|
on Business, Economic and Financial History |
|
Issue of 2015‒11‒15
twenty-six papers chosen by |
| By: | Gabriel Galvez-Behar (IRHiS - Institut de Recherches Historiques du Septentrion - Université Charles-de-Gaulle Lille 3 - Sciences humaines et sociales - CNRS) |
| Abstract: | Since the Ancien Régime, the privileges for inventions could be sold in order to improve the connection between inventors and capitalists. The 1791 French patent laws recognized the inventor's rights as a property and allowed the patent holders to assign their rights. However, to be valid, such an assignment had to be made before a notary and be registred in the prefecture. From 1824 these records were published in the Bulletin des lois. This provision was extended by the 1844 patent law and was always implemented. Thanks to this legal requirement, we have the opportunity to analyze an uninterrupted source about all these transactions during the whole 19th century. Our paper focuses on the period 1824-1844. First, we review the legal framework of French patent system, particularly regarding assignments of patents. We. Secondly, we analyze the sales, which occurred during this period and we compare them with the data available about all patents issued during the early 19th century. Finally, we consider the notion of market for technology by considering complementary sources. |
| Keywords: | economic history,history of technology,patents,market for technology,histoire économique,histoire des techniques,brevets d'invention,marché des techniques,France |
| Date: | 2015–08–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01222137&r=his |
| By: | Roger Fouquet; Stephen Broadberry |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates very long run pre-industrial economic development. New annual GDP per capita data for six European countries over the last seven hundred years paint a clearer picture of the history of European economic development. First, the paper confirms that sustained growth has been a recent phenomenon, but rejects the argument that there was no long run growth in living standards before the Industrial Revolution. Instead, the evidence demonstrates the existence of numerous periods of economic growth before the nineteenth century - unsustained, but raising GDP per capita. It also shows that many of these economies experienced substantial economic decline. Thus, rather than being stagnant, pre-nineteenth century European economies experienced a great deal of change. Finally, it offers some evidence that, from the nineteenth century, these economies increased the likelihood of being in a phase of economic growth and reduced the risk of being in a phase of economic decline. |
| Keywords: | history of economic development; economic growth; economic decline |
| JEL: | E01 N13 O11 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:63626&r=his |
| By: | Fernando Cerqueira Lima; Rita Martins de Sousa |
| Abstract: | Based on the hypotheses that Brazil was not merely an economy that exported precious metals and that there was a relative expansion of the domestic market, in this paper we assess the production, supply and circulation of ?national' gold coins in Brazil in the 18th century. New estimates are provided of the production of these gold coins at the mints of Rio de Janeiro, Bahia and Minas Gerais. Comparing the values of the coinage with remittances to Lisbon, the first half of the 18th century reveals a more stable conjuncture than was found in the second half. This latter period shows fluctuations that were expressed in the faster growth of the supply despite the fall that took place in the production/coinage of gold. Our conclusions question the historiographical theses about the shortage of currency in Brazil throughout the 18th century. The growth of the economy from the last quarter of the century onwards implied an increase in the demand for money, which it proved possible to meet through the production of ?national' gold coins. |
| Keywords: | Brazilian Mint Houses; Brazilian gold; Money Supply JEL classification: N13; N23; N43 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ise:gheswp:wp562015&r=his |
| By: | Ferlito, Carmelo |
| Abstract: | After World War II, and in particular during the 1960s and the 1970s, many developing countries began their industrial revolution path. In particular, most of them followed a path of government-led industrial development, with central planning at the heart of the industrial policy. Such a model is not new in economic history and it is typical of many ‘second-comers’ in the industrialization process. The most famous one is the case of Prussia/Germany: with the Zollverein (1833-34) and after the unification in 1870, it was the government which stimulated the development of a powerful heavy industrial system, following what was preached at the time by Friedrich List. In particular, the key point of List preaching was that second-comers countries need to protect their industrialization process (characterized by infant industries) from foreign competition. According to List, once the protected industries reach an adequate competitive level, protection should be removed and the national companies should face competition in the market, in order to stimulate further technological development. Many second-comers countries embraced this model; however, in most cases they failed to follow the second part of List’s recommendations: opening to the market in a second stage. |
