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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
| By: | Alessandro Roncaglia (Sapienza University of Rome) |
| Abstract: | Adam Smith's political economy is best understood as part of a broader inquiry into human beings and society, rather than as a narrow theory of market self-regulation. This paper situates The Wealth of Nations within Smith's wider intellectual project, including his writings on moral philosophy, rhetoric, jurisprudence, and scientific method. It emphasizes the complementarity between self-interest and sympathy, the centrality of the division of labor to Smith's theory of economic development, and the role of institutions, justice, and public action in sustaining commercial society. The paper also revisits Smith's theories of value, prices, distribution, and competition, arguing against interpretations that assimilate Smith to modern general equilibrium theory or reduce the "invisible hand" to a doctrine of automatic market optimality. Smith emerges instead as a theorist of social interdependence, historical development, and institutional complexity. |
| Keywords: | Adam Smith; classical political economy; Scottish Enlightenment; division of labor; sympathy; self-interest; value theory; competition; invisible hand; history of economic thought |
| JEL: | B12 B31 B41 D46 D6 D01 E6 K21 L4 |
| Date: | 2026–05–25 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:thk:wpaper:inetwp251 |
| By: | Oded Galor |
| Abstract: | The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2025 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Philippe Aghion, Peter Howitt, and Joel Mokyr "for having explained innovation-driven economic growth". This paper examines their contributions in the context of the development process as a whole. Aghion and Howitt established the centrality of creative destruction in the growth process of advanced economies, identifying the displacement of existing technologies by superseding ones as a key mechanism in sustaining economic growth. Mokyr highlighted the role of a tightening link between theoretical knowledge and practical application during the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment in fostering technological progress in Western Europe on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. These frontier-centered perspectives transformed our understanding of the causes and consequences of innovation-driven growth in advanced economies operating near the technological frontier. Yet, throughout much of the development process, the central challenge to growth has depended less on the creation of new technologies than on the emergence of fundamental conditions conducive to skill formation, fertility decline, and societal adaptation, which have shaped the timing of the transition to modern growth, the pace of economic growth thereafter, and the contemporary inequality in the wealth of nations. A comprehensive account of sustained growth and contemporary inequality across societies requires anchoring the growth process in its broader historical arc. |
| Keywords: | Growth, Innovation, Inequality, Unified Growth Theory, Human Capital, Demographic Transition |
| JEL: | O10 O40 Z10 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26173 |
| By: | Machielsen, Bas; Vicq de Cumptich, Amaury de |
| Abstract: | Max Weber linked Protestant prosperity to a distinctive work ethic and thrift. More recent research emphasizes instead the role of human-capital formation. We show that Protestantism also causally promoted social mobility. Studying the Netherlands, we instrument municipal Protestant share with sixteenth-century archdiocesan boundaries that shaped Catholic enforcement in the Counter-Reformation. Municipalities with higher instrumented Protestant presence exhibited greater intergenerational mobility, higher fiscal capacity, and better material living standards in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We trace mobility over more than three hundred years, and find that the Protestant mobility advantage was already visible in the centuries before industrialization. Evaluating competing channels within a unified empirical framework, we find that social mobility emerges as the strongest correlate of development among the canonical channels tested. The results provide further evidence of Protestantism's legacy for the cultural and institutional foundations of modern growth. |
| Keywords: | Economic history, Social mobility, Economic development |
| JEL: | N14 D72 H71 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:342596 |
| By: | Sergi, Francesco; Cherrier, Beatrice; Saïdi, Aurélien; Duarte, Pedro; Goutsmedt, Aurélien (UC Louvain - F.R.S-FNRS); Renault, Matthieu; Acosta, Juan |
