|
on Business, Economic and Financial History |
|
Issue of 2019‒04‒22
thirty-one papers chosen by |
| By: | Sebastian Doerr; Stefan Gissler; José-Luis Peydró; Hans-Joachim Voth |
| Abstract: | Do financial crises radicalize voters? We analyze a canonical case – Germany during the Great Depression. After a severe banking crisis in 1931, caused by foreign shocks and political inaction, radical voting increased sharply in the following year. Democracy collapsed six months later. We collect new data on pre-crisis bank-firm connections and show that banking distress led to markedly more radical voting, both through economic and non-economic channels. Firms linked to two large banks that failed experienced a bank-driven fall in lending, which caused reductions in their wage bill and a fall in city-level incomes. This in turn increased Nazi Party support between 1930 and 1932/33, especially in cities with a history of anti-Semitism. While both failing banks had a large negative economic impact, only exposure to the bank led by a Jewish chairman strongly predicts Nazi voting. Local exposure to the banking crisis simultaneously led to a decline in Jewish-gentile marriages and is associated with more deportations and attacks on synagogues after 1933. |
| Keywords: | Financial crises, banking, Great Depression, democracy, anti-Semitism |
| JEL: | E44 G01 G21 N20 P16 |
| Date: | 2018–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upf:upfgen:1651&r=all |
| By: | Potjagailo, Galina; Wolters, Maik H. |
| Abstract: | The authors analyze cyclical co-movement in credit, house prices, equity prices, and long-term interest rates across 17 advanced economies. Using a time-varying multi-level dynamic factor model and more than 130 years of data, they analyze the dynamics of co-movement and compare recent developments to earlier episodes such as the early era of financial globalization from 1880 to 1913 and the Great Depression. They find that joint global dynamics across various financial quantities and prices as well as variable-specific global co-movements are important to explain fluctuations in the data. From a historical perspective, global co-movement in financial variables is not a new phenomenon. For equity prices, however, global cycles play currently a historically unprecedented role, explaining more than half of the fluctuations in the data. Global cycles in credit and housing have become much more pronounced and longer, but their importance in explaining dynamics has only increased for some economies including the US, the UK and Nordic European countries. Regarding GDP, the authors also find an increasing role for a global business cycle. |
| Keywords: | financial cycles,financial crisis,global co-movement,dynamic factor models,time-varying parameters,macro-finance |
| JEL: | C32 C38 E44 F44 G15 N10 N20 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:imfswp:132&r=all |
| By: | Brian Beach; W. Walker Hanlon |
| Abstract: | The historical fertility transition is one of the most important events in economic history. This study provides new evidence on the role of information and social norms in this transition. We begin by documenting a causal relationship between the public release of information on the morality of engaging in family planning that resulted from the famous Bradlaugh-Besant trial of 1877 and Britain's subsequent fertility decline. We then show that the release of this information had nearly simultaneous effects among British-origin populations abroad, in Canada, South Africa, Australia and the United States. These findings highlight the importance of information and changing social norms in the historical fertility transition, as well as the role that cultural and linguistic ties played in transmitting these changes around the world. |
| JEL: | J1 N31 N33 |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25752&r=all |
| By: | Ager, Philipp; Boustan, Leah; Eriksson, Katherine |
| Abstract: | The nullification of slave-based wealth after the US Civil War (1861-65) was one of the largest episodes of wealth compression in history. We document that white southern households with more slave assets lost substantially more wealth by 1870 relative to households with otherwise similar pre-War wealth levels. Yet, the sons of these slaveholders recovered in income and wealth proxies by 1880, in part by shifting into white collar positions and marrying into higher status families. Their pattern of recovery is most consistent with the importance of social networks in facilitating employment opportunities and access to credit. |
| JEL: | J62 N31 N91 |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13660&r=all |
| By: | Kevin Hjortshøj O'Rourke; Ahmed Rahman; Alan M. Taylor |
