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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2017‒02‒19
29 papers chosen by |
| By: | Charles A. E. Goodhart |
| Abstract: | The history of central banking can be divided into periods of consensus about the roles and function of central banks, interspersed with periods of uncertainty, often following a crisis, in which central banks are searching for a new consensus. |
| JEL: | F3 G3 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:69297&r=his |
| By: | Ethan Ilzetzki; Carmen M. Reinhart; Kenneth S. Rogoff |
| Abstract: | Detailed country-by-country chronologies are an informative companion piece to our paper “Exchange Arrangements Entering the 21st Century: Which Anchor Will Hold?,” which provides a comprehensive history of anchor or reference currencies, exchange rate arrangements, and a new measure of foreign exchange restrictions for 194 countries and territories over 1946-2016. The individual country chronologies are also a central component of our approach to classifying regimes. These country histories date dual or multiple exchange rate episodes, as well as to differentiate between pre-announced pegs, crawling pegs, and bands from their de facto counterparts. We think it is important to distinguish between say, de facto pegs or bands from announced pegs or bands, because their properties are potentially different. The chronologies also flag the dates for important turning points, such as when the exchange rate first floated, or when the anchor currency was changed. We extend our chronologies as far back as possible, even though we only classify regimes from 1946 onwards. |
| JEL: | E5 F3 F4 N2 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23135&r=his |
| By: | Matthew S. Jaremski |
| Abstract: | Operating in individual cities, U.S. clearinghouses were the closest thing to a central bank before 1914, but they only assisted banks that chose to join the association. Using an annual bank-level database for seven states between 1880 and 1910, this paper shows that after the entry of a clearinghouse member banks were less likely and non-member banks in the same city were more likely to close. The results are driven by the fact that the presence of clearinghouses led all banks to become more exposed to systemic liquidity risk, yet only provided liquidity to member banks during panics. |
| JEL: | G21 G32 N21 |
| Date: | 2017–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23113&r=his |
| By: | Turner, John D. |
| Abstract: | This article outlines the development of English company law in the four centuries before 1900. The main focus is on the evolution of the corporate form and the five key legal characteristics of the corporation - separate legal personality, limited liability, transferable joint stock, delegated management, and investor ownership. The article outlines how these features developed in guilds, regulated companies, and the great mercantilist and moneyed companies. I then move on to examine the State's control of incorporation and the attempts by the founders and lawyers of unincorporated business enterprises to craft the legal characteristics of the corporation. Finally, the article analyses the forces behind the liberalisation of incorporation law in the middle of the nineteenth century. |
| Keywords: | Bubble Act,Company,Corporate Law,Legal Personality,Limited Liability,Transferable Shares,Unincorporated Company |
| JEL: | G10 G18 G30 K10 K20 N23 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:qucehw:201701&r=his |
| By: | Claude Diebolt; Michael Haupert |
| Abstract: | 1993 Nobel laureates Robert Fogel and Douglass North were pioneers in the “new” economic history, or cliometrics. Their impact on the economic history discipline is great, though not without its critics. In this essay, we use both the “old” narrative form of economic history, and the “new” cliometric form, to analyze the impact each had on the evolution of economic history. |
| Keywords: | Cliometrics, Economic History, Methodology, Economics, History. |
| JEL: | A12 B41 C18 C80 N01 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2017-04&r=his |
| By: | Guido Alfani; Federico Tadei |
| Abstract: | Today, income inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa is exceptionally high. In this paper, we study whether present-day inequality can be traced back to the colonial period by reconstructing income distributions in a sample of representative colonies. To do so, we use data from colonial records to build new social tables for French colonies in West and Central Africa and we combine them with available information on British colonies in East and Southern Africa. We find that inequality in Africa is not a recent phenomenon. Income inequality was extremely high during the colonial period, in particular because of the huge income differential between Africans and European settlers. Nevertheless, it tended to reduce over time and the post-colonial period is characterized by much lower inequality. Interestingly, the decline of inequality is not necessarily a consequence of independence: the trends toward reduction started under colonial rule. JEL Classification: N17; O43 Keywords: Africa, Inequality, Income Distribution, Development, Extractive Institutions |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:igi:igierp:594&r=his |
