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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2021‒01‒04
fifty papers chosen by |
| By: | Alexandra S. Kolesnik (National Research University Higher School of Economics); Aleksandr V. Rusanov (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | The cultural heritage was defined in the 19th century in many European countries and the United States as “objects of cultural value.” In the context of building national states mostly material objects, archaeological sites and historical monuments, were marked as heritage. Further transformation of the concept of heritage took place after the World War II, when not only national and mostly European states, but also new international organizations (United Nations, UNESCO and later European Union) began to re-define and revise cultural heritage. The large-scale transformations in the social sciences and the humanities in the 1960–70s influenced the formation a new research field in the 1980s, heritage studies. Using the approaches taken from public history and cultural, memory, postcolonial and gender studies, heritage studies conceptualize heritage in more broad temporal boundaries and network of agents involved in the process of its formation. Within heritage studies, cultural heritage covers the sphere of ordinary and everyday life, distant and recent past, different social groups and their vision of heritage. In the 2000s, heritage studies were debated. As a result, a new field of critical heritage studies emerged. The key task put in the field was to analyze discursive practices of defining and using heritage primarily by state and international institutions (the so-called “Authorized Heritage Discourse”). The scholars conceptualize heritage as a process, discourse and participatory cultural phenomenon. So, heritage is understood as a constant rethinking and redefinition cultural values by different agents––social groups, media, institutions, which are also constantly changing. The paper examines the research fields of heritage studies and critical heritage studies in Europe. It provides an overview of their development and subsequent changes, as well as the main research issues and problems. |
| Keywords: | cultural heritage, heritage studies, critical heritage studies, discourse, agency, historical monument, intangible cultural heritage, Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD) |
| JEL: | Z |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:198/hum/2020&r=all |
| By: | Cassidy, Daniel; Hanley, Nick |
| Abstract: | This article examines the integration of regional Scottish grain markets from the early seventeenth century until the end of the long eighteenth century in 1815. The Scottish economy developed rapidly in this period, with expansion driven by improvements in market structures and specialisation in agricultural production. We test for price convergence and market efficiency using grain prices collected from Scotland's fiars courts' records. Our results suggest that price convergence increased across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries but experienced a number of setbacks in times of famine and war. The civil war and Cromwellian occupation of the Scottish Lowlands in the 1640s and 1650s, the famine years of the 1690s, the American War of Independence, and the French/Napoleonic wars all caused declines in price convergence. Using a dynamic factor model, we find that market efficiency increased substantially in regional Scottish markets from the late seventeenth century. This analysis suggests that sub-national markets existed in the late seventeenth century, in the east and west of the country, but merged in the eighteenth century to form a unified national grain market. |
| Keywords: | market integration,development,prices |
| JEL: | N13 F15 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:eabhps:2005&r=all |
| By: | Pujadas-Mora, Joana-Maria; Brea-Martinez, Gabriel |
| Abstract: | Parental influence over children’s status attainment has historically been argued to be key. However, the cross-sibling influence has been scarcely studied for historical periods and for steam family societies, being the most long-lasting relationship across individuals’ lives once childhood was surpassed. We investigate how intra-generational family relationships determine the social destiny of siblings taking a long-term perspective (16th and the 19th centuries) for Barcelona and its hinterland, using the unique data compiled in the Barcelona Historical Marriage Database. This region was one of the most dynamic economic area in Southern Europe. We found the emergence of the figure of first-married siblings as determinants in the status attainment of other brothers and sisters and a decline in parental influence from the 18th century onwards for all social groups, denying a sibling competing model. This influence worked differently over time depending on sex. First-born sisters with exogamous marriages had a higher influence than first-married brothers on the social mobility of the rest of siblings along the 16th and 17th century. Conversely, from the 18th century onwards, first-married brothers had a higher ascendancy than first-married sisters. Sibship size and the siblings’ marriage order did not contribute to explain these effects. These results can be interpreted in light of an increase in life expectancy of adult population and a change in the occupational structure due to an early industrialization and in affectivity in the18th century. |
| Date: | 2020–12–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:sf6vj&r=all |
| By: | Faustine Perrin (Lund University) |
| Abstract: | Why did France experience the demographic transition first? This question remains one of the greatest puzzles of economics, demography, and economic history. The French pattern is hard to reconcile with elucidations of the process as found in other countries. The present analysis goes back to the roots of the process and offers novel ways of explaining why people started to control their fertility in France and how they did so. In this paper, I track the evolution of marriage patterns to a point before the premises of the demographic transition. I identify three distinct phases. Next, I rely on exploratory methods to classify French counties based on their discriminatory features. Five profiles emerge. I discuss these profiles through the lens of the French Revolution, one of the greatest events that ever occurred in French history, which irretrievably altered its society. In particular, the results show that the fertility transition was not as linear, but more complex than previous research had argued. They show the importance of accounting for cultural factors and for individuals’ predispositions to adapt more or less quickly to societal changes. Yet cultural factors are not all. They can help to explain the timing of the transition and the choice of methods used to control fertility, but modernity and gender equality are also needed to describe the mechanisms in play behind the process. |
| Keywords: | Demographic Transition, European Marriage Pattern, French Revolution, Gender Equality, Women Empowerment |
| JEL: | J12 J13 J16 N33 O15 O18 Z12 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0202&r=all |
| By: | Nikita I. Lychakov (National Research University Higher School of Economics); Dmitrii L. Saprykin (Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Russian Academy of Sciences); Nadia Vanteeva (University of Ontario Institute of Technology) |
| Abstract: | Using data from official manufacturing censuses, we compare labour productivity in Great Britain and the Russian Empire around 1908. We find that Russia’s labour productivity was at 81.9 percent of the U.K. level. Russia’s productivity was on a par with France’s and significantly superior to Italy’s. We also find that the majority of Russian industries underperformed British ones. However, the industries that had been established or modernised during the state-induced industrialisation policies of the 1890s, such as the Southern metallurgy, performed on a par with their British counterparts. Russia’s alcohol, tobacco, and petrochemical sectors outperformed their British equivalents. Our findings suggest a revision of the view that, at the turn of the 20th century, Russian manufacturing was economically underdeveloped. |
| Keywords: | labour productivity, Great Britain, Imperial Russia |
| JEL: | D24 L60 N63 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:199/hum/2020&r=all |
| By: | Maciej Stefański |