| Abstract: | Why did per capita income divergence occur so dramatically during the 19th Century, rather than at the outset of the Industrial Revolution? How were some countries able to reverse this trend during the globalization of the late 20th Century? To answer these questions, this paper develops a trade-and-growth model that captures the key features of the Industrial Revolution and Great Divergence between a core industrializing region and a peripheral and potentially lagging region. The model includes both endogenous biased technological change and intercontinental trade. An Industrial Revolution begins as a sequence of more unskilled-labor-intensive innovations in both regions. We show that the subsequent co-evolution of trade and directed technologies can create a delayed but inevitable divergence in demographics and living standards—the peripheral region increasingly specializes in production that worsens its terms of trade and spurs even greater fertility increases and educational declines. Allowing for technological diffusion between regions can mitigate and even reverse divergence, spurring a reversal of fortune for peripheral regions. |
| JEL: | F11 F16 F43 J10 J24 N10 N30 O11 O19 O33 O4 O41 |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25741&r=all |
| By: | Broadberry, Stephen; Gardner, Leigh |
| Abstract: | Estimates of GDP per capita are provided on an annual basis for eight SubSaharan African economies for the period since 1885. Although the growth experienced in most of SSA since the mid-1990s has had historical precedents, there have also been episodes of negative growth or “shrinking”, so that long run progress has been limited. Despite some heterogeneity across countries, this must be seen as a disappointing performance for the region as a whole, given the possibilities of catch-up growth. Avoiding episodes of shrinking needs to be given a higher priority in understanding the transition to sustained economic growth. |
| Keywords: | growth; Africa; historical national accounts |
| JEL: | E01 N17 O47 O55 |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:100473&r=all |
| By: | Accominotti, Olivier; Ugolini, Stefano |
| Abstract: | We describe how the structure and governance of international trade finance - the oldest domain of international finance- evolved from the Middle Ages until today. Trade finance products initially consisted of idiosyncratic assets issued by local merchants and bankers. The financing of international trade then became increasingly centralized and credit instruments were standardized through the diffusion of the local standards of consecutive leading trading centers (Antwerp, Amsterdam, London). This process of market centralization/product standardization culminated in the nineteenth century when London became the global center for international trade finance and the sterling bill of exchange emerged as the most widely used trade finance instrument. The structure of the trade finance market then evolved considerably following the First World War and disintegrated during the interwar de-globalization and Bretton Woods period. The reconstruction of global trade finance in the post-1970 period gave way to the decentralized market structure that prevails nowadays. |
| Keywords: | bill of exchange; letter of credit; market structure; Trade Finance |
| JEL: | F1 F3 K12 N2 N7 |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13661&r=all |
| By: | Claude Diebolt; Michael Haupert |
| Abstract: | Fenoaltea (2019) argues that cliometricians have failed as economists, historians, and economic historians. His argument is based on what he sees as a failure to appreciate the fine art of data gathering and what he perceives to be the lax attitude towards measurement. He embodies these complaints in the history of the creation of national income statistics, and the unforgiveable sin of economic historians who attempt to take those measurements backward in time. He concludes his polemic with his dream, that “cliometricians can take history and the humanities as seriously as we take economics, and lead us to the promised land.” (2019: 12) We are unsure of exactly what the “promised land” might be, but argue that any recent issue of Cliometrica, and any article in the Handbook of Cliometrics will provide ample evidence that cliometrics is alive and well, takes both history and economics very seriously, and does so with a careful and critical eye toward context (clio) and measurement (metrics). Herewith we defend the accomplishments and current robust health of cliometrics. |
| Keywords: | Cliometrics, Economic History, Economics, History. |
| JEL: | A12 B00 N00 N01 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2019-10&r=all |
| By: | Harrison, Mark (University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | The informer network was a part of the human capital of the communist police state, which had the property of dissolving the freestanding social capital of ordinary citizens. How was it built, and what was the agency of the informers in the process? A few documents from the archives of the Soviet security police allow us to see good practices as the KGB saw them. They show some of the routes by which informers came to the attention of the KGB, their varied motivations, and their social and psychological strengths and weaknesses. The pivot of the process was a contract for counter-intelligence services. The contract itself was partly written, partly verbal or implied, and highly incomplete. Before the contract, searching and due diligence were required to identify potential recruits. After the contract, to turn a recruit into a productive informer involved a further period of training and monitoring, often extending to renegotiation and further investments by both sides in the capabilities of the informer and the relationship of trust with the handler. Trust and deception were two sides of the informer’s coin. |
