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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2018‒02‒26
34 papers chosen by |
| By: | Balzano, Maria Silvia; Vecchione, Gaetano; Zamagni, Vera |
| Abstract: | In the decades around the turn of the eighteenth century, Naples was capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and Europe’s third most populous city. From the early decades of the eighteenth to the end of the nineteenth century, the city spawned a school of intellectuals that, though predominantly juridical in cast, nevertheless displayed a surprisingly substantial openness to a new approach to the social sciences, which had developed above all in France, heavily influenced by the natural sciences and the experimental method. In harmony with Enlightenment thought, Gaetano Filangieri was the precursor, two centuries back, of the principles of indissoluble interaction between formal and informal institutions and economic development, between governance and social feedback, that are pillars of today’s school of institutional economics. His writings anticipated, in a number of respects, conceptual approaches adopted by later scholars. The present paper offers an institutional focus on his work, referring above all to Douglass North and his treatment of the role of the Glorious Revolution. |
| Keywords: | Gaetano Filangieri; Kingdom of the Two Sicilies; Institutional economics |
| JEL: | B2 B25 B31 |
| Date: | 2018–01–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:84538&r=his |
| By: | Johan Fourie (Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University); Martine Mariotti (Department of Economics, Australian National University); Kris Inwood (Department of Economics, Guelph University) |
| Abstract: | While it is well known that labour market fluctuations may affect the supply of labour into particular activities such as crime and military service, other sources of selection bias may be sufficiently powerful to confound hypothesis testing. Selection into military populations, for example, may reflect influences on the demand as well as supply of labour. We argue that changing military technology in the early twentieth century shifted the demand for men of different stature and robustness. Soldiers in the First World War (1914-1918) were shorter on average than those in the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) for reasons that had nothing to do with standard of living or business cycle influences on the labour market. Rather, we argue, the mechanization and bureaucratization of warfare increased the relative value of shorter people permitting a decline in the average height of soldiers. Thus, technological change over the period of these two wars affected labour demand in a way that largely explains an apparent fall in heights. |
| Keywords: | height, stature, sample selection bias, convenience samples, World War I, Anglo-Boer War, military strategy |
| JEL: | C8 N3 N4 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sza:wpaper:wpapers296&r=his |
| By: | Alfonso Díez-Minguela (Universitat de València); Rafael González-Val (Universidad de Zaragoza, IEB); Julio Martinez-Galarraga (Universitat de València); M. Teresa Sanchis (Universitat de València); Daniel A. Tirado (Universitat de València) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the long-term relationship between regional inequality and economic development. Our data set includes information on national and regional per-capita GDP for four countries: France, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Data are compiled on a decadal basis for the period 1860-2010, thus enabling the evolution of regional inequalities throughout the whole process of economic development to be examined. Using parametric and semiparametric regressions, our results confirm the rise and fall of regional inequalities over time, i.e. the existence of an inverted-U curve since the early stages of modern economic growth, as the Williamson hypothesis suggests. We also find evidence that, in recent decades, regional inequalities have been on the rise again. As a result, the long-term relationship between national economic development and spatial inequalities describes an elephant-shaped curve. |
| Keywords: | Economic development, regional inequalities, Kuznets curve, Europe, economic history |
| JEL: | N9 O18 R1 |
| Date: | 2017–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0119&r=his |
| By: | Gagliarducci, Stefano (University of Rome Tor Vergata); Onorato, Massimiliano Gaetano (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore); Sobbrio, Francesco (LUISS Guido Carli University); Tabellini, Guido (Bocconi University) |
| Abstract: | Can counter-propaganda by a foreign democratic country help to overthrow an authoritarian military regime? And if so, what are the mechanisms through which this happens? We analyze these questions in the context of the Nazi-fascist occupation of Italy during WWII. We study the effect of BBC radio counter-propaganda (Radio Londra) on the intensity of internal resistance to the Nazi-fascist regime. Using variation in monthly sunspots activities affecting the sky-wave propagation of BBC broadcasting towards Italy, we show that BBC radio had a strong impact on political violence. We provide further evidence to prove that BBC radio played an important role in coordinating resistance activities, but had no lasting role in motivating the population against the fascist regime. |