| Abstract: | The paper estimates dynamic effects of pandemics on GDP per capita with local projections, controlling for the effects of wars and weather conditions, using a novel dataset that covers 33 countries and stretches back to the 13th century. Pandemics are found to have prolonged and highly statistically significant effects on GDP per capita - a pandemic killing 1% of the population tends to increase GDP per capita by approx. 0.3% after about 20 years. The results are qualitatively robust to various model specifications, geographical division of the sample and an exclusion of extreme events such as the Black Death and the New World epidemics. The effects of pandemics differ from those of wars and weather, which are negative and die out quicker, in line with the neoclassical growth model. |
| Keywords: | pandemic, GDP, local projection, economic history, war, tree rings |
| JEL: | I15 N10 N30 N40 N50 O47 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sgh:kaewps:2020057&r=all |
| By: | Jacopo Staccioli (Dipartimento di Politica Economica, DISCE, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore – Institute of Economics, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa); Maria Enrica Virgillito (Institute of Economics, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa – Dipartimento di Politica Economica, DISCE, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore) |
| Abstract: | The present chapter provides a historical reappraisal of labor-saving technologies. It reviews and systematizes theoretical contributions and empirical findings documenting the presence of labor- and time-saving heuristics in innovative efforts back since the First Industrial Revolution. More in detail, with the help of various patent analyses, the chapter documents the presence of labor-saving heuristics in the latest wave of technological innovation, detecting the human functions substituted by the underlying technologies. Against a reductionist approach conceiving robots as the only threat for labor displacement, it shall be argued that labor-saving technologies consist of a complex and heterogeneous bundle of innovations uncovering a much wider set of artifacts and functions. Motivated by the recurrent debate on the threats of automation occurring in the last couple of centuries, evidence is provided on the existence of long waves and clusters in relevant innovations, discussing how the overall cluster of labor-saving technologies consists of heterogeneous and often independent innovations following remarkably different time-trajectories. The chapter closes with an outline of potential future trends in labor-saving technologies and room for policy actions. |
| Keywords: | Human-Machine Relationship, History of Technology, Labor-Saving Heuristics |
| JEL: | O3 C38 J24 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctc:serie5:dipe0013&r=all |
| By: | Valerio Astuti (Bank of Italy); Riccardo De Bonis (Bank of Italy); Sergio Marroni (Tor Vergata Univerity of Rome); Alessandro Vinci (Bank of Italy) |
| Abstract: | This paper is the first to construct and analyse the language corpus of the Concluding Remarks (CF from now on), using the texts from 1946 to 2018. The first part of the paper summarizes the characteristics of the dataset, which contains around 850,000 words. The second part analyses the topics addressed by the Bank’s Governors over seventy years of Italian economic history. The third section provides a linguistic analysis of the CF, focusing in particular on the use of some types of subordinate clauses. The topics covered in the CF have been influenced by events, but also by each Governor’s personal point of view. The CF reached their maximum length in the 1970s and then became shorter. The length of the sentences increased in the 1950s and then declined, with the shortest sentences dating to the end of the 1990s. Our linguistic analysis shows that, up until the time of Baffi, the Governors concentrated on presenting economic trends. Over the last 25 years, however, the CF have focused on drawing up action programmes for Italy’s economy. |
| Keywords: | linguistic analysis, economic history, text mining, Bank of Italy, The Governor's Concluding Remarks |
| JEL: | B20 N01 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_592_20&r=all |
| By: | Amparo Castelló-Climent; Rafael Doménech |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the relationship between human capital inequality and income inequality, using an updated data set on human capital inequality for 146 countries from 1950 to 2010 and a novel database on earnings inequality. This paper explores the relationship between human capital inequality and income inequality, using an updated data set on human capital inequality for 146 countries from 1950 to 2010 and a novel database on earnings inequality. |
| Keywords: | wages, salarios, education, educación, Inequality, Desigualdad, Human capital, Capital humano, Global, Global, Global Economy, Economía Global, Working Papers, Documento de Trabajo |
| JEL: | I24 O11 O15 O5 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bbv:wpaper:2017&r=all |
| By: | Kym Anderson; Arndt-Corden Department of Economics |
| Abstract: | Protection from import competition was a defining feature of the birth of the Australian federation in 1901. For the next 70 years, the extent of protection grew, and broadened from mainly tariffs to also involving import licencing after World War II. There was a one-off 25% across-the-board cut in tariffs in 1973 and some dismantling of agricultural subsidies, but that was followed by the re-imposition of import quotas for the most-protected manufactured goods. Then a new reformist government began, in the mid-1980s, a long process of dismantling all protection as part of an overall economic reform program that also involved de-regulation, privatization and moving to a flexible exchange rate. The rewards included three decades of faster economic growth and an unprecedented rise in Australians’ living standards. This paper provides a history of economic thought on the pros and cons of protectionism for the small, distant, natural resource-rich Australian economy and a survey of the literature on the extent, effects and political economy reasons behind the growth of Australian protection and its eventual dismantling. |
| Keywords: | import restrictions; tariffs; sectoral assistance; price-distorting policies; political economy of trade policy |
| JEL: | F13 F14 O19 O53 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pas:papers:2020-10&r=all |
| By: | KONSTANTINA NTAKOLIA (ATHENS SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS) |
| Abstract: | The defeat of Greeks in the short, in terms of duration, war that broke out in 1897 against the Turks, constituted the motive for researching the way that the Greek and foreign artists chose to illustrate this unpleasant outcome of war, since so far, a concertation of the images of that war has not been conducted. Through the study of c.150 drawings, oil paintings and folk images a first attempt is realized to approach and interpret the way that the ?infelicitous? war of 1897 was presented and illustrated, mainly in the national and international Press of that time, where the documentary painting meets Ernst Gombrich?s principle of the ?eyewitness?.Although the 1897 war lasted approximately only a month the artistic production was immense. Hundreds of correspondents managed to reach the front to execute drawings of the battles that took place in the Thessalian and Epirus front. These fast drawings were sent back home, and they were published in the newspapers of the time (Acropolis, Empros, Pinakothiki, Script, Gli Avvenimenti d? Oriente, L? Illustratión, Le Monde Illustré, La Tribuna Illustrata della Domenica, Le Petit Journal Supplément ?llustré, Le Petit Parisien, The Daily Graphic, The Illustrated London News etc.) creating a ?point of view? of that war. To this end, a second wave of Philhellenism was arisen, motivating the Philhellenes around the world to join once again the Greeks in the battle, e.g., the Italians Garibaldini fought and died heroically in Thessaly. Last, special reference is made to the works of Demetrios Galanis (1879-1966) and Georgios Roilos (1867-1928). The aforementioned painters were present at the front and had the opportunity to draw the incidents. Although both artists are well known (Galanis lived and work in Paris with the avant-garde while Roilos was a prestigious professor in School of Fine Arts-Athens), this facet of their work remains undiscovered. Therefore, in this study, Galanis? drawings of the front are presented for the first time, while a new approach to Roilos? paintings is attempted. Based on the analysis and study of the images of the war, we present our conclusions on the depiction of the 1897 Greek-Turkish war: Realism and Naturalism are alternate, while the soldiers are portrayed mainly as ordinary people fighting, suffering and dying for their homeland. Perhaps the foreigners, influenced by these pictures, felt sympathy for the Greek troops and reached for help regardless the continuous recessions. It was a matter of representation of the defeat. |