| Keywords: | communism, contracts, social capital, state security, surveillance, trust. JEL Classification: H56, N44, P26 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:408&r=all |
| By: | Pelfrey, Patricia A |
| Abstract: | Early in the Second World War, Franklin Roosevelt appealed to the nation’s elite universities to join in the quest for powerful new technological weapons to counter the Nazi threat. Urged on by Nobelist Ernest O. Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron and director of the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, the University of California responded to Roosevelt’s call in 1943 by lending its scientific leadership to the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico. The goal: to design and build the world’s first atomic bomb. UC president Robert Gordon Sproul intended from the outset that the University’s involvement in secret weapons research would end with the conflict itself. In the end, an engagement entered into as an act of wartime service became a more or less permanent marriage that was controversial from the start. What justification could a public university—any university—offer for conducting research on weapons of mass destruction? Decades of public protest and faculty criticism did not end UC’s involvement in the weapons laboratories it managed for the federal government, first at Los Alamos and later at Livermore, California. What almost did was a series of sensational events that began in 1999 with charges that a spy was at work in Los Alamos’s X Division, responsible for the design of nuclear weapons. The ensuing espionage trial and its aftermath sent shock waves that spread far beyond the specific details of the case. They precipitated a series of events involving national security, US nuclear policy, and politics within the Department of Energy and the Congress that cast a shadow over UC’s stewardship.  The University and its president, Richard Atkinson (1995-2003), faced fundamental questions about the direction and future of an increasingly contentious partnership. This paper discusses the University’s evolving relationship with the federal government and how the debate over the nuclear weapons laboratories ultimately shifted from morality to management. |
| Keywords: | Education, University of California, nuclear weapons research, university service, national interest |
| Date: | 2018–04–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:cshedu:qt8tv4x00x&r=all |
| By: | Drelichman, Mauricio; Gonzalez Agudo, David |
| Abstract: | We exploit the records of a large Toledan hospital to study the compensation of female labor and the gender wage gap in early modern Castile in the context of nursing, a non-gendered low-skill occupation in which men and women performed the same clearly defined tasks. We employ a robust methodology to valuate in-kind compensation, and show it to constitute a central part of the labor contract, far exceeding subsistence requirements. Patient admissions records are used to measure nurse productivity, which did not differ across genders. Female compensation varied between 70% and 100% of male levels, with fluctuations clearly linked to relative labor scarcity. Contrary to common assumptions in the literature, we show that female compensation in early modern Castile was set through a competitive market, and not according to custom. The sources of the gender disparity are therefore likely to be found in the broader social and cultural context. |
| Keywords: | gender gap; discrimination; compensation; early modern; Spain |
| JEL: | N33 N93 J16 |
| Date: | 2019–04–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ubc:bricol:mauricio_drelichman-2019-7&r=all |
| By: | Fonseca, Felipe; Gómez-Zaldívar, Manuel; Ventosa-Santaulària, Daniel |
| Abstract: | Mexican economic historiography recognizes the key role that public investment played in the country's economic performance from the post-revolutionary period until the beginning of the economic liberalization that began in the mid-1980s. However, there is no concrete empirical evidence that this was the case. In this study, the authors construct a historical database of public investment - both total and broken down into its main components - for the period from 1925 to 1981, in order to measure the impact it had on economic activity. Given the possible presence of crowding-out effects between public investment and private investment, in their analysis the authors control for the latter. The results suggest that public investment had a significant impact on output one which varies depending on the category of public investment considered. |
| Keywords: | economic activity,federal public investment,cointegration |
| JEL: | N16 H54 C32 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwedp:201921&r=all |
| By: | Mealy, Penny (Oxford University); Farmer, J. Doyne (Oxford University); Hausmann, Ricardo (Harvard Kennedy School) |
