|
on Business, Economic and Financial History |
|
Issue of 2020‒10‒12
thirty-two papers chosen by |
| By: | Gaia Narciso (Trinity College Dublin); Battista Severgnini (Copenhagen Business School); Gayane Vardanyan (Trinity College Dublin) |
| Abstract: | What is the long-run impact of large negative historical events on the individual decision to migrate? We investigate this research question by looking at the effect of the Great Irish Famine (1845-1850) on the long-run individual decision to migrate to the US during the Age of the Mass Migration. We construct a unique dataset based on two early 20th century Irish Censuses and the Ellis Island Administrative Records. This allows us to test whether the Great Irish Famine, one of the most lethal episodes of mass starvation in history, had a long-run impact on individuals’ migration decisions. Controlling for individual and geographical characteristics, we find that the Irish Famine was a significant long-run driver of individuals’ migration choices. |
| Keywords: | mass migration, negative shock, long-run impact, Great Famine |
| JEL: | F22 N33 N93 |
| Date: | 2020–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:2003&r=all |
| By: | Mikhail A. Vsemirnov (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | With intensive industrialization process St. Petersburg faced with urbanization by the second half of the 19th century. Due to the transformation of the city green spaces became part of this pro-cess, so environmental as well as health care issues occurred at the center of public debates. It was then that issues related to urban green spaces occurred in the focus of public attention. They became the main topics in periodicals, as well as in special brochures and publications on urban development. Gardens and parks were perceived as an important element of the urban environ-ment, as a significant public good, and they were crucial due to the recreational and sanitary point of view, as places necessary for residents to relax and to improve their health while walking there. As a result, green spaces have become part of the process of forming the public sphere in St. Petersburg. Ceasing to be private, they gradually offered more leisure activities for all resi-dents of the city. However, the (re)making of green spaces in St. Petersburg was a result of a clash of interests of different actors involved – gardeners and architects, who were members of professional communities, and representatives of the city municipality. The same interest was paid by citizens whose voices are explicitly seen in periodicals. Each interest group had different vision of how urban gardens and parks should have been organized and functioned. Examining extensive body of sources that included journal and wallpaper publications and official docu-ments of the office of city authorities I would like to analyze how different communities of ex-perts that were involved in these transformations worked with nature in the urban environment and to focus on contested character of the emerging green public spaces. |
| Keywords: | green spaces, St. Petersburg in 19th century, urbanization, spatial history, urban history |
| JEL: | Z |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:190/hum/2020&r=all |
| By: | Rogério Arthmar (Department of Economics, UFES); Michael McLure (Economics Discipline, Business School, University of Western Australia) |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the controversy over the use of mathematics in economics happened between 1899 and 1902 involving Vilfredo Pareto, Gustav Cassel, Knut Wicksell, and Gaetano Scorza, with Maffeo Pantaleoni playing the role of intermediary. It begins by recapping the content of Pareto’s early articles and his book Cours d’Économie Politique (1896-97), where he lays out his method of successive approximations, the mutual interdependence of economic phenomena, and Leibniz’s principle of continuity. After that, Cassel’s criticism of formalization in economics is presented, as firstly set forth in his Grundrisse einer elementaren preislehre (1899) and further developed in later works. Cassel’s own simplified system of equations for determining prices through the concept of scarcity is introduced. The next section covers a set of unpublished letters between Pareto, Pantaleoni, and Cassel sitting at the National Library of Sweden. These documents reveal significant aspects of academic life in Europe at the time, as well as the correspondents’ interests on pure theory. The last section reviews the reception of Cassel’s Grundriss by Wicksell, Scorza, and Pareto. A few appointments on the history of mathematics are included to indicate how the rift among the mentioned economists echoed the influence of French and German traditions in infinitesimal analysis and algebra. |
| Keywords: | utility, measurement, continuity, scarcity, general equilibrium |