| Keywords: | 1897 Greek-Turkish war, 19th century Press, correspondents, documentary painting, Philhellenes, Philhellenism, Garibaldini, Galanis, Roilos |
| Date: | 2020–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iahpro:12212956&r=all |
| By: | Andrei A. Ilin (National Research University Higher School of Economics); Ksenia M. Belik (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Grant-based funding became one of the crucial innovations in the Russian academia of the 1990s. It has been studied from quantitative and institutional perspectives while our paper focuses primarily on oral histories of grants that shed light on their subjective meaning. Interviews show that some Russian academics remember their first experiences of applying for various programs, competition and peer review as important part of their ego-narratives. These narratives portray ambitious, independent, and free-minded scholarly persona that chimes with the virtues promoted in the academic community back in the 1990s, when research grants and scholarships were introduced. Apart of their practical benefits and prestige, grants helped some scientists and scholars to comprehend themselves and the changing landscape of post-Soviet academia. |
| Keywords: | oral history, grants, history of post-soviet universities, history of post-soviet academia, history of the 90-s, academic persona. |
| JEL: | Z |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:201/hum/2020&r=all |
| By: | Aldous, Michael; Coyle, Christopher |
| Abstract: | In the 19th century, the Liverpool Cotton Brokers Association (CBA) coordinated the dramatic growth of Liverpool's raw cotton market. This article shows how the CBA achieved this through the development of a private order institutional framework that improved information flows, introduced standardization and contracting regimes, and regulated market exchange platforms. These developments corresponded with significantly improved market coordination, which facilitated the growth of the largest raw cotton market in the world. The article's findings demonstrate and quantify the importance of nonstate actors, in creating institutions of global exchange central to the first wave of globalization. |
| Keywords: | private order institutions,non-state actors,globalization,Liverpool Cotton Brokers Association |
| JEL: | D03 F13 N43 N53 N74 Q17 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:qucehw:202010&r=all |
| By: | Berliner, Aaron; Hecla, Jake; Bondin, Michael; Mullen, Austin; Amundson, Kelsey; Camacena, Elena Osorio; Droster, Alex; Ermakova, Dinara; Nagel, Tyler Scott; Nappi, Nicole L. |
| Abstract: | On February 1, 2019, the United States and Russia withdrew from the three-decades old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty. Events precipitating the withdrawal were allegations by both the United States and Russia of a variety of treaty violations. Until that point, the treaty had been a centerpiece of arms control and a key agreement of the global security architecture. The absence of such a pillar has the potential destabilize the status quo of arms control, creating significant uncertainty in global nuclear stability and security. In this paper, we present a historical review as overture to an analysis on the impacts of this development on force structure. This analysis examines the changes in U.S., Russian, and Chinese nuclear forces which may occur as a result of the treaty's demise. The article concludes with commentary on potential actions to preserve stability in a post-INF world. |
| Date: | 2020–12–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:nur9v&r=all |
| By: | James A. Schmitz |
| Abstract: | U.S. government concerns about great disparities in housing conditions are at least 100 years old. For the first 50 years of this period, U.S. housing crises were widely considered to stem from the failure of the construction industry to adopt new technology -- in particular, factory production methods. The introduction of these methods in many industries had already greatly narrowed the quality of goods consumed by low- and high-income Americans. It was widely known why the industry failed to adopt these methods: Monopolies in traditional construction blocked and sabotaged them. Very little has changed in the last 50 years. The industry still fails to adopt factory methods, with monopolies, like HUD and NAHB, blocking attempts to adopt them. As a result, the productivity record of the construction industry has been horrendous. One thing has changed. Today there is very little discussion of factory-built housing; of the very few that recognize the industry's failure to adopt factory methods, there is no realization that monopolies are blocking the methods. That these monopolies, in particular, HUD and NAHB, can cause so much hardship in our country, and through misinformation and deceit cover it up, seems almost beyond belief. But, unfortunately, it's a history that is not uncommon. There are many other industries where monopolies have inflicted great harm on Americans, like the tobacco industry, yet through misinformation and deceit cover up the great harm. |
| Keywords: | Monopoly; Competition; Inequality; Cournot; Sabotage; Harberger; Thurman Arnold; Henry Simons; Housing; Modular housing; Manufactured homes; Factory-built housing; HUD; NAHB; Nimbyism; Tobacco industry; Fossil fuel industry |
| JEL: | D22 D42 K0 L0 L12 |
| Date: | 2020–12–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedmwp:89160&r=all |
| By: | Patrice Bougette (Université Côte d'Azur; GREDEG CNRS); Frédéric Marty (Université Côte d'Azur, France; GREDEG CNRS; OFCE, Sciences Po., Paris; CIRANO, Montréal) |
| Abstract: | During the 1920s, two different proposals of a regulated competition competed in the US. The first, inspired by trade associations, was advocated by Herbert Hoover. This approach echoes a managerialist view of a coordinated competition under state support. The second - promoted by Louis Brandeis - provides an alternative view of what a regulated competition should be: avoiding a ruinous competition through information exchange among small firms. From his involvement in the Wilson’s campaign team in 1912, to his dissent in the American Colum ruling of the US Supreme Court in 1923 and his position against the National Industrial Recovery Act in Schechter Poultry in 1935, we argue that Louis Brandeis was constant in his opposition to such a convergence between Big Business and Big Government. His intemporal coherence relies in his Jeffersonian approach advocating for a dispersion of economic powers for both efficiency and political purposes. At the opposite, both the trade associations’ movement and the NIRA experience pertain to a Hamiltonian perspective that is based on an equilibrium between the economic gains resulting from concentration or coordination and a strong political control. |
| Keywords: | Louis Brandeis, antitrust, information exchange, Federal Trade Commission (FTC), New Deal, National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) |
| JEL: | L40 K21 N12 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gre:wpaper:2020-56&r=all |
| By: | David I. Stern; John C. V. Pezzey; Yingying Lu |
| Abstract: | We build a directed technical change model where one intermediate goods sector uses a fixed quantity of biomass energy (“wood”) and another uses coal at a fixed price, matching stylized facts for the British Industrial Revolution. Unlike previous research, we do not assume the level or growth rate of productivity is inherently higher in the coal-using sector. Analytically, greater initial wood scarcity, initial relative knowledge of coal-using technologies, and/or population growth will boost an industrial revolution, while the converse may prevent one forever. An industrial revolution, with eventual dominance by the coal-using sector, is the model's main dynamic outcome, but not inevitable if inter-good substitutability is high enough. Empirical calibration for 1560-1900 produces historically plausible results for changes in energy-related variables during British industrialization, and through counterfactual simulations confirms that it was the growing relative scarcity of wood caused by population growth that resulted in innovation to develop coal-using machines. |
