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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
| By: | Heng-fu Zou (The World Bank) |
| Abstract: | By the 13th century, England had developed a market-oriented, legally sophisticated, and proto-capitalist system that set it apart from continental Europe. This economy, characterized by widespread market activity, financial innovation, and a mobile labor force, integrated tools like mortgages, loans, and banking, supported by institutions such as the stock exchange and robust property rights. Unlike subsistence-based economies, England's dynamic system encouraged growth, productivity, and innovation. These long-standing financial and legal structures laid the groundwork for England's industrialization and global economic leadership, showcasing that its rise to dominance was the result of centuries of gradual evolution and strategic development. |
| Date: | 2025–01–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cuf:wpaper:719 |
| By: | Priti Kalsi; Zachary Ward |
| Abstract: | Is the top tail of wealth a set of fixed individuals or is there substantial turnover? We estimate upper-tail wealth dynamics during the Gilded Age and beyond, a time of rapid wealth accumulation and concentration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Using various wealth proxies and data tracking tens of millions of individuals, we find that most extremely wealthy individuals drop out of the top tail within their lifetimes. Yet, elite wealth still matters. We find a non-linear association between grandparental wealth and being in the top 1%, such that having a rich grandparent exponentially increases the likelihood of reaching the top 1%. Still, over 90% of the grandchildren of top 1% wealth grandfathers did not achieve that level. |
| JEL: | D31 J62 N31 N32 |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33355 |
| By: | Volckart, Oliver |
| Abstract: | Scholars agree that a core feature of the political style of the Holy Roman Empire was the focus on consensus, without which policy-making at the level of the Empire would have been impossible. This article demonstrates that the consensus on which decisions of the imperial estates was based tended to be superficial and was often in danger of breaking down. This vulnerability was a product of the diet’s open and sequential voting procedure, which allowed the bandwagon effect to distort outcomes. An analysis of the votes cast in the princes’ college at the diet of 1555 shows that low-status members of the college regularly imitated the decisions of high-status voters. Reforming the system would have required accepting that the members of the college were equals—an idea no one was prepared to countenance. Hence, superficial and transitory agreements remained a systematic feature of politics at the level of the Empire. |
| Keywords: | bandwagon effect; voting; early modern parliamentarism; Holy Roman Empire |
| JEL: | N43 H11 |
| Date: | 2023–03–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:112798 |
| By: | Costa, Dora L. (UCLA); Bygren, Lars Olov (Karolinska Institutet); Graf, Benedikt (NBER); Karlsson, Martin (University of Duisburg-Essen); Price, Joseph (Brigham Young University) |
| Abstract: | Explanations for the West's escape from premature mortality have focused on chronic malnutrition or income and on public health or state capacity. We argue that by ignoring the multigenerational effects of variance in ancestors' harvests, we are underestimating the contribution of modern economic growth to the escape from early death at older ages. Using a newly constructed multigenerational dataset for Sweden, we show that grandsons' longevity was strongly linked to spatial shocks in paternal grandfathers' yearly harvest variability when agricultural productivity was low and market integration was limited. We reason that an epigenetic mechanism is the most plausible explanation for our findings. We posit that the removal of trade barriers, improvements in transportation, and agricultural innovation reduced harvest variability. We contend that for older Swedish men (but not women) born 1830-1909 this reduction was as important as decreasing contemporaneous infectious disease rates and more important than eliminating exposure to poor harvests in-utero. |
| Keywords: | intergenerational transmission, longevity, ecomomic growth, harvest variability |
| JEL: | I15 J11 N33 |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17620 |
| By: | David Lagakos; Stelios Michalopoulos; Hans-Joachim Voth |
