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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2018‒04‒16
27 papers chosen by |
| By: | Goodhart, Charles A. E.; Needham, Duncan J. |
| Abstract: | The British monetary authorities have traditionally focused on broader monetary aggregates than their counterparts elsewhere. The reasons include: the willingness of UK banks to allow customers to make payments by drawing on time deposits, the particularities of the UK approach to managing the national debt and the foreign exchange reserves, and the flow-of-funds system of national accounts developed after World War II. This article outlines these reasons, and explores the implications for the UK's often fractious relationship with the International Monetary Fund during the 1950s and 1960s. It explains why IMF conditionality on loans to the UK focused on broad aggregates. |
| JEL: | N0 |
| Date: | 2018–01–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:87364&r=his |
| By: | Karen Clay (Carnegie Mellon University); Peter Juul Egedes (University of Southern Denmark); Casper Worm Hansen (Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen); Peter Sandholt Jensen (University of Southern Denmark) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the immediate and long-run mortality effects of the first communitybased health intervention in the world, which had a particular focus on controlling tuberculosis - the so-called Framingham Health and Tuberculosis Demonstration. Comparing death and TB-mortality rates between Framingham and seven (pre-selected) control towns during the Demonstration period between 1917 and 1923, the contemporary offcial evaluation committee concluded that the Demonstration was highly successful in controlling TB and reducing mortality The Framingham Demonstration subsequently became a health example for the world. The findings in our paper question this very positive assessment. We collected and digitized causes-of-death data for towns/cities in Massachusetts and the United States for the period 1901-1934, allowing us to extend the number of control towns (or cities) and study whether the Demonstration reduced mortality in the long run.Compared to the official seven controls towns, we find that TB mortality in Framingham was on average lower between 1917 and 1923. In the extended control samples, these immediate TB mortality differences are smaller and often more than reversed by 1934.However, we do find robust evidence that the Demonstration reduced infant mortality, and these improvements persisted even after the Demonstration ended. |
| Keywords: | Public Health; Health Demonstration; Tuberculosis Mortality; Infant Mortality |
| JEL: | I15 I18 N32 |
| Date: | 2018–03–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kud:kuiedp:1803&r=his |
| By: | Mankiw, N. Gregory; Reis, Ricardo |
| Abstract: | This essay discusses the role of Milton Friedman’s presidential address to the American Economic Association, which was given a half century ago and helped set the stage for modern macroeconomics. We discuss where macroeconomics was before the address, what insights Friedman offered, where researchers and central bankers stand today on these issues, and (most speculatively) where we may be heading in the future. |
| JEL: | J1 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:87163&r=his |
| By: | Martin Shubik (Cowles Foundation, Yale University) |
| Abstract: | Money is a mystery and financial institutions are often regarded as guardians and promoters of the mystery. These sketches are designed to help an individual interested in, but not technically trained in economics, understand markets, money, credit and the evolution of a mass market system embedded in the rich context of its political environment and society. The efficient functioning of a dynamic economy requires the presence of money and financial institutions. The great variety of financial institutions in any advanced economy requires that a synthetic approach is used to understand what the whole looks like. Verbal description provides an overarching view of the mixture of history, law, philosophy, social mores, and political structure that supplies the context for the functioning of the economy. This has been vividly illustrated by Adam Smith, his teacher the Reverend Francis Hutcheson and his close friend David Hume. There are two different but highly allied themes in this single slim volume. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 supply the rich context of history, society, polity and law in which every economy is embedded. Chapters 12 and 13 sketch what might lie ahead given the current state of the world. These chapters require no symbols or technical depth. In contrast Chapters 4 to 11 offers a reasonably nontechnical exposition of some of the considerable development in formal economic theory pertaining to money and financial institutions as economics struggles towards emerging as a science, balancing quantitative measures with qualifications that help to explain what the numbers mean. |