| Keywords: | Economic growth, economic history, energy, coal, structural change |
| JEL: | N13 N73 O33 O41 Q43 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pas:papers:2020-29&r=all |
| By: | Sergey V. Baigushev (National Research University Higher School of Economics); Evgeny A. Khvalkov (National Research University Higher School of Economics); Feliks E. Levin (National Research University Higher School of Economics); Anastasia M. Novikova (National Research University Higher School of Economics); Adrian A. Selin (National Research University Higher School of Economics); Aleksandra D. Shisterova (National Research University Higher School of Economics); Maksim D. Shkil (National Research University Higher School of Economics); Irina D. Yakovleva (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper is focused on the image of the Other in early modern European imperial discourses as exemplified by Venetian discourse about Istria and English discourse about Ireland, which have not been previously compared, in the narratives by Pietro Coppo, Fynes Moryson, John Davies and Barnabe Rich. The authors of the article have analyzed mechanisms of construction of the Image of the Other and political or rhetorical context of its instrumentalization. The examination of English imperial discourses about Ireland and Venetian discourse has demonstrated instrumentalist nature of early modern ethnographic discourses of the Other. Imperial discourse of the Other justified sovereignty of the metropole over the periphery and also communicated knowledge about the Other in order to suggest possible solutions to the problems of governance. |
| Keywords: | imperial discourse; early modern ethnography; Venice; Ireland; Pietro Coppo; Fynes Moryson; Sir John Davies; Barnabe Rich |
| JEL: | Z19 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:196/hum/2020&r=all |
| By: | Sofia Henriques (Lund University); Eoin McLaughlin (University College Cork); Paul Sharp (University of Southern Denmark); Xanthi Tsoukli (University of Southern Denmark); Christian Veddel (University of Southern Denmark) |
| Abstract: | The rapid spread of the Danish dairy cooperatives from the 1880s until the First World War is often portrayed as a uniform wave which swept the country. We investigate this using exceptionally detailed micro-level panel data taken from the Operational Statistics of Creameries, which were published from 1898 until after the Second World War. Our database comprises 1419 creameries over the period 1898- 1945 and no less than 131 variables. We document the data, and use a simple fixed effects setup to demonstrate considerable heterogeneity in the productivity of the individual creameries both over time and across space. We conclude by suggesting reasons for this, including scale of production, accessibility of fuel, religious institutions, and more. |
| Keywords: | Creameries, Denmark, productivity |
| JEL: | N53 N54 Q13 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0203&r=all |
| By: | Konrad Adler; Frederic Boissay |
| Abstract: | We study the effectiveness of policy tools that deal with bank distress (i.e. central bank lending, asset purchases, bank liability guarantees, impaired asset segregation schemes). We present and draw on a novel database that tracks the use of such tools in 29 countries between 1980 and 2016. To keep "all else" equal, we test whether different policies explain differences in how countries fared through bank distress episodes that feature observationally similar initial macro–financial vulnerabilities. We find that, altogether, policy interventions help restore GDP growth and normalize the economy when bank distress follows a period of high cross–border exposures. Central bank lending and asset purchase schemes are especially effective in the first and second years of distress, respectively, and when bank distress follows low asset valuations, high bank leverage and weak bank performance. Overall, our results suggest that swift and broad–ranging policies can mitigate the adverse economic effects of bank distress. |
| Keywords: | bank distress, distress mitigation policy |
| JEL: | G01 G38 E60 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bis:biswps:909&r=all |
| By: | Deanna H. Mihaly (Virginia State University) |
| Abstract: | Alicia Partnoy reconfigures the experience of trauma, as a disappeared Jewish woman detainee during the Dirty War in Argentina, into an alternative heroic survivor narrative, titled The Little School (1986). The author recently published ¡Escuchá!: Cuentos y versitos para los más chiquitos (2016) letters and poems she had sent her daughter from prison, returning again to the time of her capture and invoking personal memories in the service of a decades-long commitment to international memory-making. In her writing, Partnoy?s struggles are set against a backdrop of surging neo-Fascism ideology, interpreted by historian Federico Finchelstein as a transcontextualization of Holocaust practices on the South American continent manifested in the atrocities committed during the Dirty War. Partnoy?s work indicates the repressive violence of her captivity, and she refers to symbolic acts of anti-Semitism directed at her and other disappeared people as victims, yet the focus of her narrative is instead a tale of resistance and survival. This study identifies in Partnoy?s work a transcontextual literary rendering of the experience of trauma. |
| Keywords: | Dirty War, The Little School, Alicia Partnoy, Federico Finchelstein, transcontextual, trauma |
| Date: | 2020–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iahpro:12213055&r=all |
| By: | Chad P. Bown |
| Abstract: | The US-China trade war forced a reluctant semiconductor industry into someone else’s fight, a very different position from its leading role in the 1980s trade conflict with Japan. This paper describes how the political economy of the global semiconductor industry has evolved since the 1980s. That includes both a shift in the business model behind how semiconductors go from conception to a finished product as well as the geographic reorientation toward Asia of demand and manufactured supply. It uses that lens to explain how, during the modern conflict with China, US policymakers turned to a legally complex set of export restrictions targeting the semiconductor supply chain in the attempt to safeguard critical infrastructure in the telecommunications sector. The potentially far-reaching tactics included weaponization of exports by relatively small but highly specialized American software service and equipment providers in order to constrain Huawei, a Fortune Global 500 company. It describes potential costs of such policies, some of their unintended consequences, and whether policymakers might push them further in the attempt to constrain other Chinese firms. |
| Keywords: | Export restrictions, supply chains, national security, semiconductors, Huawei, US–China trade relations |
| JEL: | F13 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iie:wpaper:wp20-16&r=all |
| By: | McColloch, William (Keene State College); Vernengo, Matías (Bucknell University) |
| Abstract: | The rise of the regulatory state during the Gilded Age was closely associated with the development of Institutionalist ideas in American academia. In their analysis of the emergent regulatory environment, Institutionalists like John Commons opera-ted with a fundamentally marginalist theory of value and distribution. This engagement is a central explanation for the ul-timate ascendancy of neoclassical economics, and the limitations of the regulatory environment that emerged in the Progres-sive Era. The eventual rise of the Chicago School and its deregulatory ambitions did constitute a rupture, but one achieved without rejecting preceding conceptions of competition and value. The substantial compatibility of the view of markets underlying both the regulatory and deregulatory periods is stressed, casting doubt about the transformative potential of the resurgent regulatory impulse in the New Gilded Age. |
| Keywords: | John Commons; George Stigler; Regulatory Capture; Deregulation |
| JEL: | B13 B15 B25 K20 L51 |
| Date: | 2020–12–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:sraffa:0046&r=all |
| By: | Gregg, Amanda; Nafziger, Steven |
| Abstract: | Enterprise creation, destruction, and evolution support the transition to modern economic growth, yet these processes are poorly understood in industrializing contexts. We investigate Imperial Russia’s industrial development at the firm-level by examining entry, exit, and persistence of corporations. Relying on newly developed balance sheet panel data from every active Russian corporation (N > 2500) between 1899 and 1914, we examine the characteristics of entering and exiting corporations, how new entrants evolved, and the impact of founder identity on subsequent outcomes. Russian corporations operated flexibly and competitively, conditional on overcoming distortionary institutional barriers to entry that slowed the emergence of these leading firms in the Imperial economy. |
