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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
|
Issue of 2020‒06‒08
thirty-one papers chosen by |
| By: | Robert J. Barro |
| Abstract: | Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) were measured by Markel, et al. (2007) for U.S. cities during the second wave of the Great Influenza Pandemic, September 1918-February 1919. The NPIs were in three categories: school closings, prohibitions on public gatherings, and quarantine/isolation. An increase in NPIs sharply reduced the ratio of peak to average deaths, with a larger effect when NPIs were treated as endogenous. However, the estimated effect on overall deaths was small and statistically insignificant. The likely reason that the NPIs were not more successful in curtailing mortality is that the interventions had a mean duration of only around one month. |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8245&r=all |
| By: | Basco, Sergi; Domenech, Jordi; Roses, Joan R. |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the impact of a pandemic in a developing economy. Measured by excess deaths relative to the historical trend, the 1918 influenza in Spain was one of the most intense in Western Europe. However, aggregate output and consumption were only mildly affected. In this paper we assess the impact of the flu by exploiting within-country variation in “excess deaths” and we focus on the returns to factors of production. Our main result is that the effect of flu-related “excess deaths” on real wages is large, negative, and short-lived. The effects are heterogeneous across occupations, from null to a 15 per cent decline,concentrated in 1918. The negative effects are exacerbated in more urbanized provinces. In addition, we do not find effects of the flu on the returns to capital. Indeed, neither dividends nor real estate prices (houses and land) were negatively affected by flu-related increases in mortality. Our interpretation is that the Spanish Flu represented a negative demand shock that was mostly absorbed by workers, especially in more urbanized regions. |
| Keywords: | pandemics; Spanish flu; real wages; returns to capital |
| JEL: | E32 I00 N10 N30 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:104605&r=all |
| By: | Carlos Álvarez-Nogal (Universidad Carlos III); Leandro Prados de la Escosura (Universidad Carlos III, CEPR); Carlos Santiago-Caballero (Universidad Carlos III) |
| Abstract: | The Black Death was the most devastating demographic shock in recorded human history. However, the effects in the European population were highly asymmetrical as were its economic consequences. This paper surveys the short and long run economic effects of the plague in Spain in European perspective. While the demographic impact in Spain was moderate compared to the European average, the economic effects were more severe and incomes per head fell sharply. This was a consequence of the existence of a frontier economy in Spain characterised by a relative scarcity of labour and a fragile equilibrium between factors of production. Unlike most of Europe, in Spain the Black Death increased inequality as the remuneration of labour decreased more rapidly than proprietors’ gains. In the long term the Plague reinforced the frontier economy status. |
| Keywords: | Black Death, Frontier economy, Malthusian, Spain, income, inequality |
| JEL: | I10 N13 N33 O52 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0184&r=all |
| By: | Leandro Prados de la Escosura (Universidad Carlos III, CEPR); Carlos-Vladimir Rodríguez-Caballero (IITAM, Mexico, and CREATES, Aarhus University) |
| Abstract: | This paper contributes to the debate on the origins of modern economic growth in Europe from a very long-run perspective using econometric techniques that allow for a long-range dependence approach. Different regimes, defined by endogenously estimated structural shocks, coincided with episodes of pandemics and war. The most persistent shocks occurred at the time of the Black Death and the twentieth century’s world wars. Our findings confirm that the Black Death often resulted in higher income levels, but reject the view of a uniform long-term response to the Plague while evidence a negative reaction in non-Malthusian economies. Positive trend growth in output per head and population took place in the North Sea Area (Britain and the Netherlands) since the Plague. A gap between the North Sea Area and the rest of Europe, the Little Divergence, emerged between the early seventeenth century and the Napoleonic Wars lending support to Broadberry-van Zanden’s interpretation. |
| Keywords: | Long-run Growth, Little Divergence, War, Pandemics, Malthusian |
| JEL: | E01 N10 N30 N40 O10 O47 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0185&r=all |
| By: | Doerr, Sebastian; Gissler, Stefan; Peydró, José-Luis; Voth, Hans-Joachim |