| Keywords: | media, BBC, counter-propaganda, insurgency, violence, WWII, sunspots |
| JEL: | D74 L82 N44 |
| Date: | 2017–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11244&r=his |
| By: | MacDonald, Stephen; Meyer, Leslie |
| Abstract: | One revelation from the 2008 Global Financial Crisis was the fragility of models and assumptions based on samples too short to include periods of high volatility, and this study attempts to remedy that short-coming for USDA’s development of long run cotton price projections. Real cotton prices have fallen significantly since 1900, but statistical verification of the presence of a long-run downward trend has proven elusive. Cotton price volatility has varied widely over the last 226 years, largely correlated with macroeconomic instability. Cotton’s period of greatest instability—during the U.S. Civil War—was primarily driven by cotton-specific trade and production disruptions, but since the Civil War, cotton volatility has largely coincided with broader commodity price volatility. One of cotton’s most volatility\e episodes since 18th century occurred over 2009-12, and was in part a consequence of nearly unprecedented macroeconomic instability and, in part due to factors specific to cotton markets. Looking ahead, cotton price volatility over 2018-27 is likely to be greater than the volatility experienced during 2016-17, when volatility was unusually low, likely reduced by China’s large sales from its National Reserve. |
| Keywords: | cotton, commodity prices, price volatility, GARCH, China, Bretton Woods, Gold Standard |
| JEL: | D40 D41 E31 E32 N50 Q11 Q17 |
| Date: | 2018–01–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:84484&r=his |
| By: | Emilio Depetris-Chauvin (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile); Ömer Özak (Southern Methodist University) |
| Abstract: | This research explores the historical roots of the division of labor in pre-modern societies. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that intra-ethnic diversity had a positive effect on the division of labor across ethnicities in the pre-modern era. Exploiting a variety of identification strategies and a novel ethnic level dataset combining geocoded ethnographic, linguistic and genetic data, it establishes that higher levels of intra-ethnic diversity were conducive to economic specialization in the pre-modern era. The findings are robust to a host of geographical, institutional, cultural and historical confounders, and suggest that variation in intra-ethnic diversity is the main predictor of the division of labor in pre-modern times. |
| Keywords: | Economic Comparative Development, Division of Labor, Economic Specialization, Intra-Ethnic Diversity, Cultural Diversity, Population Diversity, Genetic Diversity, Linguistic Diversity, Serial Founder Effect |
| JEL: | D74 F10 F14 J24 N10 O10 O11 O12 O40 O43 O44 Z10 Z13 |
| Date: | 2018–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smu:ecowpa:1803&r=his |
| By: | Gauti B. Eggertsson; Jacob A. Robbins; Ella Getz Wold |
| Abstract: | The macroeconomic data of the last thirty years has overturned at least two of Kaldor’s famous stylized growth facts: constant interest rates, and a constant labor share. At the same time, the research of Piketty and others has introduced several new and surprising facts: an increase in the financial wealth-to-output ratio in the US, an increase in measured Tobin’s Q, and a divergence between the marginal and the average return on capital. In this paper, we argue that these trends can be explained by an increase in market power and pure profits in the US economy, i.e., the emergence of a non-zero-rent economy, along with forces that have led to a persistent long term decline in real interest rates. We make three parsimonious modifications to the standard neoclassical model to explain these trends. Using recent estimates of the increase in markups and the decrease in real interest rates, we show that our model can quantitatively match these new stylized macroeconomic facts. |
| JEL: | E3 E5 E6 O4 |
| Date: | 2018–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24287&r=his |
| By: | Lewis, Joshua (University of Montreal); Severnini, Edson R. (Carnegie Mellon University) |
| Abstract: | Electrification among American farm households increased from less than 10 percent to nearly 100 percent over a three decade span, 1930{1960. We exploit the historical rollout of the U.S. power grid to study the short- and long-run impacts of rural electrification on local economies. In the short run, rural electrification led to increases in agricultural employment, rural farm population, and rural property values, but there was little impact on the local non-agriculture economy. Benefits exceeded historical costs, even in rural areas with low population density. As for the long run, rural counties that gained early access to electricity experienced increased economic growth that persisted for decades after the country was fully electrified. In remote rural areas, local development was driven by a long-run expansion in the agricultural sector, while in rural counties near metropolitan areas, long-run population growth coincided with increases in housing costs and decreases in agricultural employment. This last result suggests that rural electrification stimulated suburban expansion. |