| JEL: | L11 N13 N63 O16 |
| Date: | 2020–12–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bof:bofitp:2020_026&r=all |
| By: | Guglielmo Maria Caporale; Luis A. Gil-Alana; Miguel Martin-Valmayor |
| Abstract: | This note examines the stochastic behaviour of US monthly 10-year government bond yields. Specifically, it estimates a fractional integration model suitable to capture both persistence and non-linearities, these being two important properties of interest rates. Two series are analysed, one from Bloomberg including end-of-the-month values over the period January 1962-August 2020, the other from the ECB reporting average monthly values over the period January 1900-August 2020. The estimation results indicate that both are highly persistent and exhibit non-linearities, the latter being more pronounced in the case of the ECB series. |
| Keywords: | long-term interest rates, government bond yields, fractional integration, persistence, non-linearities |
| JEL: | C22 E43 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8744&r=all |
| By: | Simone Pellegrino (Department of Economics and Statistics (Dipartimento di Scienze Economico-Sociali e Matematico-Statistiche), University of Torino, Italy) |
| Abstract: | This essay retraces the fundamental steps and analyses the theoretical motivation that influenced the definition of the Gini index and its application today. It starts with the concept of mean difference, proposed by Corrado Gini in 1912, for applications in statistics and economics. The difference between the concentration ratio Gini proposed in 1914 and the Gini index, as it is usually used today, is highlighted in light of its geometrical interpretation with the Lorenz piecewise linear function proposed by Gaetano Pietra in 1915. |
| Keywords: | Gini Coefficient, Lorenz Curve |
| JEL: | D63 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tur:wpapnw:070&r=all |
| By: | Jean Luc De Meulemeester |
| Abstract: | In this paper we assess both the benefits of academic freedom and the conditions required for its existence. We propose a long run historical sketch to put forward the institutional and financial characteristics of the Humboldtian model that stressed the very idea of academic freedom. We show how this model influenced the later developments of higher education, both in Europe and the USA. We stress how the post-WW2 massive expansion of higher education led to more utilitarian considerations by the State funding the institutions. The crisis of the 70s and the rise of neoliberalism since the early 80s led to the emergence of a new vision of higher education as a tool for economic performance. In this new and anti-Humboldtian perspective, higher education institutions are monitored from above (regulated competition, selective funding, output-based rather than input-based) and transformed internally into firm-like organizations. We question the potential dangers for academic freedom. |
| Keywords: | Higher Education; Academic Freedom; Conditions; History |
| JEL: | I28 I23 |
| Date: | 2020–12–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sol:wpaper:2013/315106&r=all |
| By: | Camilla Mastromarco (Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Economia, Università degli Studi del Salento.); Léopold Simar (Institut de Statistique, Biostatistique et Sciences Actuarielles, Université Catholique de Louvain.); Valentin Zelenyuk (School of Economics and Centre for Efficiency and Productivity Analysis (CEPA) at The University of Queensland, Australia) |
| Abstract: | Despite the long and great history, developed institutions, and high level of physical and human capital, the Italian economy has been fairly stagnant during the last three decades. In this paper, we merge two streams of literature: nonparametric methods to estimate frontier eciency of an economy, which allows us to develop a new measure of output gap, and nonparametric methods to estimate probability of an economic recession. To illustrate the new framework we use quarterly data for Italy from 1995 to 2019, and nd that our model, using either nonparametric or the linear probit model, is able to provide useful insights. |
| Keywords: | Forecasting, Output Gap, Robust Nonparametric Frontier, Generilized Nonparametric Quasi- Likelihood Method, Italian recession. |
| JEL: | C5 C14 C13 C32 D24 E37 O4 |
| Date: | 2020–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qld:uqcepa:153&r=all |
| By: | Toews, Gerhard; Vezina, Pierre-Louis |
| Abstract: | Enemies of the people were the millions of artists, engineers, professors, and affluent peasants that were thought a threat to the Soviet regime for being the educated elite, and were forcedly resettled to the Gulag, i.e. the system of forced labor camps across the Soviet Union. In this paper we look at the long-run consequences of this dark re-location episode. We show that areas around camps with a larger share of enemies among camp prisoners are more prosperous today, as captured by firms’ wages and profits, as well as night lights per capita. We also show that the descendants of enemies are more likely to be tertiary educated today. Our results point in the direction of a long-run persistence of education and a resulting positive effect on local economic outcomes. A 28 percentage point increase in the share of enemies increases night lights per capita by 58%, profits per employee by 65%, and average wages by 22%. |
| Date: | 2020–12–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:gnypr&r=all |
| By: | Omar Zulaica |
| Abstract: | Almost five decades after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, gold continues to form an important share of global foreign exchange reserves. This may be because gold has traditionally offered reserve managers many benefits, such as the absence of default risk. This paper explores whether these large investment shares in gold are also justified from a risk-return standpoint, or whether any other explanations have to be brought to bear. To do this, we go beyond the simple application of portfolio optimisation techniques, comprehensively analysing all possible long-only combinations of gold and representative fixed income reserve portfolios. We conclude that the market risk associated with gold is substantial when evaluated against a broad range of criteria, such as mitigating portfolio volatility, tail-risk, the probability of loss, and measures of diversification. This will tend to limit overall allocations. Nonetheless, for portfolios with higher sensitivity to interest rates (duration) and for reserve managers who measure their returns in a non-reserve currency, we find evidence that gold may function as a hedge, making it easier to justify sizeable gold holdings from a purely quantitative perspective. |
| JEL: | E58 F31 G11 G17 |
| Date: | 2020–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bis:biswps:906&r=all |
| By: | Ganzer, Andreas (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]); Schmidtlein, Lisa (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]); Stegmaier, Jens (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]); Wolter, Stefanie (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]) |
| Abstract: | "The Establishment History Panel (BHP) is composed of cross sectional datasets since 1975 for West Germany and 1992 for East Germany. Every cross section contains all the establishments in Germany which are covered by the IAB Employment History (BeH) on June 30th. These are all establishments with at least one employee liable to social security on the reference date. Establishments with no employee liable to social security but with at least one marginal part-time employee are included since 1999. The cross sections can be combined to form a panel. This data report describes the Establishment History Panel (BHP) 1975-2019." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en)) Additional Information DOI: 10.5164/IAB.FDZD.2016.de.v1 Auszählungen also released in English as: FDZ-Datenreport , 16/2020 (en) |
| Keywords: | IAB-Betriebs-Historik-Panel, Datensatzbeschreibung, Datenaufbereitung, Datenqualität, Stichprobe, Imputationsverfahren, Datenanonymisierung, Datenzugang |
| Date: | 2020–12–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iab:iabfda:202016_de&r=all |
| By: | Douglas A. Irwin; Maksym G. Chepeliev |