| Keywords: | Evolution of money, Coordination, Division of labor |
| JEL: | C70 D21 |
| Date: | 2018–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2118&r=his |
| By: | Luigi Cannari (Bank of Italy); Giovanni D’Alessio (Bank of Italy) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides a reconstruction of the joint distribution of Italian households’ income and wealth in the years ranging from 1968 to 1975. Exploiting the information available in some historical reports recently published by the Bank of Italy, the paper reconstructs synthetic microdata compatible with the aggregate results of sample surveys carried out in those years. In this way, inequality and poverty can be estimated by using the same statistical criteria that are used today, making an intertemporal comparison of the estimates possible. The concentration of household wealth shows a downward trend in the 1970s and ’80s, an increase in the years following the 1992-93 crisis and relative stability in the new century. In the period 1968-75 the concentration of wealth turns out to be greater than in recent years. The estimates of relative poverty show a decreasing trend until the 1990s and a subsequent increase; the upward trend of these indicators in recent years is steeper than that of the concentration indices. Migration flows have contributed significantly to the recent growth in the poverty indices. |
| Keywords: | wealth, income, inequality, poverty, synthetic data |
| JEL: | D31 D63 I32 C15 |
| Date: | 2018–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_428_18&r=his |
| By: | marimuthu, sivakumar; p, santhi; d, gowri |
| Abstract: | History of Economic Thought deals with the origin and development of economic ideas, concepts, laws and theories. It is the process of searching, understanding, analyzing and interpreting the economic ideas. It is imperative to study the economic history to gain knowledge about economic theories. If one wants to understand the present phenomena clearly he has to know what happened in the past.This study deals with the ideas of Lewis Henry Haney about the very important basic economic concept i.e., “value”. It can be understood that starting from the Greek Philosopher like Aristotle so many economists carry out the analysis and interpretation of the idea of ‘value’. Among them Lewis Henry Haney, is one of the notably Economic Historian who indulged in analyzing the ‘value’ concept. That can be traced in his famous book titled ‘Value and Distribution’. |
| Keywords: | economic thought, haney, value, exchange value, subjective value, objective value |
| JEL: | B3 B31 |
| Date: | 2018–03–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:85231&r=his |
| By: | Hubert Bonin |
| Abstract: | The resurgence of the marine insurance specialty in the years 1830-1860 reflected the resumption and the extension of transoceanic trade as well as the technical and quantitative renewals of the fleets. Communities of place crystallized around this tool: the Bordeaux city-port federated ship-owners, traders-ship-owners, traders and insurers to sharpen it, by establishing a capital of experience according to the hazards of the navigation. |
| Keywords: | Insurance, shipping companies, Bordeaux Harbour, Financial history |
| JEL: | D82 G22 N73 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grt:wpegrt:2018-06&r=his |
| By: | Joan R. Rosés; Nikolaus Wolf |
| Abstract: | We provide the first long-run dataset of regional employment structures and regional GDP and GDP per capita in 1990 international dollars, stretching over more than 100 years. These data allow us to compare regions over time, among each other, and to other parts of the world. After some brief notes on methodology we describe the basic patterns in the data in terms of some key dimensions: variation in the density of population and economic activity, the spread of industry and services and the declining role of agriculture, and changes in the levels of GDP and GDP per capita. We next discuss patterns of convergence and divergence over time and their explanations in terms of short-run adjustment and long-run fundamentals. Also, we document for the first time a secular decrease in spatial coherence from 1900 to 2010. We find a U-shaped development in geographic concentration and regional income inequality, similar to the finding of a U-shaped pattern of personal income inequality. |
| Keywords: | regional inequality, Europe, long-run |
| JEL: | D31 N10 N90 R10 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6952&r=his |
| By: | Ludovic Desmedt (UB - Université de Bourgogne) |
| Date: | 2017–06–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01688827&r=his |
| By: | Thu Hien DAO (IRES - Université Catholique de Louvain); Frédéric DOCQUIER (Université Catholique de Louvain); Mathilde MAUREL (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne CNRS - Université Paris 1); Pierre SCHAUS (Department of Computer Science and Engineering - Université catholique de Louvain) |
