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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
| By: | Prados de la Escosura, Leandro |
| Abstract: | Recent research confirms that per capita income in early modern Spain improved onlymarginally overall, while also revealing sustained growth through much of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, alongside a continued decline from the late sixteenth to the midseventeenth centuries. These phases shaped Spain's relative position within Western Europe and contributed to the Reversal of Fortune. This paper finds that labour productivity, proxied by output per working-age population, improved during the first three-quarters of the sixteenth century, then declined until the mid-seventeenth century, and that thesubsequent recovery never reached the levels of the 1570s. What caused these episodes of growth and decline: changes in resource endowments or in the efficiency of their use? Phases of labour productivity growth were often driven by factor intensity, but efficiency losses underpinned periods of stagnation or decline, which contradicts the stylised view that factor intensity is the main driver of labour productivity in a pre-industrial economy. Compared with Great Britain, Spain showed an inverse, divergent pattern, moving from similar levels to less than half of Britain's by 1800. Efficiency was the main driver of the widening gap. Ingenuity appears, therefore, to be the driving force behind the Reversal of Fortune. |
| Keywords: | Output per working-age population; Dual TFP; Efficiency; Factor intensity; Reversal of Fortune; Spain; Britain |
| JEL: | J24 E24 N13 O47 |
| Date: | 2026–05–21 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:whrepe:50135 |
| By: | Rivadeneira, Alex (Banco de Mexico); Canavire Bacarreza, Gustavo (World Bank) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the long-run intergenerational effects of concertaje, a widespread forced labor system in the Americas from the Spanish colonial era that coerced indigenous workers in rural estates (haciendas) after causing them to become indebted. We collected and digitized the universe of historical individual-level tax records (1800) in what is today Ecuador and connected them to likely descendants using the universe of contemporary (2010s) tax returns and census registries via surnames. We find that descendants from concertaje earn 16 percent less formal labor income vis-Ã -vis descendants from uncoerced indigenous workers. Because of the distortions created by the institution, descendants from concertaje are less educated, more likely to work in agriculture and the informal sector, and less prone to migrate. However, the effects of concertaje on immigrants are milder, suggesting migration acted as a mitigation channel. |
| Keywords: | institutions, persistence, forced labor, intergenerational mobility, Ecuador |
| JEL: | N36 O10 O43 J62 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18614 |
| By: | Horrell, Sara; Humphries, Jane |
| Abstract: | Housework is central to feminist calls for recognition of women's work, economic histories explaining the sexual division of labour, and claims regarding the progressive role of scientific knowledge. Yet little is known about the time it actually took. We address this lacuna. We utilize British sources and find a substantial increase in the hours ordinary women spent on domestic labour between the late‐eighteenth and the mid‐twentieth centuries. We note the changing imperatives of state involvement and industrial development and explore how the additional domestic labour served the interests of state and employers as well as those of husbands and children. |
| JEL: | N0 |
| Date: | 2026–05–15 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:137939 |
| By: | Warner, Neil |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the origins of neoliberalism in Western Europe from a new perspective, by highlighting and explaining the rejection of a family of alternatives to neoliberalism in the 1970s and early 1980s. These policies for the ‘socialisation of investment’ made diagnoses that were similar to neoliberal diagnoses, particularly emphasising the tension between policies that challenged the interests of capital and reliance on that capital for investment. However, whereas neoliberal policies answered this problem by facilitating the interests of capital, these alternatives sought to extend state and workers’ control over investment. Focusing on cases in the United Kingdom and Sweden, the paper explains why Socialist parties in these countries discussed but ultimately rejected socialisation of investment as a basis for their economic strategies. Comparing the processes of rejection in these cases, and comparing them to policies that these parties did implement, it argues that these proposals were rejected because of asymmetries in resonance and mobilisation on the question. Owners and managers of capital mobilised strongly against socialisation. By contrast, most Socialist politicians, voters, and union members saw control over investment as abstract and distant from their everyday priorities, and did not provide the support needed to counteract resistance. |