| Abstract: | Britain’s repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 was the signature trade policy event of the nineteenth century. This paper provides a quantitative general equilibrium evaluation of the repeal on sectoral output and employment, factor prices and income distribution, international trade and the terms of trade, and economic welfare based on a detailed input-output matrix of the British economy in 1841. We find that the repeal left Britain’s overall welfare roughly unchanged, or perhaps negligibly (0.1 percent) lower, as the static efficiency gains are offset by the adverse terms-of-trade effects of the tariff reduction. Labor and capital gained a slight amount of income at the expense of landowners (whose income fell about 3-5 percent). Combining the changes in factor payments with different consumption patterns across income groups, we find that the top 10 percent of income earners lose while the bottom 90 percent of income earners, who spent a disproportionate amount of their income on food, gain. To assess whether the model yields reasonable results, we compare the model’s output, price, and trade predictions with the actual ex post outcomes. |
| JEL: | F13 F17 N33 N73 |
| Date: | 2020–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28142&r=all |
| By: | Richard S. J. Tol |
| Abstract: | The paper presents the professor-student network of Nobel laureates in economics. 74 of the 79 Nobelists belong to one family tree. The remaining 5 belong to 3 separate trees. There are 350 men in the graph, and 4 women. Karl Knies is the central-most professor, followed by Wassily Leontief. No classical and few neo-classical economists have left notable descendants. Harvard is the central-most university, followed by Chicago and Berlin. Most candidates for the Nobel prize belong to the main family tree, but new trees may arise for the students of Terence Gorman and Denis Sargan. |
| Date: | 2020–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2012.00103&r=all |
| By: | Ganzer, Andreas (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]); Schmidtlein, Lisa (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]); Stegmaier, Jens (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]); Wolter, Stefanie (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]) |
| Abstract: | "The Establishment History Panel (BHP) is composed of cross sectional datasets since 1975 for West Germany and 1992 for East Germany. Every cross section contains all the establishments in Germany which are covered by the IAB Employment History (BeH) on June 30th. These are all establishments with at least one employee liable to social security on the reference date. Establishments with no employee liable to social security but with at least one marginal part-time employee are included since 1999. The cross sections can be combined to form a panel. This data report describes the Establishment History Panel (BHP) 1975-2019." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en)) Additional Information DOI: 10.5164/IAB.FDZD.2016.en.v1 Frequencies and labels Deutschsprachige Version FDZ-Datenreport , 16/2020 (de) |
| Keywords: | IAB-Betriebs-Historik-Panel, Datensatzbeschreibung, Datenaufbereitung, Datenqualität, Stichprobe, Imputationsverfahren, Datenanonymisierung, Datenzugang |
| Date: | 2020–12–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iab:iabfda:202016_en&r=all |
| By: | Gerhard Toews (New Economic School); Pierre-Louis Vézina (King’s College London) |
| Abstract: | Enemies of the people were the millions of artists, engineers, professors, and affluent peasants that were thought a threat to the Soviet regime for being the educated elite, and were forcedly resettled to the Gulag, i.e. the system of forced labor camps across the Soviet Union. In this paper we look at the long-run consequences of this dark re-location episode. We show that areas around camps with a larger share of enemies among camp prisoners are more prosperous today, as captured by firms’ wages and profits, as well as night lights per capita. We also show that the descendants of enemies are more likely to be tertiary educated today. Our results point in the direction of a long-run persistence of education and a resulting positive effect on local economic outcomes. A 28 percentage point increase in the share of enemies increases night lights per capita by 58%, profits per employee by 65%, and average wages by 22%. |
| Keywords: | Soviet Union, forced migration, education, persistence, natural experiment |
| JEL: | O15 O47 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:abo:neswpt:w0279&r=all |
| By: | McGaughey, Ewan (King's College, London) |
| Abstract: | Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology (2020) is a major, encyclopaedic and data-driven contribution to the effort of constructing a better human civilization. This review summarises the main argument: a positive thesis that in every society, ideology feeds laws and institutions that create inequality, and inequality then bolsters ideology; a normative thesis that we need a better ideology, including ‘participatory socialism’, to solve our biggest challenges. The review then complements and critiques three central issues in the argument, that (1) the true concentration of economic power, the votes in the economy, is even more extreme than inequality of wealth and income, (2) the legal construction of markets, through property, contract, corporate, or human rights law, can ‘pre-distribute’ income and wealth to a vast extent before tax, and (3) social justice means expanding (not merely correcting or re-distributing) everyone’s opportunity, creative capacity, and human potential, and helps everyone to develop their personality to the fullest. Social justice is an unparalleled force, and is still the best answer to far-right, authoritarian or other failed ideologies, which have escalated inequality and driven climate damage. Perhaps the greatest achievement of Piketty’s work could be to bring economics firmly back to the values in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (2020) Oeconomia. |
| Date: | 2020–12–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:lawarx:wk29x&r=all |
| By: | Alexandra Koroleva (National Research University Higher School of Economics); Viktoria Kobzeva (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | The paper investigates interviews from the archive of Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities (IGITI) which were conducted in 2010s with Russian scholars and professors. The data from these interviews is used to study transnational academic mobility experience in the post-Soviet years (2000s–2010s) by young Russian scholars – the respondents of the interviews who entered higher education institutions in the post-Soviet period. The paper examines how they described academic mobility experience, its impact on their idea of university, concept of excellence, and the significance of academic mobility itself |
| Keywords: | academic mobility, ‘brain drain’, international academia, young Russian scholars, academic excellence. |
| JEL: | Z |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:200/hum/2020&r=all |
| By: | Eckhard Hein (Berlin School of Economics and Law (DE)); Judith Martschin |
| Abstract: | We contribute to the recent debates on demand and growth regimes in modern finance-dominated capitalism linking them to the post-Keynesian research on macroeconomic policy regimes. We examine the demand and growth regimes, as well as the macroeconomic policy regimes for the big four Eurozone countries, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, for the periods 2001-09 and 2010-19. First, our approach supports the usefulness of the identification of demand and growth regimes according to growth contributions of the main demand components and financial balances of the macroeconomic sectors. This allows for an understanding of the demand sources of growth, or stagnation, if there is a lack of demand, of how these sources are financed and of potential financial instabilities and fragilities. Second, when it comes to the macroeconomic policy drivers of demand and growth regimes, as well as their respective changes, we show that the exclusive focus on fiscal policies, as in the previous literature, is too limited, and that it is the macroeconomic policy regime which matters here, i.e. the combination of monetary, fiscal and wage policies, as well as the open economy conditions. |
| Keywords: | Demand and growth regimes, macroeconomic policy regimes, post-Keynesian macroeconomics |
| JEL: | E11 E12 E61 E63 E65 O57 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pke:wpaper:pkwp2023&r=all |