| Abstract: | Understanding the differences between rich and poor places is complicated by the fact that places differ from each other in numerous ways. In this paper, we show how a dimension reduction algorithm can unveil hidden patterns in US census data and consistently yield useful insights into the type of economic activities that separate rich and poor states over 160 years of development history. Moreover, we find this approach has a unique ability to shed light on the dynamics of evolving landscapes and changes in relevance of particular types of activities, such as the shift from manufacturing to high skill services that occurred in the US over the last 40 years. Our results have important implications for the decline of the rustbelt and the reversal of US regional income convergence from 1980 onwards. |
| Date: | 2018–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp18-030&r=all |
| By: | Peter Wirtz (Centre de Recherche Magellan - UJML - Université Jean Moulin - Lyon III - Université de Lyon - Institut d'Administration des Entreprises (IAE) - Lyon, Université de Lyon) |
| Abstract: | Despite extensive research efforts, the causal link between various corporate governance practices and the long-term performance and survival of organizations is still largely unexplored. Various theoretical approaches aim at explaining a governance system's influence on organizational performance and sustainability over the long run, but few contemporaneous corporate organizations have experienced long enough lifespans to examine the underliyng assumtions consistently in a sound and consistent empirical setting. Catholic orders are among the oldest still existing organizations and hence present a unique opportunity to test theoretical assumptions about governance systems' capacity to influence long-term survival. This paper presents a structured inventory of the current state of research on the form and functions of the governance systems of three old Catholic orders (namely the Benedictines, Dominicans, and Jesuits) in historical perspective and confirms the relevance of this kind of approach. |
| Keywords: | Dominicans,organizational performance,history,Catholic orders,Benedictines,sustainability,Corporate governance,Jesuits |
| Date: | 2019–03–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-02083983&r=all |
| By: | Schmalensee, Richard (Massachusetts Institute of Technology); Stavins, Robert N. (Harvard Kennedy School) |
| Abstract: | The U.S. Clean Air Act, passed in 1970 with strong bipartisan support, was the first environmental law to give the Federal government a serious regulatory role, established the architecture of the U.S. air pollution control system, and became a model for subsequent environmental laws in the United States and globally. We outline the Act's key provisions, as well as the main changes Congress has made to it over time. We assess the evolution of air pollution control policy under the Clean Air Act, with particular attention to the types of policy instruments used. We provide a generic assessment of the major types of policy instruments, and we trace and assess the historical evolution of EPA's policy instrument use, with particular focus on the increased use of market-based policy instruments, beginning in the 1970s and culminating in the 1990s. Over the past fifty years, air pollution regulation has gradually become much more complex, and over the past twenty years, policy debates have become increasingly partisan and polarized, to the point that it has become impossible to amend the Act or pass other legislation to address the new threat of climate change. |
| JEL: | Q40 Q48 Q54 Q58 |
| Date: | 2018–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp18-039&r=all |
| By: | Bleemer, Zachary |
| Abstract: | In what ways—and to what degree—have universities contributed to the long-run growth, health, economic mobility, and gender/ethnic equity of their students’ communities and home states? The University of California ClioMetric History Project (UC-CHP), based at the Center for Studies in Higher Education, extends prior research on this question in two ways. First, we have developed a novel digitization protocol—formatted optical character recognition (fOCR)—which transforms scanned structured and semi-structured texts like university directories and catalogs into high-quality computer-readable databases. We use fOCR to produce annual databases of students (1890s to 1940s), faculty (1900 to present), course descriptions (1900 to present), and detailed budgets (1911-2012) for many California universities. Digitized student records, for example, illuminate the high proportion of 1900s university students who were female and from rural areas, as well as large family income differences between male and female students and between students at public and private universities. Second, UC-CHP is working to photograph, process with fOCR, and analyze restricted student administrative records to construct a comprehensive database of California university students and their enrollment behavior. This paper describes UC-CHP’s methodology and provides technical documentation for the project, while also presenting examples of the range of data the project is exploring and prospects for future research. |