| JEL: | B13 B16 B31 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uwa:wpaper:20-21&r=all |
| By: | Olivier Accominotti (LSE - Economic History Department - London school of economics and political science - LSE - London School of Economics and Political Science); Stefano Ugolini (LEREPS - Laboratoire d'Etude et de Recherche sur l'Economie, les Politiques et les Systèmes Sociaux - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - UT2J - Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès - Institut d'Études Politiques [IEP] - Toulouse - ENSFEA - École Nationale Supérieure de Formation de l'Enseignement Agricole de Toulouse-Auzeville) |
| Abstract: | This chapter presents a history of international trade finance - the oldest domain of international finance - from its emergence in the Middle Ages up to today. We describe how the structure and governance of the global trade finance market changed over time and how trade credit instruments evolved. 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 centres (Antwerp, Amsterdam, London). This process of market centralization/product standardization culminated in the nineteenth century when London became the global centre 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: | Bills of exchange,Letter of credit,Market structure,Trade finance |
| Date: | 2020–09–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02941654&r=all |
| By: | Elie Murard (IZA - Institute of Labor Economics); Seyhun Orcan Sakalli (King’s Business School, King’s College Londo) |
| Abstract: | We investigate the long-term consequences of mass refugee inflow on economic develop-ment. After the Greco-Turkish war of 1919–1922, 1.2 million Greek Orthodox were forciblyresettled from Turkey to Greece, increasing the host population by more than 20% within afew months. To examine the long-term effects of this event, we build a novel geocoded datasetlocating refugee settlements across the universe of more than four thousand Greek municipali-ties that existed in 1920. Using a battery of empirical strategies relying on different margins ofspatial and temporal variation in the refugee inflow, we find that localities with a greater shareof Greek refugees in 1923 display higher level of prosperity and industrialization sixty yearsafter the event. These long-run benefits of refugees appear to be driven by the provision of newagricultural know-how and the transfer of technological knowledge in textile, which fosteredgrowth through higher diversity in complementary skills. The economic gains of the resettle-ment were lower in places where refugees were clustered in separate enclaves and where theirskills were less easily transferable due to local geographic conditions. |
| Keywords: | Refugees, Immigration, historical persistence, economic development |
| JEL: | O10 O43 N34 N44 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:2005&r=all |
| By: | Pulapre Balakrishnan (Ashoka University); Mausumi Das (University of Delhi); M. Parameswaran (IIM, Kozhikode) |
| Abstract: | Growth has for long remained a central topic in economic policy considerations of the government in India. However, there has also been a scholarly interest in it among social scientists. As a part of the latter tradition, this paper addresses the proper delineation of the phases of growth in India, a matter of some discussion in the literature. Using state-of-the art statistical methodology it first establishes the trajectory of growth and then provides a theoretical explanation for that history. With data spanning the period 1950- 2020, the procedure adopted is also able to assess the impact on economic growth of the policies of the present government. The results are conclusive. First, it is established that growth in India has accelerated continuously since the fifties, implying that dynamism in the economy did not have to wait for the liberalising reforms launched in 1991. Next, the performance of India's economy is compared to growth that has taken place in the rest of the world. It is seen that while India's economy has in recent years shown a dynamism relative to the rest of the world, it has consistently fallen behind its most dynamic regions, notably in East Asia. |
| Keywords: | Growth, Indian Economic History, Developmental State |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ash:wpaper:39&r=all |
| By: | Kenny, Seán; Lennard, Jason; Turner, John D. |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the macroeconomic effects of banking crises in the United Kingdom between 1750 and 1938. We construct a new annual chronology of banking crises, which we define as episodes of runs and panics combined with significant, geographically-dispersed failures and suspensions. Using a vector autoregression, we find that banking crises are associated with short, sharp and significant drops in economic growth. Using the narrative record to identify plausibly exogenous variation, we show that this finding is robust to potential endogeneity. |