| Keywords: | neoliberalism; socialisation of investment; socialist parties; policy resonance; 1970s |
| JEL: | J1 |
| Date: | 2026–05–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:138150 |
| By: | Vincent Bignon; Benoit Mojon; Miguel Ortiz Serrano |
| Abstract: | The severity of financial crises is exacerbated by the lack of international liquidity or the absence of a global lender of last resort. This was evident during the Long Depression (1873–1896), the Great Depression (1929–1936), and, as we show in this paper, during the 1805–1806 crisis that followed the Battle of Trafalgar. The latter took Atlantic trade routes away from Spain and cut off Europe's access to Latin American silver, the key high-powered money of the time. This silver shortage led the Banque de France to cut lending by nearly 50% within three months, deliberately tightening credit to hoard specie and restore the value of its bank notes. In turn, no less than 20 Parisian banks failed, credit collapsed and European financial and money markets experienced acute stress, reflected in rising silver prices, pressure on the metallic reserves of other central banks such as the Banco de San Carlos in Madrid, and disruptions in bills of exchange markets across Europe, from Cádiz to Hamburg. The 1805–1806 crisis highlights how a safe asset's status requires both its resilient supply and the credibility of its issuer. |
| Keywords: | Spanish dollars, Kindleberger gap, International Monetary System |
| JEL: | E41 E58 F33 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bis:biswps:1347 |
| By: | Luis Bosshart (Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies); Max Deter (University of Potsdam, Berlin School of Economics, CEPA); Leander Heldring (Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management); Cathrin Mohr (Kiel Institute for the World Economy, University of Hamburg); Matthias Weigand (Harvard University) |
| Abstract: | We digitize and analyze the near-universe of National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) membership records and link them to population and industrial censuses. Four findings emerge. First, as the party expanded, its membership came to resemble the broader population more closely in occupational, demographic, and religious terms. Second, SS members’ characteristics remained different: younger, more educated, and more fanatical, as measured by the display of Nazi insignia in membership portraits. Third, within communities, coworkers, and families, early membership generated hysteresis, with subsequent entrants drawn from the same groups. Finally, local increases in party membership are associated with subsequent deportations of Germany’s Jews. |
| Keywords: | Radicalization, Mass Movements, Political Economy of Extremism, Nazi Regime |
| JEL: | D74 N44 P16 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pot:cepadp:100 |
| By: | Luna Bellani; Anselm Hager; Stephan Maurer |
| Abstract: | Did Southern elites' economic losses from abolition translate into diminished political influence? Using novel census-linked data on state lawmakers across four slave owning and two Northern states (1850-1880), we document a striking paradox: despite the massive wealth shock of emancipation, the political influence of former slave owners increased during Reconstruction and its aftermath. We show that former slave owners won office at similar rates as in the antebellum period and secured more committee assignments. Comparable patterns are not visible among wealthy legislators in Northern comparison states. This suggests that Southern elites responded to economic loss by tightening their grip on formal political institutions. Our findings point to formal political institutions as one channel through which defeated economic elites preserved influence during Reconstruction and its aftermath. |
| Keywords: | wealth inequality, elites and development, US South, slavery, political power, reconstruction |
| Date: | 2026–05–14 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp2180 |
| By: | Henderson, Louis |
