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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2019‒03‒04
twenty-two papers chosen by |
| By: | Claude Diebolt; Charlotte Le Chapelain; Audrey Rose Menard |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the development of intermediate human capital in nineteenth century France. We perform panel and cross-section regression analyses to compare the effect of technological change on basic vs. intermediate human capital accumulation. Our contribution reveals that a shift in the kind of skills required occurred in the second half of the nineteenth century. We show that steam technology adoption was conducive to the accumulation of intermediate human capital in the second half of the nineteenth century. |
| Keywords: | Cliometrics, Human Capital, Industrialization, France. |
| JEL: | N13 N33 N73 N93 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2019-07&r=all |
| By: | KHOLODILIN Konstantin A.; LIMONOV Leonid E.; WALTL Sofie R. |
| Abstract: | This article studies the evolution of housing rents in St. Petersburg between 1880 and 1917, covering an eventful period of Russian and world history. We collect and digitize over 5,000 rental advertisements from a local newspaper, which we use together with geo-coded addresses and detailed structural characteristics to construct a quality-adjusted rent price index in continuous time. We provide the first pre-war and pre-Soviet index based on market data for any Russian housing market. In 1915, one of the world's earliest rent control and tenant protection policies was introduced in response to soaring prices following the outbreak of World War I. We analyze the impact of this policy: while before the regulation rents were increasing at a similar rapid pace as other consumer prices, the policy reversed this trend. We find evidence for official compliance with the policy, document a rise in tenure duration and strongly increased rent affordability among workers after the introduction of the policy. We conclude that the immediate prelude to the October Revolution was indeed characterized by economic turmoil, but rent affordability and rising rents were no longer the dominating problems. |
| Keywords: | Rental Market; Rent Regulation; Intra-Urban Rent Dynamics; Hedonic Rent Price Index; Economic History; Pre-Soviet Russia; October Revolution |
| JEL: | C14 C43 N93 O18 |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:irs:cepswp:2019-03&r=all |
| By: | Das, Sanjiv; Mitchener, Kris James; Vossmeyer, Angela |
| Abstract: | We employ a unique hand-collected dataset and a novel methodology to examine systemic risk before and after the largest U.S. banking crisis of the 20th century. Our systemic risk measure captures both the credit risk of an individual bank as well as a bank's position in the network. We construct linkages between all U.S. commercial banks in 1929 and 1934 so that we can measure how predisposed the entire network was to risk, where risk was concentrated, and how the failure of more than 9,000 banks during the Great Depression altered risk in the network. We find that the pyramid structure of the commercial banking system (i.e., the network's topology) created more inherent fragility, but systemic risk was nevertheless fairly dispersed throughout banks in 1929, with the top 20 banks contributing roughly 18% of total systemic risk. The massive banking crisis that occurred between 1930-33 raised systemic risk per bank by 33% and increased the riskiness of the very largest banks in the system. We use Bayesian methods to demonstrate that when network measures, such as eigenvector centrality and a bank's systemic risk contribution, are combined with balance sheet data capturing ex ante bank default risk, they strongly predict bank survivorship in 1934. |
| Keywords: | banking networks; financial crises; Global Financial Crisis; Great Depression; marginal likelihood; systemic risk |
| JEL: | E42 E44 G01 G18 G21 L1 N12 N22 |
| Date: | 2018–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13416&r=all |
| By: | Clark, Gregory; Cummins, Neil; Curtis, Matthew |
| Abstract: | Using evidence from the accident of twin births we show that for three Western European pre-industrial population samples -- England 1730-1879, France 1670-1788 and Quebec, 1621-1835 -- there is no evidence for parity-dependent control of fertility within marriage. If a twin was born to a family in any of these populations, average family size increased by 1 compared to families with a singleton birth at the same parity and mother age, with no reduction of subsequent fertility. Twin births also show no differential effect on fertility when they occurred at high, as opposed to low, parities. This is in contrast to populations where fertility is known to have been controlled by at least some families, such as England, 1900-49. There a twin birth increased average births per family by significantly less than 1. |
| Keywords: | Economic Growth; economic history; family planning; Fertility; natural fertility |
| JEL: | D01 J12 J13 N31 N33 N34 |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13539&r=all |
| By: | Ehnts, Dirk H. |