| By: | David G. Blanchflower (Dartmouth College. University of Glasgow. GLO. Bloomberg. NBER); Alex Bryson (UCL Social Research Institute. NIESR. IZA) |
| Abstract: | We examine the relationship between union membership and job satisfaction over the life-course using data from the National Child Development Study (NCDS) tracking all those born in Great Britain in a single week in March in 1958 through to age 55 (2013). Data from immigrants as well as non-respondents to the original 1958 Perinatal Mortality Study (PMS) are added in later years. Conditioning on one’s social class at birth, together with one’s education and employment status, we find there is a significant negative correlation between union membership and job satisfaction that is apparent across the life-course. Lagged union membership status going back many years is negatively correlated with current job satisfaction, though its effects become statistically non-significant when conditioning on current union membership status. These results provide a different perspective to longitudinal studies showing short-term positive responses to switches in membership status. They are consistent with earlier work showing that this cohort of workers, and others before them, have persistently lower job satisfaction as union members compared to their non-union counterparts. |
| Keywords: | Union membership; job satisfaction; life-course; birth cohort; National Child Development Survey (NCDS). |
| JEL: | J28 J50 J51 |
| Date: | 2020–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qss:dqsswp:2020&r=all |
| By: | Godfrey I. Ihedimma (Spiritan University, Nneochi, Abia State, Nigeria); Godstime I. Opara (Imo State University, Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria) |
| Abstract: | Nigeria is unarguably one of the countries with its citizens widely spread across the globe and the income earned forms a huge chunk of remittance back to Nigeria. The study focuses on what implications remittances may have for unemployment in Nigeria. Remittance is treated as being endogenously determined by the number of migrants, the nominal exchange rate (with the Naira as local currency), the inflation rate and the migrants’ income. Data from 1981 to 2019 is calibrated for structural break points and stationarity under conditions of regimes changes. While the data was found to have been affected by regime changes and stationary in levels, an Instrumental Variable Regression model was estimated and it was found that remittance positively and significantly influence unemployment. However, when remittance is interacted with the dependants in Nigeria, unemployment is observed to fall. The study strongly recommends that fiscal planning should take an account of the inflow of remittances when curbing unemployment. The study further recommends that there is the need to deliberately encourage a rise in the demand for the Naira as this would protect the value of locally produced goods from being eroded by remittances. |
| Keywords: | Remittance, Dependant, Endogenous, Financial Openness, Unemployment, Interaction, IV Estimation |
| JEL: | F24 J61 O15 |
| Date: | 2020–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:agd:wpaper:20/103&r=all |
| By: | Gregory P. Casey; Marc P. B. Klemp |
| Abstract: | We provide a simple framework for interpreting instrumental variable regressions when there is a gap in time between the impact of the instrument and the measurement of the endogenous variable, highlighting a particular violation of the exclusion restriction that can arise in this setting. In the presence of this violation, conventional IV regressions do not consistently estimate a structural parameter of interest. Building on our framework, we develop a simple empirical method to estimate the long-run effect of the endogenous variable. We use our bias correction method to examine the role of institutions in economic development, following Acemoglu et al. (2001). We find long-run coefficients that are smaller than the coefficients from the existing literature, demonstrating the quantitative importance of our framework. |
| Keywords: | long-run economic development, instrumental variable regression |
| JEL: | C10 C30 O10 O40 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8716&r=all |
| By: | Antoinette BAUJARD (Université Jean Monnet, Université de Lyon, GATE Lyon Saint-Etienne CNRS); Muriel GILARDONE (Université de Caen Normandie, UNICAEN, CREM CNRS) |
| Abstract: | Our paper offers a novel reading of Sen’s idea of justice, going beyond two standard prisms that we have identified as obscuring the debate: 1) welfarism, i.e.the focus on one definition of individual welfare; and 2)transcendentalism, i.e.resting on external normative criteria. Instead we take seriously Sen’s emphasis on personal agency,and we focus on his original contribution to the issue of positional objectivity.Firstly, we demonstrate that Sen’s idea of justice, with the notion of “positional views” at its core, is more respectful of persons’agency than any theory based on individual preference or capability could be. Secondly, we argue that Sen’s conception of positional views considers that both information and sentiments are relevant. Such an alternative approach to both objectivity and subjectivity in their standard meanings allows the formation of more impartial views through collective deliberation and a better consideration of justice by agents themselves. This paper contributes to better articulating Sen’s constructive proposal regarding justice and clarifying its anti-paternalistic nature. |
| Keywords: | individual preferences, positional objectivity, sentiments, public reasoning, agency, justice, welfarism, transcendentalism, impartiality, anti-paternalism |
| JEL: | A13 B31 B41 D63 I31 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tut:cccrwp:2020-03-ccr&r=all |
| By: | Paula Eugenia Gobbi; Marc Goñi |
| Abstract: | Abstract Using genealogical data of British aristocrats, we show that inheritances can affect childlessness. We study settlements, a contract restricting heirs’ powers and settling bequests for yet-to-be-born generations. Settlements reduced childlessness to the “natural” rate, ensuring aristocratic dynasties’ survival. Our estimation exploits that settlements were signed at the heir’s wedding if the family head lived until this date. Whether the heir was born after a girl provides as-good-as-random assignment into settlements. Next, we develop a theory that reproduces our findings, shows that exponential discounting cannot rationalize inheritance systems restricting heirs, and that inheritance systems can emerge endogenously when fertility concerns exist. |
| Date: | 2020–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/316217&r=all |
| By: | Enrico Berkes; Olivier Deschenes; Ruben Gaetani; Jeffrey Lin; Christopher Severen |
| Abstract: | Does social distancing harm innovation? We estimate the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs)—policies that restrict interactions in an attempt to slow the spread of disease—on local invention. We construct a panel of issued patents and NPIs adopted by 50 large US cities during the 1918 flu pandemic. Difference-in-differences estimates show that cities adopting longer NPIs did not experience a decline in patenting during the pandemic relative to short-NPI cities, and recorded higher patenting afterward. Rather than reduce local invention by restricting localized knowledge spillovers, NPIs adopted during the pandemic may have better preserved other inventive factors. |
| JEL: | N92 O31 R11 |
| Date: | 2020–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28152&r=all |
| By: | ; Òscar Jordà; Moritz Schularick; Alan M. Taylor |
| Abstract: | With business leverage at record levels, the effects of corporate debt overhang on growth and investment have become a prominent concern. In this paper, we study the effects of corporate debt overhang based on long-run cross-country data covering the near universe modern business cycles. We show that business credit booms typically do not leave a lasting imprint on the macroeconomy. Quantile local projections indicate that business credit booms do not affect the economy’s tail risks either. Yet in line with theory, we find that the economic costs of corporate debt booms rise when inefficient debt restructuring and liquidation impede the resolution of corporate financial distress and make it more likely that corporate zombies creep along. |
| Keywords: | corporate debt; business cycles; local projections |
| JEL: | E44 G32 G33 N20 |
| Date: | 2020–12–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedfwp:89172&r=all |
| By: | Mérel, Pierre; Ortiz-Bobea, Davis Ariel; Paroissien, Emmanuel |