| Keywords: | banking crisis; macroeconomy; narrative identification; United Kingdom; vector autoregression |
| JEL: | E32 E44 G21 N13 N14 N23 N24 |
| Date: | 2020–08–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:106585&r=all |
| By: | David S. Jacks; Kevin Hjortshøj O'Rourke; Alan M. Taylor (Division of Social Science) |
| Abstract: | We introduce a new dataset on British exports at the bilateral, commodity-level from 1700 to 1899. We then pit two primary determinants of bilateral trade against one another: the trade-diminishing effects of distance versus the trade-enhancing effects of the British Empire. We find that gravity exerted its pull as early as 1700, but the distance effect then attenuated and had almost vanished by 1800. Meanwhile the empire effect peaked sometime in the late 18th century before significantly declining in value. It was only after 1950 that distance would once again exert the same influence that it has today. JEL codes: F1, N7 |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nad:wpaper:20200055&r=all |
| By: | Francisco J. Beltrán Tapia (Norwegian University of Science and Technology); Alfonso Díez-Minguela (Universitat de València and IVIE); Julio Martinez-Galarraga (Universitat de València); Daniel A. Tirado-Fabregat (Universitat de València) |
| Abstract: | In this article we explore the relationship between institutions and educational performance from a historical perspective. Relying on municipal-level information for the Spanish region of Valencia, our study explores the economic effects of the delegation of power during the ancien regime from the Crown to local elites through the establishment of lordships, compared to that remained under royal jurisdiction. We assess whether these lordships, in their late-eighteenth- century configuration, had an impact on male literacy rates in the mid-nineteenth century. We also analyse whether a negative differential effect emerged in areas that were mainly inhabited by Moriscos, populations who lived under particularly harsh conditions. In addition to this institutional diversity, we investigate whether the regulations governing the education system could have generated a negative effect due to a mismatch between the language of schooling (Spanish) and the population’s language of use (Catalan). By isolating each of these effects, our findings show that literacy rates were consistently lower in Catalan-speaking lordships inhabited by Moriscos. |
| Keywords: | Education, Institutions, Inequality, Language |
| JEL: | N33 I24 I25 |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0196&r=all |
| By: | Lennard, Jason |
| Abstract: | This article investigates the impact of economic policy uncertainty on the British interwar economy. The first type of evidence examined is qualitative. The historical record shows that contemporaries regularly reported the incidence and consequences of major uncertainty shocks. The second type of evidence analysed is quantitative. Based on a new index of economic policy uncertainty constructed from newspapers and vector autoregressions, the results suggest that uncertainty was an important source of economic fluctuations in Britain between the wars. |
| JEL: | N0 |
| Date: | 2020–08–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:106638&r=all |
| By: | Christopher R. Esposito; ; |
| Abstract: | This article studies how new locations emerge as advantageous places for the creation of ideas. Analysis of a novel patent-based dataset that traces the flow of knowledge between inventions and across time reveals that inventors initiate knowledge production in new places through a three-stage process. In the first stage, about 50 years before knowledge production in a region reaches an appreciable volume, local inventors begin to experiment with a few promising ideas developed in other places. In the second stage, inventors use the promising ideas developed elsewhere to create a large number of highly impactful inventions locally. In the third stage, inventors source high-impact ideas from their local environs and produce an even larger number of inventions, albeit of lower quality. Overall knowledge production in regions peaks in this third stage, but novelty and the potential for future knowledge growth decline. |
| Keywords: | Regional development, innovation, knowledge transmission, agglomeration |
| JEL: | O33 R12 |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:2046&r=all |
| By: | Isabel Román (IPC-IG) |
