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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
| By: | Cummins, Neil |
| Abstract: | Using surnames from the universe of death and wealth-at-death records in England and Wales, from 1858 to 2018, I document the emergence of a modern ethnic wealth gradient. Historically, Non-British ethnicities have average wealth 2–5 times that of the English. However, this premium has decreased over the 20th century. By 1980, non-British ethnicities have no advantage over the British. However, this masks considerable heterogeneity within the non-British ethnicity group. Europeans typically die significantly richer than the English whereas the Pakistani and Swedish die significantly poorer. Some groups always have lower wealth. The Irish, have wealth around 50% of the average English throughout. Surprisingly, the most egalitarian measure of wealth is representation within the top 1%. Most ethnicities have an equal, or greater, representation in the top 1% than the English, 1980–1992. Despite large differences in average wealth between ethnicities, the vast majority of variation, 97.5% is between individuals. |
| Keywords: | Elsevier deal |
| JEL: | N00 N33 N34 |
| Date: | 2024–10–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:124610 |
| By: | Cheng, Ruoran |
| Abstract: | The Great Divergence has arguably been one of the most important debates in the field of economic history over the past two decades. This article contributes to this ongoing discussion from a novel perspective, specifically focusing on transportation conditions. Utilizing travel route books published since 16th century China, I reconstructed the national trade transport network of China during the Ming and Qing dynasties (14th to 19th centuries) and estimated transport costs and speeds in the Yangtze region during the late 17th and 18th centuries. These estimates were then compared with those of England for the same period. The findings reveal that, in the late 17th century, transport costs and speeds in the Yangtze region of China were comparable to those in England. However, a divergence emerged after 1700. This timing of divergence in transportation between the Yangtze region and England supports the strand of literature proposing that The Great Divergence began around 1700. |
| JEL: | N0 O53 L91 L96 |
| Date: | 2024–10–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:wpaper:125855 |
| By: | Donges, Alexander; Streb, Jochen |
| JEL: | D22 N64 N94 R12 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc24:302389 |
| By: | Roser Alvarez-Klee (Universitat Pompeu Fabra); Ramon Ramon Muñoz (Universitat de Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | Demographic crises and famines were recurring phenomena in China before the mid-20th century, with the Great Leap Forward Famine of 1959-61 often regarded as the last and one of the most severe in Chinese History. This article delves into the repercussions of the Great Flood of 1975 in Henan province. We reassess the demographic implications of this hydrological catastrophe and employ a well-established methodology to identify demographic crises and occurrences of famine. Contrary to official perspectives, our findings indicate absolute mortality numbers and population losses in excess of officially accepted accounts and the emergence of localised famine episodes in the last years of Maoist China, suggesting that the last famine in China might have occurred in the mid-1970s. We argue that this demographic crisis was not solely the result of a high-magnitude natural disaster but also had other components: long-term economic policies that failed to achieve a solid and strong population’s nutritional status in Henan before 1975, along with short-term political decisions made during the flood, likely exacerbated its impact. Moreover, this disaster cannot be viewed in isolation from Mao's hydraulic policies in the 1950s. |
| Keywords: | Demographic crisis, famine, hydraulic catastrophe, nutritional conditions, China |
| JEL: | I18 J11 N55 Q10 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0269 |
| By: | Kaufmann, Daniel; Stuart, Rebecca |
| Abstract: | Using newly collected discount rate data for six Swiss cities, we find no evidence of increasing integration during a 30-year period of lightly regulated free banking. We attribute this to two structural issues: banks had incentives to protect their local monopolies, and the inherent instability of free banking meant that there was always a risk (which varied across banks) of a bank run. We use a novel counterfactual to show that these risks increased discount rate dispersion, and argue that as a result, public regulation of payments infrastructure was necessary for money market integration. |
| Keywords: | Switzerland, discount rates, money market, financial integration, monetary union, 19th century |
| JEL: | E43 E44 F33 F45 N13 N23 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:qucehw:303522 |
| By: | Dorian Jullien (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, CNRS, Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne, Paris, France); Alexandre Truc (Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, GREDEG, France) |