| Abstract: | In 1905, Georg Friedrich Knapp published The State Theory of Money in his native German, claiming that money is a "creature of law" and not connected to metals via some intrinsic value. When the English translation appeared in 1924, apparently at the wishes of John Maynard Keynes, the German version had run through four editions, upon which the last the translation builds. There also had been considerable debate about "Chartalism" - the idea that money derived its acceptance by legal means - in the German academic literature. Among others, Knut Wicksell and Georg Simmel commented on it. Since so far there has not been any English-language publication on this issue, it is deemed worthwhile to provide such. After presenting the main arguments that Knapp makes in his book, the academic reviews that followed are presented and evaluated. |
| Keywords: | chartalism,Modern Monetary Theory,monetary theory,public finance,deficit spending,taxation,value of money,metallism |
| JEL: | E40 E42 E51 F31 H20 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ipewps:1152019&r=all |
| By: | Borowiecki, Karol Jan (Department of Business and Economics) |
| Abstract: | This research illuminates the historical development of creative activity in the United States. Census data is used to identify creative occupations (i.e., artists, musicians, authors, actors) and data on prominent creatives, as listed in a comprehensive biographical compendium. The analysis first sheds light on the socio-economic background of creative people and how it has changed since 1850. The results indicate that the proportion of female creatives is relatively high, time constraints can be a hindrance for taking up a creative occupation, racial inequality is present and tends to change only slowly, and education plays a significant role for taking up a creative occupation. Second, the study systematically documents and quantifies the geography of creative clusters in the United States and explains how these have evolved over time and across creative domains. Third, it investigates the importance of outstanding talent in a discipline for the local growth of an artistic cluster. |
| Keywords: | Creativity; artists; geographic clustering; agglomeration economies; urban history |
| JEL: | N33 R10 Z11 |
| Date: | 2019–02–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:sdueko:2019_003&r=all |
| By: | Li Wang (Department of Early Modern History, GECEM Project, Universidad Pablo de Olavide) |
| Abstract: | This thesis explores the silk trade in China and Europe at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth century through a transnational point of view, taking an example of France, by comparing the imperial silk factories of the Emperor Kangxi of Qing Dynasty (1661-1722) and the Grande Fabrique of Luis XVIII of France (1643-1715), analyzes the variation of business organization system, the manufacturing equipment scale, finance, personnel management, income and social status of the craftsmen, product types and sales, etc., which reflected the differences of the economic development strategies of the two monarchs; Like a butterfly effect, it could be inferred from the details of the official silk production and consumption in the studied geographical and time range, the causes and effects of diverse economic and political roads each monarch took subsequently. |
| Keywords: | global history, consumption history, imperial silk factories of Kangxi period, Louis XIV’s royal factories, silk consumption, China, Qing Dynasty |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pab:wphaei:19.01&r=all |
| By: | Batistich, Mary Kate (Purdue University); Bond, Timothy N. (Purdue University) |
| Abstract: | Many of the positive economic trends coming out of the Civil Rights Era for black men stagnated or reversed during the late 1970s and early 1980s. These changes were concurrent with a rapid rise in import competition from Japan. We assess the impact of this trade shock on racial disparities using commuting zone level variation in exposure. We find it decreased black manufacturing employment, labor force participation, and median earnings, and increased public assistance recipiency. However these manufacturing losses for blacks were offset by increased white manufacturing employment. This compositional shift appears to have been caused by skill upgrading in the manufacturing sector. Losses were concentrated among black high school dropouts and gains among college educated whites. We also see a shifting of manufacturing employment towards professionals, engineers, and college educated production workers. We find no evidence the heterogeneous effects of import competition can be explained by unionization, prejudice, or changes in spatial mismatch. Our results can explain 66-86% of the relative decrease in black manufacturing employment, 17-23% of the relative rise in black non-labor force participation, and 34-44% of the relative decline in black median male earnings from 1970-1990. |
| Keywords: | race, trade, import competition, black-white wage gap, Japan |
| JEL: | F14 J31 F14 N32 N62 |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12133&r=all |