| Abstract: | The first country to industrialize – England – ostensibly did so without expanding investment in the basic education of its workforce. The empirical evidence underpinning this argument for England rests largely on signature rates at marriage. These are not a perfect indication of educational achievement, particularly as many children never learned to write. More problematically, I argue signatures are likely to have systematically underestimated human capital in industrial districts. In place of signature data, I propose age heaping, a measure widely understood as a proxy for numeracy but shown here to be closely related to both reading and writing abilities. In contrast to signatures, this measure suggests that ‘deskilling’ industrialization induced human capital accumulation. I argue that this occurred not because human capital was directly productive, but rather because schools provided a valuable signal. Sunday school attendance signalled low leisure-preference among child workers and were popularly attended in industrial districts. Further, such schools taught children to read but not write, which they considered inappropriate for the Sabbath, accounting for the discrepancy between these two measures of human capital. |
| Keywords: | age heaping; human capital; industrialization; labour markets; signalling; Sunday school |
| JEL: | R14 J01 |
| Date: | 2024–06–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:138032 |
| By: | Aidt, T. S.; De Freitas, L. A. |
| Abstract: | This paper documents and explains the evolution of spatial variation in the municipal voting franchise in England and Wales between 1835 and 1897. Using newly assembled data on voters across Municipal Corporations, we examine how a uniform legal framework produced divergent local democratic outcomes. Applying concepts of β- and σ-convergence from the growth literature, we show strong β-convergence: initially less democratic municipalities expanded their franchise more rapidly than highly democratic ones. However, σ-convergence is weak overall, reflecting the off-setting effects of major national reforms and other shocks. Our findings reveal how de jure uniformity translates into persistent de facto democratic heterogeneity. |
| Keywords: | Democracy, Franchise Extension, Local Government, England, 19th Century |
| Date: | 2026–04–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:2637 |
| By: | Hanappi, Hardy |
| Abstract: | Since the 16th century, several forms of the capitalist mode of production have shaped the evolution of the human species. Any closer inspection of the concept of evolution reveals that it is a name for a dynamic, which incorporates several underlying contradictions. Seen from a larger perspective, a unifying characteristic of the evolution of capitalism is necessary to justify the use of a common name for this time period. But parallel to this necessity, partly contradicting it, a set of shorter stages of capitalism is needed to understand how the long-run phenomena could emerge at all. During each of these stages, some well-working mechanisms can be identified, which first led to a surge of this stage; and later, due to their working, these same mechanisms led to a partial collapse of the stage. In these shorter revolutionary intermezzi that often took several decades, new mechanisms were entering social evolution to maintain capitalism’s basic thrust and, at the same time, to overcome the obstacles of the previous stage. There clearly is a kind of fractal structure in such a historical treatment of capitalism’s evolution: Within each stage of capitalism, mid-range pulsations, sometimes called business cycles, can be observed which resemble the characteristics of the stage within which they are embedded. Of course, capitalism is a broad social formation and cannot be reduced to a simple core of stylised economic behaviour in the fashion of ‘achieving the highest output with scarce resources’. It extends to geopolitical power constellations as well as to cultural traits of capitalism’s stages. Capitalism, in its long-run evolution, in its historical mission, brought about mainly two achievements: A tremendous increase in labour productivity and a more and more sophisticated design for a global democratic institutional framework guiding the species into the next, non-capitalist mode of production. Evolutionary and institutional economics are the sub-disciplines of political economy that traditionally assembled research in this area. And the consideration of the stages of capitalism is the place where the inner workings of the dialectics of continuity and break can be best investigated. |
| Keywords: | Stages of Capitalism |
| JEL: | B51 B52 |
| Date: | 2026–05–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:129013 |
| By: | Sood, Garvit Sood |
| Abstract: | When I first looked at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, my brain struggled to reconcile the official success story with the reality on the ground—my epistemic beliefs nudged me toward the feeling that the situation was amiss. This led me to uncover a deeper strategy behind Rio’s selection, exploring the political resentment that has simmered since the city lost its status as Brazil’s capital in 1960. Using my metaphor "The Free Fall of Equilibrium, " I juxtapose the idea of a "free fall"—where short-term political plays cause a sharp long-term downrise—with "equilibrium, " which requires a focus on stability and just principles. By examining the irony of jailed governors, Olympic bribe schemes, and the symbolic "orange" abandoned pools, I argue that Rio’s approach was not just destabilizing for the city, but for the collective nation. Ultimately, this research explores a fundamental question: is it the individual or the collective who holds the most influence? By evaluating these failures against SDG 16, I show that when institutions prioritize personal beliefs over collective ones, they inevitably collapse under their own weight. |
