|
on Business, Economic and Financial History |
|
Issue of 2017‒07‒30
seventeen papers chosen by |
| By: | Thales A. Zamberlan Pereira |
| Abstract: | When and why did Brazilian cotton become important to the Industrial Revolution? After 1780, Brazil increased substantially its trade share relative to other cotton suppliers. Between 1791 and 1801, Brazilian cotton represented 40 percent of raw cotton imports in Liverpool, rivalling the West Indies. Using archival data between 1760 and 1808, this paper shows that Brazil benefited from increasing British demand for a new variety of cotton staple that emerged with mechanized textile production. Previous explanations for the rise of Brazilian cotton trade attributed it to the revolutions in the Caribbean in the 1790s, and the American Revolutionary War, which ended in 1783. Evidence, however, suggests that these explanations are incomplete or incorrect. The United States did not export cotton to Britain before 1790, and British imports from the West Indies did not fall after the revolutions. The increase in cotton trade between Brazil and Britain can be explained by four parallel stories: 1) how diplomatic conflicts between Portugal and Britain involving the wine trade increased Brazilian cotton importance in the Portuguese trade balance; 2) how cotton plantations in Brazil managed to respond to Britain’s increasing demand after the 1780s; 3) why the West Indies were not a viable alternative to Brazilian cotton; 4) why the Brazilian cotton staple had natural advantages over initial alternatives for new textile machines in Britain. |
| Keywords: | Cotton Trade; Colonial Brazil; Industrial Revolution |
| JEL: | N56 N73 N76 |
| Date: | 2017–07–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spa:wpaper:2017wpecon10&r=his |
| By: | Maxime Desmarais-Tremblay (Centre Walras-Pareto - Université de Lausanne, CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | The ancient Greek conception of oikonomia is often dismissed as irrelevant for making sense of the contemporary economic world. In this paper, I emphasise a tread that runs through the history of economic thought connecting the oikos to modern public economics. By conceptualising the public economy as a public household, Richard A. Musgrave (1910-2007) set foot in a long tradition of analogy between the practically oriented household and the state. Despite continuous references to the domestic model by major economists throughout the centuries, the analogy has clashed with liberal values associated with the public sphere since the eighteenth century. Musgrave's conceptualization of public expenditures represents one episode of this continuing tension. His defence of merit goods, in particular, was rejected by many American economists in the 1960s because it was perceived as a paternalistic intervention by the state. I suggest that the accusation of paternalism should not come as a surprise once the ‘domestic’ elements in Musgrave's conceptualisation of the public sector are highlighted. I develop three points of the analogy in Musgrave's public household (the communal basis, a central direction, and consumption to satisfy needs) which echo recurring patterns of thought about the state. |
| Abstract: | On admet souvent que la définition originale de l'économie - oikonomia : les lois de la gestion domestique - n'est pas pertinente pour le monde économique moderne. Dans cet article, je tisse un fil dans l'histoire de la pensée économique qui connecte l'oikos à l'économie publique moderne. En conceptualisant l'économie publique comme un ménage (household), Richard A. Musgrave (1910-2007) s'inscrit, en partie sans le savoir, dans une longue tradition d'analogie entre le ménage et l'État. Malgré les références continuelles au modèle domestique par des économistes et des penseurs politiques à travers les siècles, l'analogie se heurte aux valeurs libérales associées à la sphère publique depuis le XVIIe siècle. La théorisation des dépenses publiques de Musgrave représente un épisode de cette tension continuelle. C'est le cas en particulier de son concept de besoin méritoire (besoin sous tutelle) qui a été rejeté par plusieurs économistes américains dans les années 1960, parce qu'il légitimait des interventions paternalistes de l'État. Or, l'accusation de paternalisme n'est guère surprenante lorsqu'on met au jour les éléments ‘domestiques’ de la conceptualisation musgravienne du secteur public. Je développe trois points de l'analogie présents dans la conceptualisation du ménage public de Musgrave (la base communautaire, une direction centrale, la consommation pour satisfaire des besoins) qui font écho à des modes de conceptualisation de l'État récurrents dans la pensée politique et économique occidentale. |
| Keywords: | public household,paternalism,liberalism,merit wants,merit goods,ménage public,paternalisme,besoins méritoires,biens méritoites,Richard A. Musgrave |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-01560189&r=his |
| By: | Charles Angelucci; Simone Meraglia; Nico Voigtländer |
