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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2017‒01‒08
28 papers chosen by |
| By: | Forrest Capie; Geoffrey Wood |
| Abstract: | Governance: What and Why? Corporate governance was discussed before the financial crises of earlier this century, but attention to it has increased dramatically since that crisis. What is governance, and why did it suddenly become so interesting? The Oxford English Dictionary gives a comprehensive definition. It tells us governance has six meanings: the action or manner of governing; the state of being governed; the office, function, or power of governing; method of management, system of regulations; mode of living, behaviour, demeanour; wise self command. |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:baf:cbafwp:cbafwp1631&r=his |
| By: | Karlsson, Tobias (Department of Economic History, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | This paper traces the origins and early history of perceived gender differences in absenteeism in Great Britain and the USA. Among politicians and scholars, the problem was first articulated during World War I and reappeared as an issue of prime concern during World War II. The war efforts required mobilization and allocation of large numbers of women to jobs that had previously been done by men while maintaining high and continuous flows of production in an economy that was increasingly characterized by high capital intensity. The most common explanation of women’s higher levels of absenteeism was their double burden of wage work and unpaid household duties. Although researchers in the field were cautious to give policy recommendations, the studies on absenteeism revealed that ‘industrial fatigue’ could have negative effects on productivity and helped to motivate regulations on working hours. Studies on absenteeism also encouraged firms to professionalize personnel management and to reinforce apprehensions of differences between men and women as workers and employees. Some employers and other policy makers referred to gender differences in absenteeism to motivate wage discrimination. |
| Keywords: | absenteeism; gender; Great Britain; United States; World War I; World War II |
| JEL: | H56 J16 M54 N32 N34 N42 N44 |
| Date: | 2016–12–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2016_026&r=his |
| By: | Richard White (University of Toronto) |
| Abstract: | Abstract Toronto is known for having been a prosperous and successful city in the decades after the Second World War, and the postwar period has come to be seen as something of a Golden Age for the city. While acknowledging the problems inherent in this sort of characterization, this study seeks to uncover what role Toronto’s postwar municipal finances played in making the city the success that it was. It presents the historical context, briefly explaining the formation of Metropolitan Toronto and the emergence of Ontario’s welfare state. The main body of the study analyses the annual reports of both Toronto’s and Metropolitan Toronto’s Commissioners of Finance, and highlights trends and features: the shift from hard to soft services, the impact of the welfare state, increases in provincial funding, and the importance of debt financing. The author shows that although Toronto, as an overall urban system, was fiscally healthy in this Golden Age, several of the circumstances that made it so were beginning to unravel by the mid-1970s. The study concludes by suggesting what this history might teach us about Toronto’s municipal finances today. |
| Keywords: | Toronto, Metropolitan Toronto, property tax, welfare state, public debt, Toronto, Greater Toronto Area |
| JEL: | H76 H31 R31 |
| Date: | 2016–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mfg:wpaper:29&r=his |
| By: | Bailey, Roy E. (University of Essex); Hatton, Timothy J. (University of Essex); Inwood, Kris (University of Guelph) |
| Abstract: | Atmospheric pollution was an important side effect of coal-fired industrialisation in the nineteenth century. In Britain emissions of black smoke were on the order of fifty times as high as they were a century later. In this paper we examine the effects of these emissions on child development by analysing the heights on enlistment during the First World War of men born in England and Wales in the 1890s. We use the occupational structure to measure the coal intensity of the districts in which these men were observed as children in the 1901 census. We find strong negative effects of coal intensity on height, which amounts to difference of almost an inch between the most and least polluted localities. These results are robust to a variety of specification tests and they are consistent with the notion that the key channel of influence on height was via respiratory infection. The subsequent reduction of emissions from coal combustion is one factor contributing to the improvement in health (and the increase in height) during the twentieth century. |
| Keywords: | atmospheric pollution, health and height |
| JEL: | I15 N13 Q53 |
| Date: | 2016–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10428&r=his |