| Abstract: | What does it take to live a meaningful life? We exploit a unique corpus of over 1, 400 life narratives of older Americans collected by a team of writers during the 1930s. We combine detailed human readings with large language models (LLMs) to extract systematic information on critical junctures, sources of meaning, and overall life satisfaction. Under specific conditions, LLMs can provide responses to complex questions that are indistinguishable from those of human readers, effectively passing a version of the Turing Test. We find that sources of life meaning are more varied than previous research suggested, underlining the importance of work and community contributions in addition to family and close relationships (emphasized by earlier work). The narratives also highlight gendered disparities, with women disproportionately citing adverse family events, such as the loss of a parent, underscoring their role as keepers of the kin. Our research expands our understanding of human flourishing during a transformative period in American history and establishes a robust and scalable framework for exploring subjective well-being across diverse historical and cultural contexts. |
| JEL: | I31 N0 O10 P00 Z10 |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33373 |
| By: | Heng-fu Zou (IAS, Wuhan University) |
| Date: | 2025–01–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cuf:wpaper:724 |
| By: | Kaur, Harnoor; Yuchtman, Noam |
| Abstract: | In the 2023-24 academic year, protests swept across US university campuses, then campuses in Britain and elsewhere, demanding a ceasefire in the Israeli-Hamas conflict and specific university administrative responses to the conflict. This paper puts this recent wave of protests into historical perspective. It first argues that the university must be understood not only as an economic institution that produces human capital, but also as a political institution that produces a society’s elites. As such, a fundamental institutional role is to endow entering cohorts of elites with an “ideological bundle, ” which is also, at times, contested in the university environment. We present new patterns of such contestation, collecting information from multiple sources on protests involving university students across time and space. We argue that the current wave of ceasefire protests is best understood as a demand by young elites to modify the elite ideological bundle. Historical evidence suggests that such modifications have regularly been made following campus protests. |
| Keywords: | protests; universities; elites; ideology |
| JEL: | D74 I20 N00 P00 |
| Date: | 2024–12–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:126162 |
| By: | Tomohiro Hirano; Alexis Akira Toda |
| Abstract: | This article provides a self-contained overview of the theory of rational asset price bubbles. We cover topics from basic definitions, properties, and classical results to frontier research, with an emphasis on bubbles attached to real assets such as stocks, housing, and land. The main message is that bubbles attached to real assets are fundamentally nonstationary phenomena related to unbalanced growth. We present a bare-bones model and draw three new insights: (i) the emergence of asset price bubbles is a necessity, instead of a possibility; (ii) asset pricing implications are markedly different between balanced growth of stationary nature and unbalanced growth of nonstationary nature; and (iii) asset price bubbles occur within larger historical trends involving shifts in industrial structure driven by technological innovation, including the transition from the Malthusian economy to the modern economy. |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cnn:wpaper:25-002e |
| By: | Deng, Kent; Shen, Jim Huangnan; Guo, Jingyuan |
| Abstract: | This article probes the performance and mechanisms of the Maoist economy from 1950 to 1980, a period commonly regarded as a turning point that ushered in a new path for China's industrialisation and modernisation. Commonly, however, the welfare effect of this new path has been overlooked. The present research aims to fill this gap. Methodologically, this article re-conceptualises, re-examines, and re-assesses the Maoist economy with qualitative and quantitative evidence. This study applies a holistic two-pronged approach with (1) capital accumulation and re-investment, material production and consumption, and (2) mathematical conceptualisation and empirical modelling. The key findings suggest that the Maoist economy was a closed one with industrial dependence on agriculture in an urban-rural zero-sum game with inevitable constraints on workers' incentives for growth to continue. In the end of the Mao's era, agriculture declined, the size of industrial workforce stagnated, and the population was poor. This was not the end of the story, however. This failed industrial transition was itself highly influential as a subsequent point of reference used to justify the post-Mao reforms and opening up as a radical game changer that put China on a very different trajectory of growth and development. |
| Keywords: | consumption austerity; economic policies; economic zero-sum game; growth stagnation; Quesnay-Mao closed economy; scissors-pricing arbitrage |
| JEL: | J1 |
| Date: | 2024–12–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:126627 |