| Keywords: | rural electrification, short run, long run, agriculture, suburbanization |
| JEL: | N72 N92 N32 O13 O18 Q48 |
| Date: | 2017–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11243&r=his |
| By: | Stefano Gagliarducci (University of Rome Tor Vergata, EIEF, IZA and Dondena); Massimiliano Gaetano Onorato (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore); Francesco Sobbrio (LUISS “G. Carli” and CESIfo); Guido Tabellini (Bocconi University, CIFAR, CEPR and CESIfo) |
| Abstract: | What is the role of the media in coordinating and mobilizing insurgency against a foreign military occupation? We analyze this question in the context of the Nazi-fascist occupation of Italy during WWII. We study the effect of BBC radio counter-propaganda (Radio Londra) on the intensity of internal resistance to the Nazi-fascist regime. Using variation in monthly sunspot activities affecting the sky-wave propagation of BBC broadcasting towards Italy, we show that BBC radio had a strong impact on political violence. We provide further evidence to prove that BBC radio played an important role in coordinating resistance activities, but had no lasting role in motivating the population against the fascist regime. |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eie:wpaper:1803&r=his |
| By: | Lennard, Jason (Department of Economic History, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of economic policy uncertainty on the macroeconomy of interwar Britain. A new index of economic policy uncertainty constructed from contemporary newspapers indicates that this was a period of great anxiety. Time series evidence suggests that this uncertainty reduced output, raised unemployment and contributed to macroeconomic volatility. |
| Keywords: | business cycles; interwar Britain; local projections; narrative identification; uncertainty |
| JEL: | E32 E60 N14 N44 |
| Date: | 2018–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:luekhi:0170&r=his |
| By: | Aleksandra Babikova (National Research University Higher School of Economics); Alexandra Bekasova (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | The article deals with the process of emergence of tourism in Russia and focused on a visual pattern in the making of tourist places. Being an essential part of mass printed culture, travel guidebooks, along with travel literature and postcards, were in demand during the late imperial period. They were produced and replicated intensively and circulated widely. At the turn of the 19 – 20th centuries the Black Sea coast of Russia was evolving into a popular place for travel and a recreational destination. A set of images of attractive spots of this region, which were reproduced in Nikolai Lender’s guidebooks, as well as on postcards in 1880s - 1910s formed the empirical basis of this research |
| Keywords: | travel guidebooks; images of attractive spots, tourist spaces, tourism history, the Black Sea coast, late Imperial Russia |
| JEL: | Z |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:164/hum/2018&r=his |
| By: | Marco Pani |
| Abstract: | More than a century later, the Banca Romana crisis still provides useful insights on the challenges of preserving financial stability. This paper reviews the case and discusses implications that can be relevant today. The crisis was spurred by an unsustainable credit expansion encouraged by capital inflows, which provoked an asset price bubble and other imbalances. A system of corruption and collusion with politicians and journalists enabled the bank managers to run risky and illegal operations – effectively, asset-stripping – undetected and unhindered. As a result, it would not have been easy for an observer not endowed with investigative powers to detect the mounting risks, while the government, which had these powers, failed to take action when needed and concealed critical information from the public. When the crisis erupted, its resolution was facilitated by a previous, decade-long debate on the reform of the banking system which had led to the exploration and development of possible solutions that could then be rapidly implemented. |
| Keywords: | Italy;Europe;Bank supervision;Banking crisis;Financial crises;Banca Romana; Italy; issuing banks; banking crisis; bank supervision; corruption, Banca Romana, issuing banks, corruption, Search, Learning, and Information, Europe: Pre-1913 |
| Date: | 2017–12–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:17/274&r=his |
| By: | Schilirò, Daniele |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the growth theory of Robert Solow , which has been a point of reference of economic growth since the 1950s. First, the article analyzes the path-breaking model of growth contained in Solow’s article “A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth” published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics (1956). Second, it looks at the contribution of Solow to growth accounting and to the new method of studying capital formation in economic growth through the vintage approach. Therefore, the work analyzes the article “Technical Change and the Aggregate Production Function” published in The Review of Economics and Statistics (1957). In the latter publication, Solow, through the aggregate production function, tries to measure growth and provide an explanation of the nature of technical progress. The article also examines Solow’s 1960 essay “Investment and Technical Progress” based on the hypothesis of embodied technological progress and the vintage approach. |