| Abstract: | Do financial crises radicalize voters? We study Germany’s banking crisis of 1931, when two major banks collapsed and voting for radical parties soared. We collect new data on bank branches and firm-bank connections of 5,610 firms. Incomes plummeted in cities affected by the bank failures; connected firms curtailed payrolls. Nazi votes surged in locations exposed to Danatbank, led by a Jewish manager – but not in those suffering from the other bank’s failure. Unobservables or pre-trends do not explain the results. Danatbank’s collapse boosted Nazi support, especially in cities with deep-seated anti-Semitism, suggesting a synergy between cultural and economic channels. |
| Keywords: | financial crises,political extremism,populism,anti-Semitism,Great Depression |
| JEL: | E44 G01 G21 N20 P16 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:216784&r=all |
| By: | Edith Archambault (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne) |
| Abstract: | After a brief history of French civil society and its relationship with the State and the Church, highlighting the main similarities and differences with other European countries, the landscape of French civil society and religious communities nowadays is sketched out, while their relationships with the State are presented according to their components. Finally, the chapter focuses on the most conflictual part of French civil society, namely education, which has been the sources of a recurrent "school war" between the Church and the State. The conclusion notes that France is now a welfare partnership country as its Continental neighbours, even if relationships with religious communities are less developed. |
| Keywords: | religious communities,civil society,State/Church separation,laity,Catholic schools |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-02095725&r=all |
| By: | Gaggl, Paul (University of North Carolina at Charlotte); Gray, Rowena (University of California, Merced); Marinescu, Ioana E. (University of Pennsylvania); Morin, Miguel (The Alan Turing Institute) |
| Abstract: | Electricity is a general purpose technology and the catalyst for the second industrial revolution. What was its impact on the structure of employment? We use U.S. Census data from 1910 to 1940 and measure electrification with the length of higher-voltage electricity lines. Instrumenting for electrification using hydro-electric potential, we find that the average expansion of high-voltage transmission lines between 1910 and 1940 increased the share of operatives in a county by 3.3 percentage points and decreased the share of farmers by 2.1 percentage points. Electrification can explain 50.5% of the total increase in operatives, and 18.1% of the total decrease in farmers between 1910 and 1940. At the industry level, electrification drove 15.7% of the decline in the share of agricultural employment and 28.4% of the increase in the share of manufacturing employment between 1910 and 1940. Electrification was thus a key driver of structural transformation in the U.S. economy. |
| Keywords: | technological change, electrification, structural change |
| JEL: | E25 E22 J24 J31 N32 N72 O33 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13243&r=all |
| By: | Ekpo Akpan H; Ndebbio John E. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aer:wpaper:44&r=all |
| By: | Trabelsi, Mohamed Ali; Ahmed, Salah |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the role of democracy in strengthening the resilience of developing economies in the face of exogenous external shocks. Our study uses the duration model to estimate how external shocks and democracy determine the probable duration of a spell of economic growth. Examining a panel of 96 developing countries observed over the 1965-2015 period, we found that democracy is a resilience factor, insofar as it helps to support growth spells in the event of negative external shocks. |
| Keywords: | Resilience; Economic growth; Developing countries; Democracy; Survival models. |
| JEL: | E32 E60 F43 O11 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:100382&r=all |
| By: | Chu, Angus C.; Peretto, Pietro; Wang, Xilin |
| Abstract: | This study explores how agricultural technology affects the endogenous takeoff of an economy in the Schumpeterian growth model. Due to the subsistence requirement for agricultural consumption, an improvement in agricultural technology leads to a reallocation of labor from the agricultural sector to the industrial sector. Therefore, the agricultural improvement expands the firm size in the industrial sector, which determines the incentives for innovation and triggers an endogenous transition from stagnation to growth. Calibrating the model to US data for a quantitative analysis, we find that without the reallocation of labor from agriculture to the industrial sector in the early 19th century, the takeoff of the US economy would have been delayed by about four decades. |
| Keywords: | agricultural technology; endogenous takeoff; innovation; economic growth |
| JEL: | O3 O4 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:100321&r=all |