| Abstract: | This book offers a history of macroeconomics (the study of “the economy” as a whole) from its inception in the interwar period to today. Its novelty is twofold: it goes beyond a history of theories to cover a wider range of macroeconomists’ practices; it relies on a growing body of historical research, challenging misconceptions commonly disseminated in macroeconomics textbooks. This is not “yet another history of macroeconomics”. It is one that should strike scholars and students in macroeconomics as novel. Such a history is needed because macroeconomics textbooks project a particular “identity” of the field, derived from a specific historical narrative, in which the field evolved through theoretical “revolutions” and “battles” between “schools of thought” initiated by “great men”. We argue that this misrepresents the actual dynamics of macroeconomics. Our history conveys a different perspective, highlighting a more diverse set of characteristics (what macroeconomics is about) and practices (what macroeconomists do). We emphasise how macroeconomics has always relied on the combination of research agendas (theoretical, mathematical, empirical, and computational); how the interaction with other fields (notably microeconomics and econometrics) has been constant; and how the field has been shaped by a cast of researchers with diverse geographical and institutional origins (some working within academia, others in policymaking institutions and private organisations). We bring these many dimensions together through a simple chronology outlining four periods: birth (1920s-1940s), bridges (1950s-1960s), frictions (1970s-1980s), and constellations (1990s-2000s). |
| Date: | 2026–08–18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:2suyd_v1 |
| By: | Arthi, Vellore; Richardson, Gary; Van Orden, Mark |
| Abstract: | The failure of the Freedman's Savings Bank (FSB), one of the only Black-serving banks in the early post-bellum South, was an economic catastrophe and one of the great episodes of racial exploitation in post-Emancipation history. It was also most Black Americans' first experience of banking. Can events like these permanently alter financial preferences and behavior? To test this, we examine the impact of FSB collapse on life insurance-holding, an accessible alternative savings vehicle over the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We document a sharp and persistent increase in insurance demand in affected counties following the shock, driven disproportionately by Black customers. We also use FSB migrant flows to disentangle place-based and cohort-based effects, thus identifying psychological and cultural scarring as a distinct mechanism underlying the shift in financial behavior induced by the bank's collapse. Horizontal and intergenerational transmission of preferences help explain the shock’s persistent effects on financial behavior. |
| JEL: | G21 G22 G51 G52 D63 I30 N21 N22 N31 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19304 |
| By: | James J. Feigenbaum; Andrew B. Hall; Daniel M. Thompson; Jesse Yoder |
| Abstract: | We trace the family origins of Members of Congress (MC) born between 1830 and 1950, linking each MC, their parents, and their brothers to the complete-count censuses. Future MCs have always been economic outliers. By 1940, close to 60 percent of MCs aged 18--40 held a college degree, against under 5 percent of comparable young men outside Congress. In the 19th-century censuses, MCs as adults held roughly three times the wealth of demographically matched controls. They also come from economically elite families: their fathers earn more, attain more education, and hold more wealth. The brothers of future MCs sit between the population and the MCs themselves. Across the socioeconomic measures we compare, we calculate that roughly half of an MC's adult premium is shared with his brother and the other half is his own. Even as the American economy and political system have changed, the family background gap has widened over the last century and a half. Wealth, household servants, and four separate occupation-based scores all show the gap holding or growing across cohorts. We study four Progressive-Era reforms in a triple-difference design---women's suffrage, the secret ballot, direct primaries, and the direct election of senators---and none produce detectable shifts in who reaches Congress. Our results document a Congress drawn from the most fortunate families in American society in every cohort we observe. |
| JEL: | H10 H70 N31 N32 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35569 |
| By: | Juhász, Réka; Sakabe, Shogo; Weinstein, David |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the global adoption of technology in the late nineteenth century. We construct several novel datasets to test the idea that the codification of technical knowledge in the vernacular was necessary for countries to absorb the technologies of the First Industrial Revolution. We find that comparative advantage shifted to industries that could benefit from these technologies in countries and colonies with access to codified technical knowledge, but not in other regions. Using the rapid and unprecedented codification of technical knowledge in Meiji Japan as a natural experiment, we show that this pattern emerged only after the Japanese government codified vast amounts of technical knowledge. Our findings shed new light on the frictions associated with technological diffusion and offer a novel explanation for why Meiji Japan was unique among non-Western countries in successfully industrializing during the first wave of globalization. |
| Keywords: | Industrialization; Technology adoption; Development; Productivity; Industrial policy; Japan |
| JEL: | F14 F63 N15 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19208 |
| By: | Ager, Philipp; Malein, Viktor |