| Abstract: | Existing histories of behavioral and experimental economics (BE-XP) are mostly focused on the intellectual and institutional developments of these approaches in the United States of America - and to a lesser extent in Germany. While a seminal contribution to these approaches was produced in the early 1950s in France by Maurice Allais, the literature is rather silent on how BE-XP developed subsequently in France. We propose to fill this gap by comparing the history of BE-XP in France to international trends previously identified in the literature. We show that after an ambivalent influence of the work of Allais (1953) on BE-XP in France during the 1980s, that influence rapidly faded. BE-XP in France then largely follows international trends. We nevertheless identify some heterogeneity across the French territory and the development of at least two national specificities on the measurement of utility and the modeling of social preferences. |
| Keywords: | Behavioral economics, Experimental economics, History of economics |
| JEL: | B21 B40 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gre:wpaper:2024-23 |
| By: | Javier Marco Gracia (Department of Applied Economics, Universidad de Zaragoza and Instituto Agroalimentario de Aragón, IA2); Pablo Delgado (Department of Applied Economics, Universidad de Zaragoza and Instituto Agroalimentario de Aragón, IA2) |
| Abstract: | So far, studies on household income and consumption in Southern Europe have primarily focused on rural areas and factory workers. In this study, we aim to incorporate evidence of household income, considering the earnings of all household members and not just the male wage, using the population list of Zaragoza (Spain) from 1924. This population list is the first to systematically record the wages of all citizens regardless of their family role or age. Our results confirm that in 1924, most working-class households still required the labor of women and/or children to meet basic consumption needs (on average, they contributed nearly 60% of the household income). The findings also indicate that, despite a high percentage of agricultural workers (around 35% of households), agricultural day laborers were poorly paid compared to those in the industry. The seasonal nature of agricultural work likely made it even less attractive. Nevertheless, industrial wages were 18% higher than those of day laborers, and about 20% of unskilled workers were employed in industry. The relatively small size of the industrial sector and its modest wages may explain why Zaragoza was not yet a major attraction for immigrants from other regions, as it would become in the second half of the twentieth century. Employment in commerce, the military (with its associated risks), or professional occupations was associated with higher incomes, along with the ownership of production means or land. |
| Keywords: | : Wage, Urban, Household income, Purchasing capacity, Spain. |
| JEL: | N14 N34 N54 N64 J31 |
| Date: | 2024–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zar:wpaper:dt2024-01 |
| By: | Alberto Botta; Eugenio Caverzasi; Daniele Tori |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we analyze the role of financialization, namely securitization and the production of structured financial products, within the functioning of a monetary capitalist economy of production. We do this by embedding such ‘financial innovations’ in an extended financialized monetary circuit. We complement this theoretical analysis with data about the evolution of the commercial banks in the US economy since the end of World War II. We show how the ‘financial side of financialization’, by allowing commercial banks to extend more credit to the economy, and household sector in particular, may have significantly contributed to the monetization of surplus value in neoliberal capitalist regimes. In this sense, we stress how financialization appears to be fully consistent rather than dysfunctional to the needs of capitalist economies. We also note that this may come at the cost of heightened systemic fragility. While financialization may enable capitalist system to monetize profits more easily, it also modifies the structure of the pyramid of money hierarchy and favor the expansion of what has been defined as ‘fictitious liquidity’ relative to bank money. In our view, this last contradiction, can make capitalist economies more exposed to in-depth macro-financial instability as soon as financial turmoil emerges. |
| Keywords: | monetary circuit theory, financialization, profits, class conflict |
| JEL: | B50 E11 E12 E44 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pke:wpaper:pkwp2413 |
| By: | Sean Bottomley; Brian D. Varian |
| Abstract: | The development of the international telegraph network coincided with the nineteenth-century "golden age" of globalisation, but whether the former contributed to the latter is a question that has, hitherto, received only limited attention from economic historians. Fundamentally, it is a question that concerns the relationship between information-cost-reducing technology and trade. This paper introduces and utilises what is, we believe, the most comprehensive dataset of the years of international telegraphic linkages ever to have been compiled. Empirically, we analyse the effect of these telegraphic linkages on polity-specific British exports from 1849-90. Aside from intra-Empire trade flows, we find no statistically significant effect of the telegraph on British exports. Furthermore, we argue that previous estimates of the effect of the telegraph network on trade are implausibly high. |
| Keywords: | globalisation, information costs, nineteenth century, technology, telegraph, trade |
| JEL: | F15 N70 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:auu:hpaper:125 |
| By: | Joel Huesler (University of Bern); Eric Strobl (University of Bern) |