| Keywords: | Education, Social and Behavioral Sciences, History of Higher Education, Big Data, Natural Language Processing, University of California |
| Date: | 2018–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:cshedu:qt1xp6g8nj&r=all |
| By: | Ben-David, Itzhak (Ohio State University (OSU) - Department of Finance; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)); Kleimeier, Stefanie (Maastricht University - Department of Finance); Viehs, Michael (Oxford University Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment; European Centre for Corporate Engagement (ECCE)) |
| Abstract: | Despite awareness of the detrimental impact of CO2 pollution on the world climate, countries vary widely in how they design and enforce environmental laws. Using novel micro data about firms’ CO2 emissions levels in their home and foreign countries, we document that firms headquartered in countries with strict environmental policies perform their polluting activities abroad in countries with relatively weaker policies. These effects are stronger for firms in high-polluting industries and with poor corporate governance characteristics. Although firms export pollution, they nevertheless emit less overall CO2 globally in response to strict environmental policies at home. |
| JEL: | N50 O13 Q56 R11 |
| Date: | 2018–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:ohidic:2018-20&r=all |
| By: | Karol J. Borowiecki (Department of Business and Economics, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark); Kathryn Graddy (Department of Economics, International Business School, Brandeis University) |
| Abstract: | In order to investigate the role of immigrant artists on the development of artistic clusters in U.S. cities, we use the U.S. Census and American Community Survey, collected every 10 years since 1850. We identify artists and art teachers, authors, musicians, and music teachers, actors and actresses, architects, and journalists, their geographical location and their status as a native or an immigrant. We look at the relative growth rate of the immigrant population in these occupations over a ten year period and how it affects the relative growth rate of native-born individuals in these artistic occupations. We find that cities that experienced immigrant artist inflows, also see a greater inflow of native artists by about 40%. |
| Date: | 2019–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cue:wpaper:awp-03-2019&r=all |
| By: | OECD |
| Abstract: | This report, part of the “Cities” collection, provides an analysis of the demographic and morphological changes in West African border cities since the mid-20th century. Using the Africapolis harmonised database makes it possible to show that since 1950 border cities have experienced higher rates of growth than other cities in the region. While the average size of cities increases with distance from a border, the opposite is true for urban density; it decreases as distance from a border increases. This suggests that border cities form urban centres that differ from other such centres due to the fact that they specialise in the commercial activities that stimulate growth and foster higher densities. The report identifies the 27 main cross-border agglomerations in the region and discusses their specificcharacteristics.Also in this Collection:“Regional Integration in Border Cities”, No. 20“Businesses and Health in Border Cities”, No. 22“Accessibility and Infrastructure in Border Cities”, No. 23 |
| Keywords: | Africapolis, cross-border agglomerations, demography, morphology, urban density |
| JEL: | O18 O21 F15 F10 |
| Date: | 2019–04–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:swacaa:21-en&r=all |
| By: | Meyer, Josefin (Kiel Institute for the World Economy); Reinhart, Carmen M. (Harvard Kennedy School); Trebesch, Christoph (Kiel Institute for the World Economy) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies external sovereign bonds as an asset class. We compile a new database of 220,000 monthly prices of foreign-currency government bonds traded in London and New York between 1815 (the Battle of Waterloo) and 2016, covering 91 countries. Our main insight is that, as in equity markets, the returns on external sovereign bonds have been sufficiently high to compensate for risk. Real ex-post returns averaged 7% annually across two centuries, including default episodes, major wars, and global crises. This represents an excess return of around 4% above US or UK government bonds, which is comparable to stocks and outperforms corporate bonds. The observed returns are hard to reconcile with canonical theoretical models and with the degree of credit risk in this market, as measured by historical default and recovery rates. Based on our archive of more than 300 sovereign debt restructurings since 1815, we show that full repudiation is rare; the median haircut is below 50%. |
| JEL: | F30 F34 G12 G15 N10 N20 |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp19-009&r=all |
| By: | Koop, Gary (University of Strathclyde); McIntyre, Stuart (University of Strathclyde); Mitchell, James (University of Warwick); Poon, Aubrey (University of Strathclyde) |