| Abstract: | The paper evaluates the long-run impact of charity nurseries for disadvantaged children in early 20th-century New York. Access to charity nurseries with kindergarten instruction raised children’s years of education and reduced their likelihood of working in low-skilled jobs later in life. Instead, exposed children were more likely to work in jobs requiring higher cognitive and language skills. The effects were strongest for children from the most disadvantaged immigrant groups at that time. Our findings suggest that kindergarten instruction in charity nurseries helped immigrant children better understand teachers’ instructions and learning materials which improved their economic outcomes in adulthood. |
| JEL: | I21 I26 J13 J15 N31 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19317 |
| By: | Kaja, Fatjon |
| Abstract: | This article advances a new perspective on corporate purpose, grounded in the institutional conditions under which corporate privileges are granted. Using a novel dataset of historical UK royal charters and a mixed-methods empirical strategy, the study shows that early corporations articulated specific, enforceable, and public-facing purpose clauses because incorporation was a scarce privilege that allowed the Crown to impose obligations as a "asking price" for the benefits of the corporate form. Machine-learning evidence demonstrates that clauses reflecting Crown leverage cluster systematically and decline over time as incorporation becomes more accessible. The findings reframe corporate purpose not merely as a normative contest among stakeholders but as the product of institutional bargaining at the point of corporate formation, offering a historical lens for contemporary purpose debates. |
| Keywords: | corporate purpose, UK royal charters, text as data, shareholder primacy, historical perspective |
| JEL: | K00 K2 K22 N80 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:lawfin:342454 |
| By: | Voth, Hans-Joachim; Yanagizawa-Drott, David |
| Abstract: | From clothes and hairstyles to fashion accessories, humans use a great range of stylistic elements to express themselves, impress others, demonstrate their individualism, or show that they belong to a group. We present new methods to use images as a high-frequency, granular source for the analysis of cultural change. Despite its central importance as a form of social interaction and self-expression, and a rich body of theoretical work, empirical work on style choices is rare. We measure similarity over time and space, tracking the timing and location of influential style innovations. To illustrate our methods, we systematically exploit data from more than 14 million high school yearbook pictures of graduating US seniors to analyze persistence and change in style. We document a striking convergence of male and female style characteristics. This is driven by rising male individualism and declining male persistence across generations from the late 1960s onwards. Also, style polarization increases sharply across commuting zones from the 1970s onwards. In addition, we develop a novel measure of style innovation and show that it predicts patenting by cohorts later in life, suggestive of broader societal trends facilitating innovation across a range of domains. Overall, our results highlight the usefulness of images as a source for cultural economics. |
| Keywords: | Culture |
| JEL: | A12 Z13 N34 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19219 |
| By: | Romain Baeriswyl |
| Abstract: | While money has evolved from natural commodities to digital tokens, the debate about the ideal money has remained the same throughout the ages. Historical controversies about the origin, nature, and double-spending of money offer valuable insights for navigating the new forms of money tokens such as cryptocurrencies, central bank digital currencies and stablecoins. |
| Keywords: | Natural law of money, State theory of money, Economic good theory of money, Credit theory of money, Double-spending of money |
| JEL: | E40 E42 E50 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:snb:snbwpa:2026-10 |
| By: | Brey, Bjorn; Facchini, Giovanni |
| Abstract: | What are the political consequences of de-globalization? We address this question in the context of Weimar Germany, which experienced a 67\% decline in exports between 1928-1932. During this period, the Nazi party vote share increased from 3\% to 37\%. Using newly digitized data, we show that this surge was not driven by the direct effects of the export decline in manufacturing areas. At the same time, trade shock-induced declines in food prices spread economic hardship to rural hinterlands. We document that this indirect effect and the pro-agriculture policies put forward by the Nazis are instead key to explain their electoral success. |
| Keywords: | Trade; Extremism; Germany |
| JEL: | F14 F44 N14 N44 |
| Date: | 2024–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19383 |
| By: | Cermeño, Alexandra L. (Lund University); Quintigliano, Alessandra (Sapienza University of Rome); Weisdorf, Jacob (Sapienza University of Rome, CAGE, & CEPR) |
| Abstract: | Africa's historical borderlands are persistently associated with low levels of economic development. This paper examines how these regions respond to development interventions, analysing whether the long-run development advantage associated with colonial Christian missions persists near historical homeland borders. Combining georeferenced data on 3, 365 pioneering mission stations with high-resolution satellite night-time luminosity data, we show that the positive association between proximity to missionary activity and contemporary economic development weakens sharply in these borderland areas. This result is robust across a wide range of specifications and is corroborated by evidence on household wealth and human capital from the Demographic and Health Surveys Program. Our findings suggest that the success of development initiatives in the historical borderlands reflects not only the interventions themselves, but also the institutional environments in which they were implemented. |