| By: | Krantz, Olle (Department of Geography and Economic History) |
| Abstract: | This study presents a reconstruction of historical national accounts for Sweden 1300-1560. The source material for this period is very scanty and, therefore, many estimates and approximations were necessary. For agriculture the so called demand approach was used, implying utilization of price series and assumptions on price, income and cross elasticities. Furthermore, population figures had to be estimated. For the other sectors estimations of various kinds also had to be made. Nevertheless, the series for GDP and GDP per capita give a fairly reasonable picture of the economic performance. Sweden’s GDP per capita in relation to some other countries is also discussed. The country seems to have been at about the same level as England. A forward glance indicates that Sweden’s economy stagnated in the 18th century and became backward compared to England and Holland. It was first after some decades of the 19th century that a recovery came and a fast economic growth started. |
| Keywords: | historical national accounts; GDP; demand approach; deflating |
| JEL: | N13 O10 O47 |
| Date: | 2017–02–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:luekhi:0152&r=his |
| By: | Stijn Ronsse; Samuel Standaert (-) |
| Abstract: | Economists that study long-term changes during the 19th and 20th century are fundamentally restricted by the availability of qualitative data, as the latter is often inversely proportional to quality. This is further compounded by administrative changes that alter what exactly is being measured over time as well as an overall decrease of data availability the further we go back in time. This is particularly inconvenient in historical population data, as census data is often only available ever decade. As a result, researchers are forced to either impute qualitative data, or otherwise combine datasets of varying quality in some way. In this article, we demonstrate the versatility of state-space models in addressing these problems, enabling us to compose large data series of a high quality. Moreover, unlike more simple techniques it also provides an estimate of the reliability of the results, allowing any subsequent analyses to take this into account. We illustrate this by combining growth and level data on the population of Belgian cities into a dataset that contains yearly estimates of the population of over 2600 cities from 1880 to 1970. |
| Keywords: | Population, Data quality, State-space model, Bayesian econometrics |
| Date: | 2017–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rug:rugwps:17/927&r=his |
| By: | Christina Christou (School of Economics and Management, Open University of Cyprus, Cyprus); Rangan Gupta (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, South Africa); Wendy Nyakabawo (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, South Africa); Mark E. Wohar (College of Business Administration, University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA and School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, Leicestershire, UK) |
| Abstract: | This study analyses the long-run relationship between U.S house prices and non-housing Consumer Price Index (CPI) over the monthly period 1953 to 2016 using a quantile cointegration analysis. Our findings show evidence of instability in standard cointegration models, suggesting possibility of structural breaks and nonlinearity in the relationship between house prices and non-housing CPI. This motivates the use of a time-varying approach, namely, a quantile cointegration analysis, which allows the cointegrating coefficient to vary over the conditional distribution of house prices and simultaneously test for the existence of cointegration at each quantile. Our results suggest that the U.S non-housing CPI and house price index series are cointegrated at lower quantiles only, with house prices over-hedging inflation at these quantiles. |
| Keywords: | house prices, inflation, hedging, quantile cointegration |
| JEL: | C22 C32 E31 R31 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pre:wpaper:201707&r=his |
| By: | Huning, Thilo R.; Wolf, Nikolaus |
| Abstract: | We analyze the formation oft he German Zollverein as an example how geography can shape institutional change. We show how the redrawing of the European map at the Congress of Vienna—notably Prussia’s control over the Rhineland and Westphalia—affected the incentives for policymakers to cooperate. The new borders were not endogenous. They were at odds with the strategy of Prussia, but followed from Britain’s intervention at Vienna regarding the Polish-Saxon question. For many small German states, the resulting borders changed the trade-off between the benefits from cooperation with Prussia and the costs of losing political control. Based on GIS data on Central Europe for 1818–1854 we estimate a simple model of the incentives to join an existing customs union. The model can explain the sequence of states joining the Prussian Zollverein extremely well. Moreover we run a counterfactual exercise: if Prussia would have succeeded with her strategy to gain the entire Kingdom of Saxony instead of the western provinces, the Zollverein would not have formed. We conclude that geography can shape institutional change. To put it different, as collateral damage to her intervention at Vienna,”’Britain unified Germany”’. |