| Keywords: | Aggregate Production Function; Capital Accumulation; Solow’s Models of Growth; Technological Change |
| JEL: | B22 E10 E23 O10 O33 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:84531&r=his |
| By: | de Bromhead, Alan; Fernihough, Alan; Lampe, Markus; O'Rourke, Kevin Hjortshøj |
| Abstract: | A recent literature explores the nature and causes of the collapse in international trade during 2008 and 2009. The decline was particularly great for automobiles and industrial supplies; it occurred largely along the intensive margin; quantities fell by more than prices; and prices fell less for differentiated products. Do these stylised facts apply to trade collapses more generally? This paper uses detailed, commodityspecific information on UK imports between 1929 and 1933, to see to what extent the trade collapses of the Great Depression and Great Recession resembled each other. It also compares the free trading trade collapse of 1929-31 with the protectionist collapse of 1931-3, to see to what extent protection, and gradual recovery from the Great Depression, mattered for UK trade patterns. |
| Keywords: | Great Depression; Great Recession; trade; protectionism |
| JEL: | F14 N74 |
| Date: | 2018–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12626&r=his |
| By: | Jon D. Wisman |
| Abstract: | Teaching contemporary inequality can be significantly enriched by being nested in its dynamics over the course of human history. This essay is intended to provide those teaching inequality with a brief sketch of: a) the original human condition of a high degree of equality that endured for 97 to 98 percent of our species' existence as foragers and early agriculturalists; b) the origin of extreme inequality that accompanied the rise of states and civilization about 5,500 years ago as weapons technology enabled a few to subjugate the producers; and c) why, despite political democracy, extreme inequality persists. |
| Keywords: | Aboriginal equality, rise of state, comparative advantage in violence, democracy, ideology. |
| JEL: | A20 D30 D63 N00 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:amu:wpaper:2017-10&r=his |
| By: | Jensen, Peter Sandholt; Lampe, Markus; Sharp, Paul; Skovsgaard, Christian |
| Abstract: | We explore the role of elites for development and in particular for the spread of cooperative creameries in Denmark in the 1880s, which was a major factor behind that country's rapid economic catch-up. We demonstrate empirically that the location of early proto-modern dairies, so-called hollænderier, introduced onto traditional landed estates as part of the Holstein System of agriculture by landowning elites from the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein in the eighteenth century, can explain the location of cooperative creameries in 1890, more than a century later, after controlling for other relevant determinants. We interpret this as evidence that areas close to estates which adopted the Holstein System witnessed a gradual spread of modern ideas from the estates to the peasantry. Moreover, we identify a causal relationship by utilizing the nature of the spread of the Holstein System around Denmark, and the distance to the first estate to introduce it, Sofiendal. These results are supported by evidence from a wealth of contemporary sources and are robust to a variety of alternative specifications. |
| Keywords: | cooperatives; dairying; institutions; technology |
| JEL: | N53 O13 Q13 |
| Date: | 2018–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12679&r=his |
| By: | Filippo Natoli (Bank of Italy) |
| Abstract: | The first decade of the 21st century saw wide fluctuations in commodity prices and a massively increased participation of financial investors in the commodity derivatives markets. The investigation of whether the presence of financial investors was responsible for these fluctuations - and, more in general, whether large trades affected futures and spot prices - has yielded mixed results in the literature. We take up this question by linking financialization to the ongoing structural transformation of the commodity markets. First, we discuss issues related to the identification of the price effects of financialization; then, we present models of commodity markets with heterogeneous agents and informational frictions and discuss the role of financial investors as the counterparts of commercial hedgers. Lastly, we suggest some avenues for future research, including the possible implications of the shale revolution and of commodity trading in the financialization process. |
| Keywords: | commodity, oil, financialization, speculation, limits to arbitrage, informational frictions |
| JEL: | G12 G13 Q02 |
| Date: | 2018–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_419_18&r=his |
| By: | Guido Matias Cortes; Nir Jaimovich; Henry E. Siu |