| Abstract: | "In the mid-20th century, Costa Rica designed a universal social protection system dedicated to the promotion of citizenship and fundamental social rights. The institutionalisation of social policy, the development of universal policies for health care, security, education, housing and basic services (water and electricity), together with significant economic growth, allowed for a continuous improvement in human development and significant, internationally recognized achievements. Among these are the reduction in infant mortality, which dropped from 123 children per 1000 born in 1940, to 61.5 in 1970 and 9.1 in 2011; the increase in life expectancy, which rose from 55.6 years in 1950 to 79.3 in 2011; and the reduction of poverty incidence, from 50 per cent of households in 1950 to 20 per cent at the end of the century." (…) |
| Keywords: | Social Protection Systems, Latin America, Caribbean, Costa Rica |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipc:oparab:293&r=all |
| By: | Patricia Rice; Anthony Venables |
| Abstract: | The economic shocks experienced by the UK economy in the 1970s brought major changes in the spatial distribution of employment rates in the UK. This paper traces out the long run implications of these changes, suggesting that they were highly persistent and to a large extent shape current UK regional disparities. Most of the Local Authority Districts that experienced large negative shocks in the 1970s have high deprivation rates in 2015, and they constitute two-thirds of all districts with the highest deprivation rates. We conclude that neither economic adjustment processes nor policy measures have acted to reverse the effect of negative shocks incurred nearly half a century ago. |
| Keywords: | Regional inequality, de-industrialisation, employment |
| JEL: | R11 R12 O47 O50 |
| Date: | 2020–09–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:wpaper:918&r=all |
| By: | Jesse Bricker; Sarena Goodman; Alice Henriques Volz; Kevin B. Moore |
| Abstract: | Using 2019 SCF data, we update estimates of the U.S. wealth and income distributions. These data indicate that wealth concentration in 2019 was similar to the levels seen in 2016 and near the historical high over the 1989–2019 period. Income concentration similarly remains high but declined between 2016 and 2019. |
| Date: | 2020–09–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgfn:2020-09-28-1&r=all |
| By: | James Alm (Tulane Economics); Joyce Beebe (Rice University); Michael S. Kirsch (Notre Dame Law School); Omri Marian (University of California, Irvine); Jay A. Soled (Rutgers University) |
| Abstract: | Improving tax compliance is a common goal of governments worldwide. The United States is no exception. The size of the nation’s “tax gap” — or the difference between what taxpayers pay in taxes in a timely manner and what they should pay if they fully complied with the tax laws — is hundreds of billions of dollars annually, significantly depriving the nation of much-needed revenue. This paper explores the mixed effects of technological advancements on tax compliance — and, thus, its counterpart, tax noncompliance. On the one hand, technological advances have largely eradicated many of the commonplace tax-noncompliance techniques that once reigned during the twentieth century. On the other hand, many of these very same technological advances threaten to usher in new modes of tax evasion. Which of these emergent trends will dominate is unclear. The outcome will largely depend upon whether Congress updates the tax laws to address technological advances and grants sufficient funding to the Internal Revenue Service to maintain robust enforcement efforts in an ever-changing technological landscape. Failure to take these steps will destine the size of the tax gap to expand. Many prior studies have addressed discreet effects of specific technologies on tax compliance. This paper contributes to this developing literature by offering a cohesive framework to address technological advancement and tax compliance. |
| Keywords: | Technology, Tax compliance, Tax gap. |
| JEL: | H24 H26 |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tul:wpaper:2009&r=all |
| By: | Peña, Jorge; González-Forero, Mauricio |
| Abstract: | Major evolutionary transitions have produced higher-level individuals constituting new levels of adaptation with extensive effects on the history of life. How such transitions occur remains an outstanding question. We show that a major transition can happen from ancestral exploitation triggering specialization that eventually dissolves conflict. Specifically, maternal manipulation of off-spring help enables the mother to increase her fertility effort, thereby shifting a parent-offspring conflict over helping to parent-offspring agreement. This process of conflict dissolution requires that helpers alleviate maternal life history trade-offs, and results in reproductive division of labor, high queen fertility, and honest queen signaling suppressing worker reproduction, thus exceptionally recovering diverse features of eusociality. Our results explain how a major evolutionary transition can happen from ancestral conflict. |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:iastwp:124742&r=all |
| By: | Jean Bernard Chatelain; Kirsten Ralf |