| JEL: | C31 F13 N73 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145725&r=his |
| By: | Geert Bekaert; Arnaud Mehl |
| Abstract: | We propose a simple measure of de facto financial market integration based on a factor model of monthly equity returns, which can be computed back to the first era of financial globalization for 17 countries. Global financial market integration follows a “swoosh” shape – i.e. high pre-1913, still higher post-1990, low in the interwar period – rather than the other shapes hypothesized in earlier literature. We find no evidence of financial globalization reversing since the Great Recession as claimed in other recent studies. De jure capital account openness and global growth uncertainty are the two main determinants of long-run global financial market integration. We use our measure to revisit the debate on the trilemma between financial openness, the exchange rate regime, and monetary policy autonomy, and on whether the trilemma has recently morphed into a dilemma due to global financial cycles. We find evidence consistent with the trilemma and inconsistent with the dilemma hypothesis, both throughout history and for the recent decades; non-US central banks still exert more control over domestic interest rates when exchange rates are flexible in economies open to global finance. |
| JEL: | F15 F21 F30 F36 F38 F41 F6 G15 N2 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23124&r=his |
| By: | Jakir Hussain (Department of Economics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON); Jean-Thomas Bernard (Department of Economics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we investigate the presence of productivity convergence in eight regional pulp and paper industries of U.S. and Canada over the period of 1971-2005. Expectation of productivity convergence in the pulp and paper industries of Canadian provinces and of the states of its southern neighbour is high since they are trading partners with fairly high level of exchanges in both pulp and paper products. Moreover, they share a common production technology that changed very little over the last century. We supplement the North-American regional data with national data for two Nordic countries, Finland and Sweden, which provides a scope to compare the productivity performances of four leading players in global pulp and paper industry. We find evidence in favour of the catch-up hypothesis among the regional pulp and paper industries of U.S. and Canada in our sample. The growth performance is at the advantage of Canadian provinces relative to their U.S. counterparts. However, it is not good enough to surpass the growth rates of this industry in the two Nordic countries. |
| Keywords: | TFP convergence, multilateral TFP index, pulp and paper industry, translog cost function |
| JEL: | C22 F33 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ott:wpaper:1701e&r=his |
| By: | Gregori Galofré-Vilà (Dept of Sociology and Mansfield College, University of Oxford); Andrew Hinde (Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute, University of Southampton); Aravinda Guntupalli (Faculty of Health and Social Care, Open University) |
| Abstract: | This paper uses a dataset of heights calculated from the femurs of skeletal remains to explore the development of stature in England across the last two millennia. We find that heights increased during the Roman period and then steadily fell during the ‘Dark Ages’ in the early medieval period. At the turn of the first millennium heights grew rapidly, but after 1200 they started to decline coinciding with the agricultural depression, the Great Famine and the Black Death. Then they recovered to reach a plateau which they maintained for almost 300 years, before falling on the eve of industrialisation. The data show that average heights in England in the early nineteenth century were shorter than those in Roman times, and that average heights reported between 1400 and 1700 were similar to those of the twentieth century. The paper also discusses the association of heights across time with some potential determinants and correlates (real wages, inequality, food supply, climate change and expectation of life), showing that in the long run heights change with these variables, and that in certain periods, notably the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the associations are observable over the shorter run as well. We also examine potential biases surrounding the use of skeletal remains. |
| Keywords: | Health, Height, England, Skeletal remains |
| Date: | 2017–01–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nuf:esohwp:_151&r=his |
| By: | Rotta, Tomas |