| By: | Bidard, Christian (EconomiX, Université Paris Nanterre); Erreygers, Guido (Department of Economics, University of Antwerp) |
| Abstract: | Smith, Ricardo, Marx and Sraffa made no theoretical distinction between exhaustible resources and lands. The very notion of exhaustibility, however, can be opposed to that of ‘indestructible powers of the soil’ (Ricardo) and calls for a specific analysis distinct from that of rent. The diversity of the contemporary attempts to deal with that question in a classical framework shows how varied are the understandings of the main methodological features of classical theory. Three crucial points emerge: first, the treatment of prices, which are invariant in classical theory but, according to the Hotelling rule, are changing through time for exhaustible resources; second, the notion and the measure of the rate of profits; and, third, the relationship between economic analysis and a more historical and sociological approach stressing the balances of power between classes. Our own approach starts from a very simple model, called the corn-guano model, where guano is the exhaustible resource, and examines the dynamics of such an economy on the physical side and the value side. These lessons serve as a basis for an extension to multisector models. We provide a critical assessment of a few alternative approaches developed by Sraffian scholars. |
| Keywords: | exhaustible resources; classical theory; Hotelling rule; Sraffian approach |
| JEL: | B24 Q32 |
| Date: | 2020–05–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:sraffa:0040&r=all |
| By: | Esposito, Federico |
| Abstract: | This paper uses the Jeffersonian Embargo enacted in 1807 to estimate the welfare costs of autarky. I use an Armington trade model to compute the welfare losses using two sufficient statistics: the share of expenditures on domestic goods and the elasticity of substitution between domestic and imported goods. I use historical data from 1792 to 1807 to estimate the Armington elasticity, using import tariffs as instrument for relative prices. The empirical findings suggest welfare losses of 2.83-8.14% of real income. |
| Keywords: | Autarky; welfare gains from trade; Jeffersonian Embargo; Armington elasticity |
| JEL: | F00 N0 N00 N7 N71 |
| Date: | 2020–03–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:100120&r=all |
| By: | Michael Fritsch (Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), Germany); Maria Kristalova (Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany); Michael Wyrwich (University of Groningen, The Netherlands, and Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany) |
| Abstract: | We investigate how major historical shocks affect regional trajectories of economic activity. To this end, we conduct a comparative analysis of the development of entrepreneurship in East and West Germany after World War II. The introduction of an anti-entrepreneurial socialist economy in East Germany in 1949, and the subsequent transformation to a market economy four decades later were major historical shocks to the economy in general, and to entrepreneurship specifically. Our comparative analysis of East and West Germany assesses how these shocks affected the level of entrepreneurship at the regional level. Surprisingly, our results show that socialism does not have a long-run negative effect on the prevalence of self-employment in East Germany, despite the severe anti- entrepreneurial policies prevalent in Soviet-style socialism. Quite to the contrary, there is actually a positive treatment effect of German separation and reunification. Further analyses suggest that current structural differences in regional levels of self-employment in Germany are not pre- dominantly due to the socialist legacy of the East, but mainly a result of the shock transformation that occurred with reunification. |
| Keywords: | Entrepreneurship, self-employment, transition, socialism, regional development, GDR |
| JEL: | L26 R11 N94 P25 |
| Date: | 2020–06–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2020-010&r=all |
| By: | Gasper, D.R. |
| Abstract: | The work of economist and philosopher Amartya Sen (1933-) has attracted attention in other fields too, including in political science, human geography, planning, health and social policy, and, to a lesser but growing extent, in sociology and occasionally anthropology. This paper, written as part of a project on Indian social theorists, discusses Sen’s relation to social theorizing. While he is not a ‘social theorist’ in the sense recognized in sociology and anthropology, being grounded instead in the earlier perspectives of Adam Smith, Condorcet and J.S. Mill, much of his work, both theoretical and empirical, proves of interest to a wide range of social scientists. The paper’s first main part outlines his contributions as a social analyst, under four connected headings: (1) theorization on how people reason as agents within society; (2) ‘entitlements analysis’ of the social determinants of