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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2024‒04‒22
thirty-two papers chosen by |
| By: | Lambert, Thomas |
| Abstract: | Over the last 10 years or so there has been a resurgence of interest in the English king Richard III, especially after his remains are found in 2012 after being lost or missing for centuries. Prior to this, there are many publications, reports, and documentaries alluding to a “smear” campaign being conducted against the king by either the Tudor monarchs who succeeded him and/or by their confederates and surrogates. It is alleged that this is done in order to promote and make the Tudor dynasty of the 16th Century (Henry VII, Henry VIII, Mary I, and Elizabeth I) appear to be much better leaders by comparison and to make the social and economic times of Tudor England look better than the bloody and bad times of the 15th Century. The latter is characterized by the continuation and final ending of the Hundred Years War and the War of the Roses as well as by Richard’s alleged usurpation of the crown and tyranny during his brief reign (1483-1485). William Shakespeare is even accused of being complicit in promoting the Tudor myth, although perhaps unwittingly due to his reliance on the history being disseminated in his time, long after the demise of Richard III. Since fairly advanced and well-reasoned conjectures of economic activity now exist for the 15th and 16th Centuries, this paper examines the economic times of Richard III and his predecessors of the 15th Century and compares these to those of his Tudor successors. The conjectures show poorer economic performance and higher taxation during the Tudor reign compared to the previous century, and this makes one wonder if another reason for the creation of the Tudor myth is to downplay bad economic performance during their reign. It also raises the question as to whether the vilification of Richard III also helps to obscure the bad economy of 16th Century England. When examined from a long run perspective, this poor economic performance can be considered part of the economics discussion of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Richard III’s demise and vilification possibly and partially can be understood in the context of this transition. |
| Keywords: | Richard III, Tudors, Tudor myth, transition debate, long wave cycles, real net national income per capita, real GDP per capita, Shakespeare |
| JEL: | B51 N13 N43 N93 |
| Date: | 2024–03–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:120530&r=his |
| By: | Andrew Garin; Jonathan L. Rothbaum |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the long-run effects of government-led construction of manufacturing plants on the regions where they were built and on individuals from those regions. Specifically, we examine publicly financed plants built in dispersed locations outside of major urban centers for security reasons during the United States' industrial mobilization for World War II. Wartime plant construction had large and persistent impacts on local development, characterized by an expansion of relatively high-wage manufacturing employment throughout the postwar era. These benefits were shared by incumbent residents; we find men born before WWII in counties where plants were built earned $1, 200 (in 2020 dollars) or 2.5 percent more per year in adulthood relative to those born in counterfactual comparison regions, with larger benefits accruing to children of lower-income parents. The balance of evidence suggests that these individuals benefited primarily from the local expansion of higher-wage jobs to which they had access as adults, rather than because of developmental effects from exposure to better environments during childhood. |
| JEL: | H56 J31 J62 N42 R11 R53 |
| Date: | 2024–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32265&r=his |
| By: | Bouscasse, P.; Nakamura, E.; Steinsson, J. |
| Abstract: | We provide new estimates of the evolution of productivity in England from 1250 to 1870. Real wages over this period were heavily influenced by plague-induced swings in the population. We develop and implement a new methodology for estimating productivity that accounts for these Malthusian dynamics. In the early part of our sample, we find that productivity growth was zero. Productivity growth began in 1600—almost a century before the Glorious Revolution. We estimate productivity growth of 3% per decade between 1600 and 1760, which increased to 6% per decade between 1770 and 1860. Our estimates attribute much of the increase in output growth during the Industrial Revolution to a falling land share of production, rather than to faster productivity growth. Our evidence helps distinguish between theories of why growth began. In particular, our findings support the idea that broad-based economic change preceded the bourgeois institutional reforms of 17th century England and may have contributed to causing them. We estimate relatively weak Malthusian population forces on real wages. This implies that our model can generate sustained deviations from the “iron law of wages†prior the Industrial Revolution. |
| JEL: | N13 O40 J10 |
| Date: | 2023–03–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camjip:2309&r=his |