| Abstract: | In this paper I theorize the roles of effective demand and Say’s law in the Marxist theory of exploitation and accumulation. I claim that an exogenous rate of exploitation, or an exogenous functional distribution of income between profits and wages, implies deploying Say’s law, which leads profit rates not to equalize across sectors. Marx’s own procedure in Capital III of simultaneously supposing an exogenous rate of exploitation and profit rate equalization was therefore logically inconsistent. Once Keynes’ principle of effective demand is introduced, the rate of exploitation and hence the distribution of income between wages and profits become endogenous to aggregate demand. Profit rates then do equalize across sectors and prices of production can function as gravitational centers for market prices in a competitive economy. If we aim at developing a theory that is both empirically relevant and logically consistent, Marxist scholars must therefore drop Say’s law and incorporate Keynes’ principle of effective demand for a proper understanding of how capital accumulation determines the rate of exploitation, the functional distribution of income, and the equalization of profit rates. |
| Keywords: | Marxist accumulation theory; exploitation; income distribution; Keynes’ effective demand; Say’s law; evolutionary game theory; |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gpe:wpaper:15511&r=his |
| By: | Ufuk Akcigit; John Grigsby; Tom Nicholas |
| Abstract: | This paper builds on the analysis in Akcigit, Grigsby, and Nicholas (2017) by using U.S. patent and Census data to examine macro and micro-level aspects of the relationship between immigration and innovation. We construct a measure of "foreign born expertise" and show that technology areas where immigrant inventors were prevalent between 1880 and 1940 experienced more patenting and citations between 1940 and 2000. We also show that immigrant inventors were more productive during their life cycle than native born inventors, although they received significantly lower levels of labor income than their native born counterparts. Overall, the contribution of foreign born inventors to US innovation was substantial, but we also find evidence of an immigrant inventor wage-gap that cannot be explained by differentials in productivity. |
| JEL: | N11 N12 O31 O40 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23137&r=his |
| By: | Jean-Paul Faguet; Fabio Sánchez; Marta-Juanita Villaveces |
| Abstract: | Over two centuries, Colombia transferred vast quantities of land, equivalent to the entire UK landmass, mainly to landless peasants. And yet Colombia retains one of the highest concentrations of land ownership in the world. Why? We show that land reform’s effects are highly bimodal. Most of Colombia’s 1100+ municipalities lack a landed elite. Here, rural properties grew larger, land inequality and dispersion fell, and development indicators improved. But in municipalities where such an elite does exist and landholding is highly concentrated, such positive effects are counteracted, resulting in smaller rural properties, greater dispersion, and lower levels of development. We show that all of these effects – positive and negative – flow through local policy, which elites distort to benefit themselves. Our evidence implies that land reform’s second-order effects, on the distribution of local power, are more important than its first-order effects on the distribution of land. |
| Keywords: | Land reform; inequality; development; latifundia; poverty; Colombia |
| JEL: | Q15 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:69207&r=his |
| By: | Angrist, Joshua (MIT); Pischke, Jörn-Steffen (London School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | The past half‐century has seen economic research become increasingly empirical, while the nature of empirical economic research has also changed. In the 1960s and 1970s, an empirical economist's typical mission was to "explain" economic variables like wages or GDP growth. Applied econometrics has since evolved to prioritize the estimation of specific causal effects and empirical policy analysis over general models of outcome determination. Yet econometric instruction remains mostly abstract, focusing on the search for "true models" and technical concerns associated with classical regression assumptions. Questions of research design and causality still take a back seat in the classroom, in spite of having risen to the top of the modern empirical agenda. This essay traces the divergent development of econometric teaching and empirical practice, arguing for a pedagogical paradigm shift. |
| Keywords: | econometrics, teaching |
| JEL: | A22 |
| Date: | 2017–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10535&r=his |
| By: | Donges, Alexander; Meier, Jean-Marie A.; Silva, Rui C. |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the impact of radical institutional reform on innovation. We use the timing and geography of French invasions of different regions of Germany after the French revolution of 1789 as an exogenous shock to the institutions of those regions. German regions that were invaded by the French subsequently changed their institutions in important ways, including the introduction of the civil code, the dissolution of guilds, the abolition of serfdom and the implementation of agrarian reforms. These institutional changes in turn affect innovation. Using patents per capita as our measure of innovation, we show that counties whose institutions are more inclusive as a result of the French occupation also become more innovative. Moving from a county with no occupation to a county with the longest occupation, the implied changes in institutional reforms result in an increase of patents per capita of 123%. Our findings point to institutions as a first order determinant of innovation and highlight the role of innovation as a key mechanism through which institutions may foster economic growth. |