| Abstract: | This paper sheds light on the global migration patterns of the past 40 years, and produces migration projections for the 21st century, for two skill groups, and for all relevant pairs of countries. To do this, we build a simple model of the world economy, and we parameterize it to match the economic and socio-demographic characteristics of the world in the year 2010. We conduct a backcasting exercise which demonstrates that our model fits the past trends in international migration very well, and that historical trends were mostly governed by demographic changes. We then describe a set of migration projections for the 21st century. In line with backcasts, our world migration prospects and emigration rates from developing countries are mainly governed by socio-demographic changes: they are virtually insensitive to the technological environment. As far as OECD countries are concerned, we predict a highly robust increase in immigration pressures in general (from 12 in 2010 to 17-19% in 2050 and 25-28% in 2100), and in European immigration in particular (from 15% in 2010 to 23-25% in 2050 and 36-39% in 2100). Using development policies to curb these pressures requires triggering unprecedented economic takeoffs in migrants countries of origin. Increasing migration is therefore a likely phenomenon for the 21st century, and this raises societal and political challenges for most industrialized countries. |
| Keywords: | international migration, migration propects, world economy, Inequality |
| JEL: | F22 F24 J11 J61 O15 |
| Date: | 2018–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fdi:wpaper:4269&r=his |
| By: | Christopher L. Colvin (Queen’s Management School, Queen’s University Belfast); Stuart Henderson (College of Business, Dublin Institute of Technology); John D. Turner (Queen’s Management School, Queen’s University Belfast) |
| Abstract: | Cooperatively-owned Raiffeisen banks first emerged in the Netherlands in the late 1890s and spread rapidly across the country. Using a new dataset, we investigate the determinants of their market entry and early performance. We find that the cooperative organisational form, when allied to a change in the structure of Dutch agriculture and the socioreligious pillarisation of Dutch society, was an important factor explaining their entry into rural financial markets. While religious organisations provided a necessary impetus for the emergence of Raiffeisen banks, the economic advantages associated with the cooperative organisational form ensured the subsequent survival and success of these banks. |
| Keywords: | Cooperative banking, the Netherlands, Raiffeisen, religion |
| JEL: | G21 N23 N83 |
| Date: | 2018–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0126&r=his |
| By: | Lup, Aurel; Deniz Alim, Indira; Miron, Liliana |
| Abstract: | This paper addresses the evolving nature of agriculture in the Danube Delta, since the 1950s and to the present day. The paper makes the inventory of the studies and programs aimed at increasing the share of the agricultural activities in the Delta, of the attempts to transform the Danube Delta into a significant segment of the Romanian agricultural economy. Over time, there has been a great competition between agriculture and the main Delta resources; in this regard, fishing has always been a key component of the Delta's economy. Between 1955 and 1965, particular importance was given to the industrial exploitation of the reed, as raw material for cellulose and paper. To this end, the Delta was divided and embanked, and a special machine system was implemented in order to harvest the reed. By destroying the reed’s biological bases (the rhizomes), the reed yield decreased; thus, by late 1960s, reed cultivation became unprofitable. Then, it was considered that the embanked areas could be drained and turned into agricultural polders. Successive programs assigned to agriculture larger and larger areas, ranging from 100,000 ha to over 200,000 ha; however, these were not materialized. In fact, agriculture was practiced on areas ranging from 60,000 to 70,000 ha, with a tendency to specialize in a biological system according to the requirements for the environmental protection of the reserve. |
| Keywords: | delta, agriculture, reservation, program, use |
| JEL: | Q19 |
| Date: | 2017–11–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:85373&r=his |
| By: | Angel De la Fuente; Rafael Domenech |
| Abstract: | Utilizando datos de la EPA, en este trabajo se extienden hasta 2016 las series anuales del nivel educativo de la poblacion para España y sus regiones elaboradas en de la Fuente y Domenech (2016) para el periodo 1960-2011. |
| Keywords: | Documento de Trabajo , Analisis Macroeconomico , España |
| JEL: | I20 |
| Date: | 2018–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bbv:wpaper:1804&r=his |
| By: | Travers Barclay Child; Elena Nikolova (UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies) |