| By: | Ohler, Johann |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the individual-level assumptions of the Malthusian model in pre-industrial Germany. By exploiting demographic records for 150, 000 individuals from the historical county of Wittgenstein, I test for status gradients in child mortality (the Malthusian positive check) and marital fertility (preventive check). While I find no evidence for a status gradient in child mortality, I find strong evidence for a status gradient in fertility. The richest families had, on average, one extra child when compared to their poorer compatriots. Turning to the mechanics of the preventive check, this appears to have been driven mostly by an earlier age of marriage amongst high status families. Disaggregating my dataset into six periods reveals that this fertility differential began to disintegrate around 1800. Ergo, I conclude that prior to 1800, the German population was subject to some Malthusian forces, albeit it was not stuck in a rigid Malthusian equilibrium, as conceptualised by some neo Malthusian scholars. |
| Keywords: | German Economic History; Malthus; Demographic History; European Marriage Pattern; Unified Growth Theory |
| JEL: | J12 J13 N33 N93 O40 |
| Date: | 2024–01–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:120451&r=his |
| By: | Guillaume Blanc |
| Abstract: | This research shows that secularization accounts for the remarkably early fertility decline in France. The demographic transition, a turning point in history and an essential condition for development, began in France more than a century earlier than in any other country. Why it happened so early is one of the ‘big questions of history’ because it challenges traditional explanations and because of data limitations. Using a novel dataset crowdsourced from publicly available genealogies, I comprehensively document the decline in fertility and its timing with a representative sample of the population. Drawing on a wide range of sources and data, I document an important process of secularization in the eighteenth century and find a strong and robust association with the timing of the transition across regions and individuals. Finally, I discuss the persistent impact of the transition on economic growth and explore the drivers of secularization. |
| Keywords: | fertility, development, secularization |
| JEL: | N33 O10 Z12 |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:man:allwps:0003&r=his |
| By: | Kohnert, Dirk |
| Abstract: | Jews in Africa have a long history. Africans have encountered Jewish myths and traditions in different forms and situations, leading to the development of a new Jewish identity linked to that of the Diaspora. Different groups of black Jews from western, central, eastern and southern Africa used and imagined their oral traditions and traditional practices to construct a distinct Jewish identity. The adoption of Judaism by black Africans was a form of liberation from Anglo-Christian authority. Blacks and Jews are the two marginalised and stigmatised minorities in Western culture. Since ancient times they have maintained a complex relationship of identification, cooperation and rivalry. The Igbo of Nigeria, for example, were at the forefront of a normative Jewish movement that included several other ethnic groups. The rhetoric of the Holocaust, Zionism and the external features of Judaism were exploited by the Biafran neo-secessionists for their own ends. The majority of African Jews live in South Africa. However, most of them are white. The South African Jewish community numbered more than 120, 000 in the mid-1970s. After several large waves of emigration at the end of the apartheid regime, the number fell to just over 50, 000. However, the Jewish claim to South African citizenship is controversial. The South African host society distinguishes between the Jewish diaspora and South African citizenship. Since the early 1990s, the second-largest Jewish community in sub-Saharan Africa has developed in Nigeria, which previously did not appear on any map of the Jewish world. Nine out of ten Nigerian Jews are Igbo. Estimates range from 3, 000 to 30, 000 Jews. Israel, however, refuses to recognise them as a Jewish population. In the DR Congo, a small Jewish community has held a special position since colonial times. Many Jews were among Leopold II's close advisers and agents in his Congo Free State (1885-1908). Jews also played an important role in Katanga Province in the 20th century, when the first mines were opened there and a railway line to South Africa was built. However, Mobutu's Zairisation (1973) and the looting of 1991 forced most Jewish entrepreneurs to leave the country. Ethiopia could be considered the cradle of Judaism, including the ancient kingdom of Sheba, mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and the Koran, and Beta Israel. Today, however, the harsh reality faced by Ethiopian Jewish immigrants in Israel reveals the racism that is deeply rooted in Israeli society. |
| Keywords: | Black African Jews; Jewish identity; Jewish mythology; Black Jews, Black Judaism; Jewish diaspora; History of the Jews in Africa; Uganda Scheme; Ethiopian Jews; Beta Israel; Lemba people; Igbo Jews; House of Israel (Ghana); List of Jews from Sub-Saharan Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa; South Africa; Nigeria; DR Congo; Ethiopia; |
| JEL: | F35 F52 F54 K37 N17 N37 N97 O15 O55 Z12 Z13 |
| Date: | 2024–03–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:120512&r=his |
| By: | Guillaume Blanc; Masahiro Kubo |
| Abstract: | This paper studies nation-building in a fragmented society. We document the adoption of a common language and the construction of a national idenity in France. Using a natural experiment and drawing on a novel dataset on the languages spoken across municipalites on the eve of the twentieth century, we establish that state intervention in the provision of education brought homogenization. To understand why nation-building was successful, we study heterogeneity and find that elites and the demand for education were instrumental in driving assimilation. Finally, we document further impacts on identity and ideology in the twentieth century. |