people’s access or lack of access to goods; (3) theorizing the effective freedoms and agency that people enjoy or lack, in his ‘capability approach’ (CA); (4) treatments of societal membership, identity and political life, including a liberal theory of personal identity and a strong advocacy of and high expectations for ‘voice’ and deliberative democracy. The second part characterizes Sen’s intellectual style, marked by systematic conceptual refinement, associated emphases on complexity, heterogeneity, and individuality, including personal individuality, and a reformist optimism. The third part treats his relation to ‘social theory’ as considered by sociologists, including the connections, contributions and possible blind spots: in his attention to work by sociologists, in his system for theorizing human action in society, in treatment of power structures and capitalism, and in his optimistic programmatic conception of personhood that stresses the freedom to make a reasoned composition of personal identity. The final substantial part discusses his preoccupation with public reasoning and democracy, and the focus on an arguably idealized version of the former and relative neglect of the sociology of the latter. It contrasts the ideal of a reasoning polity with features and trends in independent India. Nevertheless, Sen’s programmes or critical autonomy in personhood and for reasoned politics carry significant normative force, and his analytical formats can help not only structured evaluation but investigation of obstacles to more widespread agency, voice and democratic participation. |
| Keywords: | capability approach, democracy, freedom, identity, public reasoning |
| Date: | 2020–05–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ems:euriss:126789&r=all |
| By: | Battistin, Erich (University of Maryland); Becker, Sascha O. (Monash University); Nunziata, Luca (University of Padova) |
| Abstract: | We investigate how changes in the sex ratio induced by World War II affected the bargaining patterns of Italian men in the marriage market after the war. Marriage data from the first wave of the Italian Household Longitudinal Survey (1997) are matched with newly digitized information on war casualties coming from Italian National Bureau of Statistics. We find that men in postwar marriages were better off in terms of their spouse's education, this gain amounting to about half a year of education. By considering heterogeneity across provinces, we find that the effects were more pronounced in more rural provinces, mountainous provinces, and those with a higher share of population employed in agriculture. This suggests that here, the shock provided for a more fundamental change in marriage patterns compared to urban, lower-lying, and less agricultural provinces where marriage markets might have been more flexible to begin with. |
| Keywords: | education, marriage, sex ratio, World War II |
| JEL: | J12 N34 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13217&r=all |
| By: | Jean Claude Saha (University of Ngaoundere) |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aer:wpaper:225&r=all |
| By: | Burgess, Robin; Greenstone, Michael; Ryan, Nicholas; Sudarshan, Anant |
| JEL: | N0 J1 |
| Date: | 2020–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:104591&r=all |
| By: | Bautista, María Angélica; González, Felipe; Martínez, Luis; Muñoz, Pablo; Prem, Mounu |
| Abstract: | Hostile policies towards higher education are a prominent feature of authoritarian regimes. We study the capture of higher education by the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile following the 1973 coup. We find three main results: (i) cohorts that reached college age shortly after the coup experienced a large drop in college enrollment as a result of the systematic reduction in the number of openings for incoming students decreed by the regime; (ii) these cohorts had worse economic outcomes throughout the life cycle and struggled to climb up the socioeconomic ladder, especially women; (iii) children with parents in the affected cohorts also have a substantially lower probability of college enrollment. These results demonstrate that the political capture of higher education in non-democracies hinders social mobility and leads to a persistent reduction in human capital accumulation, even after democratization. |
| Keywords: | Dictatorship; Higher education; Social mobility; Intergenerational transmission |
| JEL: | I23 I24 I25 P51 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rie:riecdt:42&r=all |
| By: | Hartmann, Dominik; Zagato, Lígia Maria de Jesus Cestari; Gala, Paulo; Pinheiro, Flávio L. |