| Keywords: | Malaysia, Automotive, Protectionism, Free Market, Duties. |
| JEL: | N15 N45 N65 P45 P47 P48 |
| Date: | 2015–11–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:67714&r=his |
| By: | Pei Gao (London School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper uses the Chinese historical path to mass education in the early 20th century to tackles one hotly debated question Ð what factors explain the rise of mass schooling? Given China's political turmoil and economic backwardness through the early 20th century, the expansion of mass education that was mainly driven by increasing public efforts seems puzzling. Based on a newly assembled dataset, we find that economic factors had little explanatory power in the rise of mass schooling. In contrast, both regional political stability and informal governance imposed by gentry (one important elite group in Chinese history) presented their critical importance. In particular, first we find that counties where previously had more traditional gentry (degree holders via the civil service exam system) provided significantly more public primary schools under the new education system, therefore had higher primary enrolment ratios. This finding is robust to various checks, including adopting an IV strategy. Secondly, the positive effect of local gentry on mass education development were larger in regions where suffered higher level of administrative instability. The explanation this paper proposes is that the near collapse of formal institution through this political chaotic historical period allowed gentry members, as traditional elites in local communities, seized administrative responsibilities, and deliberately supported the mass education development due to their private interests in modern schooling as a potential way to preserve their elites statues. |
| Date: | 2015–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0089&r=his |
| By: | Iñaki Iriarte Goñi (Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain); Enric Tello Aragay (Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain) |
| Abstract: | This work introduces some concepts, tools and works useful to analyse modern economic growth in Spain in historical perspective, taking into account some of its environmental aspects. The paper is based on the idea, supported by ecological economics, that the economy is and has been historically an open subsystem constantly interacting with society and ecosystems. In this general framework we review the main works analysing Spanish economic history matters from this specific perspective or friendly points of view. We believe that this approach to economic history is convenient for bringing to light some aspects and problems that usually remind hidden in the main stream of economic history analysis, and is, therefore, helpful for a better understanding of historical economic growth and economic development and its consequences. |
| Keywords: | Modern Economic Growth, Environmental History, Ecological footprint, Social metabolism, socio-ecological transitions |
| JEL: | N0 N5 Q57 |
| Date: | 2015–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ahe:dtaehe:1516&r=his |
| By: | Stephen Broadberry; Johann Custodis; Bishnupriya Gupta |
| Abstract: | Estimates of Indian GDP are constructed from the output side for 1600-1871, and combined with population data. Indian per capita GDP declined steadily during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries before stabilising during the nineteenth century. As British growth increased from the mid-seventeenth century, India fell increasingly behind. Whereas in 1600, Indian per capita GDP was over 60% of the British level, by 1871 it had fallen to less than 15%. These estimates place the origins of the Great Divergence firmly in the early modern period, but also suggest a relatively prosperous India at the height of the Mughal Empire. They also suggest a period of "strong" deindustrialisation during the first three decades of the nineteenth century, with a small decline of industrial output rather than just a declining share of industry in economic activity. |
| Keywords: | Britain; comparison; Indian GDP |
| JEL: | N10 N30 N35 O10 O57 |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:56838&r=his |
| By: | Ferlito, Carmelo |
| Abstract: | While in the early 1930s Keynes and Hayek were the major figures in a heated academic debate about money and capital, in which Keynes also and especially involved the Italian Piero Sraffa, it might seem at first sight that the Austrian economist set aside an organic demolition of the ideas expressed in 1936 by his rival in the General Theory. But the ‘Austrian knight’ of a new Vienna-Cambridge debate, in the subsequent decades, was the German economist Ludwig M. Lachmann (1906-1990), a student of Hayek at LSE during the 1930s and later a professor in Johannesburg and New York. Lachmann was one of the protagonists of the Austrian revival after 1974 and the founding leader of the ‘hermeneutic stream’, opposed by the Rothbardian stream. Lachmann, defending Keynes’s subjectivism and expectation theory, revived the Vienna-Cambridge controversy, criticising not Keynes but his followers, in particular the ‘new’ Cambridge School, developed by Joan Robinson and Piero Sraffa. |