| Keywords: | nation-building, language, eeducation |
| JEL: | P00 H52 I20 N40 Z13 |
| Date: | 2024–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:man:allwps:0002&r=his |
| By: | Effrosyni Adamopoulou; Jeremy Greenwood; Nezih Guner |
| Abstract: | A brief historical overview of the household equipment revolution and the women who transformed the home in Germany and the United States. |
| JEL: | B31 D13 J22 N32 N34 |
| Date: | 2024–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32253&r=his |
| By: | Liedtke, Falk |
| Abstract: | In the 1910s and 1920s, the major Berlin private banks created extensive branch networks. Among them the Commerzbank stood out in particular, building up the second-largest branch network by the mid-1920s. However, the expansion was plagued by problems from the outset. Until the 1930s, Commerzbank was only moderately successful in implementing its business strategies in the new branches. The organization of the customer lending business in particular was burdened by arbitrary and often risky business decisions by the branches, which ultimately contributed significantly to the bank's liquidity problems during the banking crisis of 1931. The risky branch business was directly linked to the aggressive expansion strategies of the major Berlin banks, whose rapidly growing number of branches competed with each other in an increasingly crowded market in the 1920s. An examination of the surviving sources from Commerzbank's branch business reveals an instrumentalization of the customer lending business, whereby an increasing willingness to take risks in lending was used as a tool in competition with a growing number of rival banks. |
| Keywords: | Bank History, Credit, Competition, Financial Crisis History, History ofFinancial Institutions, Lending, Market Structure |
| JEL: | N24 D04 G21 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ibfpps:289478&r=his |
| By: | Campagnolo, Gilles |
| Abstract: | Carl Menger is remembered less for his analysis of entrepreneurship (which in the following analysis refers to his fundamental notions related to the nature of business practice) than for his views on matters like money, individualism or the nature of institutions (there are exceptions to this subdued interest, such as Kirzner 1978). However, these issues are related and a long-debated notion among Austrians, namely time, relates investment, entrepreneurship, uncertainty and Menger’s tentative quasi-anthropology (kept in his notes). This paper conscientiously investigates those issues through Menger’s views on the notion of time. |
| Keywords: | Böhm-Bawerk (Eugen von); entrepreneurship; innovation; Menger (Carl); time |
| JEL: | B13 B31 O31 |
| Date: | 2022–09–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:117195&r=his |
| By: | Fabio Gatti |
| Abstract: | Medieval and Early-Modern business correspondence between European companies constitutes a rich source of economic, business, and trade information in that the writing of letters was the very instrument through which merchants ordered and organized the shipments of goods, and performed financial operations. While a comprehensive analysis of such material enables scholars to re-construct the supply chains and sales of various goods, as well as identify the trading networks in the Europe, much of the archival sources have not undergone any systematic and quantitative analysis. In this paper we develop a new holistic and quantitative approach for analysing the entire outgoing, and so far unexploited, correspondence of a major Renaissance merchantbank - the Saminiati & Guasconi company of Florence - for the first years of its activity. After digitization of the letters, we employ an AI-based HTR model on the Transkribus platform and perform an automated-text analysis over the HTR-model’s output. For each letter (6, 376 epistles) this results in the identification of the addressee (446 merchants), their place of residence (65 towns), and the traded goods (27 main goods). The approach developed arguably provides a best-practice methodology for the quantitative treatment of medieval and early-modern merchant letters and the use of the derived historical text as data |
| Date: | 2024–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ube:dpvwib:dp2403&r=his |
| By: | Rustam Jamilov; Tobias König; Karsten Müller; Farzad Saidi |
| Abstract: | We study the macroeconomic causes and consequences of bank runs in 184 countries over the period of 1800-2022. A new narrative chronology of bank run events coupled with a newly constructed historical dataset on banking sector deposits allows us to distinguish between systemic bank runs—those associated with substantial declines in aggregate deposits—and non-systemic episodes. We find that bank runs are typically associated with large contractions in deposits, credit, and output, as well as exchange rate crashes and sudden stops. Whether deposits contract during runs, in turn, predicts the severity of output declines, highlighting that bank runs are particularly costly when they are systemic in nature. Using several sources of historical and contemporary bank-level data, we show that systemic bank runs are associated with a wide dispersion in deposit growth rates and a flow of deposits from more leveraged to safer banks. Taken together, our analysis highlights a key role for the liability side of banks in financial crises, and our new quantitatively validated measure of bank runs provides unprecedented scope for studying such episodes. |