| By: | Ran Abramitzky; Leah Platt Boustan; Osea Giuntella |
| Abstract: | Immigrant enclaves offer valuable ethnic amenities but may delay assimilation. We study enclave formation in the Age of Mass Migration by using the centralized location decisions for “ethnic” Catholic churches. After a church opening, same-ethnicity residents of chosen neighborhoods experienced falling earnings but strengthened communal ties, as compared to residents of areas matched on baseline characteristics. Treated residents held more manual occupations, and increased in-group marriage and naming. These effects persist into the second generation and are not observed for non-ethnic neighbors. Consistent with the historical record, Poles organized communal life around neighborhood parishes, but Italians were less church-centered. |
| JEL: | N92 R23 |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33362 |
| By: | Scanlan, Oliver |
| Abstract: | The influential narrative of tribal divergence argues that identities professed by Scheduled Tribes, Adivasis and Indigenous Peoples in South Asia today are colonial artefacts. The creation of specific “non-regulation” territories, governed separately from the rest of British India, was the key mechanism that facilitated the emergence of this myriad of ethnicities. The British rationale was either ideological, or divide-and-rule tactics, or a combination of the two. An alternative reading is that such governance arrangements were the practical result of the colonial liberal project’s pursuit of frugal government and security. They were not exceptional, comprising one of many institutional arrangements implemented in an empire characterized by administrative heterogeneity. Special territories demographically separated rather than consolidated individual communities. Their impact should have been, in anything, anti-ethnographic. Tribal spaces did not create ethnic difference; there was ethnic difference and therefore the British created tribal spaces. |
| Date: | 2025–01–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:vx9kq |
| By: | Clark, Gregory; Cummins, Neil |
| Abstract: | It is widely believed that women value social status in marital partners more than men, leading to female marital hypergamy (“marrying up”), and more female intergenerational social mobility. Using evidence from more than 33 million marriages and 67 million births in England 1837-2021 we show that within this era there was never significant hypergamous marriage by women. The average status of women’s fathers equaled that of their husbands’ fathers. For marriages 1912- 2007 the average social status of female surnames equaled that of male. This was true also for parent surnames of children. Consistent with this, there was no differential tendency in England of men and women to marry by family status. There is also ancillary evidence that physical attraction cannot have been the significant determinant of matching in marriages in any period 1837-2021, based on the very strong correlation observed in underlying social status for marital partners throughout these years. |
| JEL: | N33 N34 |
| Date: | 2024–12–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:126614 |
| By: | Emile Esmaili; Michael J. Puma; Francis Ludlow; Poul Holm; Eva Jobbova |
| Abstract: | Economic historians have long studied market integration and contagion dynamics during periods of warfare and global stress, but there is a lack of model-based evidence on these phenomena. This paper uses an econometric contagion model, the Diebold-Yilmaz framework, to examine the dynamics of economic shocks across European markets in the early modern period. Our findings suggest that key periods of violent conflicts significantly increased food price spillover across cities, causing widespread disruptions across Europe. We also demonstrate the ability of this framework to capture relevant historical dynamics between the main trade centers of the period. |
| Date: | 2024–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2411.18978 |
| By: | Charles, Sébastien; Marie, Jonathan |
| Abstract: | This article traces the evolution of the Post-Keynesian school in France since the mid-1970s. Starting out inauspiciously from a Keynesian tradition of little influence, the school’s growth was slowed by strong competition from other schools (both orthodox and heterodox) in a context of limited recruitment of permanent researchers at universities. Despite this, some momentum has been built up in France since 2000s. Today, the French Post-Keynesian school is well structured, internationally integrated, and capable of hybridizing with certain heterodox schools. Nevertheless, the trend remains shaky. |
| Keywords: | Post-Keynesians; France; Heterodoxy |
| JEL: | B22 B59 |
| Date: | 2025–01–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:123348 |
| By: | Tin Htoo Naing |
