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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2015‒03‒22
thirty papers chosen by |
| By: | Karlsson, Tobias (Department of Economy and Society, School of Business, Economics and Law) |
| Abstract: | Along with rapid growth and improved standards of living, the first decades of the twentieth century saw the introduction of new technology and new ways to organize production. There are contrasting views on what impact these developments, often summarized as the Second Industrial Revolution, had on the situation of old men in the labour market. Some contemporary observers and modern-day historians have described how old men were crowded out of the labour force and pushed into an ‘industrial scrap heap’. Other researchers have maintained a more optimistic view on the opportunities of old men and argued that labour force withdrawal often was made possible by rising real earnings and savings. Since most of the research in the field has been based on cross-sectional data, the debate has relied on anecdotes, indirect evidence and assumptions.This paper uses data from a longitudinal panel of men living in the city of Gothenburg during the period 1923-1943. In contrast to most previous studies, this one takes up actual transitions into retirement and how such transitions were associated with access to resources. The main result is that a lack of resources was associated with a higher risk of retirement. This association appears even clearer when the sample is restricted to workingclass men and to the latter half of the period of investigation, when unemployment was lower and pension benefits higher. Thus, it would appear that transitions into retirement were most frequent when push and pull mechanisms were combined.<p> |
| Keywords: | labour markets; ageing; retirement; Sweden; inter-war period ISSN: 1653- |
| JEL: | J14 J26 N34 N94 |
| Date: | 2015–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunhis:0019&r=his |
| By: | Louis P. Cain (Loyola University Chicago and Northwestern University); Brooks A. Kaiser (Department of Environmental and Business Economics, University of Southern Denmark) |
| Abstract: | We find three intertwined ambitions that drove federal legislation over wildlife and biodiversity at the beginning of the 20th Century: establishment of multiple-use federal lands, the economic development of natural resources, and the maintenance of option values. We examine this federal intervention in natural resource use by analyzing roll-call votes over the past century. These votes involved decisions regarding public land that reallocated the returns to users by changing the asset’s physical character or its usage rights. We suggest that long term consequences affecting current resource allocations arose from disparities between broadly dispersed benefits and locally concentrated socio-economic and geo-physical (spatial) costs. We show that a primary intent of public land management has become to preserve multiple-use option values and identify important factors in computing those option values. We do this by demonstrating how the willingness to forego current benefits for future ones depends on the community’s resource endowments. These endowments are defined not only in terms of users’ current wealth accumulation but also from their expected ability to extract utility from natural resources over time. |
| Keywords: | Environmental Legislation; Wildlife Legislation; Endangered Species Act; Lacey Act; Economic History of the Environment |
| JEL: | N51 N52 Q28 Q23 Q24 |
| Date: | 2015–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sdk:wpaper:118&r=his |
| By: | Kevin Hjortshøj O'Rourke; Gregory Clark; Alan M. Taylor |
| Abstract: | Many previous studies of the role of trade during the British Industrial Revolution have found little or no role for trade in explaining British living standards or growth rates. We construct a three-region model of the world in which Britain trades with North America and the rest of the world, and calibrate the model to data from the 1760s and 1850s. We find that while trade had only a small impact on British welfare in the 1760s, it had a very large impact in the 1850s. This contrast is robust to a large range of parameter perturbations. Biased technological change and population growth were key in explaining Britain's growing dependent on trade during the Industrial Revolution. |
| Keywords: | British Industrial Revolution, Great Divergence, trade, colonies, growth, specialization |
| JEL: | F11 F14 F43 N10 N70 O40 |
| Date: | 2014–03–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:wpaper:number-126&r=his |
| By: | Karlsson, Tobias (Department of); Lundh, Christer (Economy and Society, School of Business, Economics and Law) |
| Abstract: | This paper presents the Gothenburg Population Panel (GOPP), a random sample of individuals who were living in Gothenburg at some point in time during the period 1915-1943. The individuals in the GOPP were searched for every fourth year in the registers of local tax authorities. The hit rate was high; 95 percent of the individuals and 87 percent of the possible observations in the initial master sample were found. The database contains 12,500 observations of 3,767 unique individuals 16 years old or more, who are broadly representative of Gothenburg’s adult population in the period of investigation. The sample is augmented with spouses and information on children (birth year and incomes). The paper documents how the database was constructed, describes its historical context, compares it with official statistics, presents some basic sample characteristics and discusses the issue of panel attrition.<p> |
