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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2019‒09‒16
38 papers chosen by |
| By: | Sara Horrell; Jane Humphries; Jacob Weisdorf |
| Abstract: | We use new estimates of men, women, and children’s wages in combination with cost-of-living indices to explore family living standards across six centuries of English history. A family perspective enables us to quantify the labour inputs required from women and children in circumstances when men’s earnings alone were insufficient to secure a decent standard of living, and so to register the historical relevance of the male breadwinner model. We employ a life-cycle approach where pre-marital savings help married couples manage increasing numbers of dependent children as well as other periods of economic pressure. We find that the male breadwinner model was generally insufficient for a ‘respectable’ standard of living; women and sometimes children were required to contribute and, even then, couples still faced poverty during old age. However, with the exception of the pre-Black Death period and the first half of the 17th-century, child labour was not essential and in the early modern era and old-age poverty was in retreat. We reconcile our findings with evidence of a surge in child-labour in the late 1700s and early 1800s, with reference to early modern economic growth, and its association with industriousness and consumerism, twin developments which served to stimulate the Industrial Revolution. |
| Keywords: | Living Standards; Prices, Wages |
| JEL: | J22 N13 O10 |
| Date: | 2019–08–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:esohwp:_172&r=all |
| By: | Robert W. Dimand (Department of Economics, Brock University); Harald Hagemann (University of Hohenheim) |
| Abstract: | Jacob Marschak shaped the emergence of monetary theory and portfolio choice at the Cowles Commission (which he directed from 1943 to 1948, but with which he was involved already from 1937) at the University of Chicago, where he was the doctoral teacher of Leonid Hurwicz, Harry Markowitz and Don Patinkin, and then from 1955 at the Cowles Foundation at Yale University, where he was a senior colleague of James Tobin until moving to UCLA in 1960. Marschak’s later attempts to clarify the concept of liquidity and to emphasize the role of new information for economic behavior date back as far as to his early experiences with hyperinflationary processes in the Northern Caucasus during the Russian Revolution. Marschak came to monetary theory with his 1922 Heidelberg doctoral dissertation on the quantity theory equation of exchange (published in 1924 as “Die Verkehrsgleichung”), and embedded monetary theory in a wider theory of asset market equilibrium in studies of “Money and the Theory of Assets” (1938), “Assets, Prices, and Monetary Theory” (with Helen Makower, 1938), “Role of Liquidity under Complete and Incomplete Information” (1949), “The Rationale of the Demand for Money and of ‘Money Illusion’” (1950), and “Monnaie et liquidité dans les modèles macroéconomiques et microéconomiques” (1955), as well as in Income, Employment and the Price Level (lectures Marschak gave at Chicago, edited by Fand and Markowitz, 1951). We examine Marschak’s analysis of money within a broader theory of asset market equilibrium and explore the relation of his work to the monetary and portfolio theories of his doctoral students Markowitz and Patinkin and his colleague Tobin and to the revival of the quantity theory of money by Milton Friedman, a University of Chicago colleague unsympathetic to the methodology of the Cowles Commission. |
| Keywords: | Jacob Marschak, Money in a theory of assets, Cowles Commission, Harry Markowitz, James Tobin |
| JEL: | B22 B31 |
| Date: | 2019–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2196&r=all |
| By: | 深尾, 京司; 牧野, 達治; 攝津, 斉彦 |
| Abstract: | 日本経済は1868年の明治維新以降，アジアで最初に近代経済成長を開始し，第二次世界大戦後の高度成長期を経て，1970年ごろには欧州の主要国にほぼ追いついた．戦前の経済成長率は西欧諸国とほぼ同水準であったものの，高度成長期に急激な産業構造の変化を伴いながら，アメリカ・イギリスの4倍という高い成長率を達成したことが，このようなキャッチアップを可能とした．本論文では，このおよそ100年間に及ぶ経済成長の過程を，近年整備された新たなGDP推計にもとづき，成長会計の手法を用いて分析する．特に，産業構造の変化，すなわち資源の再配分の効果が，経済成長にどのような影響を与えたのかを明らかにするべく，第一次産業と非第一次産業に分けて分析を試みた．我々の分析の結果，以下の知見を得た．戦前の第一次産業は，企業勃興期から第一次世界大戦ブーム期にかけて労働生産性の上昇が著しかったが，同期間の前半部分においては，TFPの上昇がその主要因となっていたのに対し，後半部分については労働者1人あたり資本ストックおよび耕地面積の寄与が相対的に大きかった．非第一次産業では，戦前期のほぼ全期間を通じて，TFPの上昇が労働生産性上昇を説明する主要因であった．戦後については，高度成長の源泉はTFPの上昇と労働者1人あたり資本ストックの増加の寄与であったが，その上昇率は非第一次産業で圧倒的に大きかった．また，これらの成長要因と比較すると，資源の再配分効果は限定的なものであった．, After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan modernized its institutions and economic growth gradually picked up. Growth accelerated especially during the so-called high-speed growth era from 1955 to 1970, when Japan rapidly caught up with Western economies. The long-term sustained high-speed growth recorded during this period was unprecedented not only in Japan but worldwide. While other East Asian countries such as Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, and China subsequently also experienced remarkable growth over a prolonged period, Japan’s place in history as the first country to record such sustained high-speed growth means that its experience continues to garner worldwide interest. Using newly constructed Hitotsubashi estimates of Japan’s historical GDP statistics and a growth accounting flamework, we analyze the sources of Japan’s economic growth from 1885 to 1970 and try to answer why Japan was not able accomplish such high-speed growth before 1955. Since until the mid-1960s the primary sector accounted for a large share of economic activity and was a major determinant of overall economic growth, we use a Hayashi and Prescott (2008) type two-sector model in which the economy overall is divided into the primary sector and the non-primary sector. |
| Date: | 2019–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:sspjdp:dp19-001&r=all |
| By: | Fukao, Kyoji; Makino, Tatsuji; Settsu, Tokihiko |