| Abstract: | Development studies on the middle-income trap have highlighted the challenges for developing economies to transform their productive systems from simple towards high valueadded activities. Here, we use trade data of 116 countries to quantify the stages of productive sophistication and reveal the critical phase that countries encounter at intermediate levels of economic sophistication. Our results reveal that only five countries (i.e. Ireland, Israel, Hungary, Singapore, and South Korea) overcame the gravitation towards simple products and fully transformed their economies towards complex products between 1970 and 2010. They successfully made use of windows of opportunities in the digital and electronics sectors through smart industrial policies that promoted endogenous skills and access to international knowledge sources. In contrast, countries like Brazil or South Africa still struggle with the gravitation towards simple economic activities, social fragmentation, and a lack of coherent industrial policies. |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fgv:eesptd:526&r=all |
| By: | Michaels, Guy; Rauch, Ferdinand; Redding, Stephen |
| Abstract: | We develop a new methodology for quantifying the tasks undertaken within occupations using over 3,000 verbs from more than 12,000 occupational descriptions in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOTs). Using micro-data from the United States from 1880-2000, we find an increase in the employment share of interactive occupations within sectors over time that is larger in metro areas than non-metro areas. We interpret these findings using a model in which reductions in transport and communication costs induce urban areas to specialize according to their comparative advantage in interactive tasks. We presenting suggestive evidence relating increases in employment in interactive occupations to improvements in transport and communication technologies. Our findings highlight a change in the nature of agglomeration over time towards an increased emphasis on human interaction. |
| Keywords: | economic development; human interaction; urbanization |
| JEL: | N0 |
| Date: | 2019–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:85163&r=all |
| By: | Dalton, John; Logan, Andrew |
| Abstract: | This paper builds upon the work of Dalton and Logan (forthcoming a) by describing the motivation for and mechanics of teaching a course dedicated to Schumpeter as a study abroad program in the city of Vienna. We argue that the qualities Vienna possesses, both historical and contemporary, make a good laboratory for exploring Schumpeter's ideas and that the process of encountering a new culture through a study abroad course is the best way to internalize his theory of innovation. To do so, our paper first outlines the course content before describing the linkages between "techno-romantic" Vienna and Schumpeter's intellectual development. We then describe specific examples for how instructors can use Vienna as a laboratory for teaching Schumpeter's ideas. We close by sharing preparatory details for instructors and offering the perspective of a student who took this course in the summer of 2018. |
| Keywords: | Joseph Schumpeter; Vienna; Innovation; Entrepreneurship; Creative Destruction; Study Abroad; Education |
| JEL: | A20 B30 O31 O33 P00 |
| Date: | 2020–05–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:100372&r=all |
| By: | Lesch, Hagen |
| Abstract: | Nach heftigen Auseinandersetzungen im deutschen Reichstag und auf der Straße trat am 4. Februar 1920 das sogenannte Betriebsrätegesetz in Kraft. Dieses Gesetz stellt die Geburtsstunde der betrieblichen Mitbestimmung in Deutschland dar. Zwar hatte der Betriebsrat mit den Arbeiterausschüssen einen Vorläufer. Schon die Gewerbeordnung von 1891 sah vor, in Betrieben mit mehr als 20 Mitarbeitern Arbeiterausschüsse einzurichten, allerdings auf freiwilliger Basis. Aber erst mit dem Betriebsrätegesetz wurden betriebliche Interessenvertretungen verbindlich verankert und den Betriebsräten Mitwirkungs- und Mitbestimmungsrechte in sozialen und personellen Angelegenheiten eingeräumt. Dabei war das während des Ersten Weltkriegs erlassene Gesetz über den vaterländischen Hilfsdienst (1916) ein wichtiger Wegbereiter. Dieses schrieb vor, Arbeiter- und Angestelltenausschüsse in kriegs- und versorgungswichtigen Betrieben mit mehr als 50 Beschäftigten verpflichtend einzuführen (BMAS, 2018, 15 ff.). |
| JEL: | J53 J58 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:iwkrep:212020&r=all |
| By: | J. James Reade (Department of Economics, University of Reading) |
| Abstract: | Economists are interested in outcomes - the results of decisions made regarding scarce resources by agents acting within environments that they must take as given. Sport, and football in particular, offers insight into a wide range of measurable outcomes, and provides vast amounts of data on the decision making that surrounded such outcomes. Usually in the context of individual footballing contexts, the immediate rewards are symmetric in that they apply equally to each team: a team that wins will progress in a competition, or in a league structure will gain three points, and a single point if the match is drawn. Despite this, there have been variations over the years in terms of the rewards on offer, usually as an attempt to encourage