| Abstract: | We study the long-run effects of conflict on social attitudes, with World War II in Central and Eastern Europe as our setting. Much of earlier work has relied on self-reported measures of victimization, which are prone to endogenous misreporting. With our own survey-based measure, we replicate established findings linking victimization to political participation, civic engagement, optimism, and trust. Those findings are reversed, however, when tested instead with an objective measure of victimization based on historical reference material. Thus, we urge caution when interpreting survey-based results from this literature as causal. |
| Keywords: | conflict, social attitudes, World War II |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:see:wpaper:2017:5&r=his |
| By: | Halford, Susan; Savage, Mike |
| Abstract: | Recent years have seen persistent tension between proponents of big data analytics, using new forms of digital data to make computational and statistical claims about ‘the social’, and many sociologists sceptical about the value of big data, its associated methods and claims to knowledge. We seek to move beyond this, taking inspiration from a mode of argumentation pursued by Piketty, Putnam and Wilkinson and Pickett that we label ‘symphonic social science’. This bears both striking similarities and significant differences to the big data paradigm and – as such – offers the potential to do big data analytics differently. This offers value to those already working with big data – for whom the difficulties of making useful and sustainable claims about the social are increasingly apparent – and to sociologists, offering a mode of practice that might shape big data analytics for the future |
| Keywords: | big data; computational methods; sociology; symphonic social science; visualisation |
| JEL: | C1 |
| Date: | 2017–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:87236&r=his |
| By: | Oded Galor; Viacheslav Savitskiy |
| Abstract: | This research explores the origins of loss aversion and the variation in its prevalence across regions, nations and ethnic group. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that the evolution of loss aversion in the course of human history can be traced to the adaptation of individuals to the asymmetric effects of climatic shocks on reproductive success during the Malthusian epoch. Exploiting variations in the degree of loss aversion among second generation migrants in Europe and the US, as well as across precolonial ethnic groups, the research establishes that consistent with the predictions of the theory, individuals and ethnic groups that are originated in regions in which climatic conditions tended to be spatially correlated, and thus shocks were aggregate in nature, are characterized by greater intensity of loss aversion, while descendants of regions marked by climatic volatility have greater propensity towards loss-neutrality. |
| Keywords: | loss aversion, cultural evolution, evolution of preferences, natural selection, Malthusian epoch, growth, development |
| JEL: | D81 D91 Z10 O10 O40 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6917&r=his |
| By: | Yoshihiko Hogen (Bank of Japan); Ryoichi Okuma (Bank of Japan) |
| Abstract: | This paper employs a model of learning about long-term inflation to jointly estimate long-term inflation expectations and the degree to which they have been anchored to the 2 percent inflation mark over the last half century in Japan. The estimated model shows that long-term inflation expectations declined to about 2 percent in the late 1980s and remained anchored to the 2 percent mark until the mid-1990s. They fell below 2 percent in the late 1990s, which resulted in a low degree of anchoring until the early 2010s. Following the introduction of the price stability target of 2 percent and the launch of Qualitative and Quantitative Monetary Easing in early 2013, inflation expectations rose until early 2015, but have not yet been anchored to the target. A further VAR analysis demonstrates that markups in domestic goods and services markets are one important reason why expectations have not been anchored at 2 percent since the late 1990s. |
| Keywords: | Inflation expectations; Anchoring; Learning |
| JEL: | D83 D84 E31 E58 |
| Date: | 2018–04–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boj:bojwps:wp18e08&r=his |
| By: | Cristina Porumboiu (Department of International Economics and Business, Bucharest University of Economic Studies); Cristina-Elena Balaceanu (Department of International Economics and Business, Bucharest University of Economic Studies); Monica Dobrescu (Department of International Economics and Business, Bucharest University of Economic Studies); Alexander Cutuca (Department of International Economics and Business, Bucharest University of Economic Studies) |