| Abstract: | Output growth estimates for the regions of the UK are currently published at the annual frequency only, released with a long delay and offer limited historical coverage. To improve the regional database this paper develops a mixed-frequency multivariate model and uses it to produce consistent estimates of quarterly regional output growth dating back to 1970. We describe how these estimates are updated and evaluated on an ongoing, quarterly basis to publish online (at www.escoe.ac.uk/regionalnowcasting) more timely regional growth estimates. We illustrate how the new quarterly data can contribute to our historical understanding of business cycle dynamics and connectedness between regions. |
| Keywords: | Regional data; Mixed frequency; Temporal disaggregation; Nowcasting; Bayesian methods; Real-time data; Vector autoregressions; JEL Classification Numbers: C32 ; C51 ; C53; E37 ; |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:wrkemf:20&r=all |
| By: | Thierry Kirat (Université Paris-Dauphine; PSL Research Universit; IRISSO CNRS); Frédéric Marty (Université Côte d'Azur, France; GREDEG CNRS) |
| Abstract: | Cet article met en relief l'implication des fondations d'entreprises dans le développement de la Law and Economics aux Etats-Unis des lendemains de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale aux années Reagan. Il s'appuie notamment sur l'analyse de trajectoires individuelles ou collectives, qu'il s'agisse des programmes de recherche menés à l'université de Chicago par Aaron Director autour de l'antitrust, des programmes de formation des juges portés par Henry Manne ou encore des travaux académiques et du parcours administratif de Robert Bork. Il met l'accent sur le rôle de fondations d'entreprises pro-marché dans l'essor de la Law and Economics et sur son impact sur les manières de juger. |
| Keywords: | Economie du droit, Antitrust, Originalisme, Conservatisme |
| JEL: | B21 B31 K21 N42 |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gre:wpaper:2019-14&r=all |
| By: | Lüger, Tim |
| Abstract: | This work seeks to answer the "population question," i.e. the effect of population growth on production per capita. This question has lingered in economic thought for centuries and to this day two general lines of thought can be identified, which might be marked as the "optimist" and the "pessimist" view. While the optimists claim that an increase in population will - chiefly owed to concomitant specialization and technological progress - raise average production per capita, the pessimists maintain that the latter would decline as a result of resources becoming relatively more scarce. Integrating both approaches and using a neoclassical framework, this work intends to show that sustainably increasing productivity is predominantly the result of reducing too high fertility toward a lower level such that diminishing returns are outweighed by the benefits from labor division. The paper argues that the historical reduction of fertility can almost completely explain long-run development. |
| Keywords: | Population Question,Division of Labor,Diminishing Returns,Demographic Transition,Economic Development,Classical Growth Theory,Neoclassical Growth Theory,Unified Growth Theory,History of Economic Thought |
| JEL: | B12 B22 J1 O47 N01 N3 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:darddp:235&r=all |
| By: | Ang, Desmond (Harvard Kennedy School) |
| Abstract: | In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act that mandated federal oversight of election laws in discriminatory jurisdictions, prompting a spate of controversial new voting rules. Utilizing difference-in-differences to examine the Act's 1975 revision, I provide the first estimates of the effects of "preclearance" oversight. I find that preclearance increased long-run voter turnout by 4-8 percentage points, due to lasting gains in minority participation. Surprisingly, Democratic support dropped sharply in areas subject to oversight. Using historical survey and newspaper data, I provide evidence that this was the result of political backlash among racially conservative whites. |
| Date: | 2018–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp18-033&r=all |
| By: | Bleemer, Zachary |
| Keywords: | Education |
| Date: | 2018–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:cshedu:qt2bd8d25p&r=all |
| By: | Matteo Gomellini; Cormac Ó Gráda |
| Abstract: | Emigrants from Italy and Ireland contributed disproportionately to the Age of Mass Migration. That their departure improved the living standards of those they left behind is hardly in doubt. Nevertheless, a voluminous literature on the selectivity of migrant flows— both from sending and receiving country perspectives—has given rise to claims that migration generates both ‘brain drains’ and ‘brain gains’. On the one hand, positive or negative selection among emigrants may affect the level of human capital in sending countries. On the other hand, the prospect of emigration and return migration may both spur investment in schooling in source countries. This essay describes the history of emigration from Italy and Ireland during the Age of Mass Migration from these perspectives. |