| Abstract: | After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan modernized its institutions and economic growth gradually picked up. Growth accelerated especially during the so-called high-speed growth era from 1955 to 1970, when Japan rapidly caught up with Western economies. The long-term sustained high-speed growth recorded during this period was unprecedented not only in Japan but worldwide. While other East Asian countries such as Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, and China subsequently also experienced remarkable growth over a prolonged period, Japan's place in history as the first country to record such sustained high-speed growth means that its experience continues to garner worldwide interest. Using newly constructed Hitotsubashi estimates of Japan's historical GDP statistics and a growth accounting framework, we analyze the sources of Japan's economic growth from 1885 to 1970 and try to answer why Japan was not able to accomplish such high-speed growth before 1955. Since until the mid-1960s the primary sector accounted for a large share of economic activity and was a major determinant of overall economic growth, we use a Hayashi and Prescott (2008) type two-sector model in which the economy overall is divided into the primary sector and the non-primary sector. |
| Date: | 2019–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:sspjdp:dp19-002&r=all |
| By: | Kevin Hjortshøj O'Rourke |
| Abstract: | Abstract The paper surveys three economic history literatures that can speak to contemporary challenges to globalization: the literature on the anti-globalization backlash of the nineteenth century, focused largely on trade and migration; the literature on the Great Depression, focused largely on capital flows, the gold standard, and protectionism; and the literature on trade and warfare. |
| Keywords: | globalization, deglobalization. |
| JEL: | N70 F02 |
| Date: | 2018–12–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:esohwp:_167&r=all |
| By: | Kalle Kappner (Institute for Economic History, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) |
| Abstract: | Did cholera function as a potent catalyst for the reform of urban water infrastructure in 19th century Europe's disease-ridden cities, serving as "our old ally" in the struggle for urban sanitation (Robert Koch)? Based on a detailed case study of Berlin's hydrological reconfiguration, this paper challenges popular narratives that paint the emergence of safe tap water supplies and sanitary sewers as an efficient, scientifically motivated reaction to Europe's recurrent cholera epidemics since 1831. While historians have long stressed the dominance of aesthetical and industrial over sanitary concerns, the study of Berlin's contemporary discourse suggest that the causal link between cholera and water infrastructure reform was not only weak, but ambiguous. Far from motivating the right actions for the wrong reasons, cholera's conception through the dominant miasmatist frameworks and limited proto-epidemiological tools of the prebacteriological era inspired inefficient, at times even counterproductive approaches that potentially deepened the urban mortality penalty. Berlin's role as a political and scientific center of 19th century Europe suggests that her experience was the norm rather than the exception. A nuanced understanding of Western Europe's sanitary past has important implications for the continuing struggle for urban sanitation in today's developing world. |
| Keywords: | Cholera, Water-Borne Disease, Epidemic, Sanitation, Berlin, Germany, Tap Water, Sewers, 19th Century, Miasma, Mortality, Urban Penalty |
| JEL: | N33 N53 N93 |
| Date: | 2019–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0167&r=all |
| By: | Meier zu Selhausen, Felix (African Economic History Network) |
| Abstract: | This chapter traces the origins and long-term development of African mass-education in colonial sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, it addresses the unique role of Christian missions in prompting a genuine schooling revolution and explores the comparative educational expansion across colonies and between genders. While the initial expansion of missions was motivated by a global competition for new church members, the development of African mass-education essentially depended on local conditions. It highlights the importance of African agency in the process towards mass-education that depended on local demand for formal education and the supply of African teachers who provided the bulk of mission schooling. The chapter also assesses potential pitfalls when those realities are not considered by studies, investigating historical missionary legacies on present-day African education and social mobility. |
| Keywords: | Christian Missionaries; Education; Africa; Gender; Colonialism; Religion; Human Capital; African Agency |
| JEL: | N37 N57 N97 |
| Date: | 2019–09–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:afekhi:2019_048&r=all |
| By: | Jedwab, Rémi (African Economic History Network); Meier zu Selhausen, Felix (African Economic History Network); Moradi, Alexander (African Economic History Network) |
| Abstract: | How did Christianity expand in sub-Saharan Africa to become the continent’s dominant religion? Using annual panel data on all Christian missions from 1751 to 1932 in Ghana, as well as cross-sectional data on missions for 43 sub-Saharan African countries in 1900 and 1924, we shed light on the spatial dynamics and determinants of this religious diffusion process. Missions expanded into healthier, safer, more accessible, and more developed areas, privileging these locations first. Results are confirmed for selected factors using various identification strategies. This pattern has implications for extensive literature using missions established during colonial times as a source of variation to study the long-term economic effects of religion, human capital and culture. Our results provide a less favorable account of the impact of Christian missions on modern African economic development. We also highlight the risks of omission and endogenous measurement error biases when using historical data and events for identification. |
| Keywords: | Economics of Religion; Religious Diffusion; Path Dependence; Economic Development; Compression of History; Measurement; Christianity; Africa |
| JEL: | N30 N37 N95 O12 O15 Z12 |
| Date: | 2019–09–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:afekhi:2019_049&r=all |
| By: | Mahnkopf, Birgit |