| Keywords: | Sweden; inter-war period; labour mobility; population registers; panel data |
| JEL: | C81 J21 J62 J82 N34 N94 Y10 |
| Date: | 2015–03–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunhis:0018&r=his |
| By: | Geloso, Vincent; Kufenko, Vadim |
| Abstract: | In this paper we study Malthusian pressures in a frontier economy. Using the empirical data on the real prices and demographic variables from 1688 to 1860 for Quebec and Montreal, we test for the existence of Malthusian pressures. Bearing in mind the particularities of frontier economies and the development of the Canadian economy, we conduct cointegration tests and VARs in order to identify positive and preventive checks. The cointegration test reveals absence of long-run equilibrium relationship between real wheat prices, birth and death rates. Using the Bai-Perron test we find a structural break in 1767 and divide the sample in pre- and post-conquest periods. We find that the positive checks were operating in the years prior to the conquest but that they faded during the nineteenth century. In the short-run, we find that wheat prices Granger-cause fluctuations in death rates in the pre-conquest period. |
| Keywords: | Malthusian economy,preventive check,positive check,Canadian history,empirical analysis |
| JEL: | J11 N11 E32 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:hohpro:422015&r=his |
| By: | Tae-Hee Jo (SUNY Buffalo State); Zdravka Todorova |
| Abstract: | The community of heterodox economists has lost Fred Lee, one of its fervent leaders, who has been at the center of the heterodox movement for the past three decades. The paper delineates Fred Lee’s wide-ranging contributions to heterodox economics focusing on the making of the history and identity of heterodox economics, on heterodox microeconomic theory, and on the analysis of the social provisioning process. What do these contributions mean for heterodox economics? Fred Lee has left us heterodox theories, institutions, and goodwill that will continue developing in the work of economists who are concerned with establishing an alternative critical theory to the status quo. |
| Keywords: | Frederic S. Lee; heterodox economics; heterodox theory; heterodox microfoundations; heterodox microeconomics; surplus approach. |
| JEL: | B3 B5 D2 D4 P1 |
| Date: | 2015–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pke:wpaper:pkwp1504&r=his |
| By: | Brunt, Liam (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration) |
| Abstract: | We estimate a time series model of weather shocks on English wheat yields for the early nineteenth century and use it to predict weather effects on yield levels from 1697 to 1871. This reveals that yields in the 1690s were depressed by unusually poor weather; and those in the late 1850s were inflated by unusually good weather. This has led researchers to overestimate the underlying growth of yields over the period by perhaps 50 per cent. Correcting for this effect would largely reconcile the conflicting primal and dual estimates of productivity growth over the period. |
| Keywords: | Weather; agriculture; productivity |
| JEL: | N50 O30 Q10 Q20 |
| Date: | 2015–03–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2015_002&r=his |
| By: | Simon Glendinning |
| Abstract: | The term “neoliberalism” is encountered everywhere today. In popular leftist political rhetoric it is often simply a place-holder for “contemporary capitalism”, “austerity politics”, and “all that is bad in our world”, giving that rhetoric the appearance of a new diagnostic edge. However, one could be excused for thinking that its intelligibility is in inverse proportion to its ubiquity. By defining it in terms of its conceptual relationship with classical liberalism this paper offers a justification for thinking about our time as period in which a particular “community of ideas” has sought (with some success) to establish a neoliberal hegemony. Doing so reveals, however, that there are in fact a variety of neoliberalisms, and that the period we now inhabit is best conceived in terms of the rise of a distinctively economic variation. Europe’s history is sketched (anachronistically) in terms of shifting patterns and transitions in which neoliberal variants vie for power. Setting those transitions within a wide-angled vision of Europe’s modernity as inseparable from a movement of the decentring of our understanding of “man”, the chance for a new shift is identified – one to be accompanied, no doubt, by “a surge of laughter” that has been heard, regularly and without fail, throughout the entirety of Europe’s history. |
| Keywords: | Neoliberalism, Hegemony, Europe, University, Philosophy |
| Date: | 2015–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eiq:eileqs:89&r=his |
| By: | Economou, Emmanouel/Marios/Lazaros; Kyriazis, Nicholas |