| Keywords: | Lachmann, Sraffa, Hayek, Keynes, Economic Crises, Business Cycles. |
| JEL: | B13 B24 B25 B31 E32 |
| Date: | 2014–11–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:67709&r=his |
| By: | Ferlito, Carmelo |
| Abstract: | While in the early 1930s Keynes and Hayek were the major figures in a heated academic debate about money and capital, in which Keynes also and especially involved the Italian Piero Sraffa, it might seem at first sight that the Austrian economist set aside an organic demolition of the ideas expressed in 1936 by his rival in the General Theory. But the ‘Austrian knight’ of a new Vienna-Cambridge debate, in the subsequent decades, was the German economist Ludwig M. Lachmann (1906-1990), a student of Hayek at LSE during the 1930s and later a professor in Johannesburg and New York. Lachmann was one of the protagonists of the Austrian revival after 1974 and the founding leader of the ‘hermeneutic stream’, opposed by the Rothbardian stream. Lachmann, defending Keynes’s subjectivism and expectation theory, revived the Vienna-Cambridge controversy, criticising not Keynes but his followers, in particular the ‘new’ Cambridge School, developed by Joan Robinson and Piero Sraffa. Lachmann’s life sight was to build a new economics paradigm, centred on the idea of market process, expectations and kaleidic society (Shackle). |
| Keywords: | Lachmann, Sraffa, Keynes, Hayek, Expectations, Macroeconomics, Innovation, Business Cycles |
| JEL: | B13 B24 B25 B41 E32 |
| Date: | 2015–08–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:67759&r=his |
| By: | James J. Feigenbaum; Lee, James; Filippo Mezzanotti |
| Abstract: | What was the economic impact of General William Sherman?s 1864-65 military march through Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina? How does local economic activity respond in both the short- and long-run to capital and infrastructure destruction? We match an 1865 US War Department map of Sherman?s march to detailed county level demographic, agricultural, and manufacturing data from US Censuses, 1850-1930. We show that both agricultural and manufacturing output fell relatively more from 1860 to 1870 and 1880 in Sherman counties compared to non-Sherman counties in the same state. These relative declines do not appear to be driven by differential out-migration, demographic patterns, or long-lasting infrastructure destruction. Instead, by collecting new historical data on local banks, we show that damage to credit markets was more severe in march counties and that these financial disruptions can help explain the larger declines in economic output. |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qsh:wpaper:256106&r=his |
| By: | Lee, James; Filippo Mezzanotti |
| Abstract: | Using newly-digitized, city-industry-year level records from the 1923-1937 US Censuses of Manufactures, we examine the influence of the financial sector on the real economy. We do so in the context of the Great Depression, a period in which many banks were suspended and the manufacturing sector, which comprised 30 percent of the US economy, declined significantly. In our research design, we measure whether industries with high levels of pre-Depression external finance dependence declined in employment, output, and establishment growth by more than industries with low levels of pre-Depression external finance dependence from 1929-1933, in cities with higher 1929-1933 bank suspension rates. We control for city-time shocks, industry-time shocks, and other, non-financial industry characteristics interacted with bank suspension rates. We find that high external finance dependence industries contracted by 21 to 27 percent more than low external finance dependence industries following bank suspensions. For robustness, we instrument for bank suspensions with a measure of trust---religious fragmentation---and a measure of real estate price growth. Given the pre-Depression share of high external finance industries and the magnitude of the 1929-1933 bank suspensions, we estimate that approximately 22 percent of the total decline in manufacturing employment from 1929-1933 was due to the banking crisis. We conclude with evidence that the negative effects of the banking shock persisted into the late 1930s on the establishment outcome. |
| Date: | 2014–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qsh:wpaper:220971&r=his |
| By: | Carlson, Mark A. (Bank for International Settlements, Basel, Switzerland); Wheelock, David C. (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the impact of the Federal Reserve’s founding on seasonal pressures and contagion risk in the interbank system. Deposit flows among classes of banks were highly seasonal before 1914; amplitude and timing varied regionally. Panics interrupted normal flows as banks throughout the country sought funds from the central money markets simultaneously. Seasonal pressures and contagion risk in the system were lower by the 1920s, when the Fed provided seasonal liquidity and reserves. Panics returned in the 1930s, due in part to shocks from nonmember banks and because the Fed’s decentralized structure hampered a vigorous response to national crises. |