| Date: | 2024–03–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:wpaper:1039&r=his |
| By: | Anjeela Khurram (Pakistan Institute of Development Economics); Saba Anwar (Pakistan Institute of Development Economics) |
| Abstract: | One of the most telling episodes of Pakistan’s economic history, with far-reaching consequences, was the ‘Nationalization’ policy initiated by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s government, which saw large swathes of economic activity coming under the umbrella of the public sector. The spillovers of this policy can still be felt in the form of a public imprint on economic activity in the country and form part of the assiduous debate on its outcomes. The industrial sector bore a substantial brunt of this policy. In this research piece, we document the case of Batala Engineering Company (BECO), established in 1932 by Mr. C.M Latif, an institution that reflected the emblem of the efforts, dedication, and sincerity on the part of its founder. Moreover, despite adverse circumstances at the time of the founding of our country, BECO continued to function and became one of the most successful industrial units over time. |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pid:kbrief:2024:114&r=his |
| By: | Christian Møller Dahl (University of Southern Denmark); Torben Johansen (University of Southern Denmark); Christian Vedel (University of Southern Denmark) |
| Abstract: | This paper introduces a new tool, OccCANINE, to automatically transform occupational descriptions into the HISCO classification system. The manual work involved in processing and classifying occupational descriptions is error-prone, tedious, and time-consuming. We finetune a preexisting language model (CANINE) to do this automatically, thereby performing in seconds and minutes what previously took days and weeks. The model is trained on 14 million pairs of occupational descriptions and HISCO codes in 13 different languages contributed by 22 different sources. Our approach is shown to have accuracy, recall, and precision above 90 percent. Our tool breaks the metaphorical HISCO barrier and makes this data readily available for analysis of occupational structures with broad applicability in economics, economic history, and various related disciplines. |
| Keywords: | Occupational Standardization, HISCO Classification System, Machine Learning in Economic History, Language Models |
| JEL: | C55 C81 J1 N01 N3 N6 O33 |
| Date: | 2024–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0255&r=his |
| By: | Leonello Tronti |
| Abstract: | The paper summarizes the evolution of the welfare state concept and its link to economic growth and full employment, along a complex itinerary running for more than a century, from the work of Adolf Wagner (1878) to James Meade’s proposals (1989, 1995). The overview focuses on the theoretical links of the first experiments of the welfare state with the foundation of welfare economics (Pigou, 1920), the establishment of the concept of human capital (Knight, 1944; Schultz, 1961) and the systematization of the welfare state design offered by Beveridge (1942). In the same years, the full employment goal is affirmed as achievable (Keynes, 1936; Beveridge, 1944; Roosevelt, 1945), meanwhile the Italian Constitution (1948) proposes a major advance, affirming full employment as a substantive freedom. With the end of Bretton Woods (1971) and the oil shocks (1973, 1979) stagflation spreads to developed economies, and both the welfare state and full employment face a setback. Wagner’s law finds a more evolved expression in the Laffer curve (1974), while monetary policy becomes restrictive and full employment has to give way to the Nairu (Modigliani and Papademos, 1975; Tobin, 1980). This is the climate in which Meade proposes a new and vital link between the welfare state and full employment: a proposal in which worker shares combine with topsy-turvy nationalization, and public credit with the social dividend. A proposal out of the box, but worth reflecting on in depth |
| Keywords: | Welfare state; Wagner law; full employment; welfare economics; human capital; substantial freedom; capabilities; stagflation; fiscal crisis; Nairu; Laffer curve; social dividend |
| JEL: | P16 E24 E64 H53 I31 J53 M52 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ast:wpaper:0061&r=his |
| By: | Ruderman, Anne; van Waijenburg, Marlous |
| Abstract: | The revocation of the Royal African Company's (RAC) monopoly in 1698 inaugurated a transformation of the transatlantic slave trade. While the RAC's exit from the slave trade has received scholarly attention, little is known about the company's response to the loss of its trading privileges. Not only did the end of the company's monopoly increase competition, but the unprecedented numbers of private traders who entered the trade exacerbated the company's principal-agent problems on the West African coast. To analyze the company's behavior in the post-monopoly period, we exploit a series of 292 instruction letters that the RAC issued to its slave-ship captains between 1685 and 1706, coding each individual command in the letters. Our database reveals two new insights into the company's response to its upended competitive landscape. First, the RAC showed a remarkable degree of organizational flexibility, reacting to a heightened principal-agent problem. Second, its response was facilitated by the infrastructure of the transatlantic slave trade, which gave the company a monitoring mechanism by virtue of the slave-ship captains who continually sailed to the West African coast. |