| Abstract: | In the present essay, we develop at first a model of choice by actors to show how a society can take decisions on specific issues according to how flexible or rigid it is in new ideas and trends. Then, by utilizing game theory we explain how the Athenian society abandoned war in favour of a peace grand strategy during the second half of the 4th century BCE. To achieve this, two visionary Athenian policymakers Eubulus and Lycurgus introduced fiscal expansionary policy programs which proved beneficial for the majority of the citizens. We found that through the expansionary public works programs, the Athenian citizens were taking decisions based on rational choice according to a wider economic prospective. |
| Keywords: | model of choice, game theory, fiscal expansionary programs, Late 4th century BCE Athens |
| JEL: | H30 H53 H56 N4 N43 Z13 Z18 |
| Date: | 2015–03–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:62987&r=his |
| By: | Federico Etro (Department of Economics, University Of Venice Cà Foscari); Elena Stepanova (Laboratory of Economics and Management, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa) |
| Abstract: | We analyze art pricing in a unique dataset on Madrid inventories between 1600 and 1750. Hedonic regressions reveal a number of interesting facts about the taste of Baroque Spanish collectors and the imports of foreign paintings. The hedonic price index shows an impressive increase in the price of paintings (relative to the cost of living) during the XVII century, in line with the Lopez hypothesis for which investment in art increases in wealthy societies without new productive investment opportunities. We examine price differentials between domestic and imported paintings: at the beginning of the century local works were priced substantially below imported paintings, but the price gap is gradually reduced during the century, with an increasing contribution of the younger painters. This is in line with a Schumpeterian hypothesis for which increasing demand induced increasing domestic quality, as priced by the market, and created the conditions for what is known as the Siglo de Oro of Spanish art. |
| Keywords: | Hedonic price index, Lopez hypothesis, Schumpeterian hypothesis |
| JEL: | Z11 N0 L14 D4 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ven:wpaper:2015:06&r=his |
| By: | Goolsbee, Austan D. (University of Chicago); Krueger, Alan B. (Princeton University) |
| Abstract: | This paper takes a retrospective look at the U.S. government's effort to rescue and restructure General Motors and Chrysler in the midst of the 2009 economic and financial crisis. The paper describes how two of the largest industrial companies in the world came to seek a bailout from the U.S. government, the analysis used to evaluate their request, and the steps taken by the government to rescue them. The paper also summarizes the performance of the U.S. auto industry since the bailout and draws some general lessons from the episode. |
| Keywords: | auto bailout, auto industry |
| JEL: | H0 L50 L62 G01 G33 |
| Date: | 2015–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8888&r=his |
| By: | Fidan Ana Kurtulus (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) |
| Abstract: | What role has affirmative action played in the growth of minority and female employment in U.S. firms? This paper analyzes this issue by comparing the employment of minorities and women at firms holding federal contracts and therefore mandated to implement affirmative action, and at noncontracting firms, over the course of three decades spanning 1973–2003. It constitutes the first study to comprehensively document the long-term impact of affirmative action in federal contracting on the U.S. employment landscape. The study uses a new panel data set of over 100,000 large private-sector firms across all industries and regions, obtained from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and it exploits rich variation across firms in the timing of federal contracting to identify affirmative action effects. The paper’s key results indicate that the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action in federal contracting over 1973–2003 were black and Native American women and men. Analysis of the dynamics of workforce composition around the time of contracting reveals that a large part of the effect of affirmative action on increasing protected group shares occurred within the first four years of gaining a contract, and that these increased shares persisted even after a firm was no longer a federal contractor. The paper also uncovers important results on how the impact of affirmative action evolved over 1973–2003. In particular, it finds that the fastest growth in the employment shares of minorities and women at federal contractors relative to noncontracting firms occurred during the 1970s and early 1980s, decelerating substantially in ensuing years. |
| Keywords: | Affirmative Action in the Labor Market; Gender; Race; Workforce Composition |
| JEL: | J15 J16 J21 J7 K31 N32 N42 M51 |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upj:weupjo:15-221&r=his |
| By: | Grönqvist, Hans (Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University); Niknami, Susan (Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University); Robling, P-O (Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University) |
| Abstract: | - |
| Keywords: | - |
| Date: | 2015–03–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:sofiwp:2015_001&r=his |
| By: | Romeu, Andrés; Collado, M. Dolores; Ortuño Ortin, Ignacio (Fundamentos del Análisis Económico) |