| Abstract: | This paper is a study of the history of the transplant of mathematical tools using negative feedback for macroeconomic stabilization policy from 1948 to 1975 and the subsequent break of the use of control for stabilization policy which occurred from 1975 to 1993. New-classical macroeconomists selected a subset of the tools of control that favored their support of rules against discretionary stabilization policy. The Lucas critique and Kydland and Prescott's time-inconsistency were over-statements that led to the "dark ages" of the prevalence of the stabilization-policy-ineffectiveness idea. These over-statements were later revised following the success of the Taylor rule. |
| Date: | 2020–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2010.00212&r=all |
| By: | Roger Backhouse (University of Birmingham [Birmingham], Erasmus University Rotterdam); Antoinette Baujard (GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université Jean Monnet [Saint-Étienne] - UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université de Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - ENS Lyon - École normale supérieure - Lyon); Tamotsu Nishizawa (Teikyo University) |
| Abstract: | Our forthcoming book, Welfare Theory, Public Action and Ethical Values challenges the belief that, until modern welfare economics introduced issues such as justice, freedom and equality, economists adopted what Amartya Sen called "welfarism." This is the belief that the welfare of society depends solely on the ordinal utilities of the individuals making up the society. Containing chapters on some of the leading twentieth-century economists, including Walras, Marshall, Pigou, Pareto, Samuelson, Musgrave, Hicks, Arrow, Coase and Sen, as well as lesser-known figures, including Ruskin, Hobson and contributors to the literature on capabilities, the book argues that, whatever their theoretical commitments, when economists have considered practical problems they have adopted a wider range of ethical values, attaching weight to equality, justice and freedom. Part 1 explains the concepts of welfarism and non-welfarism and explores ways in which economists have departed from welfarism when tackling practical problems and public policy. Part 2 explores the reasons for this. When moving away from abstract theories to consider practical problems it is often hard not to take an ethical position and economists have often been willing to do so. We conclude that economics needs to recognise this and to become more of a moral science. |
| Keywords: | individualism,economics,Welfarism,non-welfarism,welfare,public policy,ethics |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-02937994&r=all |
| By: | Depetris-Chauvin, Emilio (Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile); Özak, Ömer (Southern Methodist University) |
| Abstract: | We explore the effect of historical ethnic borders on contemporary conflict in Africa. We document that both the intensive and extensive margins of contemporary conflict are higher close to historical ethnic borders. Exploiting variations across artificial regions within an ethnicity's historical homeland and a theory-based instrumental variable approach, we find that regions crossed by historical ethnic borders have 27 percentage points higher probability of conflict and 7.9 percentage points higher probability of being the initial location of a conflict. We uncover several key underlying mechanisms: competition for agricultural land, population pressure, cultural similarity and weak property rights. |
| Keywords: | borders, conflict, territory, property rights, landownership, population pressure, migration, historical homelands, development, Africa, Voronoi tessellation, Thiessen tessellation |
| JEL: | D74 N57 O13 O17 O43 P48 Q15 Q34 |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13736&r=all |
| By: | Atella, Vincenzo (University of Rome Tor Vergata); di Porto, Edoardo (University of Naples Federico II); Kopinska, Joanna (Sapienza University of Rome); Lindeboom, Maarten (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the effects of in-utero exposure to stress on lifelong labor market outcomes. We exploit a unique natural experiment that involved randomly placed Nazi raids on municipalities in Italy during WWII. We use administrative data on the universe of private sector workers in Italy and link this data to unique historical data with detailed information about war casualties and Nazi raids across space (Municipality) and time. We find that prenatal stress exposure leads to lower wage earnings when workers start their career, and that this effect persists until retirement. The earnings penalty is in large part due to the type of job that people hold and interruptions in their working career due to unemployment. We further show that workers exposed to in-utero stress face larger earnings reductions after job loss due to mass layoffs. This earnings loss deepens their relative disadvantage over time. |