| Keywords: | Federal Reserve; banking crises; banking panics; interbank market; correspondent banks; contagion; Great Depression |
| JEL: | E58 G21 N21 N22 |
| Date: | 2015–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2015-037&r=his |
| By: | Bruce Caldwell |
| Abstract: | The paper offers a revisionist account of certain episodes in the development of F. A. Hayek's thought. It offers a new reading of his 1937 paper, "Economics and Knowledge," that draws on unpublished lecture notes in which he articulated more fully the distinctions he made in the paper between a "pure logic of choice," or the economic calculus, and an "empirical element," which he would later call the competitive market order. Next, the paper shows that Hayek continued to try to develop his ideas about the role of the economic calculus through the 1950s and early 1960s, an effort that has been missed because it never led to any published work. Finally, the paper examines Hayek's attempt to articulate a theory of the market process, one that would be at the same level of generality as the economic calculus, in lectures he gave at the University of Virginia. He never developed a full ‐ fledged formal theory, but his failed efforts still bore fruit in leading him to his contributions on spontaneous orders and the (verbal) theory of complex phenomena. This work anticipated contributions by others who were more technically trained. |
| Keywords: | F. A. Hayek, economic calculus, market process, pure logic of choice, structure of economic theory, spontaneous orders |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hec:heccee:2015-8&r=his |
| By: | Ángel Luis González (Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain); Vicente Pinilla (Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain); Raúl Serrano (Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain) |
| Abstract: | The objective of the present study is to offer a general overview of the evolution of international trade in agricultural and food products between 1945 and 1960. The developed countries not only maintained policies of stimulating agricultural production implemented during the war, but also deepened their intervention and support with regard to the agricultural sector. The culmination of such policies was, in the case of Western Europe, the creation of the European Economic Community in 1957 and the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy. This was one of the first community-wide policies and had a notable impact on international agricultural trade.To achieve the objective proposed we concentrate on two principal themes. On the one hand a reconstruction will be performed of the international flows of agricultural trade for that period. Furthermore, we shall attempt to analyse the principal determinants of the development of agricultural trade, paying special attention to the political economy which led to the taking of crucial decisions for its evolution, such as its exclusion from the GATT agreements. |
| Keywords: | Agrifood trade, GATT, Agricultural protectionism, Agricultural trade policies, Post-war agricultural policies |
| JEL: | F13 N50 N70 Q17 |
| Date: | 2015–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ahe:dtaehe:1513&r=his |
| By: | Georges Prat |
| Abstract: | The « permanent » unemployment concept of Rueff (1925, 1931) represents a classical form of unemployment due to wage rigidities leading to an excess of real wages compared to their theoretical value corresponding to a competitive equilibrium. Relative to this known aspect of the Rueff’s work, this paper shows that the author considered also a “temporary” unemployment due to an insufficient level of the economic activity, and a « minimum » frictional unemployment prevailing in the normal functioning of any economy. Using empirical data in England during the 1920’s, Rueff suggested that the « permanent » component was the main explanation of the unemployment (this is the socalled « law of Rueff »). We conduct simple econometric tests using Rueff’s data that confirm this conclusion, and we show that releasing the assumption of a constant labor productivity (supposed by Rueff) improves the « law of Rueff ». In line with these results, we show that the theoretical approach proposed by Allais (1943) joins the three types of unemployment pointed out by Rueff, renamed as “chronic”, “conjonctural” and “technological”, respectively. Much later, Allais (1980) proposed an unrecognized straightforward econometrical equation comprising these three types of unemployment to represent the french unemployment over the period 1952-78. We confirm that this equation describes a large part of the evolution of unemployment in England during the 1920’s and in France during the period 1970-2008, although the properties of residuals show that this equation is misspecified. Finally, we suggest that, under some restrictive conditions, the three types of unemployment distinguished by Rueff and Allais can be seen from the perspective of the equilibrium unemployment defined by the imperfect competition WS-PS model (Layard-Nickel-Jackman (1991)), hence allowing to indicate how the Allais’ equation is misspecified, thus highlighting the important scientific advances that have been made since. |