| Abstract: | The United Kingdom, important commercial and economic power starting from the early times, is the place where the financial services were developed. Nowadays, the City of London is one of the leading financial clusters, especially for the over-the-counter transactions. The underlying factors that led this financial cluster to become one of the most important financial centres in the world are strongly correlated with the country’s economy and its political power starting with the early 19th century. Its dominance as a global financial centre is reflected by its large concentration of financial services expertise and a highly trained, multilingual workforce. Considering the latest events from the United Kingdom, the current situation of Brexit will definitely have an impact on its global position, and through an analysis of rising issues some recommendations can be delivered with respect to the this situation: threat or opportunity for the City of London. |
| Keywords: | finance, services, cluster Brexit, City, competitiveness |
| JEL: | O16 |
| Date: | 2017–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bus:wpaper:8&r=his |
| By: | Frédéric DOCQUIER (Université Catholique de Louvain); Riccardo TURATI (IRES - Université Catholique de Louvain); Jérôme VALETTE (CERDI Université Clermont Auvergne - CNRS); Chrysovalantis VASILAKIS (FERDI) |
| Abstract: | This paper empirically revisits the impact of birthplace diversity on economic growth. We use panel data on US states over the 1960-2010 period. This rich data set allows us to better deal with endogeneity issues and to conduct a large set of robustness checks. Our results suggest that diversity among college-educated immigrants positively affects economic growth. We provide converging evidence pointing at the existence of skill complementarities between workers trained in different countries. These synergies result in better labor market outcomes for native workers and in higher productivity in the R&D sector. The gains from diversity are maximized when immigrants originate from economically or culturally distant countries (but not both), and when they acquired part of their secondary education abroad and their college education in the US. Overall, a 10% increase in high-skilled diversity raises GDP per capita by about 6%. On the contrary, low-skilled diversity has insignificant effects. |
| Keywords: | Immigration, Culture, Birthplace Diversity, growth |
| JEL: | F22 J61 |
| Date: | 2018–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fdi:wpaper:4260&r=his |
| By: | Guglielmo Maria Caporale; Luis A. Gil-Alana; Tommaso Trani |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the degree of persistence in UK inflation by applying long-memory methods to historical data that span the period from 1660 to 2016. Specifically, we use both parametric and non-parametric fractional integration techniques, that are more general than those based on the classical I(0) vs. I(1) dichotomy. Further, we carry out break tests to detect any shifts in the degree of persistence, and also run rolling-window and recursive regressions to investigate its evolution over time. On the whole, the evidence suggests that the degree of persistence of UK inflation has been relatively stable following the Bretton Woods period, despite the adoption of different monetary regimes. The estimation of an unobserved-components stochastic volatility model sheds further light on the issues of interest by showing that post-Bretton Woods changes in UK inflation are attributable to a fall in the volatility of permanent shocks. |
| Keywords: | UK inflation, persistence, fractional integration |
| JEL: | C14 C22 E31 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1731&r=his |
| By: | Hanedar, Avni Önder; Yaldız Hanedar, Elmas |
| Abstract: | In this paper, based on cliometric methodology we use new historical data on the most popular stocks traded at the İstanbul bourse between 1910 and 1914, to examine the effect of wars on stock market prices. During this period, the Ottoman Empire was involved in the Turco-Italian and the Balkan wars, leading to massive land losses and risks for the companies before the First World War. The data are manually collected from the available volumes of a daily Ottoman newspaper, Tanin. Our findings are surprising, as we observe only a temporary and small drop in stock prices, indicating little perceived risk by stock investors of the İstanbul bourse. |
| Keywords: | Cliometrics; The İstanbul stock exchange; stocks; the Turco-Italian war; the Balkan wars; Structural breaks |
| JEL: | E44 G1 N25 |
| Date: | 2017–02–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:85600&r=his |
| By: | Valentin F. Lang; Marina Mendes Tavares |
| Abstract: | We study economic globalization as a multidimensional process and investigate its effect on incomes. In a panel of 147 countries during 1970-2014, we apply a new instrumental variable, exploiting globalization’s geographically diffusive character, and find differential gains from globalization both across and within countries: Income gains are substantial for countries at early and medium stages of the globalization process, but the marginal returns diminish as globalization rises, eventually becoming insignificant. Within countries, these gains are concentrated at the top of national income distributions, resulting in rising inequality. We find that domestic policies can mitigate the adverse distributional effects of globalization. |