| Abstract: | We investigate how the frequent flooding that damaged the internal transport infrastructure in late 19th and early 20th colonial Jamaica affected local economies. To this end the evolution of the road and railways transport system was geo-referenced and combined with geo-localized damaging flood events, as well as with information on local economic activity proxied by internal tax revenue. Econometric analysis on our 30 year parish level time varying data set shows that lower market access from the flood disruptions to transport reduced tax revenue on average by 3.5%, and during some incidences up to 9.1%, over its two year impact. Decomposing the tax data by source suggests that both the property and the non-agricultural service sectors suffered after damaging floods. In contrast, flood disruptions benefited the agricultural sector, although only agricultural traders and not producers appear to have gained from investments in the transport network in general. |
| Keywords: | Transportation Network, Flooding, Market Access, Regional Economics, Jamaica |
| JEL: | Q54 R00 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0268 |
| By: | Joe Long; Carlo Medici; Nancy Qian; Marco Tabellini |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the economic consequences of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned immigration from China to the United States. The Act reduced the number of Chinese workers of all skill levels residing in the U.S. It also reduced the labor supply and the quality of jobs held by white and U.S.-born workers, the intended beneficiaries of the Act, and reduced manufacturing output. The results suggest that the Chinese Exclusion Act slowed economic growth in western states until at least 1940. |
| JEL: | J15 J6 N01 N91 N92 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33019 |
| By: | Rosas Martinez, Victor Hugo |
| Abstract: | To introduce the limit to economic growth and development, first history of economic thought precedents are put forward, later re versing to formal issues that elaborate upon previous work, which ad dress the mécaniques-geometries at the reductionist-holistic economy cicle (introducing an economic growth measurement space conceived by the limit), essentially allowing access to an innovative research agenda that reswitches to overcoming multidimensional deprivations through a non depending on initial conditions poverty traps mathematical economic analysis, which provides a proof of existence and smoothness to the solution of the Navier-Stokes equations, as well issuing explanations, examples, and the necessity for including conscience on heterodox neuroeconomics related geodesics calibrations |
| Keywords: | Navier-Stokes; Smoothness; Existence; Economic Growth; Development |
| JEL: | B16 B30 C00 |
| Date: | 2024–10–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:122307 |
| By: | Link, Andreas |
| JEL: | F10 N30 N70 O10 Z10 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc24:302362 |
| By: | Philip N. Jefferson |
| Date: | 2024–10–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgsq:98946 |
| By: | Carola Stapper (University of Cologne) |
| Abstract: | Disruptions of labor market trajectories have lasting effects on later economic success. One type of disruption that is understudied is displacement due to forced labor conscription, despite it still being a frequent event nowadays. I study the consequences of exposure to forced labor conscription for individuals' long-term labor market outcomes. I exploit that cohorts of Dutch civilians faced a differential probability of temporary labor coercion in Nazi Germany during WWII in a Regression Discontinuity Design. Using Dutch census data from 1971, I find that conscripted individuals have lower education, income, and likelihood of employment. Studying heterogeneous effects, I find that facing harsher conditions in Germany is associated with lower labor force participation and worse health. My findings suggest that the negative impact on labor force participation is mitigated when individuals are forced to work in similar sectors to those in the Netherlands, enhancing their ability to reintegrate into the workforce. |
| Keywords: | Labor economic history, labor market careers, coercive labor market, forced labor, health, skills |
| JEL: | N34 N44 J24 J47 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:338 |
| By: | Vito Cormun (Santa Clara University, USA); Kim Ristolainen (Turku School of Economics, University of Turku, Finland) |
| Abstract: | Leveraging Wall Street Journal news, recent developments in textual analysis, and generative AI, we estimate a narrative decomposition of the dollar exchange rate. Our findings shed light on the connection between economic fundamentals and the exchange rate, as well as on its absence. From the late 1970s onwards, we identify six distinct narratives that explain changes in the exchange rate, each largely non-overlapping. U.S. fiscal and monetary policies play a significant role in the early part of the sample, while financial market news becomes more dominant in the second half. Notably, news on technological change predicts the exchange rate throughout the entire sample period. Finally, using text-augmented regressions, we find evidence that media coverage explains the unstable relationship between exchange rates and macroeconomic indicators. |
| Keywords: | Exchange rates, big data, textual analysis, macroeconomic news, Wall Street Journal, narrative retrieval, scapegoat |
| JEL: | C3 C5 F3 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tkk:dpaper:dp167 |
| By: | Mark C. Strazicich; Peter A. Groothuis; Tiberiu S.V. Ungureanu |