| By: | Kirill A. Levinson (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This article analyzes changes in contemporary Latvian historical culture as regards the place it assigns to Baltic Germans in the country's past. During most of the twentieth century, their past presence in the region was represented as not really important. German noblemen and burghers were reckoned to the exploitative classes and, as such, received negative appraisal. After Latvia became independent from the USSR, German heritage came to be cherished as a symbol of Latvia’s Europeanness and a major attraction for international tourists, which is especially visible in Riga. In smaller towns, such as Koknese, partnership with a German town may originate from historic ties linking former Baltic Germans to the place, but this does not necessarily involve a historical policy emphasizing their positive presence in the history of the town. In the rural community of Irsi, a transformation of the local historical culture largely takes place under the influence of the so-called ‘homesick tourists’ from Germany who come to visit the former German colony Hirschenhof that existed between 1766 and 1939 |
| Keywords: | history, historical culture, Baltic Germans, Latvia, homesick tourists |
| JEL: | Z |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:141/hum/2016&r=his |
| By: | Hassan, Sherif Maher |
| Abstract: | There exists a broad implicit agreement that steering the monetary policy has important consequences for the whole economy (Friedman, 1968). This book uses topic classification to present a historical retrieval of the main theories and applications of the monetary policy within different schools of economic thinking and across history. From Humes’ automatic price-species flow in the 17th century, to the Keynesians, Monetarists and Austrians perspectives of the monetary dynamics in the beginning of the 19th century. The second chapter provides a general overview about how the monetary authority can fine tune monetary indicators in response to business cycle shocks. This part will discuss the monetary transmission mechanisms that represent the different means of interaction between monetary tools together and their impact on the real economy. In this context, the concept of inflation targeting will be elaborated in details while explaining its main institutional and economic prerequisites. The third and final chapter is devoted to giving an overview of the Egyptian monetary policy from 1990 to 2010 prior to the Egyptian revolution. The detailed analysis disaggregates this period into three eras: the first starts from 1991 till 1996 (ERSAP era), the second from 1996 till 2003 (Transitional era), and the third from 2003 till 2010 (towards Inflation Targeting era). This part of the book covers the broad changes occurred in the Egyptian monetary regimes and how well the successive governments used various monetary tools to achieve their policy goals and to mitigate real economic problems like unemployment and inflation. |
| Keywords: | Monetary policy, Egypt, inflation targeting |
| JEL: | B2 E4 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:75648&r=his |
| By: | Abdulkadiroğlu, Atila (Duke University); Angrist, Joshua (MIT); Narita, Yusuke (Yale University); Pathak, Parag A. (MIT) |
| Abstract: | Atmospheric pollution was an important side effect of coal-fired industrialisation in the nineteenth century. In Britain emissions of black smoke were on the order of fifty times as high as they were a century later. In this paper we examine the effects of these emissions on child development by analysing the heights on enlistment during the First World War of men born in England and Wales in the 1890s. We use the occupational structure to measure the coal intensity of the districts in which these men were observed as children in the 1901 census. We find strong negative effects of coal intensity on height, which amounts to difference of almost an inch between the most and least polluted localities. These results are robust to a variety of specification tests and they are consistent with the notion that the key channel of influence on height was via respiratory infection. The subsequent reduction of emissions from coal combustion is one factor contributing to the improvement in health (and the in-crease in height) during the twentieth century. |
| Keywords: | instrumental variables, experimental design, treatment effects, policy evaluation |
| JEL: | C14 C21 C36 C90 D47 I21 I28 |
| Date: | 2016–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10429&r=his |
| By: | Soon Ryoo (Department of Finance and Economics, Adelphi University) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines some determinants of top income shares and the aggregate wealth-income ratio in the United States. The paper, first, points out the difficulties in Piketty’s neo-classical version of explanation of US income inequality, which stresses the effect of the rising aggregate wealth-income ratio and high elasticity of factor substitution. Second, the analysis, based on a Cambridge two-class model along the lines of Kaldor (1955/56, 1966) and Pasinetti (1962), highlights the role of financialization in increasing inequality. Third, the analysis suggests that the rise in the aggregate wealth-income ratio from 1980 to 2007 in the US is explained mostly by asset price inflation, not by technical relations. Finally, the analysis examines the effects of the slowdown in capital accumulation on income distribution and wealth-income ratios, which are very different from those in Piketty’s Capital in the twenty first century. |
| Keywords: | top income share, wealth-income ratio, financialization, top management pay, stock-flow consistency |
| JEL: | E12 E21 E25 E44 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ums:papers:2016-17&r=his |