more exciting play, to discourage attempts at cheating, and thus to attract more spectator demand. Indeed, it is only since the 1980s that three points for a win became commonplace across football, and before that a range of different incentive systems have been experimented with. In France in the 1970s, bonus points were offered for teams scoring three or more goals. In other sports, bonus points are regularly awarded for attacking play. In this paper we investigate a particular experiment in Soviet football in the late 1970s and 1980s. In response to an increasing number of drawn outcomes, and concerns regarding corruption, a draw limit was introduced. Teams that had already drawn a particular number of matches in a given season would not gain a point for drawing any further matches. This led to an asymmetry in rewards, in particular if a team that had reached the draw limit faced a team that had not. We investigate whether this system had any impact on match outcomes. We find some evidence that it reduced the number of goals, and that as teams neared and exceeded the draw limit, they draw fewer matches. The experiment was, nonetheless, abandoned in 1988. |
| Keywords: | Tournamentdesign, contests, sport |
| JEL: | O1 C20 L83 |
| Date: | 2020–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rdg:emxxdp:em-dp2020-12&r=all |
| By: | Haelim Anderson; Jin-Wook Chang; Adam Copeland |
| Abstract: | The coronavirus outbreak raises the question of how central bank liquidity support affects financial stability and promotes economic recovery. Using newly assembled data on cross-county flu mortality rates and state-charter bank balance sheets in New York State, we investigate the effects of the 1918 influenza pandemic on the banking system and the role of the Federal Reserve during the pandemic. We find that banks located in more severely affected areas experienced deposit withdrawals. Banks that were members of the Federal Reserve System were able to access central bank liquidity, enabling them to continue or even expand lending. Banks that were not System members, however, did not borrow on the interbank market, but rather curtailed lending, suggesting that there was little-to-no pass-through of central bank liquidity. Further, in the counties most affected by the 1918 pandemic, even banks with direct access to the discount window did not borrow enough to offset large deposit withdrawals and so liquidated assets, suggesting limits to the effectiveness of liquidity provision by the Federal Reserve. Finally, we show that the pandemic caused only a short-term disruption in the financial sector. |
| Keywords: | 1918 influenza; pandemics; financial stability; bank lending; economic recovery; COVID-19 |
| JEL: | E32 G21 N22 |
| Date: | 2020–05–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednsr:88088&r=all |
| By: | BLINOV, Sergey |
| Abstract: | Today, increasing the growth rate of the Russian economy is more relevant than ever. Consideration of any macroeconomic phenomena that in a historical perspective would provide an economic recovery and increase the economic power of our country is of undoubted interest. One of the important aspects of this problem is the influence of monetary policy and specifically the increase in real money supply on economic growth in a broad historical perspective. The dynamics of the real money supply explains well the rapid growth of the Russian economy in 1999–2008 and the slow one from 2009 to 2019. Some features of monetary policy, in particular ignoring the important role of public debt as a stabilizer of the monetary system, can be considered as causes of economic policy failures in the recent past. From the perspective of a historical analysis of these recent events and a deeper immersion in economic history, we will try to find out what measures in the field of monetary and financial strategies and tactics can most effectively help accelerate Russia's economic development. |
| Keywords: | деньги; история; финансы; |
| JEL: | E40 E42 E50 E58 N00 N10 |
| Date: | 2020–05–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:100401&r=all |
| By: | Thierry Pouch (REGARDS - Recherches en Économie Gestion AgroRessources Durabilité Santé- EA 6292 - URCA - Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne) |
| Date: | 2020–03–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02570161&r=all |
| By: | Rolf Aaberge; Jørgen Modalsli (Statistics Norway); Anthony B. Atkinson |
