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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
| By: | Rolf Aaberge; Jørgen Modalsli; Edda Solbakken (Statistics Norway) |
| Abstract: | This paper introduces a framework for estimating long-run series of measures of overall inequality and top wealth shares when data consist of a combination of historical tabulations and modern administrative registers of taxable wealth. The proposed framework is applicable when historical wealth tabulations as a minimum provide information on bracket boundaries and the proportion of tax units for each of the wealth brackets. The framework has been used to produce evidence on wealth inequality in Norway from 1912 to 2019. The empirical results show that wealth inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient was very high at the beginning of the twentieth century, fell during the post-war period and has increased substantially since the 1980s. The rise in wealth inequality over the recent four decades is driven by a rise in the wealth share of the top 1 per cent, while equalization among the bottom 99 per cent accounted for 70 percent of the reduction in wealth inequality from the early 1950s to the late 1960s. |
| Keywords: | Distribution of wealth; long-run inequality; the Gini coefficient; wealth taxation; Norway |
| JEL: | D31 D63 H29 N34 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ssb:dispap:1028 |
| By: | Vuving, Alexander |
| Abstract: | This essay concisely tells the history of Vietnam as a region from the dawn of civilization to the present day, in less than 9, 000 words – even in a single word. Rather than a history of the Viet states, it’s a history of Au Lac, Jiaozhi, Linyi, Funan, Champa, Dai Viet, and modern Vietnams. It sheds light on the big picture, deep patterns, historical trends, and causal dynamics, while paying attention to important details. It shows, among other findings, that the core element of Vietnamese statecraft has changed as the global configuration of power was transformed. More specifically, the key to success for anyone who ruled Vietnam changed from the ability to leverage the frontier of an empire (1st millennium BCE to the 15th century) to the skill in navigating the politics between great powers (16th century to the present). |
| Date: | 2025–12–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:56t4f_v1 |
| By: | Victor Gay (IAST - Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Paula Gobbi (ULB - Université libre de Bruxelles, CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research); Marc Goñi (UiB - University of Bergen, CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research) |
| Abstract: | We test Le Play's (1875) hypothesis that the French Revolution contributed to France's early fertility decline by imposing equal partition of inheritance among all children, including women. We combine new data on local inheritance rules before the Revolution and individual-level demographic data from historical sources and crowdsourced genealogies. Difference-in-differences and regression-discontinuity estimates show that the inheritance reforms enacted during the Revolution reduced completed fertility by 0.5 children. A key mechanism was the desire to avoid land fragmentation across generations. These reforms closed the fertility gap between regions with different historical inheritance rules and crucially contributed to France's demographic transition. |
| Keywords: | Inheritance, French Revolution, Fertility, Demographic transition |
| Date: | 2025–10–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04285818 |
| By: | Julius Koschnick |
| Abstract: | What was the origin of modern economic growth? Joel Mokyr has argued that self-sustained modern economic growth originated from a feedback loop between propositional (theoretical) and prescriptive (applied) knowledge, which turned positive in the eighteenth century during the "Industrial Enlightenment". While influential, this thesis has never been directly tested. This paper provides the first quantitative evidence by estimating the impact of knowledge spillovers between propositional and prescriptive knowledge on innovation in England, 1600-1800. For this, it introduces two new text-based measures for 1) the innovativeness of publications and 2) knowledge spillovers. The paper finds strong evidence that a feedback loop between propositional and prescriptive knowledge became positive during the second half of the eighteenth century. It also documents that this process had positive effects on the real economy as measured through patents. Overall, the findings provide empirical support for Mokyr's original hypothesis. |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2512.16587 |
| By: | Massimo Anelli; Paolo Pinotti; Zachary Porreca |
| Abstract: | We document the transplantation of the Sicilian Mafia to the United States in the 1920s, when a large-scale repression campaign in Italy targeted Mafia strongholds and forced many Mafiosi to migrate, and study the resulting short- and long-term effects across neighborhoods in U.S. cities. Using newly linked administrative and historical data from the U.S. Census, Social Security records, and declassified files of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, we show that neighborhoods hosting enclaves of migrants from Sicilian Mafia strongholds targeted by the repression later became centers of Italo-American Mafia activity. These neighborhoods experienced higher violence, incarceration, and financial exclusion in the short run, but higher income, employment, and educational attainment in the long run. The results suggest that while the arrival of organized criminal networks initially intensified conflict and exclusion, their subsequent consolidation generated localized economic benefits, helping to explain the long-term resilience and persistence of organized crime. |