| Abstract: | We document a new finding regarding changes in labor market outcomes for men and women in the US. Since 1980, conditional on being a college-educated man, the probability of working in a cognitive/high-wage occupation has fallen. This contrasts starkly with the experience for college-educated women: their probability of working in these occupations rose, despite a much larger increase in the supply of educated women relative to men. We consider these facts in light of a general neoclassical model of the labor market. One key channel capable of rationalizing these findings is a greater increase in the demand for female-oriented skills in cognitive/high-wage occupations relative to other occupations. Using occupation-level data, we find evidence that this relative increase in the demand for female skills is due to an increasing importance of social skills within such occupations. Evidence from both male and female wages is also indicative of an increase in the demand for social skills. |
| JEL: | E24 J16 J23 |
| Date: | 2018–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24274&r=his |
| By: | Felipe González; Mounu Prem |
| Abstract: | What is the value of political capital for individuals? Towards the end of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, military and civilian collaborators entered the business elite, controlling the largest and most important firms in the country. Using a novel panel dataset of board members in these firms, we document a work premium for those who had previously collaborated with Pinochet. After democratization, however, collaborators were removed from boards and their compensation premium disappeared, suggesting that the value of their networks depreciated.To shed light on these findings, we study military personnel before, during, and after Pinochet and find evidence of a wage premium only during the dictatorship. We interpret these results as Pinochet favoring his collaborators while he was in power. |
| Date: | 2018–01–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000092:015980&r=his |
| By: | Frank Bösch; Phi Hong Su |
| Abstract: | Until the 1970s, only 1000 Vietnamese lived in West and East Germany, most of them international students. West Germany, in particular, had not yet been confronted with non-European refugees. This changed after 1978 with the influx of around 35,000 “boat people” from Viet Nam and other countries in South East Asia, who arrived as part of a contingent quota admission. Their entry led to new strategies for integration, including obligatory language classes and a host of measures resembling those in other countries of refugee resettlement. Yet, the German case differs from other countries because of the simultaneous arrival of non-refugee Vietnamese, who came on temporary labour contracts to socialist East Germany starting in 1980. These two migration streams would converge when Germany reunified in 1990. Drawing on mixed qualitative methods, this paper offers a strategic case for understanding factors that shaped the arrival and resettlement experiences of Vietnamese refugees and contract workers in Germany. By comparing two migration streams from the same country of origin that experienced varied contexts of reception (government, labour market, and ethnic community), we suggest that a context of reception need not be uniformly positive for immigrants and refugees to have an integration experience deemed successful. |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2018-15&r=his |
| By: | Maria Sousa Galito |
| Abstract: | Vestals had political and religious power in ancient Rome. Their peaceful presence at the forum was one of the first attempts (if not the first) in favor of gender equality or women’s empowerment in the public sphere. Vestals were virgin priestesses of a goddess that protected the walls of Rome with her perpetual fire, which was pure and had no statue. Their rituals were based on legends such as Amata or Rhea Silvia that, regardless of being true or not, were religious and cultural references for people's lives and should not be neglected, because they contain information that explains why the State respected the vestals and punished them so severely. |
| Keywords: | Vestals, roman antiquity, politics, religion. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cav:cavwpp:wp167&r=his |
| By: | FitzGerald, John (Trinity College, Dublin); Kenny, Seán (Department of Economic History, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides a consistent series for the Irish national debt since the foundation of the state in 1922. It also provides a continuous series for bond yields over the same period. The paper examines the factors behind the fluctuations in the debt burden over almost a century. The management of the debt burden by the Irish authorities has evolved over time, seeking to minimise both the burden on the economy and the risks which the debt represented to the state. The paper also examines how the cost of borrowing for the Irish government compared to that for the UK and, since the break with sterling, for Germany. This cost of borrowing was, in turn affected by developments in the domestic economy. |
| Keywords: | public debt; debt sustainability; debt management; fiscal policy; Ireland |
| JEL: | E62 H60 H63 N00 N14 |
| Date: | 2018–02–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:luekhi:0171&r=his |
| By: | William Coleman |