| Keywords: | equilibrium unemployment, wage rigidities, Maurice Allais, Jacques Rueff |
| JEL: | E24 J2 N34 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:drm:wpaper:2015-30&r=his |
| By: | Leticia Arroyo Abad (Middlebury College); Blanca S‡nschez-Alonso (Universidad CEU-San Pablo) |
| Abstract: | The city of Buenos Aires is an extreme case in immigration history since the native workers were less than one third of the labour force. This paper is the first attempt to present empirical evidence on occupations and wages for Buenos Aires ca. 1890s. Using a large dataset, we look at the performance of Argentineans vis-ˆ-vis the largest two immigrant groups, the Italians and the Spaniards. We find that, on average, Argentineans enjoyed a higher wages; however, this group did not dominate all skill levels. We find skill specialisation by nationality. Despite higher literacy levels and the language advantage, Spaniards did not outperform Italians when looking at earnings and access to homeownership. With deeper and older ties to the community, Italians formed richer networks that helped their fellow countrymen in the host labour market. |
| Keywords: | migration, wages, labour force, Buenos Aires |
| JEL: | N36 F22 |
| Date: | 2015–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0088&r=his |
| By: | Angel de la Fuente |
| Abstract: | En este trabajo se elaboran series homogéneas de diversos agregados de empleo asalariado y remuneración de asalariados para España y sus regiones durante el periodo 1986-2014 mediante el enlace de las diversas bases de la Contabilidad Regional de España. También se estiman las rentas totales del trabajo y la participación del trabajo en el VAB nacional y regional y se construye una serie de coste medio del factor trabajo, incluyendo tanto a los trabajadores asalariados como a los no asalariados. |
| Date: | 2015–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fda:fdaeee:eee2015-21&r=his |
| By: | Francesco Sergi (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS) |
| Abstract: | The purpose of the article is to analyze and criticize the way how DSGE macroeconomists working in policy-making institutions think about the history of their own modeling practice. Our contribution is, first of all, historiographical: it investigates an original literature, emphasizing in the history of DSGE as it is told by its own practitioners. The results of this analysis is what we will call a “naïve history” of DSGE modeling. Modellers working from this perspective present their models as the achievement of a “scientific progress”, which is linear and cumulative both in macroeconomic theorizing and in the application of formalized methods and econometric techniques to the theory. This article also proposes a critical perspective about the naïve history of the DSGE models, which drawns, by contrast, the main lines of an alternative, “non-naïve” history. of the DSGE models is incomplete and imprecise. It mainly ignores controversies, failures and blind alleys in previous research; as a consequence, the major theoretical and empirical turning points are made invisible. The naïve history also provides an ahistorical account of assessment criteria for modeling (especially for evaluating empirical consistency), which hides the underlying methodological and epistemological debates. Finally, we will claim that the naïve history plays an active and rhetoric role in legitimizing the DSGE models as a dominant tool for policy expertise. |
| Abstract: | L'article propose d'analyser et de critiquer la manière dont les macroéconomistes actifs dans les institutions chargées de la politique économique et se situant dans l'approche DSGE (dynamic stochastic general equilibrium) conçoivent l'histoire de leur propre pratique de modélisation. Notre contribution est avant tout historiographique, traçant les contours d'un corpus original, mettant en évidence l'histoire des modèles DSGE telle qu'elle est racontée par ses protagonistes. Le résultat obtenu peut être qualifié d'historiographie « naïve » des modèles DSGE. Les modélisateurs actifs dans cette approche conçoivent leurs modèles comme le résultat abouti d'un « progrès scientifique », linéaire et continu, concernant à la fois la théorie macroéconomique sous-jacente aux modèles et l'application à ceux-ci des méthodes formelles et des techniques économétriques. Parallèlement à l'analyse du corpus, l'article propose une critique de l'histoire naïve des modèles DSGE, traçant les contours d'une histoire « non-naïve ». L'approche adoptée par les macroéconomistes est historiographiquement et méthodologiquement incomplète et imprécise. Les difficultés et les impasses sont ignorées, rendant invisibles les tournants (théoriques et empiriques) pour la discipline. De même, la présentation anhistorique des critères d'évaluation des modélisations (notamment l'évaluation des « performances empiriques ») occulte l'ensemble des débats méthodologiques et épistémologiques. Enfin, on mettra en évidence comment cette naïveté joue un rôle rhétorique actif, de légitimation des DSGE comme pratique dominante pour l'expertise des politiques économiques. |