| Keywords: | business history; monopolies; slave trade; CUP deal |
| JEL: | N0 |
| Date: | 2023–09–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:120506&r=his |
| By: | Gregory Clark (University of Southern Denmark, LSE); Neil Cummins (LSE) |
| Abstract: | Children early in the birth order get more parental care than later children. Does this significantly affect their life chances? An extensive genealogy of 428, 280 English people 1680-2024, with substantial sets of complete families, suggests that birth order had little effect on social outcomes either for contemporary outcomes, or in earlier centuries. For a small group of elite families in the nineteenth century and earlier, the oldest son was advantaged in terms of wealth, education, and occupational status. But even in this elite group, among later sons, birth order had no effect. We consider in the paper how the absence of birth order effects in England can be reconciled with reports of substantial negative birth order effects for modern Nordic countries. |
| Keywords: | Human Capital Formation, Birth Order, Intergenerational Mobility |
| JEL: | J24 J62 N33 N34 |
| Date: | 2024–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0254&r=his |
| By: | Bernard Gazier (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne) |
| Abstract: | This text aims at identifying and discussing the content and present meaning of Blaise Pascal's contribution to the understanding of justice in economic matters: which inequalities in terms of wealth, status and power are acceptable or not in a country or a community? Such a project faces a difficulty and a paradox. The difficulty is that economics as a separate discipline does not exist in Pascal's times; the paradox lies in the fact that while Pascal was politically conservative, his heirs in the XXth century converge in a strongly critical stance against capitalism and established order. Our analysis proceeds in three steps. In the first step, we briefly situate Pascal's approach in its historical context, by comparing it to the views of other authors of his time who are considered as forerunners of political economy. In the second, we discuss the content of the legacy as identified and used in the XXth century, by comparing Pascal's statements on justice to the conceptions of his heirs, in order to pinpoint convergences and divergences. The last step adopts an epistemologic and genealogic stance. We take into consideration the long-terme changes in knowledge modalities leading to the "human sciences" and among them to "positive" and "normative" economics, in order to set and discuss the meaning of the references to Blaise Pascal in contemporary debates on economic and social justice |
| Keywords: | Blaise Pascal; social justice; normative economics |
| JEL: | B11 B50 B55 D60 |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mse:cesdoc:24003&r=his |
| By: | Chiovelli, Giorgio; Fergusson, Leopoldo (Universidad de los Andes); Martínez, Luis R. (University of Chicago); Torres, Juan David (Universidad de los Andes); Valencia Caicedo, Felipe (University of British Columbia) |
| Abstract: | We study the fiscal and political consequences of state modernization in the Spanish colonial empire in Latin America. We focus on the introduction of a new corps of provincial governors called intendants in the late 18th century. Leveraging the staggered adoption of the reform and administrative fiscal microdata, we show that the intendancy system sizably increased Crown revenue by strengthening state presence in the periphery and disrupting local elite capture. Politically, the reform reduced rebellions by previously exploited indigenous peoples. However, naming patterns reveal that the intendants heightened anti-Spanish sentiment among Creole elites, plausibly contributing to the nascent independence movement. |
| Keywords: | State Capacity; Taxation; Bureaucracy; Conflict; Elites; Colonialism; Independence; Latin America |
| JEL: | D73 D74 H71 N46 P48 |
| Date: | 2024–04–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000089:021106&r=his |
| By: | Barbara Boelmann |
| Abstract: | This paper shows that the local availability of universities acted as a catalyst in the catch-up of women in higher education that has been documented for developed countries in the latter half of the 20th century. It uses the foundation of new universities in the 1960s and 1970s in West German regions which previously did not have a university as a case study to understand how women’s mobility and education decisions interact. I first document women’s low regional mobility in post-war West Germany along with their low educational attainment. Second, I exploit that the university expansion exogenously brought universities to women’s doorsteps in a difference-indifferences (DiD) strategy. Comparing regions which experienced a university opening within 20 km to those where no university was opened, I show that women benefited more than men from a close-by university opening, closing the local gender gap in university education by about 72%. Third, I provide evidence that local universities partly increased university education through reduced costs, while part of the effect is due to higher expected returns, highlighting an important second channel through which universities promote education to local youths. |