| Keywords: | organized crime, migration, historical persistence, neighborhood effects |
| JEL: | K42 F22 N32 R23 D02 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12364 |
| By: | Pemberton, Rita |
| Abstract: | The realization that agricultural resource exploitation offered attractive prospects for profits resulted in the movement of numbers of adventurous individuals into the region to establish plantations. Most had neither farming experience nor credentials in agriculture but all shared the desire to make their ventures profitable. Initially, agriculture in the Caribbean was largely private enterprise under the full direction of the individual plantation owners, or managers who were usually attorneys, who ran the operations without state interference or professional assistance. This was the modus operandi until the second half of the 19th century when the most notable change discernible in the practice of agriculture in the Caribbean was a growing expectation of and dependence on government assistance of various kinds which heralded a period of state involvement in the agriculture of the region. This paper examines the historical tradition of problem solving manifested in the agriculture of the region with reference to developments in the colony of Trinidad and Tobago during the colonial era. The paper identifies the earliest forms of government assistance to agriculture and the kinds of requests for assistance and the levels of response from both the imperial and colonial government. The paper then discusses the problems that were identified in the colony's agriculture and the methods used to deal with them. Central to this discussion is an examination of the reports of the various commissions of enquiry which consistently identified increased diversification, more scientific applications to agriculture, disease control and more education and training for the labour force. The paper argues that these were among the main factors which stimulated the development of extension services as a state responsibility in the colony's agriculture and determined the nature of its development and its efficacy up to the end of the colonial period. |
| Keywords: | Agricultural and Food Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, International Development |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:carc04:265612 |
| By: | Alberto Baffigi (Banca d’Italia) |
| Abstract: | The origins of credit statistics by economic sector (Statistiche sul credito per rami di attività) form a crucial part of the history of official statistics in Italy. In the way they were conceived and in the institutional context in which they were developed, they represent a significant episode for at least two complementary reasons: they enabled a systematic encounter between statistics and economic analysis – something rare in the Italian tradition – and they gave rise to a form of statistical production that was autonomous from political power, and thus stable, reliable, and enduring. Within the context of the fascist dictatorship, the creation of the Research Department at the Bank of Italy contributed to making the institution a stable technostructure over time – one capable of ensuring methodological consistency in its statistical outputs. It allowed to establish a technostructure that did not merely carry out the will of the regime, but rather drew on a degree of theoretical and, to some extent, organizational autonomy. |
| Keywords: | Credit statistics, Bank of Italy, Fascist Italy |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:vnm:wpdman:226 |
| By: | Le Vu, Mathilde; Matthes, Katarina L.; Schneider, Eric B.; Moerlen, Aline; Hösli, Irene; Baud, David; Staub, Kaspar |
| Abstract: | Exposure to the 1918 influenza pandemic may have been associated with preterm birth ( |
| Keywords: | birth; birth weight; history of medicine; infants; low birth weight; miscarriage; pandemics; pregnancy; preterm birth; signs and symptoms; stillbirths; permission request sent to publisher |
| JEL: | I10 J13 |
| Date: | 2025–11–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:129897 |
| By: | Samuel Bazzi |
| Abstract: | Building a cohesive nation-state amid deep ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity is a central challenge for many governments. This paper examines the process of nation building, drawing lessons from the remarkable experience of Indonesia over the past century. I discuss conceptual perspectives on nation building and review Indonesia's historical nation-building trajectory. I then synthesize insights from four studies exploring distinct policy interventions in Indonesia---population resettlement, administrative unit proliferation, land reform, and mass schooling---to understand their effects on social cohesion and national integration. Together, these cases underscore the promise and pitfalls of nation-building efforts in diverse societies, offering guidance for future research and policymaking to support these endeavors in Indonesia and beyond. |
| JEL: | D74 H77 N35 O15 O43 P00 Z13 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34540 |
| By: | Amado, Lindorf |
