,000 entries, an art price index for the French art market during WWI and the postwar period in France (1911-1925). The results show that the WWII boom mostly reflected the specificities of the occupation economy imposed by the Nazis. Indeed during WWI artworks underperformed gold, real-estate, bonds and stocks in terms of risk-return performances. This underperformance can be explained by several peculiarities of the market. Investors tended to prefer cheap artworks and old masters during WWI as these were less volatile at the time. |
| Keywords: | Art markets; Art investment; WWI; France; War; Postwar |
| JEL: | N14 N24 N44 Z11 |
| Date: | 2014–10–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sol:wpaper:2013/176148&r=his |
| By: | Wilfrido Ruiz-Ochoa (Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain) |
| Abstract: | Se detalla el procedimiento para elaborar estimaciones quinquenales del PIB estatal industrial en México, durante un periodo en el que se carece de información oficial al respecto: 1930-1965. Las estimaciones se desglosan a nivel de rama, para lo cual se siguen métodos indirectos sustentados fundamentalmente en información de los censos industriales de la época. Se propone un método de Asignación Geográfica Relativa del Producto Interno Bruto –que aquí se le denomina AGERP–, que permiten en forma controlada, reducir los sesgos que pudieran presentarse ante los problemas censales más comunes, como son: falta de proporcionalidad y representatividad, errores de medida, cobertura incompleta, excesiva agregación geográfica, campo y unidad censal inadecuados, y otros. Después de validar las estimaciones –a través de su correlación con indicadores auxiliares que se comportan en forma similar a la actividad económica–, se concluye que mediante este método, es factible estimar el PIB estatal industrial en forma adecuada, y que las estimaciones que se han realizado con metodologías similares pueden ser mejoradas. |
| Keywords: | Palabras clave: contabilidad regional, producto interno bruto estatal, estadísticas regionales históricas. |
| JEL: | C82 P44 R12 |
| Date: | 2014–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ahe:dtaehe:1418&r=his |
| By: | Sonia Bhalotra; Martin Karlsson; Therese Nilsson |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the potential of maternal and infant health programs to improve the life expectancy of women and children. We study a program trialed 1931-33 in seven Swedish medical districts, assembling individual data from parish records and aggregate data from annual reports of medical districts. We estimate short run program effects on maternal and infant mortality. In addition, we track individuals exposed to the program together with unexposed individuals from neighbouring birth-cohorts so as to establish whether they survive to age 40, an age by which maternal mortality of the offspring is determined, and age 75, an age by which 35% of the sample cohorts had died. We find significant impacts of exposure to the infant program on infant survival and on the probability of surviving to ages 5, 40 and 75. The estimates suggest that the impact on life expectancy is largely driven by infant survival. The program narrowed health inequalities. Its impact was systematically larger among children born out of wedlock, who also exhibit higher baseline rates of infant mortality. There is no evidence of endogenous fertility responses or of selection into the program on a range of relevant observables. The evidence is consistent with parents reinforcing treatment by the public health intervention. We are unable to identify any impacts of program components delivered to mothers. |
| Keywords: | Maternal care; infant care; early life interventions; barker hypothesis; program evaluation; Sweden |
| JEL: | I15 I18 H41 |
| Date: | 2014–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rwi:repape:0504&r=his |