| Keywords: | Africa, missionaries, development, borderlands, night-time luminosity, spatial analysis. JEL Classification: O1, F35, N10, N17 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:822 |
| By: | Pujadas Mora, Joana Maria; Santiago Caballero, Carlos |
| Abstract: | This paper addresses to what extent the growth that Spain experienced around the midnineteenth century reached large shares of the local population or was mainly captured by a few. We use the Balearic Islands as a case study and analyse the changes in occupational mobility and social homogamy between 1841 and 1870. Using an original dataset created from civilregistry marriage records, we reconstruct the occupational status of the grooms, their fathers and their fathers-in-law across seven municipalities. We transcribe the occupations using HISCAM and HISCLASS to estimate the patterns of upward and downward mobility, as well as persistence and patterns observed in the marriage market. Our results show that occupational mobility increased during the central decades of the nineteenth century and that this was mainly a consequence of the high levels of upward mobility estimated in 1870. However, this process was not systematic in all the islands. We observe that more urban and commercially connected municipalities, particularly Mahón, offered more opportunities for upward mobility and also showed a more socially heterogeneous marriage market. On the other hand, Alcudia presented worse conditions in mobility patterns, consistent with its long-term demographic, sanitary and port-related problems. The analysis of homogamy shows that local marriage markets and migration status influenced the direction of social distance between families, with migrants not necessarily accessing higher-status marriage alliances even when geographical mobility could have helped them gain access to such alliances. We argue that the Balearic Islands differ from the patterns observed in other regions such as Valencia during the same period because the low initial inequality, diversified agriculture, small-scale manufacturing and access to external markets allowed the benefits of economic development to be better distributed among the local population, reaching broader sectors of society. Therefore, this paper shows that growth and globalisation do not always translate into higher inequality and increasing pauperisation, as their effects depend crucially on local structures and initial inequality levels that shape the access to new opportunities. |
| Keywords: | Social Mmbility; Occupational mobility; Social homogamy; Marriage markets; Balearic islands; Nineteenth-century Spain |
| JEL: | J62 J12 N33 O15 D31 |
| Date: | 2026–08–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:whrepe:50617 |
| By: | Philipp Barteska; Oliver Kim; Nathan Lane; Seung Joo Lee |
| Abstract: | How did geopolitics shape East Asia's economic development? We find that U.S. military procurement during the Vietnam War — a shock which peaked at nearly 3% of South Korean GDP, rivaling the Marshall Plan — catalyzed Korea's export-led industrialization. We construct a new firm-level dataset that matches Korean export records with U.S. procurement contracts awarded between 1965 and 1974 to estimate the causal impact of winning a contract on export performance. A firm winning its first contract raises its likelihood of exporting by 14.7 percentage points and its export value by 40%. Treated firms are more likely to expand into third-country markets and export manufacturing products — and these gains are unlikely to come from business stealing. Finally, we find that U.S. procurement and domestic industrial policy were likely complementary. Our findings reveal a neglected channel through which Cold War geopolitics shaped the East Asian economic miracle. |
| Keywords: | export promotion, firm development, East Asian Miracle, procurement, geoeconomics |
| JEL: | F14 F35 O14 H56 N45 O25 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12926 |
| By: | Carmona, Juan; Rosés, Joan R. |
| Abstract: | This paper argues that the financing model of property-rights institutions is a central determinant of their distributional consequences. Following the Napoleonic reforms, Spain’s Liberal governments created a modern, nationally integrated land registry, but financed access through user fees and tied registration to the collection of transfer taxes. This arrangement reduced the administrative cost of reform and gave the Treasury revenue from transactions at a time when the cadastral basis of direct land taxation was increasingly obsolete. Yet it also created a regressive access regime: because notarial fees, registry charges, and taxes were largely fixed, the proportional cost of formalisation was highest for low-value and fragmented properties. Drawing on fee schedules, fiscal series, and provincial evidence, the paper reconstructs this cost structure, documents the growing fiscal weight of transaction taxation, and shows that the incidence of formalisation costs was greatest where registry participation was weakest. Because the exclusion was produced by pricing rather than by incomplete coverage, extending such a registry need not narrow inequality and may reproduce it. Spain’s experience shows that a legally universal propertyrights institution could remain economically unequal in practice, and that the funding model should be treated as a first-order variable in explaining its historical performance. |