| Abstract: | Standard economic models often treat money as a social construct independent of physical laws. This paper proposes a unified thermodynamic theory of value, positing that monetary systems are information protocols evolved to maximize entropy production in dissipative structures (civilizations). By analyzing 10, 000 years of economic history—from the Neolithic era to the Digital Age—we demonstrate a strict linear relationship (R2 = 0:9934) between the Real Cost of Energy (E) and the Granularity of Money (G). We derive the Equation of Value, G / E, where the value of the accounting unit scales directly with the energy cost of labor. This framework resolves historical anomalies such as the collapse of the Roman Denarius and the failure of the 20th-century Gold Standard, interpreting them not as policy errors, but as thermodynamic phase transitions. The theory predicts that the current decline in the marginal cost of energy (via AI and renewables) necessitates a transition to a monetary substrate with near-infinite divisibility and zero friction. |
| Keywords: | Thermodynamics, Monetary Theory, Entropy, Granularity, Econophysics, AI, Gold Standard, Collapse, Deterministic |
| JEL: | B52 C10 E42 N10 O33 |
| Date: | 2025–12–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:127378 |
| By: | Hu, Yan (Department of Economics, Copenhagen Business School); Maurer, Stephan (University of Edinburgh,) |
| Abstract: | Do minorities benefit from social networks? In this paper, we study this ques-tion using the historical example of China’s first modern bureaucratic organization, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service. Drawing on newly digitized personnel records from 1876-1911, we first show that the Chinese clerks employed by the service were predomi-nantly Cantonese. Using the plausibly exogenous transfers of clerks across stations, we then estimate that a non-Cantonese (minority) clerk benefited significantly from meeting at least one colleague from his same province and dialect. Such connections led to faster promotion and a 5.6% salary increase, with even stronger effects when meeting a clerk who was either senior or of high quality. |
| Keywords: | Chinese Maritime Customs Service; Social connections; Wages; Promotion; Minorities |
| JEL: | J15 J31 J45 N35 N75 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:cbsnow:2025_014 |
| By: | Banzhaf, H. Spencer; Mathews, William; Walsh, Randall |
| Abstract: | This study examines the relationship between racial segregation and environmental equity in Pittsburgh from 1910 to 1940. Utilizing newly digitized historical data on the spatial distribution of air pollution in what was likely America’s most polluted city, we analyze how racial disparities in exposure to air pollution evolved during this period of heightening segregation. Our findings reveal that black residents experi- enced significantly higher levels of pollution compared to their white counterparts, and this disparity increased over time. We identify within-city moves as a critical factor exacerbating this inequity, with black movers facing increased pollution expo- sure. In contrast, European immigrants, who were also initially exposed to relatively high levels of pollution, experience declining exposure as they assimilate over this time period. We also provide evidence of the capitalization of air pollution into hous- ing markets. Taken as a whole, our results underscore the importance of considering environmental factors in discussions of racial and economic inequalities. |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policy |
| Date: | 2024–10–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:cenrep:347603 |
| By: | McLaughlin, Eoin; Whelehan, Niall |
| Abstract: | Civil registration of vital statistics was introduced in Ireland in 1864, yet historians have often viewed the resulting data as unreliable due to weak incentives for compliance and uneven administrative capacity. This paper reassesses the performance of Ireland's vital registration system by tracing its legal origins, documenting its institutional development, and re-evaluating its demographic accuracy. We show that the primary motivation for establishing civil registration was the protection of property rights, which shaped both the design of the system and the incentives facing registrars. New evidence on legal utilisation demonstrates that recourse to records of vital registration increased steadily and converged with usage rates in Britain, suggesting growing engagement with an expanding bureaucratic state in Ireland. Revisiting longstanding comparisons between registered vital events and decadal census enumerations, we find that death registration was generally robust and that irregularities in birth registration are considerably smaller than earlier studies imply. These results indicate that Irish civil registration is more reliable, and more suitable for empirical research, than the prevailing consensus suggests. Revised age-standardised mortality estimates further show that, once demographic structure is accounted for, Ireland's mortality trajectory was distinctive but not exceptional in comparative perspective. |
| Keywords: | civil registration, vital statistics, demographic measurement, state capacity |
| JEL: | N33 J11 K11 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:qucehw:334512 |
| By: | Kosuke Aoki; Alan Auerbach; Charles Yuji Horioka; Anil Kashyap; Tsutomu Watanabe; David Weinstein |
| Abstract: | Takatoshi Ito, who passed away in September 2025, was a leading scholar of macroeconomics and international finance. This column, written by a group of friends and colleagues, outlines his many contributions in a lifetime of research, teaching and policy-making in Japan, the United States and around the world. His work is particularly notable for challenging the widespread perception that standard economic analysis is somehow ill-suited for understanding the Japanese economy. Indeed, using the discipline’s rigorous tools, he illuminated challenges that Japan faced earlier and more acutely than other countries – including population decline and ageing, ballooning government debt, the zero lower bound and unconventional monetary policies, real estate bubbles and their collapse, and the banking sector’s problem of non-performing loans. |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dpr:wpaper:1298 |