| Abstract: | This paper provides empirical evidence on the welfare losses associated with asymmetric information about product quality in a competitive market. When consumers cannot observe product characteristics at the time of purchase, atomistic producers have no incentive to supply costly quality. We compare wine prices across administrative districts around the enactment of historic regulations aimed at certifying the quality of more than 250 French appellation wines to identify welfare losses from asymmetric information. We estimate that these losses amount to more than 7% of total market value, suggesting an important role for credible certification schemes. |
| Keywords: | Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Marketing |
| Date: | 2021–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:assa21:308045&r=all |
| By: | Richard G. Lipsey (Simon Fraser University); Kenneth I. Carlaw (UBC Okanagan) |
| Abstract: | This paper reviews some of the myriad, often complex, ways in which the private and public sectors interact in the invention and innovation of the new technologies that are a major driver of economic growth. Several terms have been used to describe the public sector’s activities in these matters: technology enhancement policy, innovation policy, industrial policy, and national systems of innovation. We use the term Industrial Policies to cover all the public sector’s activities that, either directly or indirectly, encourage technological advance. We first outline some important concepts and definitions: two views of the place of the public sector in technological advance; the definition of technology and the facilitating structure; the main public sector organisations that encourage technological advance; the four evolutionary trajectories of a new technology: invention, efficiency, applications and diffusion; the growing importance of science in technological advance; and an overview of a successful industrial policy. In Section II we study 13 important technologies developed over the last century and a half, showing the extent that the public sector has provided finance for the various trajectories of these technologies. In Section III we consider nine public policies designed to encourage technological advance in general. Then in section IV, we discuss over 20 cases in which the government has attempted to pick and encourage specific winners, some of which were successes while others were failures. After each of our case studies in our three main sections, we offer at least one tentative lesson concerning the conditions that favour success and/or that tend to lead to failure. Section V offers a few concluding remarks ending with the statement that “The cases considered here reveal that those who would dismiss industrial policy with statements such as ‘Governments cannot pick winners’ are relying on an empty slogan to avoid detailed consideration of the actual complicated, multifaceted relationship between the private and public sectors in encouraging the inventions and innovations that are the root of economic growth. |
| Keywords: | policy, technology enhancement, innovation, industrial policy |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sfu:sfudps:dp20-11&r=all |
| By: | Diana Ricciulli-Marín |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the effect of internal conflict on local fiscal capacity using evidence from Colombia’s political conflict in the mid-20th century, better known as La Violencia. Following a difference-in-differences strategy, I find that internal conflict has negative long-term consequences in local fiscal capacity. More precisely, municipalities affected by La Violencia experienced an average reduction of 10.3% in their tax revenue and a fall of 2.8 percentage points on their ratio of taxes to total revenue. Effects lasted for more than a decade and are only partially explained by a population and economic activity downturn. These results are consistent with previous evidence indicating a negative effect of violence on tax collection efficiency at the local level. ****** Este trabajo estudia el impacto del conflicto interno en la capacidad fiscal de los gobiernos locales usando evidencia del conflicto político de mediados de siglo XX en Colombia, más conocido como La Violencia. Usando una estrategia de diferencia-en-diferencias, se encuentra que el conflicto interno genera consecuencias negativas y significativas de largo plazo en la capacidad fiscal local. En particular, los resultados señalan que los municipios afectados por La Violencia experimentaron una reducción promedio de 10,3% en el recaudo de impuestos y una caída de 2,8 puntos porcentuales en la proporción de impuestos sobre ingresos totales. Estos efectos se mantienen por más de una década y son solo parcialmente explicados por las menores dinámicas económicas y poblacionales de la época. En general, los hallazgos son consistentes con evidencia previa que señala efectos negativos de la violencia en la eficiencia en el recaudo de impuestos a nivel territorial. |
| Keywords: | Fiscal capacity, Internal conflict, La Violencia, Colombia, La Violencia, Colombia, Capacidad fiscal, Conflicto interno |
| JEL: | D74 H20 N26 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdr:cheedt:53&r=all |
| By: | James Kai-sing Kung (The University of Hong Kong); Ömer Özak (Southern Methodist University); Louis Putterman (Brown University); Shuang Shi (The University of Hong Kong) |
| Abstract: | We propose and empirically test a theory for the endogenous formation and persistence of large states, using China as an example. We suggest that the relative timing of the emergence of agricultural societies and their distance to each other set off a race between autochthonous state-building projects and the expansion of neighboring (proto-)states. Using a novel dataset on the Chinese state's historical presence, the timing of agricultural adoption, social complexity, climate, and geography across 1x1 degree grid cells in East Asia, we provide empirical support for this hypothesis. Specifically, we find that on average, cells that adopted agriculture earlier or were close to the earliest archaic state in East Asia (Erlitou) remained longer under Sinitic control. In contrast, earlier adoption of agriculture decreased the persistent control of the Chinese state in cells farther than 2.8 weeks of travel from Erlitou. |
| Keywords: | Comparative Development, State-Building, Emergence of States, Agricultural Adoption, Isolation, Neolithic Revolution, Social Complexity, East Asia, China, Erlitou |
| JEL: | F50 F59 H70 H79 N90 O10 R10 Z10 Z13 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smu:ecowpa:2016&r=all |
| By: | Price V. Fishback; Jessica LaVoice; Allison Shertzer; Randall Walsh |
| Abstract: | During the late 1930s, the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) created a series of maps designed to summarize spatial variation in the riskiness of mortgage lending in different neighborhoods. The HOLC maps, in conjunction with contemporaneous maps produced by the Federal Housing Agency (FHA), are at the center of debates regarding the long-run impacts of government-imposed redlining, particularly because black households were concentrated in the highest risk zones on these maps. This concentration, combined with the fact that these formerly redlined neighborhoods largely remain economically distressed today, suggest racial bias in the construction of the maps has had important effects over the long run. Using newly digitized data for ten major northern cities, we assess the maps for the importance of this channel in explaining the prevalence of black residents in redlined neighborhoods. We find that racial bias in the construction of the HOLC maps can explain at most a small fraction of the observed concentration of black households in redlined zones. Instead, our results suggest that the majority of black households were redlined because decades of disadvantage and discrimination had already pushed them in to the core of economically distressed neighborhoods prior to the government’s direct involvement in mortgage markets. As a result, the HOLC maps are best viewed as providing clear evidence of how decades of unequal treatment effectively limited where black households lived in the 1930s rather than reflecting racial bias in the construction of the maps themselves. We argue that the systemized treatment of neighborhood risk vis-à-vis mortgage lending that was adopted by HOLC and the FHA may have played a central role in locking these patterns of inequality in place. |
| JEL: | J15 N9 R28 |
| Date: | 2020–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28146&r=all |