| Keywords: | Rio 2016 Olympics, Urban Regeneration, SDG 16, Corruption, Epistemic Framing, Modular Technology, Institutional Development. |
| JEL: | D02 D73 O18 O33 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–05–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:129017 |
| By: | Fieles-Ahmad, Omar (Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg); Kvasnicka, Michael (Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg) |
| Abstract: | Following reunification, anti-foreigner crimes rose sharply in the former GDR. Using county-level data for the early 1990s, we study if regional access to Western TV, i.e. non-socialist media, prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall had an impact on regional levels of serious anti-foreigner crime (murder and arson) in East Germany. We find that East German counties with no access to Western TV exhibit higher rates of such crimes, as in the ’valley of the clueless’ around Dresden. This crime-attenuating effect of Western TV proves robust in a battery of robustness checks and underscores the importance of media for anti-foreigner attitudes and crimes well before the rise of the internet and social media. |
| Keywords: | crimes against foreigners, Western TV, immigration, East Germany |
| JEL: | F22 J15 K42 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18648 |
| By: | David Roodman |
| Abstract: | Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky argued for challenging inside views (informed by contextual specifics) with outside views (based on historical "base rates" for certain event types). A reasonable inside view of the prospects for the global economy in this century is that growth will converge to 2.5%/year or less: population growth is expected to slow or halt by 2100; and as more countries approach the technological frontier, economic growth should slow as well. To test that view, this paper models gross world product (GWP) observed since 10, 000 BCE or earlier, in order to estimate a base distribution for changes in the growth rate as a function of the GWP level. For econometric rigor, it casts a GWP series as a sample path in a stochastic diffusion whose specification is novel yet rooted in neoclassical growth theory. After estimation, most observations fall between the 40th and 60th percentiles of predicted distributions. The fit implies that GWP explosion is all but inevitable, in a median year of 2047. The friction between inside and outside views highlights two insights. First, accelerating growth is more easily explained by theory than is constant growth. Second, the world system may be less stable than traditional growth theory and the growth record of the last two centuries suggest. |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2605.09182 |
| By: | Neil R. Ericsson; Andrew B. Martinez |
| Abstract: | In April 2025, the Department of Economics at the University of Oxford hosted the "Workshop to Celebrate Forty Years of Unit Roots and Cointegration", which commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics’s 1986 special issue "Economic Modelling With Cointegrated Variables". The current article summarizes that workshop's panel discussion with major contributors to the literature on cointegration-David Hendry, Peter Phillips, Katarina Juselius, and Soren Johansen—and includes additional remarks by Martin Ellison and the conference's audience. The discussion highlights key roles that the panelists and the Bulletin have played in advancing the literature on cointegration. |
| Keywords: | cointegration; equilibrium correction; error correction; spurious regression; structural breaks; unit roots. |
| JEL: | C10 N1 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gwc:wpaper:2026-009 |
| By: | Bj\"orn L\"ofdahl Grelsson |
| Abstract: | Historical Simulation (HS) and its extensions form a popular class of methods for estimating Value-at-Risk for portfolios of financial assets based on historical data. In this note, we seek to unify several ideas and models from throughout the literature into a single modeling framework. By explicitly defining a parametric model form for the asset returns and extracting the realized increments of the driving innovation process from historical data, we are able to reproduce the Historical Simulation, filtered Historical Simulation, and displaced Historical Simulation methods. This shows beyond a doubt that these methods need more underlying assumptions than what is often alluded to. |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2605.10066 |