| Abstract: | : We examine the evolution of salary distribution in the National Basketball Association (NBA) over 33 years, using a panel of all players earning above the rookie minimum scale. We identify three distinct eras of salary dynamics by applying time series structural break analysis, with breaks aligned to key changes in NBA Collective Bargaining Agreements. Our findings show that while real salaries have risen substantially across all income levels, inequality has grown, particularly among the highest earners. Analyzing the Lorenz curve and Gini coefficient, we observe a period of increasing inequality during the 1990s, followed by a brief shift toward more equitable salary distribution in the early 2000s and a return to rising inequality in recent years. These insights reveal the complex interplay between union negotiations, league revenues, and market forces, offering a deeper understanding of how CBA policies have shaped salary distribution in professional sports. Key Words: : Unions, Collective Bargaining Agreement, NBA, Structural Breaks Analysis |
| JEL: | Z22 L83 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:apl:wpaper:24-20 |
| By: | Anna Airoldi; Petra Moser |
| Abstract: | How does a person’s childhood socioeconomic status (SES) influence their chances to participate and succeed in science? To investigate this question, we use machine-learning methods to link scientists in a comprehensive biographical dictionary, the American Men of Science (1921), with their childhood home in the US Census and with publications. First, we show that children from low-SES homes were already severely underrepresented in the early 1900s. Second, we find that SES influences peer recognition, even conditional on participation: Scientists from high-SES families have 38% higher odds of becoming stars, controlling for age, publications, and disciplines. Using live-in servants as an alternative measure for SES confirms the strong link between childhood SES and becoming a star. Applying text analysis to assign scientists to disciplines, we find that mathematics is the only discipline in which SES influences stardom through the number and the quality of a scientist’s publications. Using detailed data on job titles to distinguish academic from industry scientists, we find that industry scientists have lower odds of being stars. Controlling for industry employment further strengthens the link between childhood SES and stardom. Elite undergraduate degrees explain more of the correlation between SES and stardom than any other control. At the same time, controls for birth order, family size, foreign-born parents, maternal education, patents, and connections with existing stars leave estimates unchanged, highlighting the importance of SES. |
| JEL: | J24 N0 N32 O3 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33063 |
| By: | Yoshifumi Konishi (Department of Economics, Keio University); Akari Ono (Graduate School of Economics, Keio University) |
| Abstract: | Economists are increasingly concerned with the heterogeneous impacts of transportation infrastructure investments on economic outcomes, particularly the phenomenon known as the “Straw Effect†: Core cities that were already in economic prosperity may gain more, and peripheral cities may lose, from transportation megaprojects. We empirically investigate whether such an effect manifests in the case of the Great Seto Bridges in Japan, a 70-billion-dollar project implemented in the 1980s-1990s as part of the “Building-a-New-Japan†initiative. We employ the recentered instrumental variable approach in the difference-in-differences design, exploiting the sharp decline in transport costs and its unexpected impacts on market access across cities as the exogenous sources of variation. Contrary to the Straw Effect, we find that large peripheral cities gain more than core cities from the megaproject, demonstrating that the distribution of winners and losers from the megaproject depends on how the transport cost reductions pass through in the existing network structures. |
| Keywords: | Market Access, Transportation Investment, Core-Periphery Model, Economic Geography, Quantitative Spatial Model, Treatment Effect under Spatial Network |
| JEL: | O18 R4 R11 R12 |
| Date: | 2024–08–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:keo:dpaper:2024-018 |
| By: | Schünemann, Johannes; Strulik, Holger; Trimborn, Timo |
| JEL: | D91 E21 O40 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc24:302398 |
| By: | Tomás R. Martinez; Thiago Trafane Oliveira Santos |
| Abstract: | Assessments of the role played by misallocation in shaping total factorproductivity (TFP) have been hindered by constraints in the availability of firm-level data.This paper addresses this issue by developing a static Cournot model that primarily requires standard macroeconomic data to estimate market-power-driven misallocation.We apply this framework to decompose aggregate TFP into technology and allocative efficiency components from 1950 to 2019 for up to a hundred countries from the Penn World Table10.01. Utilizing this decomposition, we revisit key facts of economic growth. On the one hand, we evaluate the world income frontier as proxied by the US, finding that changes in misallocation can significantly impact short-run growth. On the other hand, we examine the economic performance around the world. We conclude misallocation enhances our understanding of cross-country income differences, eventhough a substantial unexplained portion persists. We also find a lack of convergence in allocative efficiency, suggesting market-power-driven misallocation is linked, in the long run, to long-lasting country-specific factors such as institutions. |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bcb:wpaper:603 |