| Abstract: | Elmar Altvater was a renowned political economist and professor at the Otto-Suhr-Institute of Freie Universität Berlin from 1970 until 2006. Until his death in 2018 he was a point of reference for several generations of students, left-wing academics and politicians, trade union activists, representatives of civil society organizations in Germany, across Europe and in Latin America. He became one of the few academics in Germany who based the analysis of contemporary economic and political developments on a critical reading of Marxian approaches to understand the historical cycles of growth, recession and crisis in modern capitalism. The following text attempts to sketch some elements of a remarkable leftist intellectual history of the Federal Republic of Germany through the prism of Elmar Altvater while referring to some of the political initiatives Elmar Altvater was involved in and touching on some of the most important topics he has dealt with: the causes and consequences of the numerous debt crisis; the role of neoliberalism which emerged in the course of crisis of world finance since the late 1970s; the impact of "finanzialization" on social cohesion and politics at national, European and international level and, most importantly, his attempt to analyze the degradation of nature as the "price of progress" - on the basis of an ecologically expanded critique of political economy. |
| Keywords: | Marx,capitalism,critical political economy,debt crisis,globalization,nature |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ipewps:1232019&r=all |
| By: | Tereza Kopecka (Charles University, Czech Republic) |
| Abstract: | In the last third of the 19th century, the germ theory of infection had been reliably proved and widely accepted, new principles of microbiological research were laid down and many infectious diseases explained. But medicine was not ready yet to explain all the illnesses. Despite the thorough work of many scientists, substantial facts were still unknown – e.g. existence of most viruses, autoimmunity processes or micronutrients. The effort to explain all the diseases with existent knowledge gave rise to half-true concepts and mistakes. This paper deals with two interesting mistakes, found in the textbook of pathological anatomy and medical microbiology by Hlava and Obrzut, published in 1900-1901 in Austria-Hungary: the concept of scurvy as an infection caused by Bacillus scorbuti, and the causative role of the so-called „Pfeiffer’s bacillus“ - Bacillus influenzae, presently Haemophilus infuenzae, in the flu. These were not only theories but expert opinions based on the results of scientific research. Unfortunately, the methods were imperfect and performed/interpreted properly either, so they didn’t allow the scientists to realize the erroneousness of their conclusions. The real causes of the diseases mentioned above were proven much later. |
| Keywords: | history, medicine, microbiology, scurvy, flu |
| Date: | 2019–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:dpaper:037tk&r=all |
| By: | von Fintel, Dieter (African Economic History Network); Fourie, Johan (African Economic History Network) |
| Abstract: | Does wealth persist over time, despite the disruptions of historical shocks like colonisation? This paper shows that South Africa experienced a reversal of fortunes after the arrival of European settlers in the eastern half of the country. Yet this was not, as some have argued was the case elsewhere in colonial Africa, because of an institutional reversal. We argue, instead, that black South Africans found themselves at the mercy of two extractive regimes: those in `white South Africa and those in the `homelands. The political and economic institutions of each of those regimes favoured a small elite: in white South Africa, whites, and in the homelands, the black chiefs and headmen. Democracy brought inclusive institutions for black residents in white South Africa but not for those in the former home- lands. This is why we see mass migration to the urban areas of South Africa today, and why addressing the institutional weaknesses of the former homelands is key to alleviating the poverty in these regions where a third of South Africans still reside. |
| Keywords: | reversal of fortunes; population persistence; institutional reversal; colonial impact; settler economy; African economic history; traditional leaders |
| JEL: | J10 J11 N37 N57 |
| Date: | 2019–08–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:afekhi:2019_047&r=all |
| By: | Timur Natkhov (National Research University Higher School of Economics); Natalia Vasilenok (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines technology adoption in pre-industrial societies. We use the case of a technologically advanced and spatially concentrated German minority in Saratov province of the Russian Empire to study adoption patterns among Russian peasants in late 19th–early 20th century. We find that distance from German colonies predicts the prevalence of heavy ploughs, fanning mills and wheat sowing among Russians, who traditionally sowed rye and plowed with wooden ard (sokha). We show a significant rise in labor productivity in agriculture resulting from the adoption of heavy ploughs. However, we find no evidence for the adoption of non-codified knowledge like blacksmithing, carpentry, textile manufacture, tanning and other artisan skills. Hence, the adoption of advanced tools does not necessary induce the diffusion of skills required to produce those tools. This may well be the key to the problem of slow technological convergence |
| Keywords: | technology adoption, economic development, agriculture, Russian Empire |
| JEL: | N33 N53 I15 O15 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:220/ec/2019&r=all |
| By: | Radoli Lydia Ouma (Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany) |
| Abstract: | “White Terror†(2013), a BBC documentary details colonial atrocities in Kenya and thereafter state of emergency. I argue, ghosts (memories) of the atrocities still haunt a few remaining colonial survivors. Socio-political colonial structures were inherited in post-independence Kenya. The documentary based on Harvard’s History Professor Caroline Elkins (2005) research was evidenced in a legal suit of five colonial survivors against the British government for torture. Post-2007 ethno-political conflicts in Kenya can be linked to misappropriations in the 1954 Swynerton land tenure reforms. British occupation of native land sparked an insurgency that resulted in a state emergency (1952-1960), and later turned into struggle for independence. To Kenyans, Mau Mau (largely Kikuyus) were freedom fighters, but inhuman savage terrorists to colonial agents. Geographical annexing of land placed the Kikuyu, a dominant ethnic group close to the colonial capital, while the rest of the tribes were disbursed in the peripheries. In postcolonial Kenya, political and economic disparities herald power struggles between dominant ethnicities, in the case of Kenya; Kikuyu, Luo and Kalenjin. Postcolonial theory was a result of colonial experience, “the testimonies of the third world countries and discourses of minorities within geographical and political divisions of “East and West†, “North and South†(Bhabha 1994). First generational Kenyans survived colonialism, but retain narratives of the struggle over colonial domination. Using a postcolonial and discourse theoretic qualitative methodology for documentary and interviews analysis, this paper traces narratives of postcolonial Kenya and impacts on present day social political challenges. |