| Abstract: | The representation of merchant interests in parliaments played a crucial role in constraining monarchs’ power and expanding the protection of property rights. We study the process that led to the inclusion of merchant representatives in the English Parliament, using a novel comprehensive dataset for 550 medieval English towns (boroughs). Our analysis begins with the Norman Conquest in 1066 – an event of enormous political change that resulted in largely homogeneous formal institutions across England. From this starting point, we document a two-step process: First, monitoring issues and asymmetric information led to inefficiencies in the king’s tax collection, especially with the onset of the Commercial Revolution in the 12th century. This gave rise to mutually beneficial agreements (Farm Grants), whereby medieval merchant towns obtained the right of self-administered tax collection and law enforcement. Second, we show that Farm Grants were stepping stones towards representation in the English Parliament after its creation in 1295: local autonomy meant that subsequently, extra-ordinary taxation (e.g., to finance wars) had to be negotiated with towns – and the efficient institution to do so was Parliament. We show that royal boroughs with trade-favoring geography were much more likely to be represented in Parliament, and that this relationship worked through Farm Grants. We also show that medieval self-governance had important long-term consequences and interacted with nationwide institutional changes. Boroughs with medieval Farm Grants had persistently more inclusive local elections of public officials and MPs, they raised troops to support the parliamentarians during the CivilWar in 1642, and they supported the Great Reform Act of 1832, which resulted in the extension of the franchise. |
| JEL: | D02 D73 N43 P14 P16 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23606&r=his |
| By: | Nicholas Stone (Tung Wah College) |
| Abstract: | Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Britain experienced a wave of xenophobia against a single ethnic minority, the Chinese, that would become known as the Yellow Peril. Britain was not alone in experiencing this phenomenon, but compared to the more documented example of the Peril in North America, the British example has been far less documented. Initially reflecting international notions of the Yellow Peril, such as fears over mass immigration from Asia into the West, at its heart the British example reflected local concerns vis-à-vis the recently emerged Chinese communities. The following article will present a discussion on the exclusively Sinocentric British experience of the Yellow Peril and document how despite their minute numbers, the Chinese would bear the brunt of Britain's alien xenophobia during the period. It will examine how their visible and cultural differences signalled them to become scapegoats for a host of social, labour and political issues. It will also mention how these same differences led to a mystique developing around their communities, spawning a uniquely British aspect of the Yellow Peril, that of the popular pulp fiction of the time, most notably the Dr Fu Manchu stories. This article will also argue that despite the uniqueness of the British experience, it nonetheless would not have developed in isolation without the international aspects of the Peril feeding into the local debate. Ultimately, it was the outside stimulus of the First World War and associated post-war settlements that would signal the end of the British Yellow Peril in the early twentieth century. |
| Keywords: | The Yellow Peril, Britain, xenophobia, China, Chinese, Sinocentric, Dr Fu Manchu, First World War, The Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), the Great Unrest, Limehouse, |
| Date: | 2017–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:5007633&r=his |
| By: | Bordo, Michael D. (Rutgers University) |
| Abstract: | The recent rise of populist anti-globalization political movements has led to concerns that the current wave of globalization that goes back to the 1870s may end in turmoil just like the first wave which ended after World War I. It is too soon to tell. The decline and then levelling off of trade and capital flows in recent years reflects the drastic decline in global real income during the Great Recession. Other factors at work include the slowdown in the growth rate of China and the reversal of the extended international supply chains developed in the 1990s, as well as increased financial regulation across the world after the crisis. This suggests either a pause in the pace of integration or more likely a slowing down, rather than a reversal. |
| JEL: | F6 N1 |
| Date: | 2017–07–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:feddgw:319&r=his |
| By: | Hetzel, Robert L. (Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond) |
| Abstract: | From the early 1960s until the early 1970s with the emergence of rational expectations, under the rubric of monetarism, Milton Friedman defined macroeconomic debate. Although the Keynesian consensus that he challenged has disappeared, the current academic literature makes little reference to monetarist ideas. What happened to them? The argument here is that those ideas remain relevant but require translation into terms expressible in modern macroeconomic models and in the monetary policies of central banks, neither of which contain any obvious references to money. Moreover, the Friedman and Schwartz methodology for identifying shocks retains relevance. |