| Keywords: | early-life, stress, life-long earnings, mass layoff, dynamic complementarities |
| JEL: | I1 O1 |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13744&r=all |
| By: | Jaime Aragón Falomir |
| Abstract: | En Argentine depuis la fin des années 80, le nombre d’institutions d’enseignement supérieur privées (IESP) n’a cessé d’augmenter. Une concurrence importante pour attirer les étudiants s’est mise en place entre les institutions de gestion publique et privée. Le présent papier de re-cherche ESPI-Argentine fait l’état de la consolidation du secteur privé dans le secteur éducatif, à travers l’analyse des différents éléments formels de la construction socio-historique du secteur pendant le XXe siècle (lois, réformes, mouvements politiques comme les dictatures).Dans la perspective de mettre au jour les orientations, le fonctionnement et l’organisation du secteur privé d’enseignement supérieur, la construction d’un échantillon représentatif d’Institutions d’enseignement supérieur privé nous conduit à définir une typologie (clus-ter) de trois groupes d’institutions avec des carac-téristiques homogènes à l’intérieur de chacun des groupes et des caractéristiques hétérogènes entre les groupes (niveaux de formation, disciplines, reconnaissance officiel, taille, etc.). |
| Keywords: | Argentine |
| JEL: | Q |
| Date: | 2020–09–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:avg:wpaper:fr11524&r=all |
| By: | José Pedro Pontes; Armando J. Garcia Pires |
| Abstract: | In the Von Thunen (1826)'s economy, manufacturing decentralization is viewed as the refining of an agricultural commodity near the cultivation site, which substitutes for its transport to an industrial mill located in the Town. As Friedrich List (1841) added, this substitution is economically feasible only if the savings in transport costs following from in site refining cover the increase in fixed costs associated with a second industrial plant. In market equilibrium terms, this happens when the decentralized machine is provided collectively by the landowners, who fund it through the proceeds of the rise in total land rent following from the industrial investment. This condition will be satisfied more likely in a large economy with high average transport costs and where manufacturing specializes in relatively weight losing activities. If industrial decentralization is feasible, then the new factories will prefer to locate outside the Town, in formely rural areas endowed with an intermediate degree of centrality. Their distance to the Town will be directly related with the intensity of input refining that they are able to carry out. This model appears to account for main stylized trends of manufacturing relocation nowadays, which are jointly labeled as "(de)industrialization". |
| Keywords: | Von Thunen, Manufacturing Location, Industrialization, External Economies of Scale |
| JEL: | O12 O14 R12 B20 |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ise:remwps:wp01462020&r=all |
| By: | Fiorini, Luciana C. (University of Western Australia); Jetter, Michael (University of Western Australia); Parmeter, Christopher F. (University of Miami); Parsons, Christopher (University of Western Australia) |
| Abstract: | Populous communities often prefer more government involvement than less populous communities, but does community size per se affect citizens' preferences for government? Endogeneity commonly prevents testing for causal effects because (i) people can select into communities while (ii) government structures can affect community size (e.g., by en- or discouraging migration and fertility decisions). This paper studies a plausibly exogenous setting from post-WWII Baden-Württemberg (located in Southern Germany), in which the French occupation zone prevented the entry of German expellees after 1945, whereas the U.S. occupied zone did not. Consequently, municipalities on the U.S. side, just across the border from the French zone, experienced large and relatively homogenous population shocks. Studying voting patterns in the 1949 national- and 1952 state-level elections for 828 municipalities, we find more populous municipalities systematically preferred the SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands), the party advocating for greater government involvement in virtually all areas of policymaking, over the CDU (Christlich Demokratische Union), the major conservative party that emphasized free markets. Our results hold when accounting for a host of potential confounding factors, county-fixed effects, pre-WWII vote shares, employing fractional response models and alternative instrumental variable specifications. Our benchmark estimates imply that a one standard deviation increase in population size (equivalent to ≈4,000 citizens) raised the SPD vote share by more than 11 percentage points. |
| Keywords: | community size, government size, voting preferences, public good provision |