| By: | Soeren J. Henn; James A. Robinson |
| Abstract: | We provide an overview of the explanations for the relative lack of state formation historically in Africa. In doing so we systematically document for the first time the extent to which Africa was politically decentralized, calculating that in 1880 there were probably 45, 000 independent polities which were rarely organized on ethnic lines. At most 2% of these could be classified as states. We advance a new argument for this extreme political decentralization positing that African societies were deliberately organized to stop centralization emerging. In this they were successful. We point out some key aspects of African societies that helped them to manage this equilibrium. We also emphasize how the organization of the economy was subservient to these political goals. |
| JEL: | D7 N47 O55 P5 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34546 |
| By: | Ruixue Jia; David Strömberg |
| Abstract: | Moral regulation is widespread across societies, yet its consequences have seldom been examined empirically. We study the Hays Code (July 1934–1960s), which imposed systematic moral guidelines on American cinema. Using a regression-discontinuity design, with non-U.S. films providing a comparison group, we find that the moral compliance of U.S. films rose sharply after 1935 and remained high for two decades. The Code also reshaped protagonists and political tone: protagonists became less likely to be women or working class, and political tones grew more conservative. Filmmakers adapted both by increasing compliance within genres and by shifting across them: less-compliant Drama declined while more-compliant Western and Action rose. Companies with a larger market size and immigrant film directors exhibited stronger responses. These findings reveal how moral constraint, market, and identity jointly shape cultural production and how well-intentioned moral regulation can generate broad and often unintended spillovers. |
| JEL: | L51 L82 N72 P16 Z11 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34539 |
| By: | Christopher L. Foote; Ellen Meara; Jonathan S. Skinner; Luke R. Stewart |
| Abstract: | The education-mortality gradient has increased sharply in the last three decades, with the life-expectancy gap between people with and without a college degree widening from 2.6 years in 1992 to 6.3 years in 2019 (Case and Deaton 2023). During the same period, mortality inequality across counties rose 30 percent, accompanied by an increasing rural health penalty. Using county- and state-level data from the 1992–2019 period, we demonstrate that these three trends arose due to a fundamental shift in the geographic patterns of mortality among college and non-college populations. First, we find a sharp decline in both mortality rates and geographic inequality for college graduates. Second, the reverse was true for people without a college degree; spatial inequality became amplified. Third, we find that rates of smoking play a key role in explaining all three empirical puzzles, with secondary roles attributed to income, other health behaviors, and state policies. Less well-understood is why “place effects” matter so much for smoking (and mortality) for those without a college degree. |
| JEL: | I1 I12 I14 I18 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34553 |
| By: | Federico Etro |
| Abstract: | We analyze the economic dynamics of art markets through workshops that transmit artistic tradition to apprentices and invest in innovations that shape art history. Initial innovations are more radical and associated with low prices and increasing profitability, but the subsequent evolution implies a gradual convergence toward a steady state with stable quality and prices. The equilibrium involves under-investment in creativity, a problem that can be solved through institutions setting payments for apprenticeship, such as art guilds. Heterogeneous talent can generate a highly skewed distribution of art prices with superstar effects. We analyze the role of principal-agent contracts between patrons and artists when quality is not verifiable, cost-saving innovations and mass production, price-setting artists and dealers, endogenous entry of artists and networks of interdependent artistic traditions. |
| Keywords: | Art history, Artistic innovation, Art prices, Patron-artist contracts |
| JEL: | Z11 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:frz:wpaper:wp2025_21.rdf |
| By: | Leander Heldring |
| Abstract: | I examine the potential of pro-development state (capacity) building projects to be coopted for repression. I leverage the natural experiment created by the differential build-up of capacity between formerly Prussian and formerly non-Prussian parts of unified Germany, and the radical policy shifts instigated by the Nazi regime. Across a geographical discontinuity, and across different stops of the same train transport to the East, I find that Prussian municipalities were significantly more efficient at deporting Germany's Jews. They were also better at providing public goods and at collecting taxes. Just before the Nazis came to power, Prussian municipalities also provided public goods more efficiently, but were not differentially involved with anti-Semitism. I show that democratic oversight and aspects of bureaucratic culture can mitigate the potential for future abuse of state building projects. |