| Keywords: | new neoclassical synthesis,history of macroeconomics,modelling methodology,central banks,rhetoric of economics,rhétorique de l'économie,méthodologie et modélisation,banques centrales,DSGE,nouvelle synthèse néoclassique,histoire de la macroéconomie |
| Date: | 2015–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-01222798&r=his |
| By: | Pablo Díaz-Morlán (Universidad de Alicante, Alicante, Spain); Miguel Ángel Sáez-García (Universidad de Alicante, Alicante, Spain) |
| Abstract: | The aim of this article is to make a comparison of public assistance provided during the restructuring of the steel industry in Spain and in the European Community of Coal and Steel from 1975 to 1988. We have used both primary and printed sources from different institutions: steel Spanish companies, Spanish steel organization (Unesid), European Community and Spanish agencies and public bodies and reports from the European Commission. The work concludes that the main difference between the Spanish and European Community steel policies was not so much on the amount of the public resources but rather on the use of them in the restructuring process, especially since the 1980s. So while in the EEC steel aids were granted only in exchange for the elimination of surplus capacity, in Spain not adjustment was made until its accession to the European Communities on 1 January 1986. |
| Keywords: | Restructuring policy, Steel industry, State aids, European Economic Community |
| JEL: | L53 L61 |
| Date: | 2015–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ahe:dtaehe:1514&r=his |
| By: | Svetlana A. Ryabova (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This article investigates modernity through a study of pleasure gardens in St. Petersburg and Moscow in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. Russian pleasure gardens, being mere imitations of the English venues, reflect how western ideas connected to entertainment were modified, enriched with local features and used for wider purposes. This study argues that pleasure gardens were translators of developing mass culture, facilities for testing the new technology and leisure practices, and also indicators of cultural changes, which were experienced by an urban population on the cusp of modern Russia. |
| Keywords: | pleasure gardens, urban history, leisure, modernity, fin-de-siecle, recreation, Moscow, St.Petersburg, amusement parks. |
| JEL: | Z |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:111hum2015&r=his |
| By: | Krummes, Daniel C |
| Abstract: | Cruel Seas is an annotated bibliography of fiction in English that involves civilian steamships of the merchant marine in works set during World War Two (or slightly before). While the subtitle states "1930s to Present," the last entry was added in 2008, and the work will not be updated. The entries include novels, novellas, and short stories, but exclude poetry, theater plays, and fiction written for juveniles (unless the work can appeal to adults as well). Many of the works involve ships in convoy across the Atlantic. An earlier version of Cruel Seas was published in softcover edition in 2004 by the Institute of Transportation Studies of the University of California, Berkeley, under the slightly different title of Cruel Seas: Merchant Shipping-Focused World War 2 Nautical Fiction, 1939 to 2004. For an annotated bibliography of fiction in English that involves civilian steamships, 1845-2012 (so, not limited to fiction of World War Two), but excludes the works listed in Cruel Seas, see the author's Steamer Stories, published by Oak Knoll Press in 2016. |
| Keywords: | Arts and Humanities, steamships, ocean liners, freighters, merchant shipping, merchant marine, mercantile navy, merchant mariners, World War Two, World War 2, World War Two fiction, convoys, nautical fiction, maritime fiction, marine fiction, popular fiction, pulp fiction, pulp magazines, Battle of the Atlantic, Murmansk Run, Townend, Wetjen, Monsarrat, Havighurst, de Hartog, Callison, Hammond Innes, Mr. Gallup, Richard Sale, Richard Howells Watkins, Forester, Gilpatric, Mr. Glencannon, James Hanley, Jacland Marmur, Philip McCutchan, Howard Pease, Norman Reilly Raine, Breyfogle, Allan R. Bosworth, Robert Carse, Douglas Scott Brookes, Daniel C. Krummes |
| Date: | 2015–11–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsrrp:qt4sf3p53v&r=his |