| By: | Solon, Neo |
| Abstract: | This paper provides the first retrospective empirical reconstruction of the Citizens Standard monetary framework against US historical data. The architectural paper (Neo-Solon, 2026) proposes a constitutional monetary framework with three mode configurations and projects substantial retirement wealth outcomes under 2025 launch parameters. The present paper asks a different question: applied to actual US economic data from 1960 to 2025, what outcomes would the framework's Mode B configuration have produced for representative citizens, and how do those outcomes compare to what citizens actually experienced under the discretionary monetary system? Using an annual dataset drawn from authoritative public sources — FRED M2SL, BEA nominal GDP, BLS CPI-U, Census population, and S&P 500 total returns from Damodaran/NYU Stern through 2024 — we apply Mode B's K1 and K2 issuance formulas to four cohorts born in 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1990. The central finding is that Mode B reliably produces a Stable Floor at retirement that exceeds the median American's actual retirement wealth by a factor of 1.9 to 4.0 across all four cohorts under central return assumptions. This finding holds for fully retrospective cohorts with high empirical confidence and for projected cohorts under all three return scenarios including pessimistic assumptions. A decomposition analysis reveals that approximately 96 percent of the framework's projected retirement wealth derives from compound equity returns on deposited principal; only 4 percent is the monetary principal itself. The Citizens Standard's contribution is to guarantee the structural conditions under which compounding can occur — universal participation, automatic deposits, constitutional locking, fee minimization, no early withdrawal — rather than to provide the wealth directly. Stress tests using Depression-era and stagflation-era equity sequences show that under catastrophic equity conditions during peak accumulation years, the framework's median advantage is significantly diminished or eliminated for the most adversely timed cohorts. Non-survivor analysis drawing on the Dimson, Marsh, and Staunton global returns dataset shows that the framework's structural advantages persist in any equity market that avoids confiscation, though absolute outcomes are proportional to country-level long-run equity returns. The paper concludes that the Citizens Standard is most accurately described as a structural retirement-security architecture — one that eliminates the behavioral and institutional leakages that cause median Americans to accumulate far less than a disciplined investor — rather than as a monetary-stimulus mechanism. Its principal social contribution is eliminating the savings-discipline lottery. |
| Keywords: | Mode B, constitutional monetary architecture, retirement security, k-formulas, equity, compounding, counterfactual, monetary |
| JEL: | D31 E21 E42 E58 G11 G17 H55 N11 N12 |
| Date: | 2026–05–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:129035 |
| By: | Patrick Coate; Kyle Mangum |
| Abstract: | This paper shows the declining trend in internal migration in the United States is primarily due to increasing home attachment in “fast locations, ” areas with relatively high rates of population turnover. These locations were population growth destinations in the 20th century, with transient populations that settled as regional population growth converged. The qualitative patterns of the U.S. experience can be generated by a model of location choice in heterogeneous regions with overlapping generations when the population has a home bias that varies endogenously with the history of population change. Using a novel measure of home attachment, this paper estimates a structural model of migration that distinguishes moving frictions from home utility. Simulations quantify channels of the mobility decline. Rising home attachment accounts for much of the decline, predominantly in fast locations. Population aging explains most of the remainder but in a more spatially neutral way. |
| Keywords: | declining internal migration; labor mobility; home attachment; rootedness; local ties; conditional choice probability estimation |
| JEL: | J61 R23 R11 C50 |
| Date: | 2026–05–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedpwp:103190 |
| By: | Ran Huang |