| By: | Luca Fiorito; Sebastiano Nerozzi |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to unfold a rich body of archival material that can shed new light on the nature and evolution of interwar Chicago economics. Specifically, this paper is based on a scrutiny of the PhD qualifying exams on Economic Theory at Chicago from 1926 to 1940. The qualifying tests (supplemented by the courses’ programs) show the existence of two important turning points in the shaping of Chicago economic training. The first one is in 1927, when John M. Clark, the undisputed leader of the Chicago Department of Economics during the heyday of institutionalism, moved to Columbia, leaving open ground to the restructuring of the courses according to a different and more analytical approach already represented in the Department by Viner and, in a narrower field, by Paul Douglas. The arrival at Chicago of figures such as Knight, Schultz and Simons definitely shifted the balance toward neoclassical theory. A second turning point occurred in 1933 when the qualifying test in Economic Theory was divided into two major fields: price and distribution theory on the one side; money and business cycle on the other. This innovation reveals the importance acquired by monetary theory in economic training at a time that is commonly associated with the nurturing of what was later named as the “Chicago monetary tradition.” |
| Keywords: | Chicago School; Institutionalism; Knight, Frank H.; Viner, Jacob |
| JEL: | B13 B15 B21 B22 B23 B25 |
| Date: | 2016–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usi:wpaper:733&r=his |
| By: | Mark A Carlson; David C Wheelock |
| Abstract: | As a result of legal restrictions on branch banking, an extensive interbank system developed in the United States during the 19th century to facilitate interregional payments and flows of liquidity and credit. Vast sums moved through the interbank system to meet seasonal and other demands, but the system also transmitted shocks during banking panics. The Federal Reserve was established in 1914 to reduce reliance on the interbank market and correct other defects that caused banking system instability. Drawing on recent theoretical work on interbank networks, we examine how the Fed's establishment affected the system's resilience to solvency and liquidity shocks and whether these shocks might have been contagious. We find that the interbank system became more resilient to solvency shocks, but less resilient to liquidity shocks, as banks sharply reduced their liquidity after the Fed's founding. The industry's response illustrates how the introduction of a lender of last resort can alter private behavior in a way that increases the likelihood that the lender may be needed. |
| Keywords: | Federal Reserve System, contagion, systemic risk, seasonal liquidity demand, interbank networks, banking panics, National Banking system |
| Date: | 2016–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bis:biswps:598&r=his |
| By: | Lothar Grall (Justus Liebig University Giessen) |
| Abstract: | This paper suggests that feedback effects between technological progress and human longevity lie at the heart of their common emergence in human history. It connects two major research questions. First, the long life span after menopause is a unique but puzzling feature of humans among primates. Second, the shift in human behavior at least 50,000 years ago, which led to an unprecedented pace of technological progress, is still not well understood. The paper develops an evolutionary growth theory that builds on the trade-off between the quantity and the quality of offspring. It suggests that early technological advances gradually increased the importance of intergenerational transfers of knowledge. Eventually, the fertility advantage shifted towards individuals that were characterized by higher parental investment in offspring and a significant post-reproductive life span. Subsequently, the rise in human longevity reinforced the process of development and laid the foundations for sustained technological progress. As a key feature, the theory resolves the debate about a “revolution” in human behavior in an entirely new way. It shows that a gradual emergence of modern behavior is sufficient to trigger a demographic shift that appears as a “behavioral revolution” in the archeological record. |
| Keywords: | Behavioral Revolution, Economic Growth, Human Longevity, Natural Selection, Somatic Investment, Technological Progress. |
| JEL: | J13 N30 O10 O30 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mar:magkse:201645&r=his |
| By: | Sergio Cesaratto |
| Abstract: | The paper reviews the main elements of Modern Classical Theory in view of the analysis of contemporary societies and in particular: the recovery of the Classical and Marxist “surplus approach” as a solid foundation for the analysis of social conflict; a demand-led theory of the level and growth of output based on the rejection of Say’s Law and the recovery of the notion of “external markets” put forward by Rosa Luxembourg and Kalecki, as the framework for the investigation of growth and crises in different historical phases of capitalism; the dismantling of the analytical core of Marginalism and of its laissez-faire policy prescriptions; and finally, the rejection of methodological individualism and of subjectivism in economic analysis and the preservation of the analytical methods of the Classical economists and Marx. In this regard, the paper underlines some differences with other heterodox schools, but also convergence with endogenous money theory and with systemic views of technical change. |
| Keywords: | Classical economists, Sraffa, Kalecki, Keynes, Surplus approach, heterodox economics |