| Abstract: | The primary objective of this article is to overview the basic concepts and methodologies employed to estimate Malaya’s Historical GDP series by the production approach for the period 1900-1939. The Malayan GDP was estimated by the expenditure approach. for the period 1895-1939 but no single work for GDP estimates by the output approach and income approach is available for the period prior to 1947. In this study, therefore, an alternative approach, the production (value added) approach is attempted. The System of National Accounts (SNA) - a multi-purpose system designed by the United Nations for economic analysis, growth modeling and policy-making - is implemented in this study to meet international standards and guidelines for comparative purposes. The major tasks involve, firstly, the collection and evaluation of data and subsequently making estimates by employing several methodologies while at the same time ensuring that the concepts and definitions as outlined in the System of National Account (SNA) for each component of GDP. Refining methodology itself, particularly concerning measurement and interpretation, has been another major field of research. By and large, the outcome of this study provides a new dataset of historical GDP estimates by industrial origins to serve as a basic indicator of macroeconomic performance over time. |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:auu:hpaper:127 |
| By: | Dimitri Sarkiss Tatoyan (CRJ-CCJ - Centre de recherches sur le Japon - CCJ - Chine, Corée, Japon - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UPCité - Université Paris Cité); Aleksandra Kobiljski (CRJ-CCJ - Centre de recherches sur le Japon - CCJ - Chine, Corée, Japon - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UPCité - Université Paris Cité); Hiroki Yamashita (Institut d'Études Politiques [IEP] - Paris); Éric Mermet (TSE-R - TSE-R Toulouse School of Economics – Recherche - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement) |
| Abstract: | The 1445 Toll Register is the only surviving medieval customs register in Japan. As such, it is a precious window into Japan's medieval commercial revolution. While well studied using traditional methods, this article is the first attempt to submit this source to social network analysis (SNA) methods. It highlights the potential of statistical, spatial and network analysis, producing visualizations which nuance our understanding of the role of commercial agents in the medieval maritime trade. Starting from visualizing the overall network, this article probes into the legwork of a commodity network, much of which passed through the hands of the commercial agents. Our analysis also reveals that a group of 32 actors, who in the register appear to have been principally commercial agents, were in fact also shipmasters. A community detection method allows us to open up new avenues of understanding maritime trade clusters, while geospatial data visualization point to a historically irregular absence which requires further research. |
| Keywords: | medieval studies, 15th century, medieval Japan, maritime trade, commerical agents, shipmasters, commodification |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04870442 |
| By: | Luke Heath Milsom |
| Abstract: | Using data from the Doomsday Book, I find that areas of England that were 10% richer in 1086 are on average almost 2% richer today. Using a natural experiment and a dynamic quantitative spatial economics model I show that this persistence is not due to path dependency. Instead, the 1086 economy was moving towards a different, but correlated, long-run spatial equilibrium than that observed in 2020. This correlation in spatial equilibria can in part be explained by local market access. Modern place-based policies aiming to shift the spatial distribution of economic activity should focus on changing location fundamentals if they are to have long-run impacts. |
| Date: | 2024–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ete:ceswps:746864 |
| By: | Luke Heath Milsom |
| Abstract: | This paper asks what impact a large, but temporary, productivity shock can have on the spatial distribution of economic activity across cities in the short and long run. To answer this question I use a dynamic quantitative spatial economics model and the natural experiment of a sudden river, the Zwin, that connected Bruges to the North Sea in the 12th century. I show that despite dramatic short-run impacts in Bruges and across the Low Countries during the period the Zwin was navigable as well as in the centuries after, this shock failed to alter the prevailing long-run spatial equilibrium. Simulating alternative shock magnitudes or locations also doesn’t result in a change in spatial equilibrium, but a permanent shock would have. However, convergence is slow, in 1800 some 300 years after the Zwin became impassable aggregate welfare remains on average 2% higher across the Low Countries as compared to the counterfactual world where the Zwin had never existed. |
| Date: | 2024–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ete:ceswps:746865 |