| Keywords: | monetary policy; Milton Friedman |
| JEL: | B22 |
| Date: | 2017–07–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedrwp:17-09&r=his |
| By: | Binika Sadhnani (Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University) |
| Abstract: | The Bhakti movement refers to the theistic devotional trend that emerged in medieval Hinduism. It originated in the seventh-century Tamil south India, and spread northwards. The Bhakti movement regionally developed around different gods and goddesses, such as Vishnu, Shiva. The movement has traditionally been considered as an influential social reformation in Hinduism, and provided an individual-focused alternative path to spirituality regardless of one's caste of birth or gender.This paper aims to provide a brief understanding of the Bhakti movement which spread in early India and the Indian literature which sprang out of it. The focus of the paper is to identity the features of Bhakti poetry and the relevance of the ideas in the contemporary world. The paper proposes to focus in particular on Saint Mirabai- one of the well known women poets of the Bhakti movement.Born in Rajasthan and married to Rana Bhojraj but as a young girl Mirabai took the idol of Lord Krishna (Hindu God) as her husband incarnate. Mirabai?s entire life was devoted to Krishna. Despite the discontentment from her in-laws, Mirabai continued to sing, dance and immerse herself in the devotion of Lord Krishna.The idea of bhakti is often looked at as a mere devotion to God. Its value is often limited to that being religious. This paper aims to expand the horizon and look deeper into the movement and what it stood for with religion not at the center of it. This paper analyses Mirabai?s role as a strong woman in the early India dominated by patriarchy and caste-ism and looks at Mirabai?s poetic themes as philosophies which can be adapted by the contemporary world. The paper does not intend to change or propagate any religious ideas as the focus is the attitude, the mentality and the courage which one can infer. The paper proposes to explore religion and God as a concept which is personal and may be interpreted individually. These two terms can be replaced with anything that is deeply personal and carry immense value for any individual. Lord Krishna was a concept or a belief and the purpose of Mira?s life. For a modern day individual Krishna can stand for something else- one?s belief ,a commercial idea, a philosophy,anything that is intuitive and different from that which is taught- this is the undercurrent of this paper. |
| Keywords: | Bhakti Poetry, Mirabai, Secular India |
| JEL: | Z11 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:4607682&r=his |
| By: | Faustine Perrin (Lund University); David de la Croix (Université catholique Louvain) |
| Abstract: | We analyze how much a parsimonious rational-choice model can explain the temporal and spatial variation in fertility and school enrollment in France during the 19th century. The originality of our approach is in our reliance on the structural estimation of a system of rst-order conditions to identify the deep parameters. Another new dimension is our use of gendered education data, allowing us to have a richer theory having implications for the gender wage and education gaps. Results indicate that the parsimonious rational-choice model explains 38 percent of the variation of fertility over time and across counties, as well as 71 percent and 83 percent of school enrollment of boys and girls, respectively. The analysis of the residuals (unexplained by the economic model) indicates that additional insights might be gained by considering cross-county differences in family structure and cultural barriers. |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed017:246&r=his |
| By: | Federico Etro (Department of Economics, University Of Venice Cà Foscari) |
| Abstract: | I analyze the Renaissance art market in Italy through a unique dataset on primary commissions between 1285 and 1550. Hedonic regressions on the real price of paintings allow me to advance evidence that the art market was to a large extent competitive, and that an important determinant of artistic innovation during Renaissance was related to economic incentives. Price differentials reflected quality differentials as perceived at the time (whose proxy is the length of the biography of Vasari, in the 1568 Edition of his Vite) and did not depend on the regional destination of the commissions, as expected under monopolistic competition with free entry. I show an inverse-U relation between prices and age of execution, which is consistent with a reputational theory of artistic effort, and a substantial increase of the real price of paintings since the 1420s. The latter suggests that artistic differentiation, deeper realism and innovations(as linear perspective) may have been driven by increasing profitability of the profession. |