| JEL: | D61 D72 H11 N44 |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13724&r=all |
| By: | Trindade, Federico J.; Fuginiti, Liyan E.; Perrin, Richard K. |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policy |
| Date: | 2020–04–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:nbaesp:305568&r=all |
| By: | Vincenzo Atella (University of Rome Tor Vergata); Edoardo di Porto (Federico II University of Napoli); Joanna Kopinska (Sapienza University of Rome); Maarten Lindeboom (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the effects of in-utero exposure to stress on lifelong labor market outcomes. We exploit a unique natural experiment that involved randomly placed Nazi raids on municipalities in Italy during WWII. We use administrative data on the universe of private sector workers in Italy and link this data to unique historical data with detailed information about war casualties and Nazi raids across space (Municipality) and time. We find that prenatal stress exposure leads to lower wage earnings when workers start their career, and that this effect persists until retirement. The earnings penalty is in large part due to the type of job that people hold and interruptions in their working career due to unemployment. We further show that workers exposed to in-utero stress face larger earnings reductions after job loss due to mass layoffs. This earnings loss deepens their relative disadvantage over time. |
| Keywords: | Early-life, Stress, Life-long earnings, mass layoff, dynamic complementarities |
| JEL: | I1 J1 |
| Date: | 2020–09–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20200065&r=all |
| By: | Lorenzo Esposito; Giuseppe Mastromatteo |
| Abstract: | Since the 2008 crisis, the economics literature has shown a renewed interest in Keynes's "beauty contest" (BC) as a fundamental aspect of the functioning of financial markets. We argue that to understand the importance of the BC, psychological and informational factors are of small importance, and a dynamic-structural approach should be followed instead: the BC framework is paramount because it is rooted in the historical trajectory of capitalism and it is not simply a consequence of "irrational" (i.e., biased) agents. In this genuine form, the BC mechanism allows one to understand the main trends of a financialized world. Moreover, the conventional nature of financial markets provides a sound method for assessing different economic policies whose effectiveness depends on how much they can influence the convention itself. This alternative understanding of the BC can be used to start the needed rethinking of economics, urged by the crisis, that is for now reduced to studying the financial and psychological "imperfections" of the market. |
| Keywords: | Financial Crisis; Financialization; Behavioral Economics; Herd Behavior; Convention |
| JEL: | B15 E12 G01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lev:wrkpap:wp_972&r=all |
| By: | Barbier , Edward B. |
| Abstract: | Since the 1950s, as economics has responded to new environmental challenges, views on natural resource scarcity have also evolved. Three distinct phases are discernible in this evolution. From the 1950s through the 1970s, the “Resource Depletion Era”, the concern was mainly with the environment as a source of key natural resources and a sink for waste, and thus the focus was on whether there were physical “limits” on the availability of resources as economies expand and populations grow. From the 1970s to the end of the 20th century, the “Environmental Public Goods Era”, attention shifted to the state of environment and processes of environmental degradation, such as climate change, deforestation, watershed degradation, desertification and acid rain, that resulted in loss of global and local environmental public goods and their important non-market values. Since 2000, the “Ecological Scarcity Era” has seen a growing concern with the state of the world’s ecosystems and Earth system processes, and shifted focus back to possible “limits” to economic and population expansion, but now with the emphasis on potential “planetary boundary” constraints on human activity. |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policy |
| Date: | 2020–09–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aare20:305259&r=all |
| By: | Milena Lavigne (IPC-IG); Luis Hernán Vargas (IPC-IG) |
| Abstract: | "During the 20th century, the political and social development of the Dominican Republic was marked by the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo (1930–1961), who forged the institutional and legal bases of Dominican social policies, and successive governments headed by Joaquín Balaguer (1960–1962, 1966–1978 and 1986–1996). During the 1990s, the Dominican government started once more to implement social policies, among which we can highlight the Fund for the Promotion of Community Initiatives (PROCOMUNIDAD), the countrys first poverty reduction programme. During the 2000s, some social reforms were undertaken, such as the creation of the Social Cabinet and reform of the pension system, which set up a model of individual capitalisation. Finally, after the economic crisis that affected the Dominican Republic in 2003, programmes aiming to reduce malnutrition (Comer es Primero) and poverty (Solidaridad) began to be implemented".(…) |