| Date: | 2018–03–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:18/54&r=his |
| By: | Vegard Høghaug Larsen; Leif Anders Thorsrud |
| Abstract: | This article quantifies the epidemiology of media narratives relevant to business cycles in the US, Japan, and Europe (euro area). We do so by first constructing daily business cycle indexes computed on the basis of the news topics the media writes about. At a broad level, the most in uential news narratives are shown to be associated with general macroeconomic developments, finance, and (geo-)politics. However, a large set of narratives contributes to our index estimates across time, especially in times of expansion. In times of trouble, narratives associated with economic uctuations become more sparse. Likewise, we show that narratives do go viral, but mostly so when growth is low. While narratives interact in complicated ways, we document that some are clearly associated with economic fundamentals. Other narratives, on the other hand, show no such relationship, and are likely better explained by classical work capturing the market's animal spirits. |
| Keywords: | Business cycles, Narratives, Dynamic Factor Model (DFM), Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) |
| Date: | 2018–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bny:wpaper:0064&r=his |
| By: | Flavia Palazzi (UGA UFR ARSH - Université Grenoble Alpes - UFR Arts & Sciences Humaines - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes); Francesco Iury Forte |
| Abstract: | The essay aims to analyze the phenomenon of corporate social responsibility, which originated in the United States in the fifties but became a reality widespread in recent decades, from a philosophical-economic point of view and as the Socratic question "how to live ? ", Reproposed by the Nobel Prize winner for economics Amartya Sen, as well as his reflections on the ethical origins of the economy, lead us to reflect on new ways through which the company influences social values. From crowdfunding to the experiences of free-form enterprises, where time and space are decentralized. The phenomenon is interesting from an economic point of view: in fact, new forms of competitiveness are sought in the knowledge that the ultimate goal of the company remains profit, but also and above all ethical and social where new ways of doing business are changing society , while society itself requires innovative models in the way of doing business in its liquid and globalized variability. The need to find new measures of quality of life is also linked to these reflections. In 2008, a commission set up by the then President Nicolas Sarkozy and composed of some Nobel prizes including Amartya Sen, Jean Paul Fitoussi and Joseph Stigltiz, despite not having had a large following, began studying alternative measures to GDP that took into account happiness and of the welfare of the population. The order of economic indices so far known is therefore to be confronted with the disorder of a society that is reorganizing according to renewed models and desperately seeking new certainty, in the economic and political fields; starting from the crisis of homo oeconomicus, of overcoming the mere rationality about human choices in the economic field, if the request of society is that of a greater attention to ethics, to the responsibility in the consumption of resources and in respect of human rights, the governments that in the future will have the objective of guiding the economy and, in turn, not being guided, will have to take it into account and identify new answers to these questions, in order to put the economy back to the full service of man. |
| Abstract: | Il saggio mira ad analizzare il fenomeno della responsabilità sociale d’impresa, che ha avuto origine negli Stati Uniti negli anni Cinquanta ma divenuta una realtà diffusa negli ultimi decenni, da un punto di vista filosofico-economico e come la domanda socratica «come bisogna vivere?», riproposta dal premio Nobel per l’economia Amartya Sen, nonché le sue riflessioni sulle origini etiche dell’economia, ci inducano a riflettere su nuove modalità attraverso cui l’impresa influenza i valori sociali. Dal crowdfunding alle esperienze della free-form enterprises, in cui il tempo e lo spazio sono decentrati. Il fenomeno è interessante da un punto di vista economico: si cercano infatti nuove forme di competitività pur nella consapevolezza che il fine ultimo dell’impresa resta il profitto, ma anche e soprattutto etico-sociale laddove i nuovi modi di fare impresa stanno cambiando la società, mentre la società stessa richiede, nella sua variabilità liquida e globalizzata, modelli innovativi nel modo di fare impresa. A queste riflessioni si collega anche la necessità di trovare nuove misure della qualità della vita. Nel 2008, una Commissione istituita dall’allora Presidente Nicolas Sarkozy e composta da alcuni premi Nobel tra cui Amartya Sen, Jean Paul Fitoussi e Joseph Stigltiz, malgrado non abbia avuto grande seguito, iniziò a studiare