| By: | Gupta, Bishnupriya (University of Warwick); Mookherjee, Dilip (Boston University); Munshi, Kaivan (University of Cambridge); Sanclemente, Mario (University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | We argue that community networks played an important role in the emergence of Indian entrepreneurship in the early stages of the cotton textile and jute textile industries in the late 19th and early 20th century respectively, overcoming the lack of market institutions and government support. From business registers, we construct a yearly panel dataset of entrepreneurs in these two industries. We find no evidence that entry is affected by prior trading experience or price shocks in the corresponding upstream sector. Firm directors exhibited a high degree of clustering of entrepreneurs by community. The dynamics of entry is consistent with a model of network-based dynamics |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:warwec:1189&r=all |
| By: | González-Val, Rafael; Pueyo, Fernando |
| Abstract: | Worldwide materials extraction increased by a factor of 8.4 over the course of the 20th century. In the meantime, global GDP and population increased by factors of about 22 and 4, respectively. This reveals that one of the key factors driving the increase in the exploitation of the resources was the growth in world population, although mitigated by the reduction in the intensity in the use of the resources in production. In this paper, we present a model that combines the theory of endogenous growth and the economy of natural resources, but taking into account the geographical distribution of economic activity. Indeed, the New Economic Geography provides insights about two elements that, although speeding up GDP growth, can curb the pressure on natural resources, namely the reduction in transports costs and a boost to pace of innovation. |
| Keywords: | industrial location, endogenous growth, renewable resource, geography |
| JEL: | F43 O30 Q20 R12 |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:92396&r=all |
| By: | Julia Cage (Département d'économie); Valeria Rueda (Département d'économie) |
| Abstract: | This article investigates the long-term historical impact of missionary activity on the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. On the one hand, missionaries were among the first to invest in modern medicine in a number of countries. On the other hand, Christianity influenced sexual beliefs and behaviors. We build a new geocoded dataset locating Protestant and Catholic missions in the early 20th century, as well as their health investments. Using a number of different empirical strategies to address selection in missionary locations and into health investments, we show that missionary presence has conflicting effects on HIV today. Regions close to historical mission stations exhibit higher HIV prevalence. This negative impact is robust to multiple specifications accounting for urbanization, and we provide evidence that it is specific to STDs. Less knowledge about condom use is a likely channel. On the contrary, among regions historically close to missionary settlements, proximity to a mission with a health investment is associated with lower HIV prevalence nowadays. Safer sexual behaviors around these missions are a possible explanatory channel. |
| Keywords: | Historical persistence; Missions; Health investments; HIV/AIDS; Sexual behavior |
| JEL: | D72 N37 N77 O33 Z12 Z13 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/1m830agp9d84tqs03n95sm3o1u&r=all |
| By: | Kurdin, Alexander (Курдин, Александр) (The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration) |
| Abstract: | The paper reflects the systematization and historical analysis of approaches to the regulation of natural monopolies that have been used in the United States and Europe over the past century. The focus is on the oil and gas sector, electric power industry and rail transportation as the largest areas of activity of natural monopolies. The study of international experience allows us to identify trends in the development of regulation of natural monopolies and assess the prospects for applying this experience to Russian enterprises. |
| Date: | 2019–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rnp:wpaper:021928&r=all |
| By: | Julia Cage (Département d'économie) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of increased media competition on the quantity and quality of news provided and, ultimately, on political participation. Drawing upon existing literature on vertical product differentiation, I explore the conditions under which an increase in the number of newspapers can decrease both the quantity and quality of news provided. I build a new county-level panel dataset of local newspaper presence, newspapers' newsrooms, costs and revenues and political turnout in France, from 1944 to 2014. I estimate the effect of newspaper entry by comparing counties that experience entry to similar counties in the same years that do not. Both sets of counties exhibit similar trends prior to newspaper entry, but those with entry experience substantial declines in the average number of journalists (business-stealing effect). An increased number of newspapers is also associated with fewer articles and less hard news provision. These effects are stronger in counties with more homogeneous populations, as predicted by my simple theoretical framework, whereas there is little impact in counties with more heterogeneous populations. Newspaper entry, and the associated decline in information provision, is ultimately found to decrease voter turnout at local elections. |