| JEL: | B12 B24 B51 E11 |
| Date: | 2016–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usi:wpaper:735&r=his |
| By: | Joachim Hubmer; Per Krusell; Anthony A. Smith, Jr. |
| Abstract: | This paper employs the benchmark heterogeneous-agent model used in macroeconomics to examine drivers of the rise in wealth inequality in the U.S. over the last thirty years. Several plausible candidates are formulated, calibrated to data, and examined through the lens of the model. There is one main finding: by far the most important driver is the significant drop in tax progressivity that started in the late 1970s, intensified during the Reagan years, and then subsequently flattened out, with only a minor bounce back. The sharp observed increases in earnings inequality, the falling labor share over the recent decades, and potential mechanisms underlying changes in the gap between the interest rate and the growth rate (Piketty's r-g story) all fall far short of accounting for the data. |
| JEL: | D14 D31 D33 E21 E25 E62 H31 |
| Date: | 2016–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23011&r=his |
| By: | Neil Duxbury |
| Abstract: | Various seventeenth-century parliamentarians resorted to the concept of acquisitive prescription when denouncing irresponsible use of the royal prerogative. Often, the concept was invoked to convey nothing more than that a custom had existed since time immemorial. But sometimes the concept was being used in its legal sense: to denote the acquisition of a right (as if someone with the authority to grant that right had done so) by virtue of some instance of long and uninterrupted enjoyment over a period of time. This paper considers the application of acquisitive prescription, a doctrine rooted in the medieval law of land obligations, in Stuart constitutional discourse. |
| Keywords: | fundamental rights; prescription; custom; constitutional history; royal prerogative; Magna Carta |
| JEL: | J1 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:66520&r=his |
| By: | Mikhail Pogorelov (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | The article examines the role of degeneration theory in Russian medical and public discourses at the turn of the 20th century. Drawing on a wide range of historiography and primary sources, including archival records and medical writings, the article aims to outline different contexts of the concept’s usages: from rhetorical idioms to “scientific”, clinical and instrumental applications. Then, it seeks how psychiatrists defined the category of “socially dangerous” and tried to modify the existed institutional and legal framework. This focus could explain degeneration theory influence on social policy and the late imperial institutional system. |
| Keywords: | deviant, socially dangerous, psychiatry, degeneration theory, Russia |
| JEL: | Z |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:139/hum/2016&r=his |
| By: | Peter Mihalyi (Department of Macroeconomics, Corvinus University of Budapest and Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences); Iván Szelenyi (Sociology and Political Science, Yale University, USA) |
| Abstract: | The starting point of our research is Piketty (2014) who follows Marx by asserting that rents are merely one of the forms of profits, therefore they do not require separate conceptual analysis and statistical separation. Speaking of the generation of rents (as a distinctly different mechanism from profit maximising business activity), we use a broader notion of rent than it was customary in the past 50 years. We return to the Ricardian tradition and define the institution of rent as payments for goods, services or for work in employment that exceed the competitive price. Our rent concept includes – inter alia - the income of those whose jobs are protected by unions or professional associations, with the same holding for top-managers or celebrities of the entertainment industry. We also show that state-generated oligopolies are not necessarily evil, as they are often justified by other social objectives than equity. To conclude, three main propositions are presented: (i) rents are not anomalies of the advanced market economies, they are indispensable building blocks of it; (ii) rents are not the privilege of large companies and their owners; (iii) rents, rather than profits are the main driving force of the increase of wealth inequalities since the 1970s |
| Keywords: | inequality, capital, capitalism, profits, rents |
| JEL: | B12 D63 E01 |
| Date: | 2016–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:has:discpr:1630&r=his |
| By: | Humpage, Owen F. (Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland) |
| Abstract: | This narrative investigates the frictions that existed between the Federal Reserve’s monetary policies and the US Treasury’s debt-management operations from the onset of the Second World War through the end of the Federal Reserve’s even-keel actions in mid-1975. The analysis suggests that three factors can help explain why the Federal Reserve compromised the attainment of its statutorily mandated monetary-policy objectives for debt-management reasons: 1) the existence of an existential threat, 2) the fear that to do otherwise would create instability in the banking sector, and 3) the vulnerability of Treasury financing operations to monetary-policy actions that existed when the Treasury did not auction its debts. |
| Keywords: | Federal Reserve; US Treasury; monetary policy; debt management; bills only; even-keel; |
| JEL: | E02 E5 E6 |