| By: | Sara Torregrosa (Universitat de Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | In this paper I estimate under-assessment of incomes in the Personal Income Tax during the years following its introduction in Spain. The methodology combines an analysis of discrepancy with National Accounts and an econometric exercise, which follows and slightly modifies the Feldman and Slemrod (2007) procedure, based on the relation of reported charitable donations with the composition of income in tax micro-data. Both calculations show that concealment of income differed substantially across sources and levels, with better compliance at the bottom of the distribution of taxpayers. Because of this, fraud made the tax less progressive than it was on paper. Compliance improved over the next decades, but the overall levels were still far from those attained in developed countries, because of lack of administrative capacity or political will to enforce the new regulation. In this way, general, comprehensive income taxation was hardly a reality 20 years after its introduction. |
| Keywords: | Tax evasion, base erosion, under-reporting, progressivity, personal income tax |
| JEL: | H23 H24 H26 N44 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ieb:wpaper:doc2015-31&r=his |
| By: | Kai M. Thaler |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qsh:wpaper:349576&r=his |
| By: | Moro, Alessio; Moslehi, Solmaz; Tanaka, Satoshi |
| Abstract: | There is an extensive literature discussing how individuals' marriage behavior changes as a country develops. However, no existing data set allows an explicit investigation of the relationship between marriage and economic development. In this paper, we construct new cross-country panel data on marital statistics for 16 OECD countries from 1900 to 2000, in order to analyze such a relationship. We use this data set, together with cross-country data on real GDP per capita and the value added share of agriculture, manufacturing and services sectors, to document two novel stylized facts. First, the fraction of a country's population that is married displays a hump-shaped relationship with the level of real GDP per capita. Second, the fraction of the married correlates positively with the share of manufacturing in GDP. We conclude that the stage of economic development of a country is a key factor that affects individuals' family formation decisions. |
| Date: | 2015–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:hituec:629&r=his |
| By: | Arrigo, Ugo; Di Foggia, Giacomo |
| Abstract: | This paper provides an overview of the government debt associated to the postal services focusing on a case study. In fact, the performance and the government expenditure on postal services from the Belle Époque to the current situation is investigated. This is done with the aim of identifying in the various historical moments the burden on the public finances resulting from government expenditure on postal services. This paper also tries to measure the impact of the cumulated transfers on the stock of public debt. Nonetheless, this work is one-step in a broader research aimed at estimating what part of the public debt exceeding the Maastricht parameters is attributable to additional costs paid by the entrepreneurial State in different fields: post, railways, local transport and airways. Acknowledgement of the strategic link between quality and coverage can be very useful in the design of a regulatory policy. In almost half a century from the beginning of the 10s of the last century and the end of the 50s, the postal company registered positive values in the vast majority of accounting periods. Since the late '50s, however, also because of an out of control growth of the number of employees, not justified by the trend in production levels, budgets deficit emerged. In 1993, at the start of postal reform, the company accumulated debt with the Treasury and the Deposits and Loans Fund to cover the cost of deficit exceeds €42bn. The paper recognizes that enhanced measures (both in terms of details and in terms of time horizon) of net government debt deriving from the expenditure on postal services could be considered. However, adding more variables may lead to practical difficulties related to the lack of available data sources and valuation problems. Provided that financial sustainability should be one of the factors guiding policies, these findings have important implications. To be in line with the public’s preferences, measures or policies to reduce deficit should aim to improve conditions to guarantee the healthy functioning of the market. |
| Keywords: | poste, servizi postali, debito pubblico, public expenditure postal services, public economics, debt |
| JEL: | H5 L1 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:67813&r=his |
| By: | Maixé-Altés, J. Carles |
| Abstract: | This study provides information on how the process of technological globalization was implemented prior to the Internet and what its limits were, which certainly helps to understand how computers are changing the world. One can see divergent patterns in the process of introducing computers (using the worldwide savings bank industry as a reference). However, the foundations of this divergence should be situated within an idiosyncratic and not an asymmetric landscape as a consequence of the role that adoption/appropriation processes (the end-user as an active participant) play in the perspective of technological diffusion. |
| Keywords: | retail banking, world savings banks industry, computers, ICT, computing history |
| JEL: | N20 N70 |
| Date: | 2015–11–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:67785&r=his |