| Keywords: | college gender gap, geographic mobility, university expansion |
| JEL: | I23 I24 I28 J16 |
| Date: | 2024–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2024_518&r=his |
| By: | Paolo Buonanno; Francesco Cinnirella; Elona Harka; Marcello Puca |
| Abstract: | Access to useful knowledge is crucial for fostering modern economic growth. We show, for the first time, that knowledge accumulated and stored in monasteries was useful for innovation. In 1866, anticlerical legislation in Italy led to the suppression of religious orders, the expropriation of their properties, and the transfer of their manuscripts to local public libraries. From a contemporary survey on public libraries, we construct a unique dataset on municipalities which received monastic volumes. This information is then linked to newly digitized annual data on patents issued in Italy between 1863 and 1883. Difference-in-differences estimates show that municipalities exposed to an influx of monastic manuscripts experienced a significant increase in innovation. The effect is driven by the increase in the number of manuscripts in previously existing libraries. We show that the innovation advantage also persisted in the long run and had no impact on human capital. |
| Keywords: | books, manuscripts, knowledge, religion, monastery, libraries, patents |
| JEL: | N33 O30 Z12 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11015&r=his |
| By: | Accominotti, Olivier; Albers, Thilo; Kessler, Philippe; Oosterlinck, Kim |
| Abstract: | This paper argues that international and domestic political economy factors are key determinants of creditor countries’ commercial policy responses to sovereign debt defaults. We illustrate this argument using a unique historical case study: the German external default of the 1930s. Our new historical narrative of this episode reveals that the various creditor countries adopted markedly different trade policy responses to the default depending on their degree of economic leverage on Germany and on the relative political influence of various interest groups within their domestic economy. These factors account for the pattern of Germany’s bilateral trade with the different creditor countries during the 1930s as well as for the differential treatment of various countries’ bondholders by the German government. |
| Keywords: | sovereign risk; trade; creditor discrimination; commercial policy; FP7/2007-2013/ under REA grant agreement n◦ 608129 |
| JEL: | N74 F10 |
| Date: | 2024–02–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:122087&r=his |
| By: | Piergiuseppe Fortunato, Tanmay Singh and Marco Pecoraro |
| Abstract: | We examine the policy changes enacted by populist leaders after coming into power in different historical and geographical contexts. We employ the dataset developed by Funke et al. (2023), based on Cas Mudde’s minimalist definition of populism, and expand it to several additional policy dimensions. We find that populist governance is rather heterogeneous both in terms of policy instruments and outcomes, and that it varies depending on historical context, geography, and ideology. We conclude that we should contemplate a more nuanced definition of populism for a better understanding of the phenomenon. |
| Keywords: | Populism, Public expenditure, Corruption. |
| JEL: | D60 E60 N10 P16 |
| Date: | 2024–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:irn:wpaper:24-02&r=his |
| By: | Suss, Joel; Kemeny, Tom; Connor, Dylan S. |
| Abstract: | Wealth inequality has been sharply rising in the United States and across many other high-income countries. Due to a lack of data, we know little about how this trend has unfolded across locations within countries. Examining the subnational geography of wealth is crucial because, from one generation to the next, it shapes the distribution of opportunity, disadvantage, and power across individuals and communities. By employing machine-learning-based imputation to link national historical surveys conducted by the U.S. Federal Reserve to population survey microdata, the data presented in this article addresses this gap. The Geographic Wealth Inequality Database (“GEOWEALTH-US”) provides the first estimates of the level and distribution of wealth at various geographical scales within the United States from 1960 to 2020. The GEOWEALTH-US database enables new lines of investigation into the contribution of spatial wealth disparities to major societal challenges including wealth concentration, income inequality, social mobility, housing unaffordability, and political polarization. |
| JEL: | N0 |
| Date: | 2024–02–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:122377&r=his |
| By: | Charles W. Calomiris; Matthew S. Jaremski |
| Abstract: | The high social costs of financial crises imply that economists, policymakers, businesses, and households have a tremendous incentive to understand, and try to prevent them. And yet, so far we have failed to learn how to avoid them. In this article, we take a novel approach to studying financial crises. We first build ten case studies of financial crises that stretch over two millennia, and then consider their salient points of differences and commonalities. We see this as the beginning of developing a useful taxonomy of crises – an understanding of the most important factors that reappear across the many examples, which also allows (as in any taxonomy) some examples to be more similar to each other than others. From the perspective of our review of the ten crises, we consider the question of why it has proven so difficult to learn from past crises to avoid future ones. |