| Date: | 2016–12–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwp:1632&r=his |
| By: | Sergio Cesaratto |
| Abstract: | Supporters of the Monetary Circuit Theory argue that workers’ or households’ savings may be used to fix firms’ losses and avoid crises. The question is reminiscent of a discussion that took place between Dennis Robertson (DHR) and Keynes on the Treatise (1930) about Keynes’s idea that workers’ savings might cover firms’ losses. In this discussion, DHR denied that savings could correspond to firms’ losses, arguing that savings do not exist independently of investment. Circuitists like Graziani seem to reiterate the Treatise’s mistake of maintaining that part of savings corresponds to firm’s losses and are lent to firms to fix those losses, while neglecting the effects of those losses on output as DHR pointed out in the early 1930s. |
| Keywords: | Monetary circuit, Robertson, Keynes, Graziani, Treatise |
| JEL: | B22 B50 E12 |
| Date: | 2016–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usi:wpaper:732&r=his |
| By: | Thomas Piketty; Emmanuel Saez; Gabriel Zucman |
| Abstract: | This paper combines tax, survey, and national accounts data to estimate the distribution of national income in the United States since 1913. Our distributional national accounts capture 100% of national income, allowing us to compute growth rates for each quantile of the income distribution consistent with macroeconomic growth. We estimate the distribution of both pre-tax and post-tax income, making it possible to provide a comprehensive view of how government redistribution affects inequality. Average pre-tax national income per adult has increased 60% since 1980, but we find that it has stagnated for the bottom 50% of the distribution at about $16,000 a year. The pre-tax income of the middle class—adults between the median and the 90th percentile—has grown 40% since 1980, faster than what tax and survey data suggest, due in particular to the rise of tax-exempt fringe benefits. Income has boomed at the top: in 1980, top 1% adults earned on average 27 times more than bottom 50% adults, while they earn 81 times more today. The upsurge of top incomes was first a labor income phenomenon but has mostly been a capital income phenomenon since 2000. The government has offset only a small fraction of the increase in inequality. The reduction of the gender gap in earnings has mitigated the increase in inequality among adults. The share of women, however, falls steeply as one moves up the labor income distribution, and is only 11% in the top 0.1% today. |
| JEL: | E01 H2 H5 J3 |
| Date: | 2016–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22945&r=his |
| By: | Luca Fiorito; Tiziana Foresti |
| Abstract: | This work analyzes the contribution to the debates on labor and immigration of a group of Jewish academicians and reformers who, during the second half of the Progressive Era, explicitly took a stance against the racialist and eugenic rhetoric of the period. This group includes first-rank economists like Edwin R. A. Seligman, Jacob H. Hollander, and Emanuel A. Goldenweiser; influential field specialists such as Isaac A. Hourwich and Isaac M. Rubinow; and relatively less known figures like Max J. Kohler and Samuel K. Joseph. By focusing on the voices of these dissenters, the work enriches the emerging picture of Progressive Era eugenic and racial thought |
| Keywords: | American Progressive Era, Edwin R. A. Seligman, Immigration, Race, Anti-Semitism |
| JEL: | B1 B15 |
| Date: | 2016–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usi:wpaper:740&r=his |
| By: | Howard Bodenhorn |
| Abstract: | In 1893 South Carolina prohibited the private manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol and established a state monopoly in wholesale and retail alcohol distribution. The combination of a market decline in the availability of alcohol, reduced variety, and monopoly pricing at state-operated outlets encouraged black markets in alcohol. Because black market participants tend to resort to extra-legal mechanisms for dispute resolution, including violence, one result of South Carolina’s alcohol restriction was an increase in homicide. A continuous-treatment difference-in-difference approach reveals that homicide rates increased by about 30 to 60 percent in counties that more vigorously enforced the law. |
| JEL: | K14 K42 N41 |
| Date: | 2016–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22980&r=his |
| By: | Lance Taylor; Duncan K Foley; Armon Rezai; Luiza Pires; Ozlem Omer; Ellis Scharfenaker (Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA)) |
| Abstract: | This paper makes three contributions to the existing literature on economic growth: first, we provide a demand-driven alternative to the conventional supply side Solow-Swan growth model. The model’s medium run is built around MarxGoodwin cycles of demand and distribution. Second, we introduce wage income of “capitalist” households. The Samuelson-Modigliani steady state “dual” to Pasinetti’s cannot be stable when capitalists have positive wages. Finally, we speak to the discussion triggered by Piketty on the stability of wealth concentration and its relation to the profitability of capital. Our demand-driven model of the long run satisfies Kaldor’s stylized facts (the gold standard of growth theory) and generates sustained economic growth with the capitalists’ share of wealth stabilizing between zero and one. Complications arising from “excess” capital gains and how well the model fits the data are briefly considered. |
| Keywords: | Demand, Growth, Keynes |
| JEL: | B51 E12 |