| Abstract: | We develop a novel methodology to analyze intergenerational social mobility over long periods of time when the precise ancestors of the individual cannot be identi...ed. We base our approach on the incorporation of surnames in the analysis of social mobility, applying our methodology to assess the degree of intergenerational social mobility within two Spanish regions from the late 19th century to the beginning of the 21st century. The results show that the probability of having a high educational level, or of belonging to a high-status socioeconomic group, still depends on the socioeconomic status of the great-great-grandparents. Our analysis suggests, however, that such dependence will vanish in the next-to-present generation. |
| Keywords: | long-run social mobility, equality of opportunity, distribution of surnames |
| JEL: | D12 R23 |
| Date: | 2013–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mur:wpaper:36768&r=his |
| By: | Benito Arruñada |
| Abstract: | I analyze the basis of the market economy in classical Rome, from the perspective of personal-versus-impersonal exchange and focusing on the role of the state in providing market-enabling institutions. I start by reviewing the central conflict in all exchanges between those holding and those acquiring property rights, and how solving it requires reducing information asymmetry without endangering the security of property. Relying on a model of the social choice of institutions, I identify the demand and supply factors driving the institutional choices made by the Romans, and examine the economic circumstances that influenced these factors in the classical period of Roman law. Comparing the predictions of the model with the main solutions used by Roman law in the areas of property, business exchange and the enforcement of personal obligations allows me to propose alternative interpretations for some salient institutions that have been subject to controversy in the literature, and to conclude with an overall positive assessment of the market-enabling role of the Roman state. |
| Keywords: | property rights, enforcement, transaction costs, registries, Roman law, impersonal exchange, personal exchange, New Institutional Economics, Law and Economics |
| JEL: | D1 D23 G38 K11 K12 K14 K22 K36 L22 N13 O17 P48 |
| Date: | 2015–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bge:wpaper:813&r=his |
| By: | Giancarlo Bertocco (Department of Economics, University of Insubria, Italy); Andrea Kalajzic (Department of Economics, University of Insubria, Italy) |
| Abstract: | Keynes in the General Theory, explains the monetary nature of the interest rate by means of the liquidity preference theory. The objective of this paper is twofold. First, to point out the limits of the liquidity preference theory. Second, to present an explanation of the monetary nature of the interest rate based on the arguments with which Keynes responded to the criticism levelled at the liquidity preference theory by supporters of the loanable funds theory such as Ohlin and Robertson. It is shown that this explanation is consistent with the definition of the non-neutrality of money that Keynes presented in his 1933 works in which he underlines the need to elaborate a monetary theory of production in order to explain the phenomena of the crisis and the fluctuations in income and employment. |
| Date: | 2014–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ins:quaeco:qf1402&r=his |
| By: | Armin Steinbach (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn) |
| Abstract: | This study identifies commonalities between two historical incidents of debt assumption – in the United States in 1791 and in present-day Europe. By comparing the interests and behaviour of key players in these two incidents, we find three major parallels: First, in their strategic interactions, parties both for and against debt mutualisation raise arguments based on notions of fairness and morality. Second, in both historical episodes we find harsh rhetoric levelled against private creditors, who are derided as greedy speculators. Third, bargaining is an essential element of the debt assumption process. Bargaining is directed towards limiting or expanding the scope of debt assumption. Further, bargaining typically leads to some form of conditionality imposed in order to increase the chances of the debts being repaid or to ensure benefits accrue to the parties assuming the debt. |
| JEL: | H63 F55 N11 E62 |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2015_02&r=his |
| By: | Christina D. Romer; David H. Romer |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the aftermath of financial crises in advanced countries in the four decades before the Great Recession. We construct a new series on financial distress in 24 OECD countries for the period 1967–2007. The series is based on assessments of the health of countries’ financial systems from a consistent, real-time narrative source; and it classifies financial distress on a relatively fine scale, rather than treating it as a 0-1 variable. We find that output declines following financial crises in modern advanced countries are highly variable, on average only moderate, and often temporary. One important driver of the variation in outcomes across crises appears to be the severity and persistence of the financial distress itself. |
| JEL: | E32 E44 G01 N10 N20 |