| JEL: | H11 H41 N43 N44 P50 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34586 |
| By: | Kaiser, Ulrich (University of Zurich); Mata, José (Copenhagen Business School) |
| Abstract: | We study whether gender norms—proxied by Switzerland’s 1981 referendum on constitutional gender equality—continue to shape women’s entrepreneurship today, despite major demographic change. Using startup data for all Swiss municipalities from 2016 to 2023, we find that places with stronger historical support for gender equality have significantly higher women-to-men startup ratios. A one–percentage point increase in the 1981 “yes” vote share is associated with a 0.165 percent increase in this ratio. The result is robust to controlling for later gender-related referenda, extensive municipal characteristics, and contemporary policy measures. The association is stronger in municipalities with more stable populations and in less religious municipalities. Childcare spending alone is not linked to startup rates, but it positively affects women’s entrepreneurship when combined with supportive historical gender norms, highlighting the joint role of formal policies and informal social support. |
| Keywords: | Switzerland, female founders, cultural persistence, entrepreneurship, gender norms |
| JEL: | J16 L26 Z13 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18337 |
| By: | Takashi Oshio; Satoshi Shimizutani; Akiko S. Oishi |
| Abstract: | We examined the heterogeneous impacts of social security reforms in Japan over the past 40 years. We utilize a nationwide large-scale micro-dataset to compute individual-level social security wealth (SSW) and mortality rates by lifetime earning groups. We found that SSW declined for all groups after the social security reforms, which aimed to reduce generosity; however, the size of the negative impact was larger for richer individuals. These results indicate that a series of recent social security reforms have reduced inequality in SSW. |
| JEL: | H30 I31 J14 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34574 |
| By: | Despina Gavresi (DEM, University of Luxembourg); Anastasia Litina (Department of Economics, University of Macedonia); Ioannis Patios (University of Macedonia) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how exposure to a wide range of macroeconomic downturns shapes individual attitudes to politics and support for variety of populist attitudes in Europe. We try to capture the long-run and the contemporaneous exposure to crises. We first focus on economic downturns experienced during the impressionable years between ages 18 and 25. We use repeated cross-sectional data from the Eurobarometer surveys and exploit cross-country and cohort variation in exposure to recessions. Our baseline analysis relies on fixed-effects regressions controlling for individual characteristics and contemporaneous economic conditions. We then attempt to address identification concerns. To this end we implement a difference-in-differences design that compares cohorts differentially exposed to downturns within the same country. We find that individuals exposed to macroeconomic downturns in early adulthood are more likely to support populist parties and exhibit lower trust in national and European political institutions later in life. |
| Keywords: | Populism; Political attitudes; Institutional trust; OLS, Difference-in-differences |
| Date: | 2025–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mcd:mcddps:2025_06 |
| By: | Clemence Tricaud; Romain Wacziarg |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we argue that recent trends in party seat margins and election vote margins result from structural changes in the nature of US political competition. We assemble a comprehensive database of electoral results for the House, Senate and presidential contests, from the 19th century until today. Seat margins declined in the recent period, so the margins of control of the House, Senate, and Electoral College by either party have become smaller. However, this was not accompanied by a decline in the margins of victory at the constituency level. We propose a model of electoral competition with multiple districts that can rationalize these trends. We show theoretically that an increase in politicians’ information about voter preferences, together with the growing nationalization of politics, can account for the decrease in seat margins and the concurrent stability in vote margins. As implied by the model, we document that campaign contributions received by House and Senate candidates are increasingly concentrated in a dwindling set of swing constituencies. |
| JEL: | D72 P0 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34566 |
| By: | Lauren Hoehn-Velasco; Nikita Dhingra; Mayra Pineda-Torres |
| Abstract: | Do restrictions on public funding create unintended reliance on social assistance? In this paper, we study the 1976 Hyde Amendment, which barred federal funding for abortion. Using county-level data and an event-study design, we show that reduced federal funding for abortion increased fertility among young women by 2%. These effects were concentrated among non-white women, who subsequently experienced greater welfare participation in states with larger abortion funding declines. The consequences extend into the next generation: non-white girls born after Hyde were more likely to rely on public assistance in adulthood. Abortion funding restrictions reinforce long-run economic inequality across generations. |