| Keywords: | Renaissance, Economic theory of art history |
| JEL: | N8 Z1 L1 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ven:wpaper:2017:13&r=his |
| By: | Jason Barrows (Tokyo Denki University) |
| Abstract: | The subject of this paper is how the Associated Press used propaganda in the United States in order to sway the public sentiment regarding Yellow Peril and the effects on public opinions when the popular media chose whether to follow or reject the popular prejudices of the time. During the years 1888 to 1905, the diplomatic relations between the Western powers and the Far East showed signs of increasing equality and interdependence between the East and West, which unsettled many Westerners. Since Westerners had limited access to knowledge about Asia, they created an image that Asia, with is vast population, would join together in making a powerful military unit, and this force would be a substantial threat to ?Christian civilization.? These unrealistic fears caused the West to witness an outpouring of books, articles and editorial commentary concerning the impending danger to Western-white-Christian civilization from the growing power of the Oriental peoples. The slogan `Yellow Peril` not only expressed the Western fears of Asia initiating physical war against the US or Europe, but also fears that Asian immigrants to the United States were stealing American jobs. |
| Keywords: | Japanese Yellow Peril |
| JEL: | I24 |
| Date: | 2017–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:5007625&r=his |
| By: | Politronacci, Emmanuelle; Ninlias, Élodie B.; Palazzeschi, Enda E.; Torre, Ghjuvanni |
| Abstract: | Despite the well-known difficulties to measure national euro circulations within the euro area, several methods have been used to estimate the national demand for euro banknotes in France, such as key-based calculations (ECB capital), approaches using average return time of banknotes or extrapolated data from legacy currencies historical trends, methods relying on the replacement indicators of the first euro banknote series. This paper proposes an update of these approaches and complements them with two additional methods. First, exportations of banknotes data enable to infer the French national circulation from the difference between banknotes issued by the Banque de France and the banknotes it shipped outside the euro area, directly or via the French wholesale bank. Second, a “bottom-up” approach can be built-up, where the cash holdings of the different institutional sectors (MFIs, households, non-financial corporations) are summed up in order to estimate the use of cash for transactional purpose. Bearing in mind that those various approaches do not always separate the hoarding from the transactional purposes nor take into account banknotes migrations flows across countries, the analysis of the similarities and differences between those several methods sheds light on the French national demand for cash by giving hints on both the low and the top ends of the range. |
| Keywords: | banknotes in circulation,cash usage,payment instruments |
| JEL: | E41 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:iccp17:162913&r=his |
| By: | Lehmann-Hasemeyer, Sibylle H.; Wahl, Fabian |
| Abstract: | We show that smaller, regional public financial intermediaries significantly contributed to industrial development, using a new data set of the foundation year and location of Prussian savings banks. This extends the banking-growth nexus beyond its traditional focus on the large universal banks, to savings banks. The saving banks had an impact through the financing of public infrastructure, such as railways, and new private factories. Saving banks were public financial intermediaries, so our results strongly suggest that state intervention can be very successful, particularly in regions in the early stages of industrial development when capital requirements are manageable, and access to international capital markets is limited. |
| Keywords: | Savings Banks,Prussia,Industrialisation,Public Infrastructure,Regional and Urban Development |
| JEL: | G21 N23 N74 N93 R11 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:hohdps:182017&r=his |
| By: | Grosfeld, Irena; Sakalli, Seyhun Orcan; Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina |
| Abstract: | We present evidence to reconcile two seemingly contradictory observations: on the one hand, minorities often choose middleman occupations, such as traders and moneylenders, to avoid competition with the majority and, as a consequence, avoid conflict; on the other hand, middleman minorities do become the primary target of persecution. Using panel data on anti-Jewish pogroms in Eastern Europe between 1800 and 1927, we document that ethnic violence broke out when crop failures coincided with political turmoil. Crop failures without political turmoil did not cause pogroms. At the intersection of economic and political shocks, pogroms occurred in places where Jews dominated moneylending and trade in grain. This evidence is consistent with the following mechanism. When political situation was stable, negative economic shocks did not instigate pogroms because the majority valued future services of Jewish middlemen. In contrast, in times of a sharp increase in political uncertainty, Jewish middlemen became the primary target of mob violence following an economic shock as the value of their future services fell. Peasants organized pogroms when they could not repay loans to Jewish creditors and buyers of grain turned against Jews blaming Jewish traders for an increase in grain prices. |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12154&r=his |