| Abstract: | The paper uses data from South Australia’s census of 1901 to throw light of the attributes of electors and electorates that encouraged or discouraged voting Yes in the 1898 and 1899 South Australian federation referenda. It concludes that British-birth and an industrial occupation contributed powerfully to voting No. It additionally concludes that in the 1899 referendum industrial occupation disappeared as a discouragement to voting Yes. |
| JEL: | D72 |
| Date: | 2017–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:auu:dpaper:700&r=his |
| By: | Fleckenstein, Timo; Lee, Soohyun Christine |
| Abstract: | This review article provides an overview of the scholarship on the establishment and reform of East Asian welfare capitalism. The developmental welfare state theory and the related productivist welfare regime approach have dominated the study of welfare states in the region. This essay, however, shows that a growing body of research challenges the dominant literature. We identify two key driving factors of welfare reform in East Asia, namely democratization and post-industrialization; and discuss how these two drivers have undermined the political and functional underpinnings of the post-war equilibrium of the East Asian welfare/production regime. Its unfolding transformation and the new politics of social policy in the region challenge the notion of “East Asian exceptionalism”, and we suggest that recent welfare reforms call for a better integration of the region into the literature of advanced political economies to allow for cross-fertilization between Eastern and Western literatures. |
| Keywords: | Democratization; Post-Industrialization; Welfare Capitalism; Developmentalism; Japan; South Korea; Taiwan. |
| JEL: | N0 |
| Date: | 2017–02–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:69574&r=his |
| By: | James Bessen |
| Abstract: | Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies will automate many jobs, but the effect on employment is not obvious. In manufacturing, technology has sharply reduced jobs in recent decades. But before that, for over a century, employment grew, even in industries experiencing rapid technological change. What changed? Demand was highly elastic at first and then became inelastic. The effect of artificial intelligence on jobs will similarly depend critically on the nature of demand. This paper presents a simple model of demand that accurately predicts the rise and fall of employment in the textile, steel and automotive industries. This model provides a useful framework for exploring how AI is likely to affect jobs over the next 10 or 20 years. |
| JEL: | J2 N10 O3 |
| Date: | 2018–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24235&r=his |
| By: | Konstantinos Gkillas (Department of Business Administration , University of Patras, University Campus, Greece); Rangan Gupta (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa); Mark E. Wohar (College of Business Administration, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, USA and School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, Leicestershire, UK) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we analyse the role of a news-based index of geopolitical risks (GPRs), in predicting volatility jumps in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) over the monthly period of 1899:01 to 2017:12, with the jumps having been computed based on daily data over the same period. Standard linear Granger causality test fail to detect any evidence of GPRs causing volatility jumps. But given strong evidence of nonlinearity and structural breaks between jumps and GPRs, we next employ a nonparametric causality-in-quantiles test, because the linear model is misspecified. Using this data-driven robust approach we were able to detect overwhelming evidence of GPRs predicting volatility jumps in the DJIA over its entire conditional distribution. |
| Keywords: | Stock Market Volatility Jumps, Geopolitical Risks |
| JEL: | C22 G10 |
| Date: | 2018–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pre:wpaper:201805&r=his |
| By: | Bosker, Maarten; Buringh, Eltjo |
| Abstract: | Iceberg transport costs are one of the main ingredients of modern trade and economic geography models: transport costs are modelled by assuming that a fraction of the goods shipped "melts in transit''. In this paper, we investigate whether the iceberg assumption applies to the costs of transporting the only good that literally melts in transit: ice. Using detailed information on Boston's nineteenth-century global ice trade, we show that ice(berg) transport costs in practice were a combination of a true ad-valorem iceberg cost: melt in transit, and freight, (off)loading and insurance costs. The physics of the melt process and the practice of insulating the ice in transit imply an immediate violation of the iceberg assumption: shipping ice is subject to economies scale. |
| Keywords: | Boston; ice trade; iceberg transport costs |
| JEL: | F1 N51 N7 |
| Date: | 2018–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12660&r=his |
| By: | Carl L. Bankston III; Min Zhou |