| JEL: | N13 O31 O33 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145952&r=his |
| By: | Cédric Leterme |
| Abstract: | Le « tournant néolibéral » des années 1970 a fait l’objet d’analyses diverses et parfois contradictoires. Notre thèse se propose d’en enrichir la compréhension à travers une analyse discursive comparée de trois organisations internationales étroitement concernées par ces évolutions :la Banque mondiale, l’OCDE et l’OIT. Nous partons en effet du principe que le « tournant néolibéral » fut aussi un tournant discursif et que les organisations internationales en furent des acteurs et relais clés. Des relais parce que les tenants de la stratégie néolibérale ont cherché à la déployer dans et à travers ces institutions, mais des acteurs aussi parce que pour ce faire, les « néolibéraux » ont dû tenir compte des pratiques discursives et extra-discursives pré-instituées qui caractérisaient ces organisations internationales jusque-là. C’est ainsi que selon nous, mêmes des institutions hégémoniques comme la Banque mondiale et l’OCDE n’ont pas seulement reproduit la stratégie et le discours néolibéraux, elles l’ont aussi (et surtout) co-produit et co-déterminé selon leurs propres caractéristiques historiques et institutionnelles, avec des conséquences potentiellement diverses (voire conflictuelles). Et c’est encore plus le cas d’une institution comme l’OIT, dont le mandat et la structure la rendent structurellement incompatible avec le projet néolibéral. Sans véritable possibilité de s’y opposer de front, mais sans pouvoir également s’y conformer totalement sauf à renier jusqu’à sa propre raison d’être, il nous semble que la seule solution qu’il lui restait consistait dès lors à y « répondre stratégiquement », notamment d’un point de vue discursif. Pour le démontrer nous avons donc entrepris de réaliser une analyse lexicométrique de trois corpus de textes composés respectivement de tout ou parties des rapports sur le développement dans le monde de la Banque mondiale, des rapports d’activités de l’OCDE et des rapports annuels du Directeur Général de l’OIT publiés entre 1970 et 2015. À travers elle, nous avons cherché à comprendre les logiques de recontextualisation discursive qui ont accompagné le déploiement hégémonique néolibéral. |
| Keywords: | analyse critique de discours; organisations internationales; néolibéralisme; organisation internationale du travail; critical discourse analysis; international organizations; neoliberalism; international labor organization |
| Date: | 2017–01–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/244588&r=his |
| By: | Nelson, Edward |
| Abstract: | This paper finds a significant influence of Milton Friedman on U.K. economic policy from the 1970s onward, and especially during the period of the Thatcher Government. The finding is based on a consideration of statements by policymakers and key economic advisers, as well as an analysis of Friedman’s commentary in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s on U.K. economic developments. It is shown that explicit acknowledgments of Friedman’s influence were given on the record over the years by Margaret Thatcher, Chancellor of the Exchequer Geoffrey Howe, Bank of England officials, and others in policy circles. Examples of Friedman’s influence include the absorption into U.K. policy doctrine of the permanent income hypothesis and the natural rate hypothesis, the rejection from 1979 onward of incomes policy as a weapon against inflation, and U.K. officials’ repeated appeals to monetary sovereignty when arguing against monetary union or a sterling peg. Evidence of influence by Friedman on privatization policy and on the official perspective on the current account deficit can also be discerned. Friedman had only limited personal interaction with U.K. policymakers, but his influence was felt in the adoption into actual U.K. policymaking of recommendations made in his writings and in the fact that those writings—which were studied closely by a number of senior U.K. economic advisers—helped alter economists’ conceptual framework in the United Kingdom and thereby fostered doctrinal changes in U.K. economic policy. The analysis in this paper also shows that two key critics of the Conservative party’s economic policy under Margaret Thatcher—Labour’s Harold Wilson and the Conservatives’ Edward Heath—had good reason to ascribe this policy partly to the influence of Friedman, whom each of them had met before the Thatcher era. |
| Keywords: | Milton Friedman, U.K. economic policy, incomes policy, monetarism, Thatcher Government, doctrine of economic policy. |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:syd:wpaper:2017-01&r=his |
| By: | Duncan Foley (Department of Economics, New School for Social Research) |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:new:wpaper:1705&r=his |
| By: | Chang, Simone; Kan, Kamhon; Zhang, Xiaobo |
| Abstract: | The literature has placed great emphasis on the advantages of competition on market efficiency while ignoring the downside of competition on health. Using a natural experiment in Taiwan, we show that excessive competition comes at a health cost. In the late 1940s, half a million soldiers retreated to Taiwan from Mainland China after a civil war. They were initially not allowed to get married until the marriage ban was essentially lifted in 1959. As a large number of soldiers flooded the marriage market, men faced much stronger mating competition than before, which in turn increased the likelihood of male depression and mortality. |