| Keywords: | Migration; Brain Drain; Brain Gain; Human Capital; Italy; Ireland |
| JEL: | F22 J61 N33 O15 |
| Date: | 2019–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucn:wpaper:201907&r=all |
| By: | M Niaz Asadullah; Norma Mansor; Antonio Savoia |
| Abstract: | This paper provides a systematic assessment of the alleged exceptionality of Malaysia’s development progress and its likely explanations, in a comparative perspective. Using cross-country regressions and aggregate indices of education, health, poverty and gender equality outcomes, we offer three findings. First, we provide evidence supporting the hypothesis that Malaysia’s human development progress has been exceptional compared with that of countries with a similar level of economic development, primarily for the 1970s and 1980s, so showing that progress has early origins. Next, we show that such progress is explained by a combination of income-mediated and support-led mechanisms, including Malaysia’s early emphasis on education and health inputs and infrastructure development. Finally, we argue that an early advantage in state capacity, vis-à-vis other countries of similar income level, may be at the origin of Malaysia’s successful implementation of poverty-reduction and growth-enhancing policies. |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bwp:bwppap:382019&r=all |
| By: | Roque B. Fernández |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cem:doctra:690&r=all |
| By: | Mahnken, Thomas G. |
| Abstract: | Defense innovation is the transformation of ideas and knowledge into new or improved products, processes, and services for military and dual-use applications. It refers primarily to organizations and activities associated with the defense and dual-use civil-military science, technology, and industrial base. Included at this level are, for instance, changes in planning, programming, budgeting, research, development, acquisition and other business processes. The period between the two world wars offers a rich set of cases for examining defense innovation. These include the development of armored warfare, strategic bombing, close air support, carrier aviation, amphibious warfare, and radio and radar. Whereas others have focused on military innovation in the interwar period, the focus of this brief is on defense innovation in general, andthe development of tanks in Britain, the United States, and Germany in particular. |
| Keywords: | Social and Behavioral Sciences, defense innovation, Germany, Britain, United States, tanks |
| Date: | 2018–05–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:globco:qt1hw200dw&r=all |
| By: | Aisling J. Reynolds-Feighan |
| Abstract: | This paper describes the evolution of the four largest airlines in the U.S. domestic market and focuses on the relationships between the mainline airlines and sets of regional airlines that provide feeder services through contract arrangements. The paper traces the series of mergers occurring over the last 20 years that have resulted in the current industry structures and organization and shows the dominance of the top four carriers directly as well as through their relationships with the main regional airlines. The current structure reflects the impact of different types of contractual arrangements and agreements that have shaped relationships between large numbers of airlines in the domestic U.S. market since deregulation in 1978. The paper sets out the rationale for entering into these agreements, the nature of the relationships and the stages of development of current carrier arrangements. A number of public policy issues are highlighted. |
| Keywords: | Relationships of mainline and regional airlines; Airline dominance; U.S. market; Airline partnerships |
| Date: | 2018–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucn:oapubs:10197/9910&r=all |
| By: | Maximilian Sprengholz; Anna Wieber; Elke Holst |
| Abstract: | We exploit the natural experiment of German reunification in 1990 to investigate if the institutional regimes of the formerly socialist (rather gender-equal) East Germany and the capitalist (rather gender-traditional) West Germany shaped different gender identity prescriptions of family breadwinning. We use data for three periods between 1984 and 2016 from the representative German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Density discontinuity tests and fixed-effects regressions suggest that married couples in West (but not East) Germany diminished the wife’s labor market outcomes in order to avoid situations where she would earn more than him. However, the significance of the male breadwinner prescription seems to decline in West Germany since reunification, converging to the more gender-egalitarian East Germany. Our work emphasizes the view that political and institutional frameworks can shape fairly persistent gender identity prescriptions that influence household economic decisions for some time, even when these frameworks change. |
| Keywords: | Gender identity, male breadwinner norm, institutions, female labor market outcomes, SOEP |
| JEL: | J16 J12 D10 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1799&r=all |