| Abstract: | In this study, we examine the Vietnamese population of the United States as a case study in the integration of a refugee group in a host country. We approach this case in three parts. We first offer a brief review of Vietnamese refugee resettlement in the US and the making of a new ethnic community. We then provide a quantitative analysis of socioeconomic mobility among Vietnamese refugees using American Community Survey data from 1980 to 2015 and survey data. We examine how this ethnic population has changed over time by focusing on key socioeconomic indicators, such as poverty rates and levels of education, occupation, and income. Third, we seek to explain what enables Vietnamese refugees and their children to overcome initial disadvantage and move up in society based on our own work over the span of 20 years with in-depth qualitative data. We consider how policies, institutions (government, civil society, and ethnic), and patterns of social relations in the Vietnamese American community have interacted with individual agency to shape mobility. |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2018-14&r=his |
| By: | Süssmuth, Bernd; Wieschemeyer, Matthias |
| Abstract: | Inflation and earnings growth can push some tax payers into higher brackets in the absence of inflation-indexed schedules. Moreover, inflation may affect the composition of individuals' income sources. As a result, depending on the relative tax burden of labour and capital, inflation may decrease or increase the difference between before-tax and after-tax income. However, whether some and if so which percentiles of the income distribution net benefit from inflation via taxation is a widely unexplored question. We make use of a novel dataset on U.S. pre-tax and post-tax income distribution series provided by Pike ty et al. (2018) for the years 1962 to 2014 to answer this question. To this end, we estimate local projections to quantify dynamic effects. We find that inflation shocks increase progressivity of taxation not only contemporaneously but also with some repercussion of several years after the shock. While particularly the bottom two quintiles gain in share, it is not the top but the fourth quintile that lastingly loses. |
| Keywords: | bracket creep,progressive income taxation,inflation,income distribution |
| JEL: | D31 E31 E44 E52 E62 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:iwhdps:332017&r=his |
| By: | Claude Diebolt (University of Strasbourg) |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:afc:wpaper:01-18&r=his |
| By: | Edward Nelson |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes Milton Friedman's (1968) article "The Role of Monetary Policy," via a discussion of seven fallacies concerning the article. These fallacies are: (1) "The Role of Monetary Policy" was Friedman’s first public statement of the natural rate hypothesis. (2) The Friedman-Phelps Phillips curve was already presented in Samuelson and Solow's (1960) analysis. (3) Friedman's specification of the Phillips curve was based on perfect competition and no nominal rigidities. (4) Friedman’s (1968) account of monetary policy in the Great Depression contradicted the Monetary History's version. (5) Friedman (1968) stated that a monetary expansion will keep the unemployment rate and the real interest rate below their natural rates for two decades. (6) The zero lower bound on nominal interest rates invalidates the natural rate hypothesis. (7) Friedman's (1968) treatment of an interest-rate peg was refuted by the rational expectations revolution. The discussion lays out the reasons why each of these seven items is a fallacy and infers key aspects of the framework underlying Friedman’s (1968) analysis. |
| Keywords: | Fisher effect ; Milton Friedman ; Phillips curve ; Liquidity effect ; Natural rate hypothesis ; Price stickiness ; Zero lower bound |
| JEL: | E31 E43 E52 |
| Date: | 2018–02–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2018-13&r=his |
| By: | Nicolas Brisset (Université Côte d'Azur, France; GREDEG CNRS); Raphaël Fèvre (Université de Lausanne; Centre Walras-Pareto) |
| Abstract: | L'article analyse les écrits de François Perroux de l'entre-deux-guerres jusqu'à la période du régime de Vichy. Ce faisant, l'article montre en particulier qu'à travers sa conceptualisation d'une Communauté de travail, pensée comme la fusion des activités et des consciences, Perroux cherche à tenir ensemble mystique sociale et organisation politique. Un effort de rationalisation de l'irrationnel dont le Chef politique est le principal dépositaire par sa capacité à incarner le Mythe national qui doit orienter par le haut la Communauté de travail. Cette interprétation nous permet de situer intellectuellement Perroux vis-à-vis d'éléments structurants du discours vichyste. |
| Keywords: | François Perroux, Corporatisme, Communauté, Mythe, Régime de Vichy |
| JEL: | B29 B30 |
| Date: | 2018–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gre:wpaper:2018-04&r=his |
| By: | Razin, Assaf |
| Abstract: | The exodus of Soviet Jews to Israel in the 1990s was a unique event. The extraordinary experience of Israel, which has received three quarter million migrants from the Former Soviet Union within a short time, is also relevant for the current debate about globalization. The immigration wave was distinctive for its large high skilled cohort, and its quick integration into the domestic labor market. Immigration also changed the entire economic landscape: it raised productivity, underpinned by the information technological surge, and had significant impact on income inequality. This paper provides an explanation for a possible link between immigration and the level of redistribution in Israel's welfare state. |
| Date: | 2018–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12662&r=his |