| Date: | 2016–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:epa:cepawp:2016-04&r=his |
| By: | Jakob Brochner Madsen |
| Abstract: | This paper constructs annual data on primary, secondary and tertiary education, significant inventions and great scientists in the period 1270-2011 for Britain to investigate the influence of education and science on the economic development of Britain. Institutions, culture, real book prices and other variables are used to trace the origin of innovations, great scientists and educational attainment. The regressions show that education, a highly innovative environment and knowledge spillovers were influential in shaping British economic development over the period 1270-2011. |
| Keywords: | Economic growth, science, education, institutions, culture |
| JEL: | O30 O40 |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mos:moswps:2016-01&r=his |
| By: | Philipp Ager; Leonardo Bursztyn; Hans-Joachim Voth |
| Abstract: | A growing theoretical and empirical literature shows that public recognition can lead to greater effort amongst employees. At the same time, status competition can be associated with excessive expenditure on status goods, higher risk of bankruptcy, and more risk taking amongst money managers. In this paper, we look at the effects of recognition and status competition jointly: We focus on the spillover effects of public recognition on the performance and risk taking of peers. Using newly collected data on monthly victory scores of over 5,000 German pilots during World War II, we find corrosive effects of status competition: When the daily bulletin of the German armed forces mentioned the accomplishments of a particular fighter pilot, his former peers perform markedly better. Outperformance is differential across skill groups. When a former squadron peer is mentioned, the best pilots try harder, score more, and die no more frequently; average pilots win only a few additional victories, but die at a markedly higher rate. Our results suggest that the overall efficiency effects of non-financial rewards can be ambiguous in settings where both risk and output affect aggregate performance. |
| JEL: | D03 J20 N14 Z00 |
| Date: | 2016–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22992&r=his |
| By: | José Flávio Motta; Luciana Suarez Lopes |
| Abstract: | In this paper we analyse the proceedings of the two Agricultural Meetings that took place in 1878: in July in Rio de Janeiro, and in October in Recife. We compare the two different call processes of the events. Then we focus our attention on the discussions about the availability of capital for the plantations, and on the suggestions about stimulating the supply of credit to the farmers. For each meeting, we analyse separately some of the aspects that stood up in those discussions. In our closing remarks, we resume the comparison of the two events, and consider the eventual existence of a segmentation among the farmers at the Rio de Janeiro Meeting. |
| Keywords: | Agricultural Meeting of 1878; credit policy in the Second Empire; Money and banks in the Second Empire; sugar economy; coffee economy. |
| JEL: | N56 N26 N46 |
| Date: | 2016–12–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spa:wpaper:2016wpecon33&r=his |
| By: | Jean Pierre Grimmeau; Benjamin Wayens |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/241710&r=his |
| By: | Jean-Francois Maystadt; Giuseppe Migali |
| Abstract: | We study the intergenerational transmission of health using linked registered data from China between 1789 and 1906. We first document the intergenerational correlations across 7 generations. We then identify intergenerational causal associations comparing children born from twin mothers or fathers. In particular, we find a strong and persistent intergenerational elasticity between mothers and children of about 0.52. The intergenerational association from fathers is much weaker and seems to be largely driven by genetic factors. The estimates remain relatively stable up to generation 5 and are robust to different checks. Overall, our results highlight the nurturing role of women in explaining the intergenerational transmission of health, stressing the key role played by women in affecting children's health outcomes in developing countries. |
| Keywords: | Intergenerational correlations, causal effects, long-term health outcomes |
| JEL: | I14 I29 I3 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lan:wpaper:147116320&r=his |
| By: | Arnaud Costinot; Dave Donaldson |
| Abstract: | In this paper we develop a new approach to measuring the gains from economic integration based on a generalization of the Ricardian model in which heterogeneous factors of production are allocated to multiple sectors in multiple local markets based on comparative advantage. We implement this approach using data on crop markets in approximately 2,600 U.S. counties from 1880 to 1997. Central to our empirical analysis is the use of a novel agronomic data source on predicted output by crop for small spatial units. Crucially, this dataset contains information about the productivity of all units for all crops, not just those that are actually being grown—an essential input for measuring the gains from trade. Using this new approach we find substantial long-run gains from economic integration among US agricultural markets, benefits that are similar in magnitude to those due to productivity improvements over that same period. |
| JEL: | F0 F1 F11 F15 F17 |
| Date: | 2016–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22946&r=his |