| Keywords: | postcolonialism, socio-political narratives, colonial imagery, post-independence Kenya |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:cpaper:58lr&r=all |
| By: | Robert W. Dimand (Department of Economics, Brock University) |
| Abstract: | Founded in 1932 by a newspaper heir disillusioned by the failure of forecasters to predict the Great Crash, the Cowles Commission promoted the use of formal mathematical and statistical methods in economics, initially through summer research conferences in Colorado and through support of the Econometric Society (of which Alfred Cowles was secretary-treasurer for decades). After moving to the University of Chicago in 1939, the Cowles Commission sponsored works, many later honored with Nobel Prizes but at the time out of the mainstream of economics, by Haavelmo, Hurwicz and Koopmans on econometrics, Arrow and Debreu on general equilibrium, Yntema and Mosak on general equilibrium in international trade theory, Arrow on social choice, Koopmans on activity analysis, Klein on macroeconometric modelling, Lange, Marschak and Patinkin on macroeconomic theory, and Markowitz on portfolio choice, but came into intense methodological, ideological and personal conflict with the emerging “Chicago school.” This conflict led the Cowles Commission to move to Yale in 1955 as the Cowles Foundation, directed by James Tobin (who had declined to move to Chicago to direct it). The Cowles Foundation remained a leader in the more technical areas of economics, notably with Tobin’s “Yale school” of monetary theory, Scarf’s computable general equilibrium, Shubik in game theory, and later Phillips and Andrews in econometric theory but as formal methods in economic theory and econometrics pervaded the discipline of economics, Cowles (like the Econometric Society) became less distinct from the rest of economics. |
| Keywords: | Cowles Commission, Formalism in economics, Mathematics in economics, Cowles approach to econometrics |
| JEL: | B23 B41 C01 C02 |
| Date: | 2019–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2198&r=all |
| By: | Stephen Broadberry; Leigh Gardner |
| Abstract: | Estimates of GDP per capita are provided on an annual basis for eight Sub-Saharan 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. |
| Date: | 2019–03–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:esohwp:_169&r=all |
| By: | Joseph Price; Kasey Buckles; Jacob Van Leeuwen; Isaac Riley |
| Abstract: | A key challenge for research on many questions in the social sciences is that it is difficult to link historical records in a way that allows investigators to observe people at different points in their life or across generations. In this paper, we develop a new approach that relies on millions of record links created by individual contributors to a large, public, wiki-style family tree. First, we use these “true” links to inform the decisions one needs to make when using traditional linking methods. Second, we use the links to construct a training data set for use in supervised machine learning methods. We describe the procedure we use and illustrate the potential of our approach by linking individuals across the 100% samples of the US decennial censuses from 1900, 1910, and 1920. We obtain an overall match rate of about 70 percent, with a false positive rate of about 12 percent. This combination of high match rate and accuracy represents a point beyond the current frontier for record linking methods. |
| JEL: | C81 J1 N01 |
| Date: | 2019–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26227&r=all |
| By: | Fukao, Kyoji; Paul, Saumik |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the drivers of the long-run structural transformation in Japan. We use a dynamic input-output framework that decomposes the reallocation of the total output across sectors into two components: the Engel effect (demand side) and the Baumol effect (supply side). To perform this task, we employ 13 seven-sector input-output tables spanning 100 years (1885 to 1985). The results show that the Engel effect was the key explanatory factor in more than 60% of the sector-period cases in the pre-WWII period, while the Baumol effect drove structural transformation in more than 75% of such cases in the post-WWII period. Detailed decomposition results suggest that in most of the sectors (agriculture, commerce and services, food, textiles and transport, communication and utilities), changes in private consumption were the dominant force behind the demand-side explanations. The Engel effect was found to be the strongest in the commerce and services sector, which contributed to the rapid growth of GDP in Japan throughout the 20th century. |
| Keywords: | long-run structural transformation, the Engel effect, Baumol's cost disease effect, sectoral productivity growth |
| JEL: | O40 O10 |
| Date: | 2019–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:sspjdp:dp19-003&r=all |
| By: | Kalea Ramsey (Menaul School, New Mexico, USA) |