| Date: | 2015–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21021&r=his |
| By: | Fabio Petri |
| Abstract: | Pierangelo Garegnani has argued that the value capital endowment could have been avoided in Knut Wicksell’s long-period general equilibrium in Value Capital and Rent (1898); the capital endowment might have been specified as an amount of labour embodied in the economy’s stock of capital goods, which would have avoided the vicious circle of a factor endowment dependent on what the equilibrium must determine. The paper argues that this thesis cannot be accepted. |
| JEL: | B13 D50 |
| Date: | 2015–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usi:wpaper:707&r=his |
| By: | Claudio Bravo-Ortega; Nicolas A. Eterovic; Valentina Paredes |
| Abstract: | The scanty economic literature has attributed to female voting part of the increase in government expenditure and social government expenditure over the XXth century. This finding results puzzling considering that the political science literature has documented that women tended to be more conservative and right wing supporters over the first half of the XXth century across a wide set of developed and developing countries. We argue that current estimates on this relationship are afflicted by strong endogeneity bias. Using data for 46 countries we find that the introduction of female suffrage did not increased in average the social and total government expenditure. In our estimates we use a novel instrument set related to the diffusion of female suffrage across the globe. Further, research should focus on the determinants of women preferences across the political spectrum in order to understand the also documented movement of women towards the left that has occurred in some countries after the eighties, well after the introduction of female suffrage. |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:udc:wpaper:wp386&r=his |
| By: | Leonidas Montes (Escuela de Gobierno, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez); Bruce Caldwell |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uai:wpaper:wp_036&r=his |
| By: | Beatrice D. Simo-Kengne (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria); Stephen M. Miller (Department of Economics, University of Nevada, Las Vegas); Rangan Gupta (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates whether changes in the monetary transmission mechanism as captured by the interest rate respond to variations in asset returns. We distinguish between low-volatility (bull) and high-volatility (bear) markets and employ a TVP-VAR approach with stochastic volatility to assess the evolution of the interest rate in relation to housing and stock returns. We measure the relative importance of housing and stock returns in the movements of the interest rate and their possible feedback effects over both time and horizon and across regimes. Empirical results from annual data on the US spanning the period from 1890 to 2012 indicate that the interest rate responds more strongly to asset returns during low-volatility (bull) regimes. While the bigger interest-rate effect of stock-return shocks occurs prior to the 1970s, the interest rate appears to respond more strongly to housing-return than stock return shocks after the 1970s. Similarly, a higher interest rate exerts a larger effect on both asset categories during low-volatility (bull) markets. Particularly, larger negative responses of housing return to interest-rate shocks occur after the 1980s, corresponding to the low-volatility (bull) regime in the housing market. Conversely, the stock-return effect of interest-rate shocks dominates before the 1980s, where stock-market booms achieved more importance. |
| Keywords: | Asset Prices, Monetary policy, housing return, stock return, TVP-VAR |
| JEL: | C32 E52 G10 |
| Date: | 2014–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nlv:wpaper:1405&r=his |
| By: | Jean-Pierre Zigrand |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the concept of systemic risk and provides an intuitive account of the economic thought on systems and the development of the notion of systemic risk. It is illustrated by putting the ideas of system, systemic risk and endogenous risk in a historial perspective. |
| JEL: | G21 G23 G33 |
| Date: | 2014–01–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:61220&r=his |
| By: | Clement, Christine |
| Abstract: | Central to the scientific debate about the 'informal sector' and the validity of the concept used to be a twofold challenge. The crux laid not only in the objective to explain the widely visible persistence of the informal economy in developing countries, but also in the identification of its roots and the proliferation conditions to be met ex ante. The present paper aims at establishing a link between the theories on informality and marginalization which is another important issue that has arisen within the discussions on the causes of persistent poverty a few years ago. Both concepts are interlinked and self-enforcing. On the macroeconomic level, any economy - be it formal or informal - consists of a set of different economic sectors and any of these sectors basically consists of an accumulation of people on the microeconomic level. Every time one looks at the macro level where political and economic conditions frame the dynamics of the formal and the informal economy, one