| By: | Howard, Eric (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics); Link, Albert (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we chronicle the early history of the development of Gateway University Research Park at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. We document the institutional efforts of faculty, administrators, and public leaders who moved the Gateway idea from seed to harvest to provide guideposts for other institutions to possibly follow that are contemplating establishing a research park. Our summary emphasizes the concept of cooperation not only because it is a cornerstone of the successful development of Gateway, but also because it might be a key element to which others relate. |
| Keywords: | research parks; entrepreneurship; innovation |
| JEL: | J16 L26 O31 |
| Date: | 2017–07–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:uncgec:2017_010&r=his |
| By: | Juan Pablo Mateo (Department of Economics, New School for Social Research and University of Valladolid) |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a comparative analysis of the process of capital accumulation in three economies, US, Spain and Brazil, between 1990 and 2014. The objective is to analyze the peculiarities existing in these cases, corresponding to the main contemporary economy (US), a developed one, but with a peripheral integration into a more developed area, such as the Euroarea (Spain), and a semiperipheral economy (Brazil); and in a period in which, specially for both Spain and Brazil, a neoliberal turn is carried out, and achieving certain monetary stalibity that ultimately affect the macroeconomic performance. |
| Keywords: | Capital accumulation, productivity, profit rate, underdevelopment |
| JEL: | E11 E22 F00 O47 O5 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:new:wpaper:1723&r=his |
| By: | Michel GARENNE (Institut Pasteur) |
| Abstract: | L’article retrace les liens entre planning familial, prévalence de la contraception et tendances de la fécondité en Afrique subsaharienne, à partir d’études de cas portant sur les pays disposant d’enquêtes démographiques. L’étude montre que certains pays ont terminé leur transition de la fécondité, que d’autres ont réduit leur fécondité rapidement en milieu urbain, mais moins en milieu rural. Dans certains pays, la fécondité est restée très élevée ou a peu baissé en milieu rural : ce sont ceux où les politiques et programmes de planning familial sont restés insuffisants, voire quasi inexistants. Le rôle des politiques de population et des programmes de planning familial dans la baisse de la fécondité est mis en évidence en contrastant des pays à caractéristiques voisines, dont l’un a eu une baisse forte de la fécondité et l’autre une baisse faible ou inexistante. Dans chaque cas on présente le contexte politique, économique et social qui explique ces différences entre les programmes de planning familial et leurs résultats. Ces études de cas permettent de tirer des conclusions sur les conditions de la maîtrise de la fécondité dans les pays africains. |
| Keywords: | Politique de population, Planning familial, Contraception, Tendances de la fécondité, Transition démographique, Environnement politique, Conditions économiques, Situations sociales, Enquêtes démographiques, Afrique subsaharienne |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fdi:wpaper:3875&r=his |
| By: | Dögüs, Ilhan |
| Abstract: | It has already been pointed out in the literature on financialisation that private pension funds have played a key role in the inflation of financial markets. This paper argues that an increase in wage dispersion between white-collar and blue-collar workers affects pension funds in a direct and structural manner. Using Saez-Zucman and fred.stlouisfed annual datasets, the proposed argument is statistically analysed by applying Vector Autoregressive modelling for the period 1966-2013 in the USA. The results show that the responses of share of pension funds within US-household wealth to one-unit shock in wage dispersion are positive and significant over the first three years. Furthermore, wage dispersion explains 11% of variations in pension funds' share in household wealth in the short-run and 19% of variations in the long-run. The study concludes that wage dispersion has a direct and structural impact on pension funds and contributes to the literature by clarifying the rise and expansion of pension funds. |
| Keywords: | financialisation,pension funds,wage dispersion,savings out of salaries,white-collar workers,capital market inflation |
| JEL: | J31 D14 E44 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:cessdp:63&r=his |