| Abstract: | Most evidence on the long-run evolution of income inequality is restricted to top income shares. While this evidence is relevant and important for studying the concentration of economic power, it is incomplete as an informational basis for analysing inequality in the income distribution as a whole. This paper proposes a non-parametric approach for estimating inequality in the overall distribution of income on the basis of tabular data from different sources, some in a highly aggregated form. The proposed approach is applied to Norway, for which rich historical data exist. We find evidence of very high income inequality from the late nineteenth century until the eve of World War II, followed by a rapid equalization until the 1950s. Income inequality remained low during the post-war period but has increased steadily since the 1980s. Estimates of a measure of affluence demonstrate that overall inequality has largely been governed by changes in the top half of the distribution and in in the ratio between the mean incomes of the lower and upper halves of the population. |
| Keywords: | distribution of income; long-run inequality; the Gini coefficient; Norway |
| JEL: | D31 D63 N33 N34 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ssb:dispap:928&r=all |
| By: | Clay, Karen (Carnegie Mellon University); Lewis, Joshua (University of Montreal); Severnini, Edson R. (Carnegie Mellon University); Wang, Xiao (Carnegie Mellon University) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how better access to public health insurance affects infant mortality during pandemics. Our analysis combines cross-state variation in mandated eligibility for Medicaid with two influenza pandemics — the 1957-58 "Asian Flu" pandemic and the 1968-69 "Hong Kong Flu" — that arrived shortly before and after the program's introduction. Exploiting heterogeneity in the underlying severity of these two shocks across counties, we find no relationship between Medicaid eligibility and pandemic infant mortality during the 1957-58 outbreak. After Medicaid implementation, we find that better access to insurance in high-eligibility states substantially reduced infant mortality during the 1968-69 pandemic. The reductions in pandemic infant mortality are too large to be attributable solely to new Medicaid recipients, suggesting that the expansion in health insurance coverage mitigated disease transmission among the broader population. |
| Keywords: | public health insurance, medicaid, influenza pandemics |
| JEL: | I13 I18 N32 N52 |
| Date: | 2020–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13200&r=all |
| By: | Marco A Espinosa-Vega; Kazuko Shirono; Hector Carcel Villanova; Esha Chhabra; Bidisha Das; Yingjie Fan |
| Abstract: | This departmental paper marks the 10th anniversary of the IMF Financial Access Survey (FAS). It offers a retrospective of the FAS database, along with some reflections as to its future directions. Since its 2009 launch, the FAS has provided granular data on access to and use of financial services. It is a supply-side database with annual global coverage based on data sourced directly from financial service providers—aimed at supporting policymakers to target and evaluate financial inclusion policies. Its data collection has kept pace with financial innovation, such as the rise of mobile money and growing demand for gender-disaggregated data—and the FAS must continue to evolve. |
| Keywords: | Financial inclusion;Financial institutions;Inclusive growth;Economic development;Financial inclusion;Financial institutions;Inclusive growth;Economic development |
| Date: | 2020–05–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfdep:20/08&r=all |
| By: | Marie Hyland (World Bank); Simeon Djankov (Peterson Institute for International Economics); Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg (Peterson Institute for International Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides the first global look at how gender discrimination by the law affects women’s economic opportunity and charts the evolution of legal inequalities over five decades. Using the World Bank’s newly constructed Women, Business and the Law database, it documents large and persistent gender inequalities, especially with regard to pay and treatment of parenthood. The paper finds positive correlations between more equal laws pertaining to women in the workforce and more equal labor market outcomes, such as higher female labor force participation and a smaller wage gap between men and women. |
| Keywords: | Law, gender, discrimination |
| JEL: | J16 N40 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iie:wpaper:wp20-7&r=all |
| By: | Delgado Narro, Augusto Ricardo |
| Abstract: | The paper analyzes the convergence process in Japan by time series analysis and the existence of clubs of convergence by finding if they are endogenously conformed. We follow a two-stage approach. The first one consists of the analysis of stochastic convergence. Secondly, prove the existence of clubs of convergence among prefectures. We find two clubs of convergence conformed endogenously. The first club is integrated by 40 prefectures converging slowly toward a unique steady state. Five prefectures integrate the second club of convergence. Finally, Tokyo and Nara are not converging toward any steady-state like disconnected prefectures. |
| Keywords: | β-Convergence, Regional Economics, Growth, Clubs of Convergence |
| JEL: | O47 P25 R11 |
| Date: | 2020–05–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:100361&r=all |