| JEL: | E30 G01 N20 |
| Date: | 2024–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32213&r=his |
| By: | Michalopoulos, S; Rauh, C. |
| Abstract: | Why are certain movies more successful in some markets than others? Are the entertainment products we consume reflective of our core values and beliefs? These questions drive our investigation into the relationship between a society’s oral tradition and the financial success of films. We combine a unique catalog of local tales, myths, and legends around the world with data on international movie screenings and revenues. First, we quantify the similarity between movies’ plots and traditional motifs employing machine learning techniques. Comparing the same movie across different markets, we establish that films that resonate more with local folklore systematically accrue higher revenue and are more likely to be screened. Second, we document analogous patterns within the US. Google Trends data reveal a pronounced interest in markets where ancestral narratives align more closely with a movie’s theme. Third, we delve into the explicit values transmitted by films, concentrating on the depiction of risk and gender roles. Films that promote risk-taking sell more in entrepreneurial societies today, rooted in traditions where characters pursue dangerous tasks successfully. Films portraying women in stereotypical roles continue to find a robust audience in societies with similar gender stereotypes in their folklore and where women today continue being relegated to subordinate positions. These findings underscore the enduring influence of traditional storytelling on entertainment patterns in the 21st century, highlighting a profound connection between movie consumption and deeply ingrained cultural narratives and values. |
| Keywords: | Movies, Folklore, Culture, Values, Entertainment, Text Analysis, Media |
| JEL: | N00 O10 P00 Z10 Z11 |
| Date: | 2024–03–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camjip:2406&r=his |
| By: | Esteve, Albert; Castro, Andrés; Becca, Federica |
| Abstract: | This chapter provides an account of the major family transformations that occurred in recent decades across Latin American and Caribbean countries and examines the implications of such transformations for childrens school attendance and progress and womens labor force participation. Latin American and Caribbean families and households have undergone substantial changes in recent years while keeping some of their distinctive features unchanged (Esteve et al., 2022; Esteve & Florez-Paredes, 2018a; Juárez & Gayet, 2014). This combination of stability and change has had profound transformations in the family status in which women raise their children and the family context in which children are raised. We refer to family context as the combination of womens marital status and the type of households in which children reside. We combine references to the literature and own calculations based on Latin American and Caribbean population census samples, available at the Integrated Public-use Microdata Series International (IPUMS) (Minnesota Population Center, 2020). We use data from 25 countries based on the most recent census microdata and, in some instances, historical samples starting in the late 1950s (see Appendix 1). The chapter is organized as follows. First, we document trends in family change and childrens status. To illustrate family change empirically, we focus on women aged 25 to 29 and children aged 7 to 16. For reasons that will be displayed during the paper, these groups offer a reliable overview of major transformations with the advantage of avoiding overlapping cohorts when data are analyzed over time. Variations by educational attainment are also examined to illustrate the role of inequality of opportunities in family change. Second, we focus on the implications of family forms on children's school attendance and progress and women's participation in the labor market. In the absence of tailored indicators about progress in cognitive and non-cognitive skills, school attendance and progress are standard indicators of early human capital accumulation (UNESCO, 2022). We examine these two outcomes among more than 15 million children included in the IPUMS-I census samples. For women, we examine the degree of participation in the labor market (n 16 million). |
| JEL: | J12 J16 I21 |
| Date: | 2023–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:brikps:13097&r=his |
| By: | Victoria Ivashina; Ṣebnem Kalemli-Özcan; Luc Laeven; Karsten Müller |
| Abstract: | Using a new dataset on sectoral credit exposures covering financial and non-financial sectors in 115 economies over the period 1940–2014, we document the following evidence that corporate debt plays a key role in explaining boom-bust cycles, financial crises, and slow macroeconomic recoveries: (i) corporate debt accounts for two thirds of the aggregate credit expansion before crises and three quarters of total nonperforming loans during the bust; (ii) expansions in corporate debt predict crises similarly to household debt; (iii) a measure of imbalance in credit growth flowing disproportionately to some sectors, such as construction and non-bank financial intermediation, is associated with crises; and (iv) the recovery from financial crises is slower after a boom in corporate debt, especially when backed by procyclical collateral values, due to higher nonperforming loans. |
| JEL: | E30 F34 |
| Date: | 2024–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32225&r=his |