| JEL: | D6 H51 H53 I13 I18 J13 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34548 |
| By: | Ester Faia; Edward L. Glaeser; Saverio Simonelli; Martina Viarengo |
| Abstract: | What explains the dramatic differences in earnings across locations? We employ an administrative employer-employee linked dataset from Italy that includes the country’s entire workforce to estimate firm-worker or location-worker effects. We also estimate differences in human capital accumulation across firms and cities. We find that the elasticity of the location premia to density is smaller than in other settings and that other locational characteristics, such as segregation in school or the workplace and inter-generational mobility, are more strongly correlated with earnings and earnings growth. Our place-based estimates are similar if we focus on movers who were forced to relocate after the L’Aquila Earthquake. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that density levels jump up at the historic border between House of Savoy-ruled Piedmont and the Hapsburg Empire. Earnings today also jump at the border. This finding suggests that there may be some unintended effects of being a far-flung province of a distant empire, perhaps because of access to larger markets or the administrative and educational reforms that began under Empress Maria Theresa. |
| JEL: | J31 J61 N93 R10 R23 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34582 |
| By: | Lorde, Troy; Pilgrim, George; Hippolyte, Antonius |
| Abstract: | This article explores the relationship between tourism development and the colonial legal inheritance of Barbados. While tourism is routinely framed as the island’s post-independence success story, the statutory regime that governs it tells a more complicated tale. Drawing on a critical legal-historical approach, the paper traces how legislation—from the Hotel Aids Act of 1956 to the Tourism Development Act of 2002 and the long-standing Land Acquisition Act—preserves the priorities and hierarchies of the plantation economy. These laws extend advantages to foreign investors, facilitate land dispossession and entrench patterns of dependency that echo earlier forms of colonial rule. By situating these statutes within broader debates on the “coloniality of law”, the analysis shows how political independence left intact a legal imagination more attuned to property, order and external capital than to equity or community empowerment. The article concludes by outlining elements of a decolonial legal strategy that centres collective rights, environmental stewardship and democratic participation in the design of future tourism policy. |
| Keywords: | coloniality of law; tourism development; savings law clause; plantation economy; legal continuity |
| JEL: | K10 N96 Z13 |
| Date: | 2025–12–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:127400 |
| By: | Patrick A. Testa |
| Abstract: | Elections select officeholders and policies, but they also signal to political actors where to invest their time and money. This paper presents a framework for understanding these effects, in which political investors (e.g., donors, activists) allocate resources where expected political fundamentals favor their party. Investors possess idiosyncratic local knowledge but also public information in the form of recent election results. These signals are complementary: where local knowledge is good, even the narrowest vote-share majorities can align beliefs and concentrate investment. I apply this framework to the changing political geography of the United States between 1940 and 1972, when urban and minority areas came into play for the Democratic Party. A regression discontinuity design based on close presidential elections shows that counties narrowly won by Democrats saw pronounced increases in Democratic local officeholding and voter support in subsequent election periods. This does not reflect direct impacts of presidential elections on local offices, but rather indirect shifts through political investment, including heightened activity in newspaper advertising, phone banking, and civil rights mobilization. Effects are concentrated in urban, Black, and union areas where dense organizational networks enhanced local political knowledge. Together, the findings show how elections organize political actors not only at the ballot box but through the information they convey. |
| JEL: | D72 J15 J18 N32 N42 P16 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34585 |
| By: | Oded Galor; Daniel C. Wainstock |
| Abstract: | Is income inequality in the United States primarily driven by disparities between ethnic groups or within them? The evidence reveals a striking pattern: 96% of U.S. income inequality arises from variation within groups sharing common ancestral origins, far overshadowing the comparatively small share attributable to differences between these groups. This pattern remains remarkably stable across time and regions. |
| JEL: | D63 J15 O15 Z13 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34558 |
| By: | Samuel Berlinski; Guillermo Cruces; Sebastian Galiani; Paul Gertler; Fabian Gonzalez |