has at the same time to look at the micro-level where the social and economic conditions determine the incentives for every actor to participate either in the formal, the informal or in both economies. Informality has multiple sources depending on whether the agent took a voluntary choice or had to involuntary opt-out from an institutional system. In this paper, the connection between informality and involuntary exclusion shall be examined in a retrospective of economic thought since the 1940s. The roots of the intertwined concepts of informality and economic exclusion have been laid in the dual economy theories of the 1940s-1950s. Recapitulating the works of Julius BOEKE, Arthur LEWIS, John HARRIS & Michael TODARO, Albert HIRSCHMAN and other socio-economists of that time, it will be argued that one of the necessary reasons for the persistence of the informal economy in developing countries is the dualism in institutional frameworks that leads to the marginalization of social groups and their subsequent exclusion from formal economic activities. By referring to the groundbreaking Africa studies of Keith HART (1971) and the INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION (1972), special emphasis will be given to the causal reciprocity between informality, marginalization and economic exclusion. The paper closes with a brief overview of current schools of thought that deal very differently with the issue of informality and economic exclusion. |
| Keywords: | economic dualism,informal sector,informal economy,informality,marginalization,economic exclusion,involuntary exclusion,institutions,inequality,traditional sector,urban rural sector,stages of development,Julius Boeke |
| JEL: | B20 B25 J64 O15 O17 O43 N90 P16 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:hohpro:432015&r=his |
| By: | Ricardo Ffrench-Davis |
| Abstract: | The Chilean economy is usually highly praised as a successful one since the imposition of neoliberal reforms, under the dictatorship of general Pinochet in 1973. The fact is that the four decades that have elapsed include sub-periods with quite different policy approaches and notably diverse outcomes. There is neither one unique model nor only one outcome. The four decades growth is moderate, averaging 4.2% per year; during the 16 years of dictatorship averaged 2.9% (meager), during one quarter of a century of democracy, 5.1%, a good performance, but a vigorous 7.1% in the first years (1990-98) and a modest 3.9% in the fifteen more recent years. Sometimes has performed closer to become a “model†for development, sometimes the opposite. Focusing in three episodes (1973-81, 1990-98 and 2008-13), we explore the underlying explanatory variables and some lessons for building “a model for development†|
| Date: | 2014–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:udc:wpaper:wp392&r=his |
| By: | Dodig, Nina; Herr, Hansjörg |
| Abstract: | This paper presents an overview of different models which explain financial crises, with the aim of understanding economic developments during and possibly after the Great Recession. In the first part approaches based on efficient markets and rational expectations hypotheses are analyzed, which however do not give any explanation for the occurrence of financial crises and thus cannot suggest any remedies for the present situation. A broad range of theoretical approaches analyzing financial crises from a medium term perspective is then discussed. Within this group we focused on the insights of Marx, Schumpeter, Wicksell, Hayek, Fisher, Keynes, Minsky, and Kindleberger. Subsequently the contributions of the Regulation School, the approach of Social Structures of Accumulation and Post-Keynesian approach, which focus on long-term developments and regime shifts in capitalist development, are presented. International approaches to finance and financial crises are integrated into the analyses. We address the issue of relevance of all these theories for the present crisis and draw some policy implications. The paper has the aim to find out to which extent the different approaches are able to explain the Great Recession, what visions they develop about future development of capitalism and to which extent these different approaches can be synthesized. |
| Keywords: | theories of crisis,Marxian,Institutional,Keynesian,capitalism,finance,financial crisis |
| JEL: | B14 B15 B24 B25 E11 E12 E13 E32 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ipewps:482015&r=his |
| By: | Xiao Jiang (Department of Economics, Denison University); Luis Villanueva (Department of Economics, Denison University) |
| Abstract: | In conventional economic theories, population is determined outside of the economic system. However, classical political economists such as Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus have long argued for the endogenous determination of population, hence establishing a connection between eco- nomics and demography. Foley (2000) used empirically established global per capita output-fertility schedule based on the 1960-1992 Extended Penn World Tables to project the population stabilizing level of world per capita output and population. In this paper we intend to update this line of re- search using more recent empirical evidences. We find that the world production still exhibits strong pattern of Smithian increasing returns to scale, and most countries' population have been stabilizing along a con- vex path in the income-fertility schedule. Our projection suggests that the world population will stabilize at per capita income around $ 13,550 in 2005 PPP, and by the year of 2011, the world per capita output was still about $2,824 short. The world population will stabilize around 10 billion assuming the absence of any exogenous shocks to the empirically established global income-fertility relation. |