| By: | Krenz, Astrid; Strulik, Holger |
| Abstract: | We develop a macroeconomic theory of the division of household tasks between servants and own work and how it is affected by automation in households and firms. We calibrate the model for the U.S. and apply it to explain the historical development of household time use and the distribution of household tasks from 1900 to 2020. The economy is populated by high-skilled and low-skilled households and household tasks are performed by own work, machines, or servants. For the period 1900–1960, innovations in household automation motivate the decline of the servant economy and the creation of new household tasks motivates an almost constant division of household time between wage work and domestic work. For the period 1960–2020, innovations in firm automation and the implied increase of the skill premium explain the return of the servant economy. We use counterfactual historical experiments to assess the role of automation, the creation of new household tasks, and the gig economy for the division of household time and tasks. We provide supporting evidence for the relation between automation and inequality, and for inequality as a driver of the return of the servant economy in a regional panel of U.S. metropolitan statistical areas for the period 2005–2020. |
| Keywords: | automation; gig economy; home production; inequality; maids; servants |
| JEL: | D13 E24 J22 J24 O11 O30 |
| Date: | 2025–02–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:126593 |
| By: | Heng-fu Zou |
| Date: | 2025–01–21 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cuf:wpaper:735 |
| By: | Heng-fu Zou (IAS, Wuhan University) |
| Date: | 2025–01–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cuf:wpaper:728 |
| By: | Anna Aizer; Gabrielle Grafton; Santiago Pérez |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of Federal alcohol Prohibition in 1919 on workers in the alcohol industry and their families using newly linked census records that allow us to follow spouses, sons and daughters. Immediately after Prohibition, men previously working in alcohol-related industries were less likely to be in the labor force, and when working, employed in lower skilled occupations. By 1940, 21 years after Prohibition, workers were still more likely to be in unskilled occupations, but they were more likely to be employed, consistent with delayed retirement. In the short run, sons are largely unaffected but in the long run, they complete slightly more schooling and earn more. Interestingly, daughters were more likely to remain at home, delay marriage and be employed, even 20 years later. These effects are driven by daughters living at home in 1920. Daughters, not sons, appear to have acted as the family's safety net in this period before public provision of relief. |
| JEL: | J13 J20 J62 N32 N62 |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33346 |
| By: | Scanlan, Oliver; Mankhin, Anitta; Ritchil, Parag |
| Abstract: | In the mid-1980s, the state summarily cancelled the property rights of the Indigenous Peoples of Madhupur, Bangladesh, that hitherto were thoroughly embedded in the national legal-administrative architecture. The removal of capital from formal circuits of exchange is irrational in economic terms. This is a case where neoliberalism has been constrained by the state’s defense of a racialized hierarchy embedded in majoritarian understandings of the nation. Further exploration of how racial capitalism works by excluding certain ethnic groups from capital is likely to shed new light on processes of dispossession, particularly in regions where ethnic complexity, biological diversity and “old land wars” intersect. |
| Date: | 2025–01–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:7s68d |
| By: | Heng-fu Zou (The World Bank) |
| Date: | 2025–01–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cuf:wpaper:721 |
| By: | Patrick Bayer; Kerwin Kofi Charles; Ellora Derenoncourt |
| Abstract: | In this chapter, we introduce a new framework for studying the evolution of racial inequality in the labor market. The framework encompasses two broad forces – distributional and positional – that affect labor market gaps by racial and ethnic identity over time. We provide long-run results on the evolution of Black-White earnings gaps, including new results for Black and White women, and we review the evidence on historical factors affecting racial gaps. We then provide new results on racial gaps among other groups in the U.S. and discuss the evidence on racial gaps outside the U.S. We then discuss the role of prejudice-based discrimination in driving racial gaps, particularly in the post-civil-rights era, a period when such discrimination has been thought to play a declining role in racial inequality. We describe forces that can amplify existing discrimination, such as monopsony and workers’ perceptions of prejudice in the economy, and we discuss recent literature directly measuring discrimination through expanded audit studies and quasi-experimental variation. We conclude with a discussion of existing and new frontiers on race in the labor market, including stratification, reformulations of prejudice, and understanding the way race has shaped purportedly race-neutral institutions throughout the economy. |