| Abstract: | This research uses Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as an anchor to look back and forth between the novel and the precursor texts and themes on which Shelley both draws and which she also transforms in light of the critical influences of her historical moment, straddling as it did a transition from the rationalism of the Enlightenment to the emotional, social and creative energies unleashed by Romanticism. This paper focuses on the themes of transgression, fear, isolation, damnation and redemption, and their importance in outlining the journeys of Victor Frankenstein and the monster he created, as well as other related works in history. The major comparisons in this research are that of Frankenstein with the archetypal figure of Prometheus, ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, and Paradise Lost. The first was directly referenced by Mary Shelley in the allusions of Walton and Victor Frankenstein, and the latter is the epigraph of the book, which appears as one of the books that shaped the Monster’s education. Stemming from ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, the Wandering Jew and the biblical Cain and Abel story are extended archetypes, further showing traits that could be found among the Mariner, Frankenstein, the Monster, and Satan, forming an interconnected web that weaves all these characters together. Frankenstein is also known as the ‘Modern Prometheus’: through her writing, Mary Shelley aimed to historicize and reconceptualize universalist assumptions about the nature and relevance of archetypes in literature. By historicizing the role of Prometheus and imbuing it in Victor Frankenstein, Shelley portrayed the figure of an ambitious scientist who assumed the role of God and disregarded the law of nature. She charaterized Victor such that his traits resemble those of Prometheus, yet far from reproducing an idealized archetype, Shelley brings a Greek myth down to earth, transforming it so that it can speak to the people of her time. This paper reads Frankenstein in relation to how its context transforms the universalist archetypes on which Shelley drew to give her characters and themes literary depth and texture. Shelley inflects Victor Frankenstein and his Monster with traits associated with the archetypal figures of Prometheus, Satan, and the Ancient Mariner, simultaneously relating the resulting hybrid characters to the pressing concerns of her particular historical moment and demonstrating that universal archetypes continue to be rich sources both for the creative process and for bringing perennial themes to life for successive generations of readers. |
| Keywords: | Archetypes, Cain, Edmund Burke, Enlightenment in literature, Frankenstein, French Revolution, Mary Shelley, Prometheus, Paradise Lost, Romanticism, Satan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Wandering Jew |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:cpaper:51kr&r=all |
| By: | Ansgar Belke; Ulrich Volz |
| Abstract: | Since the demise of the Bretton Woods system, the yen has seen several episodes of strong appreciation, including in the late 1970s, after the 1985 Plaza Agreement, the early and late 1990s and after 2008. These appreciations have not only been associated with “expensive yen recessions” resulting from negative effects on exports; since the late 1980s, the strong yen has also raised concerns about a deindustrialisation of the Japanese economy. Against this backdrop, the paper investigates the effects of changes to the yen exchange rate on the hollowing out of the Japanese industrial sector. To this end, the paper uses both aggregate and industry‐specific data to gauge the effects of yen fluctuations on the output and exports of different Japanese industries, exploiting new data for industry‐specific real effective exchange rates. Our findings support the view that the periods of yen appreciation had more than just transitory effects on Japanese manufacturing. The results also provide indication of hysteresis effects on manufacturing. While there are certainly also other factors that have contributed to a hollowing out of Japanese industry, a strong yen played a role, too. |
| Keywords: | Yen appreciation, exchange rates, Japanese manufacturing, hollowing out, hysteresis |
| JEL: | F31 O14 |
| Date: | 2019–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rmn:wpaper:201908&r=all |
| By: | Robert W. Dimand (Department of Economics, Brock University) |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the development of dynamic modelling of macroeconomic fluctuations at the Cowles Commission from Roos, Dynamic Economics (Cowles Monograph No. 1, 1934) and Davis, Analysis of Economic Time Series (Cowles Monograph No. 6, 1941) to Koopmans, ed., Statistical Inference in Dynamic Economic Models (Cowles Monograph No. 10, 1950) and Klein’s Economic Fluctuations in the United States, 1921-1941 (Cowles Monograph No. 11, 1950), emphasizing the emergence of a distinctive Cowles Commission approach to structural modelling of macroeconomic fluctuations influenced by Cowles Commission work on structural estimation of simulation equations models, as advanced by Haavelmo (“A Probability Approach to Econometrics,” Cowles Commission Paper No. 4, 1944) and in Cowles Monographs Nos. 10 and 14. This paper is part of a larger project, a history of the Cowles Commission and Foundation commissioned by the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics at Yale University. Presented at the Association Charles Gide workshop “Macroeconomics: Dynamic Histories. When Statics is no longer Enough,” Colmar, May 16-19, 2019. |
| Keywords: | Macroeconomic dynamics, Cowles Commission, Business cycles, Lawrence R. Klein, Tjalling C. Koopmans |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2195&r=all |
| By: | Owen Thompson (Williams College) |
| Abstract: | Prior to the racial integration of schools in the southern United States, predominantly African American schools were staffed almost exclusively by African American teachers as well, and teaching constituted an extraordinarily large share of professional employment among southern blacks. The large-scale desegregation of southern schools occurring after passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act represented a potential threat to this employment base, and this paper estimates how student integration affected black teacher employment. Using newly assembled archival data from 781 southern school districts observed between 1964 and 1972, I estimate that a school district transitioning from fully segregated to fully integrated education, which approximates the experience of the modal southern district in this period, led to a 25% reduction in black teacher employment. A series of tests indicate that these employment reductions were not due to school district self-selection into desegregation or unobserved district characteristics associated with desegregation. Additional estimates using synthetic cohorts from the Decennial Censuses indicate that displaced southern black teachers either entered lower skill occupations within the South or migrated out of the region to continue teaching, and that southern school districts compensated for reduced black teacher employment by employing fewer total teachers and by increasing their recruitment of white teachers, especially less experienced white teachers and white male teachers. |