misure alternative al PIL che tenessero conto della felicità e del benessere della popolazione. L’ordine degli indici economici fino ad ora conosciuti si trova quindi a doversi confrontare con il disordine di una società che si sta riorganizzando secondo modelli rinnovati e che cerca disperatamente nuove certezze, in campo economico e politico; a partire dalla crisi dell’homo oeconomicus, del superamento della mera razionalità circa le scelte umane in ambito economico, se la richiesta della società è quella di una maggiore attenzione all’etica, alla responsabilità nel consumo delle risorse e nel rispetto dei diritti umani, i governi che in futuro avranno come obiettivo quello di guidare l’economia e, non esserne a loro volta guidati, dovranno tenerne conto e individuare nuove risposte a queste domande, al fine di porre di nuovo l’economia al pieno servizio dell’uomo. |
| Date: | 2018–03–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01737858&r=his |
| By: | Salles, Maurice |
| Abstract: | This paper describes an unknown episode in the development of the theory of social choice. In the Summer 1949, while at RAND, Quine worked on Arrow’s (im)possibility theorem. This work was eventually published as a paper on (applied) set theory totally disconnected from social choice. The working paper directly linked to Arrow’s work was never published. I alluded to this (then unwritten) paper in a number of presentations I made on ‘Logic and Social Choice’ in Turku, Bucharest, Boston, Strasbourg and Munich, between October 2013 and January 2015. It was eventually first presented during a conference at Queen Mary, University of London, 19–20 June 2015, on ‘Social Welfare, Justice and Distribution: Celebrating John Roemer’s Contributions to Economics, Political Philosophy and Political Science’, organized by Roberto Veneziani and Juan Moreno-Ternero. I am grateful to the participants for interesting reactions and comments, in particular Richard Arneson, Jon Elster, Marc Fleurbaey, Klaus Nehring and Gil Skillman. Jon Elster contacted Dagfinn Føllesdal, a well-known philosopher and a pre-eminent Quine scholar, who kindly responded to some queries. A more developed version was presented in Aix-en-Provence during the International Conference on Economic Philosophy and in Lund during the meeting of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare in June 2016. Comments of participants to these two events revealed to be very helpful, among which comments by Gilles Campagnolo, Christian List and John Weymark. While in Lund, I also greatly benefitted from conversations with Adrian Miroiu. Finally, I am very grateful to an Associate Editor of this journal for excellent suggestions and for detecting some very annoying slips. |
| JEL: | C7 D7 |
| Date: | 2017–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:73457&r=his |
| By: | Viola von Berlepsch; Andrés Rodríguez-Pose; Neil Lee |
| Abstract: | Does the economic effect of immigrant women differ from that of immigrants in general? This paper examines if gender has influenced the short- and long-term economic impact of mass migration to the US, using Census microdata from 1880 and 1910. By means of ordinary least squares and instrumental variable estimations, the analysis shows that a greater concentration of immigrant women is significantly associated with lower levels of economic development in US counties. However, immigrant women also shaped economic development positively, albeit indirectly via their children. Communities with more children born to foreign mothers and that successfully managed to integrate female immigrants experienced greater economic growth than those dominated by children of foreign-born fathers or American-born parents. |
| Keywords: | Gender, migration, economic growth, development, counties, US |
| JEL: | F22 J16 J61 O15 R23 |
| Date: | 2018–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:1815&r=his |
| By: | Peter H. Bent |
| Abstract: | What drives recoveries after financial crises? I address this question for the 1870-1913 “first era of globalization,” a period when international economic integration meant that terms of trade movements could have significant national-level impacts, but before governments were engaged in widespread economic management. Protectionism was one of the few economic policy options available at this time. The impacts of these two factors–terms of trade and tariff rates–over this period have been studied before. But previous studies have not looked specifically at how these factors influenced recoveries from financial crises. I find that tariff shocks had a positive impact on GDP in post-crisis periods, while terms of trade shocks had a slightly negative impact. The tariff results are especially pronounced in temperate economies. Overall this suggests that national governments, through trade policies, played a more significant role in shaping economic outcomes during this period than is typically recognized. |
| Date: | 2018–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:auu:hpaper:068&r=his |