| Abstract: | We study the long-run effects of a large public expansion of pre-primary education in Argentina. Between 1993 and 1999 the federal government financed the construction of new preschool classrooms targeted to departments with low base- line enrollment and high poverty, creating roughly 186, 000 additional places. We link administrative records on classroom construction to four population censuses and estimate difference-in-differences models that compare treated and untreated cohorts across high- and low-construction departments. An additional preschool seat per child increases post-kindergarten schooling by about 0.5 years, raising the probability of completing secondary school by 11.9 percentage points and of enrolling in post-secondary education by 7.1 percentage points. For women, access to the program also reduces completed fertility: an additional seat lowers the number of live births per woman by 0.18, and we find no evidence that selective migration biases these estimates. We find little impact on labor-market outcomes at the census date, consistent with beneficiaries still being in school or in the early stages of their careers. A benefit-cost analysis based on the estimated schooling gains, standard Mincer returns, and observed construction and operating costs yields a benefit-cost ratio of about 11 and an internal rate of return of 13%. Our findings show that universal at-scale pre-primary expansions in middle-income countries can generate sizable improvements in human capital and demographic outcomes at relatively low fiscal cost. |
| JEL: | J13 J16 J38 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34552 |
| By: | Nicolò Bellanca |
| Abstract: | Why is sustained, adaptive development so rare despite decades of institutional reform, industrial policy, macroeconomic stabilization and innovation strategies? This paper advances a structural explanation. It defines generative development as a process that is simultaneously endogenous, cumulative, structurally irreversible and transformatively adaptive, and argues that sustaining these four properties requires four irreducible causal functions: Collective Action (A), Production (P), Stabilization (S) and Redefinition of Goals (F). The core claim is that the joint reproduction of these functions through a configuration of functional causal closure provides a necessary structural condition for sustaining development as a self-reinforcing and adaptive historical process. No dyadic or triadic subset of these functions is structurally sufficient to reproduce all four constitutive properties at once. Partial closures may generate growth, learning, institutional reform or strategic direction, but they remain intrinsically fragile and structurally exposed to stagnation, crisis or lock-in. The paper offers a unified structural reinterpretation of institutional, evolutionary, developmental state and mission-oriented approaches as partial theories of distinct development functions. It also derives a typology of development regimes as systematic configurations of partial and full functional closure. A minimal dynamic representation presented in the Online Supplement illustrates the internal consistency of the argument. Overall, the paper reframes development as a problem of causal architecture rather than factor accumulation, with direct implications for development theory, industrial policy, institutional reform, mission-oriented strategies and comparative historical research. |
| Keywords: | Generative development; Structural transformation; Industrial policy; Institutions and development; Mission-oriented policies |
| JEL: | O10 O25 P16 O33 O43 B52 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:frz:wpaper:wp2025_23.rdf |
| By: | Shuhei Kitamura; Nils-Petter Lagerlöf |
| Abstract: | The location of cities is linked to access to trade, but security also matters, in particular for capitals. Here we document this phenomenon, and explore its implications, in the context of Europe’s Great Power era. First we show that Great Power battles tend to occur in shortest-distance corridors between belligerent powers’ capitals, except where those corridors are intercepted by seas, mountains, and marshes. Then we show that capitals locate closer to each other when they have more of these types of geography between them. Finally, we show that city pairs are less likely to belong to the same state if they have more of this geography between them, allowing us to use geography to predict the territorial size and shape of Europe’s Great Powers. In sum, our results suggest that terrain which slows down military incursions makes capitals safer, allowing them to locate closer to each other; given all capitals’ locations, the surrounding geography then shapes the associated state territories. |
| Date: | 2025–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dpr:wpaper:1290 |
| By: | Edo, Anthony (CEPII, Paris); Renault, Thomas (CES, University of Paris); Valette, Jérôme (CEPII, Paris) |
| Abstract: | How does the electoral success of a far-right political force shape the strategies and policy platforms of mainstream candidates? We answer this question by exploiting the political shock of the creation of the Front National, an anti-immigration party, in 1972 and its sudden electoral breakthrough in the 1980s. Through a comprehensive textual analysis of candidate manifestos in French parliamentary elections from 1968 to 1997, we find that right-wing candidates respond to local far-right success, measured as voting shares, by amplifying the salience of immigration in their manifestos. They also adopt more negative positions on immigration and increasingly associate it with issues such as crime and the welfare state. In contrast, the ideological positions of left-wing candidates do not shift in response to far-right electoral gains. We finally show that the strategic adjustments of right- wing candidates help mitigate electoral losses to far-right competitors. |
| Keywords: | party platform, electoral competition, anti-immigrant parties, political economy, immigration |
| JEL: | F22 P16 D72 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18311 |