| Keywords: | Social Protection Systems, Latin America, Caribbean, Dominican Republic |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipc:oparab:296&r=all |
| By: | Bengtsson, Ingemar (Division of Real Estate Science, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | Den här artikeln är ett delresultat i ett projekt som bl.a. studerar bostadsbristens orsaker och konsekvenser. I artikeln studeras samspelet mellan byggande och befolkningstillväxt under de senaste knappa 70 åren. Möjligen kan vi lära oss något om hur mycket byggande som krävs i förhållande till befolkningsökning, genom att studera hur sambandet faktiskt har sett ut. Det är intressant att studera sambandet mellan befolkningsökning och byggande eftersom byggandet ofta står i centrum i debatten om bostadsbrist. På ett sätt kan det tyckas vara paradoxalt eftersom nybyggda bostäder utgör så begränsad del av bostadsbeståndet, medan det å andra sidan också är en logisk koppling då byggandet förstås ökar antalet bostäder och därmed borde minska eventuell bostadsbrist, i varje fall i fall man tänker sig att bostadsbrist främst handlar om antal bostäder. |
| Keywords: | Bostäder; Byggande |
| JEL: | R31 R38 |
| Date: | 2020–05–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lureal:2020_001&r=all |
| By: | Bespalov, Sergey (Беспалов, Сергей) (The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration); Maracha, Vyacheslav (Марача, Вячеслав) (The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration) |
| Abstract: | The first section examines the historical experience of organizing interaction between state authorities and business associations in the states of East Asia, many aspects of which seem to be quite significant for modern Russia. The second section is devoted to such an important aspect of the relationship between business and the state as the specifics of the interaction of state structures with entrepreneurial communities of the network type. |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rnp:wpaper:052020&r=all |
| By: | Bosankic, Alen; Hütten, Moritz; Klüh, Ulrich |
| Abstract: | Im Jahr 1974 verunsicherten eine Reihe von Bankenkrisen viele der größten Volkswirtschaften der Welt. Die Prominenteste, die Herstattkrise in Deutschland, verursachte große Schockwellen durch das entstehende globale Finanzsystem. Rückblickend markiert die Krise den Beginn eines langen Trends der diskontinuierlich steigenden Finanzinstabilität, der in der Krise 2007/08 gipfelte. Im Rückblick scheint die Krise ein Vorspiel oder Vorwort zu sein, wenn nicht sogar das erste Kapitel einer sich abzeichnenden Ära der Finanzialisierung und der Bankenverwirrung. Als solches hätte es die Reaktion derjenigen beeinflussen können, die die finanzielle Instabilität analysieren und darauf reagieren. Aber wie haben zeitgenössische Beobachter die Episode tatsächlich interpretiert und kontextualisiert? Welche Auswirkungen hat das auf die professionelle Sichtweise und die Politik für den Finanzsektor? Mit Schwerpunkt auf Deutschland überprüfen wir eine umfangreiche Sammlung von Zeitdokumenten, um die Auswirkungen der Krise von 1974 auf die Erwartungen der Experten an Banken und Finanzen zu analysieren. |
| Keywords: | Herstatt Crisis,banking crisis,banking regulation,accumulation regimes,financialization |
| JEL: | B26 E02 E65 G01 N24 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:znwudp:1&r=all |
| By: | Michael Fritsch (Friedrich Schiller University Jenam and Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH)); Maria Kristalova (Friedrich Schiller University Jena); Michael Wyrwich (University of Groningen, and Friedrich Schiller University Jena) |
| Abstract: | We investigate the reasons for the pronounced regional differences of new business formation after the transformation from a socialist planned system to a market economy in East Germany. Relatively high start-up rates are found in regions that had a well-qualified workforce and a relatively high share of remaining self-employed at the end of the socialist period. This also holds for high-tech manufacturing start-ups. Based on our conclusion that policy should account for these initial regional conditions, we use two criteria to introduce a classification of regions. |
| Keywords: | Entrepreneurship, new business formation, regional conditions, transformation, East Germany |
| JEL: | L26 R11 N94 P25 |
| Date: | 2020–09–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2020-014&r=all |