| Keywords: | School desegregation, education, African-American employment |
| Date: | 2019–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wil:wileco:2019-14&r=all |
| By: | Harold Carter |
| Abstract: | Social intervention by governments in liberal democracies faces two major problems. The first is that it tends to reward the majority at the expense of the weak; there is no agreed way to trade-off the claims of different groups on a limited pool of resources, so it comes down to political muscle. The second is that support for intervention depends on a continuing flow of new resources, to fix each new problem while still preserving the interests of existing clients – and as a result, subsidies and controls multiply, despite the fact that they often pursue conflicting goals. In the early days of the British welfare state these dilemmas were resolved by shared assumptions that were fundamentally illiberal, excluding some groups altogether and enabling a clear pecking order amongst the rest. By the end of the century these narratives had largely been rejected. What happened was not a collapse in the fact of collective provision (which continued to grow) but a collapse in the narrative by which it was understood. Unable to resist popular pressure to spend more, governments were also unable to build the public confidence necessary to persuade taxpayers to pay for what they wanted. The easiest course of action was to give in to vested interests; to fund as much as possible by borrowing, on and off the balance sheet; and once the money started to run out, to give in to the most powerful groups, and to pay proportionately less attention to the less vocal. |
| Date: | 2019–02–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:esohwp:_168&r=all |
| By: | Sascha O. Becker; Erik Hornung |
| Abstract: | Did the Prussian three-class franchise, which politically over-represented the economic elite, affect policy-making? Combining MP-level political orientation, derived from all roll call votes in the Prussian parliament (1867–1903), with constituency characteristics, we analyze how local vote inequality, determined by tax payments, affected policymaking during Prussia’s period of rapid industrialization. Contrary to the predominant view that the franchise system produced a conservative parliament, higher vote inequality is associated with more liberal voting, especially in regions with large-scale industry. We argue that industrialists preferred self-serving liberal policies and were able to coordinate on suitable MPs when vote inequality was high. |
| Keywords: | inequality, political economy, three-class franchise, elites, Prussia |
| JEL: | D72 N43 N93 P26 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7801&r=all |
| By: | Hamark, Jesper (Department of Economic History, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University); Collin, Kristoffer (Department of Economic History, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University) |
| Abstract: | Most researchers interested in Swedish wages during early industrialization have used the seminal work Wages in Sweden from the 1930s as their point of departure. Whereas the material in Wages in Sweden solidly tracks the movements of wages, it is not suitable for comparisons across industries or counties at a specific point in time. Nor should Wages in Sweden be used to estimate wages in absolute levels. Based on hitherto-unused source material from a large, nationwide public inquiry, we estimate industrial wages in the mid-1880s. The population consists of industrial workers with different experience, skills and firm attachment. Our estimations include a national wage as well as inter-industry and inter-regional wages in both absolute and relative terms, weighted by employment. The findings call for a substantial revision of relative wages across industries. They also indicate that the wage dispersion across industries and counties was lower than previously thought. We estimate the national wage for women as being half the size of that of men. |
| Keywords: | Sweden 1880s; industrial wages; regional wages; absolute wage levels; relative wages; male and female wages; Gösta Bagge; Wages in Sweden |
| JEL: | J31 N01 N30 |
| Date: | 2019–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunhis:0024&r=all |
| By: | Beestermöller, Matthias; Rauch, Ferdinand |
| Abstract: | We study trade in Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain, and show that the countries of the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy trade significantly more with one another after 1989 than predicted by a standard gravity model. Cultural trading capital, established under Habsburg rule and maintained in the period of the Iron Curtain, seems to have survived over four decades of separation and gives an initial boost to trade. This surplus trade disappeared rapidly after 1990 as countries rearranged themselves with the new geopolitical circumstances. We document the rate of decay of these forces. |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lmu:muenar:62871&r=all |
| By: | Wilfried Kisling; Antonio Tena Junguito |
| Abstract: | This article identifies and analyzes the determinants of the success of German exports to Argentina between 1875 and 1913, the fastest emerging market in South America at that time. New German technology and increasing productivity were complemented by banking and financial support for trade. We find that industrial sectors linked to German foreign banks (Auslandsbanken) in Argentina benefited from privileged access to financial support and hence exported more in comparison with other leading industrial countries. Our findings contribute to the literature on Latin American emerging markets and the role of finance in the development of foreign trade. |
| Date: | 2019–08–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:esohwp:_171&r=all |
| By: | Noel Packard (University of Auckland) |