| JEL: | J15 J31 |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33372 |
| By: | Ranaldi, Marco |
| Abstract: | This article studies the global distributions of capital and labor incomes among individuals in 2000 and 2016. By constructing a novel database covering approximately 80% of the global output and 60% of the world population, two major findings stand out. First, the world underwent an important process of capitalization. The share of world individuals with positive capital income rose from 20% to 32%. Second, the global middle class benefited the most, in relative terms, from such a capitalization process, with China being the main driver of this global trend. The findings of this paper are robust to changes in the income definition, top-income and functional income distribution adjustments. The global composition of capital and labor incomes is more equal today than it was twenty years ago. |
| Keywords: | capital and labor; compositional inequality; global inequality |
| JEL: | J1 R14 J01 |
| Date: | 2025–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:126608 |
| By: | Joxe, Ludovic |
| Abstract: | This article, in the form of a short essay, aims to discuss the evolution over the centuries of the role and social position of those mastering the technologies of their time. We suggest that the industrial revolution, the rationalization of technical and managerial processes, then the rise of IT, the ascent of cryptocurrencies and finally the emergence of the neo-liberal state have lifted a fringe of these individuals to the top of the social hierarchy. Among the “technology masters”, we distinguish three families: those who remain at the service of the State and the established order, those who have exploited, consciously or not, of the withdrawal of the neoliberal State to offer services and innovations formerly assumed by the public sector, and finally those who have consciously taken advantage of this same withdrawal and the recognition they enjoy in society to propose other models (free software, open source, cryptoanarchism, technical alternatives, etc.). |
| Date: | 2025–01–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:ukr8e |
| By: | Wan, Sitong |
| Keywords: | Medicine and Health Sciences, 150w, UCB, Women Faculty in Nutrition |
| Date: | 2025–01–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:cshedu:qt7b68r2sg |
| By: | Yang, Xiaoliang (Zhongnan University of Economics and Law); Zhou, Peng (Cardiff Business School); Dong, Xue |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the long-run nexus between wealth inequality and aggregate output using a DSGE model in which wealth inequality endogenously affects individual entrepreneurship incentives, thereby influencing aggregate output. Our model passes the indirect inference test against the UK data from 1870 to 2015. We find that shocks to aggregate TFP, entrepreneurial barriers, government grant support and general government spending played significant roles in shaping historical inequality dynamics in the UK. Directly removing entrepreneurial barriers or indirectly providing government grant support to the private sector such as through inclusive loan subsidies are effective means of reducing inequality and stimulating output growth. |
| Keywords: | Wealth Inequality, Aggregate Output, Entrepreneurship, Indirect Inference |
| JEL: | C72 C92 D83 |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdf:wpaper:2025/1 |
| By: | John Echeverri-Gent (University of Virginia); Renuka Sane (TrustBridge Rule of Law Foundation) |
| Abstract: | This essay shows how the sectoral political network in India's banking sector has structured its development from the era of dirigisme beginning under the Nehru government in 1947 to the more liberalized contemporary period starting in 1991. We show that political bargains, or institutionalized agreements among actors in a sectoral political network, are mechanisms through which the legacies of earlier eras shape developments in subsequent periods. Our study of India's banking sector examines two varieties of political bargains. Politicians created an entrenched political bargain during the dirigiste era by nationalizing India's banks to assert control over bank governance. Entrenched bargains limit subsequent reforms to policies that address their negative consequences but not the underlying causes emanating from the interests of powerful actors. Principal-agent relations are the second type of political bargain. Politicians struck this evolving bargain by establishing an asymmetric relationship between the government and India's central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). We analyze how these entrenched and principal-agent bargains have shaped the development of Indian banking by examining their impact on the banking sector's recurring non-performing asset problem and its dynamic payment system. |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bjd:wpaper:8 |