| Keywords: | gender, markets, health, men, marriage, sex ratio, mortality, governance, |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:1585&r=his |
| By: | Dombi, Akos; Grigoriadis, Theocharis |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we analyze the growth effects of historical and biological ancestry, diversity and financial development in transition economies. We show that the common indicators of ethnolinguistic fractionalization, state history and genetic distance yield significant results and to some extent transform the impact of finance on growth in East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. Deep ethnolinguistic cleavages produce insignificant results, whereas at intermediate and lower levels of aggregation diversity is likely to significantly improve the effect of finance on growth. Similarly to finer ethnolinguistic cleavages, genetic distance from the United States also favorably increases the relevance of financial development for growth. However, state history as a proxy for long-run ancestral exposure to institutions, political organization and centralization reinforces the negative growth effect of financial development. We argue that financial development is inclined to resolve problems arising from coordination failures and absence of trust in diverse societies by easing liquidity constraints and offering incentives for entrepreneurship to minority groups. In contrast, long state history is likely to generate extractive institutions that facilitate the provision of soft budget constraints. Genetic distance from the United States induces higher reliance on continental rather than Anglo-Saxon financing practices, and therefore increases dependence on banks rather than bonds or equity for external liquidity purposes. |
| Keywords: | financial development,economic growth,state history,ethnolinguistic diversity,genetic distance,transition economies |
| JEL: | G21 O15 O43 P26 P51 Z10 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:fubsbe:20174&r=his |
| By: | Congressional Budget Office |
| Abstract: | In 2013, total family wealth in the United States was $67 trillion and the median family held approximately $81,000. Over the period from 1989 through 2013, family wealth grew at significantly different rates for different segments of the U.S. population, and the distribution among the nation’s families was more unequal in 2013 than it had been in 1989. |
| JEL: | D14 D31 |
| Date: | 2016–08–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cbo:report:518461&r=his |
| By: | Theo S. Eicher (University of Washington); David J. Kuenzel (Economics Department, Wesleyan University) |
| Abstract: | The development accounting literature identifies political institutions as fundamental development determinants. Forms of government or executive constraints are thought to shape economic institutions (e.g., property rights) which provide the necessary incentives for economic growth. The consensus in this literature is that European influence affects economic development, presumably via the adoption of European institutions. But how exactly did European influence in the distant past induce positive economic outcomes today? While previous approaches rely on “language,” “settler mortality,” “legal origins,” or the “number of European settlers” as indirect proxies of European influence, we propose a direct and quantifiable mechanism: the adoption of European constitutional features. We construct a dataset of all constitutional dimensions in all countries from 1800-2008, and find that nations experience growth spurts after adopting features of European constitutions. The growth effects are influenced (negatively) by periods of political turmoil, but they are independent of colonial backgrounds. These results imply that countries have been able to overcome adverse initial conditions over the last 200 years by adjusting European influence via the adoption of European constitutional features. Our constitutional dataset is also sufficiently detailed to identify which dimensions of European constitutions matter for development, namely legislative rules and provisions that curtail executive power. |
| Keywords: | Institutions, Constitutions, Economic Growth |
| JEL: | O10 P48 O43 |
| Date: | 2017–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wes:weswpa:2017-002&r=his |
| By: | Ronald Busse (Fresenius University of Applied Sciences); Malcolm (Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge); Shuming (Nanjing University) |
| Abstract: | The main thrust of this article is to trace the roots of US-driven 'Human Resource Management' (HRM) school of thought which now become widely institutionalized in China, up to the present day. It examines the diffusion of management knowledge over the period to Chinese business, which involved in turn, Scientific Management (SM), Human Relations (HR) and Human Resource Management (HRM) respectively, from the interwar years onwards, by using a bibliometric analysis of Chinese- language sources, searching a number of data-bases now available. We scanned the international, as well as Chinese, literature in order to support a conjecture of a HR route toward China and how it morphed into HRM and go on to conclude that there was by the end of the year 2015 still a significant output of academic publications with references to both HR and HRM respectively but that we must be cautious in putting forward a firm conclusion. |