| Abstract: | The Spanish Price Revolution is usually treated as a classic case in which American bullion inflows expanded the money supply and generated inflation. This view captures the first phase of the episode but fails to explain why the same monetary expansion did not continue to produce proportional price growth after 1600. We develop a two-phase Money Phase Transition Theory (MPTT) model in which the classical monetary relation is recovered before a transition point, while a second-phase correction term modifies the money-price transmission coefficient after the transition. Using annual Spanish CPI and reconstructed money-supply data, we show that 1500-1600 was a high-transmission metallic inflationary phase: CPI increased approximately 3.35-fold while money supply increased approximately 3.73-fold. After 1600, money supply continued to rise, increasing approximately 1.82-fold during 1600-1650, while CPI rose only approximately 1.22-fold. A classical one-phase model fitted on 1500-1600, therefore, overpredicts post-1600 prices when extrapolated forward. The MPTT two-phase model with transition point tau=1600 estimates beta_1=0.949, gamma=-0.812, and beta_2=beta_1+gamma=0.137, indicating a sharp post-transition weakening of monetary transmission. An unrestricted break scan identifies a deeper BIC-minimizing break around 1636. These results suggest that the Spanish Price Revolution was not a single monotonic bullion-inflation process but the rise and exhaustion of high-transmission metallic money inflation. |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2605.08788 |
| By: | Sebastian Edwards |
| Abstract: | In this paper I examine Chile’s 1972 initiative to draft a new constitution under President Salvador Allende. I analyze the political and economic circumstances that gave rise to the project and the institutional mechanisms through which the draft sought to advance a socialist economic and political program centered on state ownership of means of production and central planning. I compare the Chilean proposal with the socialist constitutions of the German Democratic Republic and Czechoslovakia. The draft, which was never submitted to a plebiscite, as Allende envisioned, subsequently disappeared and remained unavailable for nearly two decades. Remarkably, the proposal has attracted very limited scholarly attention. |
| JEL: | K10 K16 K19 N46 P37 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35200 |
| By: | Salvo, Carla (Sapienza University of Rome); Weisdorf, Jacob (Sapienza University of Rome, CAGE, & CEPR) |
| Abstract: | Northern Italy is markedly richer than the rest of the country. The origins of this regional divide have long been the subject of debate. We trace relative regional development back to the end of antiquity using newly assembled data on ecclesiastical building activity as a proxy for economic performance. We identify two pre-modern golden ages in the 10th to 13th and 15th to 16th centuries, both plausibly interrupted by major plague outbreaks. Our evidence suggests that the North South gap emerged more than a millennium ago, around 900 CE, when the North pulled ahead and re tained its lead thereafter. We also find that Italian unification further amplified this northern advantage. |
| Keywords: | Church building, regional development, economic growth JEL Classification: O11, N30, N60, Z12 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:803 |
| By: | Ignacio Andrés Rossi (CIC-CEHEAL-UNGS) |
| Abstract: | El objetivo del artículo es analizar la hiperinflación argentina de 1989 a partir de un enfoque e interpretación histórica. El punto de partida lo constituyen los factores estructurales detrás de la crisis la década de 1980 como la deuda externa, el alto déficit fiscal y la inflación reteniendo la coyuntura inmediata del Plan de estabilización Primavera. A partir del abordaje de un conjunto de fuentes estadísticas, institucionales y testimoniales se propone una interpretación sobre el episodio hiperinflacionario desde el manejo de la política económica del gobierno entre 1986 y 1988 como condición previa. Como se dio cuenta, la hiperinflación no puede entenderse meramente desde el desborde fiscal y monetario, sino que debe partirse de un enfoque que jerarquice el peso del endeudamiento externo e interno y las limitaciones de la política financiera tanto del gobierno como la ejercida desde el Banco Central. |
| Keywords: | hiperinflación, deuda externa, Banco Central, estabilización |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aoz:wpaper:396 |
| By: | Ciccarelli , Carlo (University of Rome Tor Vergata); Marciante, Gianni (University of Bologna) |
| Abstract: | The role of womens education in driving the historical fertility transition remains poorly understood. Existing studies have focused on France, an early outlier, or on Prussia before the onset of its demographic transition. Less is known about the context where this effect is expected to be strongest: the onset of the transition in late transitioning countries. This paper fills this gap by studying the impact of womens education on fertility in Italy (1881 to 1921). Using original district level panel data, we exploit the interaction between proximity to the first female teacher training colleges opened under the Casati Law of 1859 and time fixed effects as an instrumental variable. IV estimates confirm a negative effect of education on fertility, operating through health knowledge and the economic independence that female teachers embodied. |