| Abstract: | Marx?s Machine Age theory of capitalism ascribes a unique driving role for alienation and argues new modes of production emerge from past modes of production. Presently so-called surveillance capitalism is superseding Machine Age capitalism and distributing wealth unequally to a 1% global elite. There are debates about what alienation is at work in this changed epoch. Premised on Marx?s idea that modes of production are born in the previous epoch along with the alienation that works with them, a hypothesis about how today?s Internet enables both endless free speech, while inversely and simultaneously, enabling endless spying with impunity is presented here. The hypothesis is a conceptualization of alienation labeled as ?known unknown.? The adaption of the term ?known unknown alienation? stems from the discourse in the film, ?The Unknown Known? which highlights aspects of known unknown alienation, in the form of so-called national security experts who are mentally divided about what they can and can not know (or talk about) and also the divide between the expert and the taxpayer, who does not qualify to have access to the same information that the expert has. This personal internal contradiction and social alienation is compounded because Americans are proud of US constitutionally protected free speech rights (which according to The Citizens United Act allows corporations to be individuals); these contradictions help drive surveillance capitalism. The historical-comparative argument is: ?Communist hunting? intelligence agents, scientists, and contractors, backed by neoliberal economists, built a military-industrial-complex that obligated them to both known and not know, or in the case of the CIA be ?witting? of national security secrets, which alienated them from US constitutional free speech. Their alienation manifest in their interactive inventions - the Internet, pc and cell phone - devices that today dialectically give customers the ability to express free speech endlessly in electronic memory form, while inversely giving spies unlimited access to that speech with impunity. This process works in tandem: enabling appropriation of data for government surveillance and service fee payments for corporations. |
| Keywords: | alienation, Internet, neoliberal, Cold War, intelligence, surveillance, witting |
| JEL: | H54 H56 O33 |
| Date: | 2019–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:9211641&r=all |
| By: | Carlos Mallorquin (Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas); ; |
| Abstract: | The article discusses a recent book publication by Philip Pilkington, in which an interesting and novel reconceptualizing of the investment (accumulation) process and economic growth is proposed. The gaze and critique through which the book is examined underlines certain theoretical similarities found in the Latin American economic discourse during the 1950´s, denominated as “Latin American structuralism”, in Anglo Saxon or European academia. Central to its perspective is the examination of economic formations and its agents as a configuration of power asymmetries. |
| Keywords: | Desarrollo, crecimiento económico, asimetrías. |
| JEL: | B22 B41 B50 |
| Date: | 2019–08–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cjz:ca41cj:53&r=all |
| By: | Cuevas Casaña, Joaquim; Martín Aceña, Pablo; Pons Brias, María A. |
| Abstract: | This paper explores why Spanish banks internationalise and why Latin America has been the main region for the international expansion of BBVA and Santander. It shows that prior to 1986 Spanish banks had a limited presence abroad, and analyses the main drivers of this initial expansion (remittances and trade connections). However, from 1986 on, there was a confluence of domestic and external factors (economic and regulatory changes in Latin America) that encouraged the international forays of BBVA and Santander. The fact that changes in the Spanish and the Latin American financial sectors occurred just when other transnational banks were turning their attention to other regions created the optimal conditions for the expansion of Spanish banks in Latin America. |
| Keywords: | Banking globalisation,Financial markets in Latin America,Spanish banks |
| JEL: | G15 G21 N26 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:eabhps:1902&r=all |
| By: | Owen Thompson (Williams College) |
| Abstract: | Large black-white fertility differences are a key feature of US demography, and are closely related to the broader dynamics of US racial inequality. To better understand the origins and determinants of racial fertility differentials, this paper examines fertility patterns in the period surrounding passage and implementation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which precipitated a period of rapid socioeconomic and political progress among African Americans, with these gains strongly concentrated in the South. I first show that the relative fertility of southern black women precipitously declined immediately after 1964. Specifically, as of 1964 the general fertility rate of southern black women was 53 births greater than the general fertility rate of southern white women, but by 1969 this gap had fallen to 33 births, a decline of approximately 40% in five years. The black-white fertility gap outside of the South was unchanged over this period. Measures of completed childbearing similarly show rapid black-white fertility convergence in the South but not in the North. An analysis of potential mechanisms finds that a substantial share of the observed fertility convergence can be explained by relative improvements in the earnings of southern blacks, and that the historical intensity of slavery and lynching activity are the strongest spacial correlates of fertility convergence |
| Keywords: | Civil rights, fertility, demography |
| Date: | 2019–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wil:wileco:2019-13&r=all |
| By: | Takalo, Tuomas |
| Abstract: | I calibrate switching cost for the Finnish retail deposit market by using the approach developed by Oz Shy (2002). It turns out that switching costs faced by deposit customers of the main banks are high, ranging from 200 euros to nearly 1,400 euros. Over the past 20 years, switching costs have increased by roughly 50% in real terms, but in relation to average account balance, switching costs have not essentially changed. I conjecture that differences in the switching costs among the Finnish banks might be explained by differences in their loyalty programs. |
| JEL: | G21 L13 L49 |
| Date: | 2019–09–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bof:bofrdp:2019_015&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) |
| Date: | 2019–08–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02277837&r=all |
| By: | Oana Horhogea (Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iasi, Romania) |