| Keywords: | Hard news; Media competition; Newspaper content; Political participation; Size of the news room; Soft news |
| JEL: | D72 L11 L13 L82 |
| Date: | 2017–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/478a1feno18otpdr60lclo4fuq&r=all |
| By: | Hartmann, Philipp; Smets, Frank |
| Abstract: | On 1 June 2018 the ECB celebrated its 20th anniversary. This paper provides a comprehensive view of the ECB's monetary policy over these two decades. The first section provides a chronological account of the macroeconomic and monetary policy developments in the euro area since the adoption of the euro in 1999, going through four cyclical phases "conditioning" ECB monetary policy. We describe the monetary policy decisions from the ECB's perspective and against the background of its evolving monetary policy strategy and framework. We also highlight a number of the key critical issues that were the subject of debate. The second section contains a partial assessment. We first analyze the achievement of the price stability mandate and developments in the ECB's credibility. Next, we investigate the ECB's interest rate decisions through the lens of a simple empirical interest rate reaction function. This is appropriate until the ECB hits the zero-lower bound in 2013. Finally, we present the ECB's framework for thinking about non-standard monetary policy measures and review the evidence on their effectiveness. One of the main themes of the paper is how ECB monetary policy responded to the challenges posed by the European twin crises and the subsequent slow economic recovery, making use of its relatively wide range of instruments, defining new ones where necessary and developing the strategic underpinnings of its policy framework. |
| Keywords: | crisis; euro area economy; European Central Bank; European Economic and Monetary Union; inflation; monetary policy; non-standard measures; zero-lower bound |
| JEL: | E31 E32 E42 E52 G01 N14 |
| Date: | 2018–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13411&r=all |
| By: | Hansing, Katrin; Hoffmann, Bert |
| Abstract: | Few political transformations have attacked social inequalities more thoroughly than the 1959 Cuban Revolution. However, as the survey data in this paper shows, 60 years on, structural inequalities which echo the pre-revolutionary socio-ethnic hierarchies are returning. While official Cuban statistics are mute about social differences along racial lines, the authors were able to conduct a unique, nationwide survey which shows the contrary. If the revolutionary, state-run economy and radical social policies were the main social elevators for the formerly underprivileged classes in socialist Cuba, the economic crisis and depressed wages of the past decades have seriously undercut these achievements. Moreover, previously racialised migration patterns have produced highly unequal levels of access to family remittances, and the gradual opening of the private business sector in Cuba has largely disfavoured Afro-Cubans, due to their lack of access to pre-revolutionary property and remittances in the form of start-up capital. While social and racial inequalities have not yet reached the levels of other Latin American countries, behind the face of socialist continuity a profound restructuring of Cuban society is taking place. |
| Keywords: | Cuba,social inequality,race,socialism,migration,remittances |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:gigawp:315&r=all |
| By: | Mathias Hoffmann (Department of Economics, University of Zurich); Tetsuji Okazaki (Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo); Toshihiro Okubo (Faculty of Economics, Keio University) |
| Abstract: | The banking sector in Japan experienced a substantial organizational change in the early twentieth century, including an expansion of branch networks. In this paper, we explore the implications of branch banking in regional economies, using unique bank branch office-level data for four rural regions: Fukushima, Tottori, Kumamoto, and Miyazaki Prefectures. We find that branch banking had a positive scale effect on lending. However, compared with branch offices of banks headquartered in the same municipality, branch offices of banks headquartered in other municipalities, especially in other prefectures, tended to have a lower propensity to issue loans. In particular, branch offices of banks headquartered in urban areas, such as Osaka and Tokyo, tended to collect deposits rather than to lend money through their branch networks, which restricted regional finance. |
| Keywords: | branch banking, bank merger, regional economy |
| JEL: | G2 N2 N9 |
| Date: | 2019–01–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:keo:dpaper:2019-004&r=all |
| By: | Michael Donadelli (Department of Economics, University Of Venice Cà Foscari); Marcus Jüppner (Deutsche Bundesbank; Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Goethe University Frankfurt); Antonio Paradiso (Department of Economics, University Of Venice Cà Foscari); Christian Schlag (Faculty of Economics and Business Administration and Research Center SAFE, Goethe University Frankfurt) |