| Keywords: | Growth, Demographic Equilibrium, Classical Economics |
| JEL: | B12 J11 |
| Date: | 2015–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:new:wpaper:1502&r=his |
| By: | Ernesto Screpanti |
| Abstract: | Marx’s theory of labour value is flawed. This note summarizes the main reasons why this is so. At the same time, it claims that the theory of exploitation does not depend on a labour embodied valuation and can be expounded by resorting to the theory of production prices. Almost all Marxists have now accepted this truth. Most of them have been convinced by a ‘new interpretation’ which has been able to translate the price of net output into an amount of ‘living labour’ and the rate of exploitation into a ratio between unpaid and paid labour. What produced such a surprising result is the use of labour productivity as a numeraire |
| Keywords: | Marxian Economics, Labour Values, Prices of Production, Theory of Exploitation |
| JEL: | B14 E11 |
| Date: | 2015–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usi:wpaper:708&r=his |
| By: | Gregori Gomis, Aleix; Baltar, Fabiola |
| Abstract: | Microeconomics is perceived by students as one of the toughest subjects they face at the undergraduate level in order to obtain an Economics or Business degree. This is due to a sometimes rather stringent mathematical content, which is essential to teach economic concepts keeping a proper rigorous approach. In this article we present an experience of using a film clip to support teaching in the microeconomics field. In this case, we chose a cut from Stanley Kubricks' film "Dr. Strangelove", which topic is closely related to game theory, an area of knowledge that lies at the core of any intermediate or advanced microeconomics course. The fragment was selected in order to get the maximum subject related content out of the film spending the minimum class time. Methods: The clip was played in front of too different undergraduate level groups, accounting for a total number of 65 students. Results were derived from behavioural observation in a guided debate on the clip's content and the marks obtained by students in a questionnaire that was administrated to them immediately after the film's view. Questions were aimed for the students to connect the content of the film with the concepts previously taught in class. Results: Students proved a higher degree of interest and attention than that shown in other class sessions of the course, both during the view and the following debate on the content. Additionally, questionnaire marks were on average higher than those obtained by students in other tests. On the whole, students proved a better comprehension of the economic concepts involved after the film's view, compared with that shown in previous sessions. Conclusions: Although film views are a rather innovative tool in the area of microeconomics, our experience shows that it can be a useful complement of usual lessons when teaching certain economic concepts that are explained to students on a mathematical basis. In this regard, the film clip used in this paper helped students to get a better understanding of those concepts and boosted their interest on the topic. We believe that the growing trend of media tools use at the undergraduate level must also be implemented gradually in the economic theory field. |
| Keywords: | Enseñanza Superior; Microeconomía; Métodos Pedagógicos; |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nmp:nuland:2116&r=his |
| By: | Ada Scupola (Roskilde University, Denmark); Antonello Zanfei (Department of Economics, Society & Politics, Università di Urbino "Carlo Bo") |
| Abstract: | Based on a longitudinal case study of virtual library development, we highlight three important aspects that characterize the links between governance and innovation in public sector innovation. First, the examined case shows that the organizational complexities have increased in the transition from what could be considered as a spurious New Public Management approach, which incorporates elements of the traditional hierarchical model and elements of market-like competition, towards a “networked model” implying more emphasis on bottom-up decision making and a greater involvement of end users. Second, we provide evidence of increasing co-creation activities in which end users are involved not only in choosing out of a given menu of alternative solutions to given problems, but also in the definition of the menu itself, and in shaping and implementing innovative solutions. Third, the increasing involvement of users has created important innovation opportunities that are more and more characterized by their frugal/bricolage nature, hence more localized but not necessarily trivial and relatively easy to diffuse to different contexts. |
| Keywords: | Governance, Innovation, Public Sector, Services, ICT. |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:urb:wpaper:14_11&r=his |