| Abstract: | In history, between Law and Religion there existed an important connection because both have their origin in establishing some norms regulating the conduct of man in the society. Thus, if at the beginning, the religious and the legal norms were almost identical, over time these began to differentiate, preserving, however, a latent and permanent connection. In its evolution, law has always represented an assembly of behavioural rules in the social connections, whose main feature is the mandatory feature establish for all its members of a society. By studying religion, we can establish similar rules as the law ones, having as purpose the creation of a manner for preserving peace and understanding between individuals, without family links, rules which had to be complied with by all the participants in a social, economic or religious process. |
| Keywords: | evolution, law, norms, religion, rules |
| Date: | 2019–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:dpaper:043oh&r=all |
| By: | Manuel García-Santana; Josep Pijoan-Mas; Lucciano Villacorta |
| Abstract: | In this paper we study the joint evolution of the investment rate and the sectoral composition of developing economies. Using panel data for several countries in different stages of development we document three novel facts: (a) both the investment rate and the industrial weight in the economy are strongly correlated and follow a hump-shaped profile with development, (b) investment goods contain more domestic value added from industry and less from services than consumption goods do, and (c) the evolution of the sectoral composition of investment and consumption goods differs from the one of GDP. We build and estimate a multi-sector growth model to fit these patterns. Our results highlight a novel mechanism of structural change: the evolution of the investment rate driven by the standard income and substitution effect of transitional dynamics explains half of the hump in industry with development, while the standard income and relative price effects explain the rest. We also find that the evolution of investment demand is quantitatively important to understand the industrialization of several countries since 1950 and the deindustrialization of many Western economies since 1970. |
| Keywords: | structural change; investment; growth; transitional dynamics |
| JEL: | E23 E21 O41 |
| Date: | 2019–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bge:wpaper:1113&r=all |
| By: | C. Knick Harley |
| Date: | 2019–05–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:esohwp:_170&r=all |
| By: | Serratos-Sotelo, L.; |
| Abstract: | Recent research showed that exposure to the vaccine against polio in early life had no longterm economic benefits among native Swedes. However, whether this result holds for individuals from other countries remains unexplored. This study explores the relationship between exposure to the vaccine and later-life outcomes, but focuses on individuals who migrated to Sweden (birth cohorts 1946-1971), who constitute a diverse sample in terms of national origin. Using a differences-in-differences approach and register data from the Swedish Longitudinal Immigrant Database, this study explores if being exposed to the vaccine against polio in the year of birth in the country of origin has any impact on adult income, educational achievement, nor days or number of hospitalizations. The results are in line with the previous research in showing that there are no statistically significant effects on adult income, education, or health from exposure to the vaccine against polio, regardless of national origin. Furthermore, no scarring effects of exposure to polio epidemics were found on any of the outcomes, reinforcing the hypothesis that polio did not scar individuals in the same way as other contemporary epidemic diseases did, and that the lack of scarring could explain the absence of long-term impact from vaccine exposure. |
| Keywords: | vaccine; polio; income; education; early-life; Sweden; migration; |
| JEL: | I15 I18 H41 N34 |
| Date: | 2019–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yor:hectdg:19/19&r=all |
| By: | William W. Olney (University of Hawai‘i) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the economic implications of the Jones Act, which is a 1920 U.S. cabotage law that restricts domestic waterborne shipments to American vessels. The rapid rise of the Asian shipbuilding industry over the last century has contributed to the closure of most American shipyards and to the decline in American built ships. Thus, the Jones Act requirements have become more onerous over time. The results show that the decline in Jones-Act-eligible vessels, instrumented for using shipbuilding in another high-income country, has reduced domestic waterborne shipments into U.S. states relative to other modes of transport and relative to waterborne imports. These findings are stronger in coastal states and for commodities that are typically transported via water. Furthermore, there is evidence that this reduction in domestic trade, due to the Jones Act, has increased consumer prices. These findings support common, but to date unverified, claims that the Jones Act impedes domestic trade and drives up prices. |
| Keywords: | Cabotage, Jones Act, Shipping, Domestic Trade, Prices, Trade Policy |
| JEL: | F14 R48 |
| Date: | 2019–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hae:wpaper:2019-6&r=all |
| By: | Obaya, Martín |
| Abstract: | Con el propósito de contribuir a la comprensión de las dinámicas de los regímenes de gobernanza de los recursos naturales, se ha diseñado un estudio de caso sobre la explotación del litio en el Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia, que abarca el período comprendido entre la década de 1970 y la actualidad. Este se propone abordar dos objetivos específicos: i) caracterizar los distintos regímenes de gobernanza del litio que se han implementado en estos años, con un foco particular en el período 2003-2018; y ii) comprender qué factores explican la configuración del régimen de gobernanza en un determinado período y dan cuenta de sus cambios a través del tiempo. |
| Keywords: | RECURSOS NATURALES, RECURSOS MINERALES, METALES, INDUSTRIA MINERA, DESARROLLO INDUSTRIAL, POLITICA DE RECURSOS MINERALES, DESARROLLO SOSTENIBLE, ESTUDIOS DE CASOS, NATURAL RESOURCES, MINERAL RESOURCES, METALS, MINING INDUSTRY, INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT, MINERAL RESOURCES POLICY, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, CASE STUDIES |
| Date: | 2019–08–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecr:col022:44776&r=all |