| Keywords: | China, human relations, human resource management, people-management, scientific management, workplace |
| Date: | 2016–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jbs:wpaper:201602&r=his |
| By: | Markus Brueckner; Era Dabla-Norris; Mark Gradstein; Daniel Lederman |
| Abstract: | We present estimates of the relationship between the share of income accruing to the middle class and GDP per capita of ASEAN economies. The increase in GDP per capita that ASEAN economies experienced during 1970-2010 significantly contributed to a higher share of income accruing to the middle class in these countries. The impact of a rise of the middle class on economic growth depends on ASEAN countries’ initial level of GDP per capita. In the majority of ASEAN countries, a rise of the middle class that is unrelated to GDP per capita growth would have had a significant negative effect on economic growth based on values of these countries’ GDP per capita in 1970. In contrast, for recent values of GDP per capita a rise of the middle class would positively contribute to GDP per capita growth. We show that human capital accumulation is an important channel through which a rise of the middle class affects economic growth. |
| Keywords: | Income Inequality, Economic Growth, ASEAN |
| JEL: | O1 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:een:camaaa:2017-10&r=his |
| By: | Nagel, Korbinian |
| Abstract: | The epidemiological literature discusses two contrary hypotheses that can represent the income-to-health relationship from a life course perspective: the ``cumulative advantage'' and the ``age as leveller'' hypothesis. The aim of this study is to transfer the investigation of both hypotheses to a macro level with long time horizon. It asks whether increases in per capita income improves population health and whether the improvements differ across population age groups. Using an unbalanced panel data set with 20 countries and with up to 211 years, the analysis relies on the Westerlund (2007) error correction methodology to detect long-run causality and on the Pesaran (2006) framework to quantify the effect magnitude. A significant effect of per capita income on survivability is only found for middle age groups. The analysis detects no significant effect on survivability of the very young and of old ages. These findings provide evidence for both hypotheses during several stages of life: while the ``cumulative advantage'' theory serves for describing the transition from young to middle ages, the transition from middle to old ages corresponds to the ``age as leveller'' mechanism. |
| JEL: | I15 J11 C22 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145810&r=his |
| By: | Ivan Sablin (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | The working paper offers a new interpretation of the intellectual and political genealogies of the Far Eastern Republic (1920–1922). The working paper demonstrates that the Far Eastern Republic was not a new project, as a similar formation was first proclaimed on April 10, 1918, in Khabarovsk as an autonomy within the Soviet Russian Republic under the name of the Soviet Republic of the Far East in line with the resolutions of the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets. The Soviet Republic of the Far East was a product of regionalist and nationalist discourses and built on the ideas of decentralization which were widely discussed since the First Russian Revolution (1905–1907) by liberals and socialists alike and began to be implemented after the February Revolution (1917). The Chernobyl-born and Chicago-educated Bolshevik Aleksandr Mikhailovich Krasnoshchekov, who led the establishment of the Far Eastern Republic in 1920, also headed the Soviet Republic of the Far East in 1918. Its government, the Far Eastern Council of People’s Commissars (Dal’sovnarkom) defied the authority of the Central Executive Committee of Siberian Soviets (Tsentrosibir’) and disobeyed the Moscow central government implementing thereby a regionalist approach to Soviet federalism. Krasnoshchekov’s project relied on the ideas of the Populists (Narodniki), the Socialist Revolutionaries, and the Social Democrats which were tested in the Russian Far East during the First Russian Revolution and the interpretations of Far Eastern history and interests which were put forward by regional deputies in the Russian State Duma. The formation of the first Far Eastern republic was facilitated by the activities of Deputy of the Fourth Duma and Commissar of the Provisional Government for the Far East Aleksandr Nikolaevich Rusanov who led the formation of a regional organization uniting democratically elected zemstvo and municipal self-government bodies. |
| Keywords: | Russian Far East, State Duma, nationalism, regionalism, revolution |
| JEL: | Z |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:142/hum/2017&r=his |