| By: | Stark, Oded (University of Bonn) |
| Abstract: | Sen (1973 and 1997) presents the Gini coefficient of income inequality in a population as follows. "In any pair-wise comparison the man with the lower income can be thought to be suffering from some depression on finding his income to be lower. Let this depression be proportional to the difference in income. The sum total of all such depressions in all possible pair-wise comparisons takes us to the Gini coefficient." (This citation is from Sen 1973, p. 8.) Sen's verbal account is accompanied by a formula (Sen 1997, p. 31, eq. 2.8.1), which is replicated in the text of this note as equation (1). The formula yields a coefficient bounded from above by a number smaller than 1. This creates a difficulty, because the "mission" of a measure of inequality defined on the unit interval is to accord 0 to perfect equality (maximal equality) and 1 to perfect inequality (maximal inequality). In this note we show that when the Gini coefficient is elicited from a neat measure of the aggregate income-related depression of the population that consists of the people who experience income-related depression, then the obtained Gini coefficient is "well behaved" in the sense that it is bounded from above by 1. We conjecture a reason for a drawback of Sen's definition, and we present repercussions of the usage of the "well-behaved" Gini coefficient. |
| Keywords: | Sen's definition of the Gini coefficient of income inequality, aggregate income-related depression of a population, a "well-behaved" Gini coefficient |
| JEL: | D31 D63 I31 |
| Date: | 2024–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16856&r=his |
| By: | Harald Hagemann (Universität Hohenheim) |
| Abstract: | The essay begins with Hayek's grappling with the equilibrium framework as the starting point for the analysis of cyclical fluctuations and the fundamental methodological challenge raised by Lowe's attack against the construction of business-cycle theory within the system of general economic equilibrium. It then shows that Hayek elaborated his Austrian theory of the business cycle on the innovative combination of five building blocks: (1) Wicksell's theory of the cumulative process where price changes are caused by the discrepancy between the market rate and the natural (equilibrium) rate of interest; (2) Mises's theory of money and credit in which banks artificially lowering the money (market) rate of interest are responsible for overinvestment and a misallocation of resources which necessarily has to be corrected; (3) Böhm-Bawerk's theory of capital with its emphasis on the time structure of the production process; (4) Cantillon effects of changes in the money supply on the price structure and hence on the structure of production (non-neutrality of money); (5) Ricardo effects of a shortage of consumption goods on the production of investment goods (disproportionality of circulating and fixed capital). |
| JEL: | B22 B25 B31 E32 |
| Date: | 2024–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gre:wpaper:2024-06&r=his |
| By: | O'Donoghue, Cathal (National University of Ireland, Galway); Doorley, Karina (Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin); Sologon, Denisa Maria (LISER (CEPS/INSTEAD)) |
| Abstract: | The cost-of-living crisis has increased attention on consumption and how it differs for particular societal groups. There is much theoretical evidence that consumption patterns of men and women should differ, but the empirical evidence is scant, due in part to the availability of individual-level consumption data. This paper tackles the question of consumption differentials between men and women over nearly three decades in Ireland. Using harmonised survey data, we show how patterns of consumption of male- and female-headed households have changed over this period of significant economic turmoil and growth. |
| Keywords: | consumption, gender |
| JEL: | E21 J16 |
| Date: | 2024–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16852&r=his |
| By: | Silva, Buddhika; Hasan, Amena |
| Abstract: | Driven by societal pressures and a growing focus on diversity, corporations are increasingly seeking to diversify their leadership teams. Female representation on corporate boards is a topic of growing interest, with many European countries recently implementing formal gender diversity requirements. This study analyzes existing research on gender diversity in boardrooms, examining the characteristics of women directors, the challenges they encounter, and the barriers hindering their advancement. Despite the recognized benefits of gender diversity, male-dominated boards and ingrained gender biases often confine women to lower-level positions. As women climb the corporate ladder, they face the "glass ceiling" and "glass cliff" phenomena, further limiting their progress. However, research reveals no significant difference in long-term financial performance between companies led by men and women. In fact, increased female representation can positively impact innovation. This suggests that the glass ceiling and other barriers are not based on a lack of talent among women but rather on unconscious biases and discriminatory practices. This article advocates for balanced board representation based on qualifications, fostering true gender diversity and unlocking its potential benefits for organizations. |
| Keywords: | Empowerment, innovation, leadership, biases, gender roles, discrepancies, financial performance |
| JEL: | D6 D60 D63 N3 N9 |
| Date: | 2023–03–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:120388&r=his |