| Keywords: | JEL Classification: |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:804 |
| By: | D. Mark Anderson; Kerwin Kofi Charles; Daniel I. Rees |
| Abstract: | Whether medical innovation exacerbates or reduces racial health disparities remains an open question. We study surfactant replacement therapy (SRT), a life-saving intervention for premature infants with respiratory disorders. Before its approval by the FDA in 1989, premature Black infants were much less likely than their White counterparts to die from respiratory-related causes. Within a few years of FDA approval, the Black-White gap in respiratory-related neonatal mortality had essentially disappeared. Using 1980-2000 vital statistics data and non-respiratory-related mortality as a counterfactual outcome, we find that both Blacks and Whites benefited from the introduction of SRT, but White neonates experienced larger and more immediate reductions in mortality. We estimate that, by 1993, SRT had reduced respiratory-related mortality among White neonates by 46 percent, compared to 30 percent for Black neonates. These results are not explained by differences in health care access, as proxied by socioeconomic status or distance to the nearest neonatal intensive care unit. We conclude that racial differences in fetal pulmonary maturation, rather than barriers to access, likely drove the uneven impact of SRT on neonatal mortality. |
| JEL: | I14 I18 J13 J15 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35210 |
| By: | Giovanni Scarano |
| Abstract: | The paper advances novel interpretations of Marx’s original insights by situating them within the horizon of contemporary scientific approaches, notably dynamical systems theory and statistical physics. Marx’s dialectical method is a mode of analysis predicated on the insight that relations among parts cannot be adequately grasped in abstraction from the relation between the whole and its constituent elements – a defining feature of modern systemic approaches. This perspective renders it possible to reinterpret many of Marx’s key concepts as emergent properties of economic systems. The paper further contends that Marx conceived capitalist development as an intrinsically dynamic process that precludes the notion of equilibrium as a state of rest. In this light, the centrality of disequilibrium within the Marxian framework brings it into an alignment with contemporary theories of deterministic chaos, wherein systems persistently far from equilibrium are nonetheless amenable to rational analysis through the concept of attractors. |
| Keywords: | Complex systems, holism, reductionism, structuralism, disequilibrium |
| JEL: | A11 A12 B14 B40 B41 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rtr:wpaper:0292 |
| By: | Valsecchi, Michele (New Economic School (NES)); Olsson, Ola (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University); Kopylova, Aleksandra (New Economic School (NES)) |
| Abstract: | Cadasters are country-wide mapped land registries that increase transparency and strengthen private property rights but are often also associated with land redistribution and higher taxation. A large micro literature has studied how land reforms affect economic development within countries. We use recently developed cross-country data on cadastral institutions to investigate the empirical relationship between major reforms and social conflict. We exploit 22 major cadastral reform events during 1814-2014 that we match with countries that experienced no reform. We find a clear tendency for conflict levels and political instability to decrease one or two decades after cadastral reforms. Our findings could have relevance for policy debates among countries that have still not pursued the introduction of land registries. |
| Keywords: | cadasters; social conflict; land registry; civil war; leader changes |
| JEL: | K11 N20 O20 |
| Date: | 2026–05–15 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0863 |
| By: | Ruben Gaetani; Alexander T. Whalley |
| Abstract: | The emergence of firms like SpaceX and Blue Origin has made space a leading example of how private enterprise drives innovation, marking what many see as a sharp break between Old Space and New Space. Yet little systematic evidence documents when the transition to this new phase of space innovation occurred and which firms drove it. We use patent data to provide this measurement and find that the largest surge in space innovation occurred in the 1990s, coinciding with demand-side market creation, and preceding the entry of high-profile startups after 2005. Throughout this period and since, incumbent aerospace firms account for most of the space-related patenting, with entrants contributing a growing but minority share. The same geographic regions that dominated space innovation during the post-Apollo era remain dominant today. These patterns are consistent with directed technical change: incumbents direct R&D toward policy-created markets accessible from existing capabilities, while entrants bring science-based insights into domains requiring new paradigms. Our findings suggest that New Space is more closely connected to Old Space than prevailing narratives imply, and that government's most consequential role in space innovation may lie in constructing appropriable markets. We make patent data on space-related technologies available for future research. |