| By: | Eskander, Shaikh M.S.U.; Barbier, Edward B. |
| Abstract: | We use childhood exposure to disasters as a natural experiment inducing variations in adulthood outcomes. Following the fetal origin hypothesis, we hypothesize that children from households with greater famine exposure will have poorer health outcomes. Employing a unique dataset from Bangladesh, we test this hypothesis for the 1974-75 famine that was largely caused by increased differences between the price of coarse rice and agricultural wages, together with the lack of entitlement to foodgrains for daily wage earners. People from northern regions of Bangladesh were unequally affected by this famine that spanned several months in 1974 and 1975. We find that children surviving the 1974-75 famine have lower health outcomes during their adulthood. Due to the long-lasting effects of such adverse events and their apparent human capital and growth implications, it is important to enact and enforce public policies aimed at ameliorating the immediate harms of such events through helping the poor. |
| Keywords: | Bangladesh; fetal origin hypothesis; health; long-term effects; the 1974-75 Bangladesh famine |
| JEL: | Q54 O15 I31 |
| Date: | 2024–12–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:126622 |
| By: | Pradhan, Manoj; Goodhart, C. A. E. |
| Abstract: | Ageing societies are likely to face rapidly changing structural macroeconomic trends, with fiscal balances likely to worsen over time. It is widely acknowledged by forecasters and financial markets that debt-to-GDP ratios are tending to rise over t ime, but there are signs that the size and persistence of future deficits and debts may be underestimated. This underestimation comes from three sources: i) incorrect consideration of the medical complications of older cohorts; ii) a demography-driven rise in inflation, real interest rates and interest expenses; and iii) misalignment of f iscal and monetary policy incentives in an inflationary environment. We argue that a new era is starting, when we will have to face complicated relations between demography, and fiscal and monetary policy. |
| JEL: | E20 E30 E40 E50 I11 J11 J14 N10 N30 P10 |
| Date: | 2024–12–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:126585 |
| By: | Bennett, Daniel L. (Center for Free Enterprise, Department of Economics); Bjørnskov, Christian (Department of Economics, Aarhus University, Denmark, and); Gohmann, Stephan F. (Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Understanding the consequences and recovery for countries hit by adverse national events such as political crises is central to understanding long-run development dynamics. Utilizing the Coleman boat framework, we develop a micro-foundation based theoretical framework grounded in public choice theory and institutional economic theory to theorize about the productivity consequences of political coups. Our theory suggests two consequences. First, coups create regime uncertainty that distorts the judgment of entrepreneurs and firm managers, resulting in their delaying or abandoning altogether investment in potential productivity-enhancing innovation projects. Second, in addition to regime uncertainty, institutional changes in the aftermath of a coup exert long-run impacts on national productivity by creating a misalignment of the formal institutional environment. Our model allows us to disentangle the productivity effects of institutional uncertainty from actual institutional change following a political crisis. We assemble a unique longitudinal dataset consisting of 39 nations covering the period 1950-2012 to empirically test our hypotheses using panel data methods. We further explore some of the boundary conditions of our analysis. |
| Keywords: | Coups; Regime change; Institutional change; Productivity |
| JEL: | E02 O31 O43 P47 |
| Date: | 2025–01–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1518 |
| By: | Bell, Clive |
| Abstract: | This paper recounts an early attempt to promote the adoption of high-yielding varieties (HYVs) of rice and wheat by small farmers. The instrument was a package not only of inputs, extension advice and supervision, but also – addressing risk aversion – a guaranteed net revenue. The scheme was implemented by the newly-created Small Farmers’ Development Agency, a parastatal body. The paper examines how and why the scheme failed, and analyses the data yielded by the trials. The chief causes of its failure were a lack of incentives within the public sector and the Agency’s weakness within the larger administrative system. Despite all manner of difficulties, the participants in the trials obtained levels of valued added per acre thrice those of their contemporaries cultivating local varieties and crop yields from two-thirds to four-fifths of those achieved by their grand children’s cohort circa 2020. |