| Abstract: | We produce novel empirical evidence on the relevance of temperature volatility shocks for the dynamics of macro aggregates and asset prices. Using two centuries of UK temperature data, we document that the relationship between temperature volatility and the macroeconomy varies over time. First, the sign of the causality from temperature volatility to TFP growth is negative in the post-war period (i.e., 1950-2015) and positive before (i.e., 1800-1950). Second, over the pre-1950 (post-1950) period temperature volatility shocks positively (negatively) affect TFP growth. In the post-1950 period, temperature volatility shocks are also found to undermine equity valuations and other main macro aggregates. More importantly, temperature volatility shocks are priced in the cross section of returns and command a positive premium. We rationalize these findings within a production economy featuring long-run productivity and temperature volatility risk. In the model temperature volatility shocks generate non-negligible welfare costs. Such costs decrease (increase) when associated with immediate technology adaptation (capital depreciation). |
| Keywords: | Temperature volatility, TFP, asset prices, and welfare costs |
| JEL: | E30 G12 Q0 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ven:wpaper:2019:05&r=all |
| By: | Giancarlo Bertocco; Andrea Kalajzić |
| Abstract: | The publication of the seventh edition of Blanchard’s textbook (Blanchard 2017) and of the third edition of the textbook authored by Blanchard, Amighini and Giavazzi (2017) represents a significant opportunity to assess the impact of the Great Recession on macroeconomic theory and on the teaching of macroeconomics. The authors acknowledge that the mainstream economic model presented in the previous editions of their textbooks is unable to offer a significant explanation of the causes of the crisis as it completely neglects the role of the financial system. They believe that the economics profession has learned the lesson of the crisis since economists understood the limitations of the theoretical model elaborated over the last decades. In the revised editions of their textbooks they present a new theoretical model taking into account the financial system. The objective of this work is twofold: i) to show that the new model does not allow to elaborate a coherent explanation of the Great Recession and: ii) to present the pillars of an alternative theoretical model based on the lessons of Keynes, Schumpeter and Minsky. |
| Keywords: | Financial markets, Crises, Keynes, Schumpeter, Minsky |
| JEL: | E10 E20 E30 E40 E44 |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pke:wpaper:pkwp1905&r=all |
| By: | N. Palma |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:man:sespap:1904&r=all |
| By: | Jean-François Mignot (GEMASS - Groupe d'Etude des Méthodes de l'Analyse Sociologique de la Sorbonne - UP4 - Université Paris-Sorbonne - FMSH - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Date: | 2019–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-02008838&r=all |
| By: | NYONI, THABANI |
| Abstract: | This study uses annual time series data on CPI in Panama from 1960 to 2017, to model and forecast CPI using the Box – Jenkins ARIMA technique. Diagnostic tests indicate that the P series is I (1). The study presents the ARIMA (1, 1, 0) model for predicting CPI in Panama. The diagnostic tests further imply that the presented optimal model is actually stable and acceptable for forecasting CPI in Panama. The results of the study apparently show that CPI in Panama is likely to continue on an upwards trajectory in the next 10 years. The study encourages policy makers to make use of tight monetary and fiscal policy measures in order to deal with inflation in Panama. |
| Keywords: | Forecasting; Inflation; Panama |
| JEL: | C53 E31 E37 E47 |
| Date: | 2019–02–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:92419&r=all |
| By: | Knobel, Alexander (Кнобель, Александр) (The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Russian Foreign Trade Academy); Aliev, Timur (Алиев, Тимур) (The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration); Pyzhikov, Nikita (Пыжиков, Никита) (The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Russian Foreign Trade Academy); Flegontova, Tatiana (Флегонтова, Татьяна) (The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration); |
| Abstract: | The report analyzes the globalization trends of recent decades and its impact on trade. It is shown, in particular, a significant change in the balance of economic forces between developed and developing countries, while the basic rules and conditions for trade and economic interaction in the world were formed even during the period of dominance of countries with developed economies. As a result, in addition to creating additional resources through more efficient use of existing opportunities from reducing various trade and economic barriers, the period of the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century was characterized by the accumulation of significant structural problems. It is demonstrated how regional economic integration in its modern form causes an increase in protectionism instead of the declared liberalization of international trade. The quantitative assessments of the impact on the world economy of the actions of the main world actors in the framework of trade wars that have entered the active phase in 2018 are given. Three options for further developments are proposed. |
| Date: | 2019–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rnp:ppaper:021923&r=all |