| JEL: | L64 O31 O38 R48 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35212 |
| By: | Bimardhika, Elghafiky; Halim, Daniel Zefanya |
| Abstract: | Can college-educated women in rapidly developing economies balance career and family, or does compressed economic growth polarize their choices? This paper investigates how Indonesian women navigate these dual objectives across birth cohorts from the 1950s to the 1990s. It utilizes 38 years of Labor Force Survey data to examine aggregate cohort patterns and five rounds of Indonesia Family Life Survey panel data to trace individual life-cycle trajectories. The paper documents increasing polarization among younger cohorts, which either delay marriage and stay in the labor force or opt out of the labor force altogether post-marriage. The paper traces this divergence to two concurrent trends. First, more women enter time-demanding, high-skilled professions traditionally dominated by men. Second, rising conservatism among young men creates marriage market frictions, leaving educated women with stark choices: conform to conservative family expectations by leaving work, or prioritize careers while delaying or forgoing family. |
| Date: | 2026–03–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11326 |
| By: | Bokes, Jakub |
| JEL: | B14 B24 P2 P3 |
| Date: | 2024–07–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:123678 |
| By: | Anibal Jáuregui (Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Económicas. Instituto Interdisciplinario de Economía Política (IIEP UBA–CONICET). Buenos Aires, Argentina.); Roberto Dante Flores (Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Económicas. Instituto Interdisciplinario de Economía Política (IIEP UBA–CONICET). Buenos Aires, Argentina.) |
| Abstract: | La crisis política y económica de 1962-63 desestabilizó al país, marcada por una profunda fractura militar, violencia reaccionaria y una macro en recesión inflacionaria. Ante la urgencia de una salida institucional, el gobierno impulsó una salida electoral sin reglas claras. Con vistas a esta se formó el Frente Nacional y Popular que integraba al peronismo con la UCRI de Arturo Frondizi. Finalmente Perón decidió el retiro de esta coalición de los comicios de 1963 y facilitó el triunfo de Arturo Illia (UCRP). De esta manera se frustró el retorno del peronismo a la vida política. La UCRI se dividió y el frondizismo ya definido como desarrollismo se reorganizó en abierta oposición al gobierno radical, al que consideraba un obstáculo para el desarrollo nacional. En noviembre de 1964 se fundó el Movimiento de Integración y Desarrollo (MID) que consolidó dentro del desarrollismo la preeminencia del sector frigerista y su enfoque técnico-económico sobre el relato partidario tradicional. Pese a su llegada al establishment, este partido no alcanzó suficiente arraigo popular. La crisis política iniciada en 1962 no se había resuelto ya que los militares seguían dominando la vida institucional; ello culminó en 1966 con un golpe militar, que Frondizi y el MID no contaron con la condena de Frondizi y el MID. |
| Keywords: | Instituciones políticas; Fuerzas Armadas; Partido Político; Radicalismo Intransigente; Desarrollo económico y social |
| JEL: | N16 P16 H30 Z18 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ake:iiepdt:2026-121 |
| By: | Keiichi Morimoto; Akihiko Noda; Takenobu Yuki |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how wartime economic controls shaped stock-price formation in Japan from 1930 to 1943. We develop a four-portfolio asset-pricing model in which zaibatsu affiliation affects expected payoffs and the translation of valuations into economic scale through lower financing wedges. We then construct daily capitalization-weighted indices and four benchmark portfolios based on a two-by-two sort by zaibatsu affiliation and military orientation. Using a CAPM-AR(p)-SV event-study framework that allows for serial correlation and stochastic volatility, we show that the model rationalizes capitalization concentration, segmented abnormal returns, delayed cumulative adjustment, regime-risk insulation of zaibatsu portfolios, and zaibatsu-concentrated responses to embedded-rent or group-continuation shocks. The evidence is consistent not with a collapse of semi-strong efficiency, but with institutionally contingent efficiency: stock prices continued to respond to news while capitalizing uneven access to credit, materials, and procurement. |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2605.21009 |