| Keywords: | Property rights; Land registration; Fiscal capacity; Formalisation costs; Napoleonic reforms; Land markets; Spain |
| JEL: | N53 N54 K11 Q15 |
| Date: | 2026–08–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:whrepe:50618 |
| By: | Fernihough, Alan; Colvin, Chris; McLaughlin, Eoin |
| Abstract: | Why do we choose one language over another? Rival views see language frontiers as exogenous, driven by policy, or endogenous, determined by social, cultural and economic forces. We study language loss in nineteenth-century Ireland's bilingual society using individual-level data from the 1901 census. Our analysis highlights the intergenerational influence of the education received by a community’s elders on subsequent generations’ language use. This is consistent with an endogenous demand for English driving language choice because the elder generation's literacy was acquired by attending privately financed voluntary primary schools in a period that predates state-funded compulsory schooling. |
| Keywords: | Ireland |
| JEL: | I24 I28 N33 N93 R12 Z13 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19300 |
| By: | Graf von Luckner, Clemens; Meyer, Josefin; Reinhart, Carmen; Trebesch, Christoph |
| Abstract: | We study sovereign external debt crises over the past 200 years, with a focus on creditor losses, or "haircuts". Our sample covers 327 sovereign debt restructurings with external private creditors over 205 default spells since 1815. Creditor losses vary widely (from none to 100%), but the statistical distribution has remained remarkably stable over two centuries, with an average haircut of around 45 percent. The data also reveal that serial restructurings, meaning two or more debt exchanges in the same default spell, are on the rise. To account for this trend toward serial renegotiation, we introduce the "Bulow-Rogoff haircut" - a cumulative measure that captures the combined creditor loss across all restructurings during a single debt crisis. Using this measure, we show that longer debt crises deliver larger haircuts and that interim restructurings provide limited debt relief. We further examine past predictors of the size of haircuts and identify rules of thumb applicable to future defaults. Poorer countries, first-time debt issuers, and those that borrowed heavily from external creditors all record significantly higher haircuts in case of a default. Geopolitical shocks - such as wars, revolutions, or the break-up of empires – deliver the deepest haircuts. Sovereign debt investment disasters are often linked to (geo-)political disasters. |
| JEL: | F34 H63 G15 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19246 |
| By: | Quoc-Anh Do; Sebastian Ellingsen; Gedeon Lim |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the long-run impacts of diasporas on local economic development. We do so in the context of one of the most economically influential diasporas: the ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia. Our instrumental variables strategy exploits 15th-century landing sites on Java that shaped subsequent Chinese settlement but lost maritime access due to 17th-century silting. We find that a 1p.p. higher Chinese share in 1930 leads to 9.4% higher household consumption and 26% higher population today. These effects attenuate sharply during the 1997-1998 crisis, then recover. We find strong effects on firm sales driven by improved financing through local private networks but not through exports. We provide suggestive evidence for the key role of historical ethnic-trading networks within Java. Our findings suggest that despite their small size, ethnic minorities with durable complementarities can play an out-sized, positive role in local economic development. |
| Keywords: | diaspora, ethnic minority, immigration, ethnic segregation, conflict, discrimination, private finance, networks |
| JEL: | F63 N35 J15 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12893 |
| By: | Jha, Saumitra; Koudijs, Peter; Salgado, Marcos |
| Abstract: | Can political beliefs, particularly about benefits of war versus peace, move thick financial markets? We document that following an unlikely victory by French citizen-soldiers during the German Siege of Paris (1870), prices of the highly liquid French sovereign bond diverged substantially and persistently there versus elsewhere. While France resisted, Parisian prices were higher and responded more to war events. However after the ceasefire, price differences reversed dramatically until peace terms were revealed. Difficult to reconcile otherwise, these patterns match the predictions of a simple model with different political beliefs in Paris and elsewhere about the benefits of war versus peace. |
| Keywords: | War; Peace; Conflict; Sovereign debt; Political beliefs and behavior; Financial markets; Asset pricing |
| JEL: | F51 G14 H56 N20 N43 P10 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19220 |
| By: | Fieles-Ahmad, Omar Martin; Kvasnicka, Michael |