| Keywords: | high-yielding varieties; credit-insurance scheme; Small Farmers Development Agency; Bihar |
| Date: | 2025–01–21 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:awi:wpaper:0761 |
| By: | Gilles Paché (CERGAM - Centre d'Études et de Recherche en Gestion d'Aix-Marseille - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - UTLN - Université de Toulon) |
| Abstract: | The study of civilization collapse has gained significant attention since the 1980s, largely due to researchers like Joseph Tainter and Jared Diamond. Tainter explores how increasing societal complexity leads to higher management costs, ultimately causing collapse when marginal returns diminish, including in areas like logistics. In contrast, Diamond investigates various drivers of collapse, particularly environmental factors, and highlights that societies often fail when they cannot adapt their supply chains to challenges such as environmental degradation and climate crises. While Tainter views logistics as a fundamental aspect of societal complexity, Diamond includes it within his broader analysis of the causes of collapse. Despite this, it is unfortunate that the topic remains largely overlooked in supply chain management research. This paper seeks to fill that gap by demonstrating that logistical failures play a critical role in the collapse of civilizations, linking historical patterns to current vulnera |
| Keywords: | civilization collapse, history, Jared Diamond, Joseph Tainter, logistics, vulnerability |
| Date: | 2024–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04871034 |
| By: | Heng-fu Zou (IAS, Wuhan University) |
| Date: | 2025–01–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cuf:wpaper:726 |
| By: | Rodriguez, Brittany; Li, Anthea; Oh, Amy; Baines, Raman |
| Keywords: | Medicine and Health Sciences, 150w, UCB, Women in Public Health |
| Date: | 2025–01–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:cshedu:qt8hg9x3gp |
| By: | Hennicke, Moritz |
| Abstract: | I study the impact on workers of restructuring communist firms during the transition to capitalism. Drawing on close to the universe of communist state-owned enterprises under the authority of the German privatization agency in the 1990ies, I am able to link firms across industries and districts to workers and their labor market outcomes before and after exposure to firm restructuring. I study effects of two treatments: First, I find that the advent of market competition through firm closures by the privatization agency increases unemployment. Second, I estimate that the genesis of private ownership in the form of privatizations lowers household income and well-being of workers. To explore the role of ownership, I conduct event studies at the firm level and find that privatized firms downsize compared to firms remaining state-owned. Building a conceptual framework on the idea that the transition implied large temporary uncertainties, the shrinking of privatized firms might have followed from a higher desire by private owners to reduce exposure to risk as opposed to the state. |
| Date: | 2023–04–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:jext7 |
| By: | Heng-fu Zou (The World Bank) |
| Date: | 2025–01–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cuf:wpaper:720 |
| By: | Ghizlen Ouasbaa (TecnoCampus University Center & IEB) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the lasting impact of tourism specialization on per capita income in Spanish municipalities, aiming to understand the factors driving these effects. We employ two distinct approaches. The first one focuses on tourism development since the initial boom in the 1960s and relies on cross-sectional variation in tourism exposure related to amenities like beaches and weather for identification. The second method looks at a later wave of tourism development in the 1990s, using a shiftshare analysis that combines the share of residents from tourist-source countries in each municipality with the growth rate of tourists from these countries throughout Spain. The findings indicate that municipalities with the highest growth in tourism specialization now exhibit lower per capita income. A municipality experiencing an increase in tourism per capita over time equal to the sample median has a per capita income between 21% and 22% lower as of 2019, depending on the approach used. This decline in income is associated with an increase in temporary job contracts, with a decrease in industrial employment, and with lower levels of educational attainment. |
| Keywords: | Tourism specialization, local economic growth, long-term effects, local labor markets. |
| JEL: | R11 R23 Z32 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ieb:wpaper:doc2024-14 |