| 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. |
| Abstract: | Nach der Wiedervereinigung stieg die Zahl ausländerfeindlicher Straftaten in der ehemaligen DDR stark an. Mithilfe von Landkreis-Daten aus den frühen 1990er-Jahren untersuchen wir, ob der regionale Zugang zu westlichem Fernsehen, also zu nichtsozialistischen Medien, vor dem Mauerfall Einfluss auf die regionale Häufigkeit schwerer fremdenfeindlicher Straftaten (Mord und Brandstiftung) in Ostdeutschland hatte. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass ostdeutsche Landkreise ohne Zugang zu "Westfernsehen" höhere Raten solcher Straftaten aufwiesen, wie beispielsweise im "Tal der Ahnungslosen" rund um Dresden. Dieser kriminalitätsmindernde Effekt des westlichen Fernsehens erweist sich in einer Reihe von Robustheitsprüfungen als stabil und unterstreicht die Bedeutung der Medien für Einstellungen gegenüber Ausländern und für fremdenfeindliche Straftaten - und zwar lange vor dem Aufkommen des Internets und der sozialen Medien. |
| Keywords: | Crimes Against Foreigners, Western TV, Immigration, East Germany |
| JEL: | F22 J15 K42 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:rwirep:342545 |
| By: | Chawla, Parth |
| Abstract: | Do returns to human capital rise during crises? This paper examines whether human capital accumulation created by Indonesia’s INPRES school construction program in the 1970s improved firm resilience in the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. I find that each additional school per 1, 000 children increased real labor productivity and output during the crisis period by 2.7 and 3.3 percent, respectively. INPRESinduced changes in the local pre-crisis workforce composition that shifted workers toward more skill-intensive production work. I argue that these skills became particularly valuable during the crisis, when firms faced disruptions. Consistent with this mechanism, INPRES had larger effects in sectors with higher import intensity, where adjustment demands were greater. I show that the local abundance of skilled workers in high-INPRES districts kept wages relatively lower, enabling plants to retain more of them when they were most valuable. |
| Keywords: | International Development |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404651 |
| By: | Dieter F. Kogler; Keungoui Kim |
| Abstract: | Evolutionary Economic Geography (EEG) has become a central perspective within contemporary Economic Geography by explaining how regions, cities, industries, firms, technologies, and institutions evolve over historical time. This chapter introduces EEG’s intellectual foundations in evolutionary economics, Schumpeterian ideas of innovation and creative destruction, and geographical debates on uneven development, path dependence, and regional transformation. It reviews the field’s core conceptual contributions around history, novelty, complexity, emergence, and adaptability, and shows how these ideas have informed empirical research on related variety, regional branching, technological knowledge spaces, networks, resilience, path development, institutions, and policy. The chapter argues that EEG is best understood not as a closed paradigm, but as an evolving and plural research programme. Its future relevance depends on explaining not only how inherited capabilities shape regional trajectories, but also how capabilities, relatedness, and path dependence are produced, activated, selected, contested, and transformed. In doing so, EEG offers a powerful framework for understanding how economic landscapes inherit the past, generate novelty, and confront uncertain spatial, technological, social, and ecological futures. |
| Keywords: | Evolutionary Economic Geography; Regional Diversification; Path Dependence; Knowledge Spaces; Uneven Development |
| JEL: | R11 O33 O18 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:2619 |
| By: | Oded Galor; Marc Klemp; Daniel C. Wainstock |
| Abstract: | What gave rise to the mosaic of cultural expressions across the globe? Why are some societies more culturally diverse than others? This study develops a unified theory of cultural evolution, characterizing the forces that have governed this process over the course of human existence. The research advances the hypothesis that population movements and socioeconomic transformations generated a mismatch between inherited cultural traits and prevailing ecological and societal conditions, setting in motion an evolutionary process governed by adaptation-based vertical transmission, horizontal diffusion, and fitness-based evolutionary selection. The theory generates novel testable predictions concerning the origins of the global cultural mosaic and the cross-societal variation in cultural diversity. First, greater ecological distance between ancestral environments generated greater cultural distance across societies. Second, prehistoric differences in ancestral diversity contributed to divergent adaptive capacity and greater cultural distance. Third, societies descended from more diverse prehistoric populations exhibit greater cultural diversity despite convergence induced by adaptation to a common environment and societal norms. Drawing on measures of cultural distance and diversity derived from folkloric and musical traditions among ethnic groups, visual representations of common concepts, and the dispersion of norms, values, and attitudes, the empirical analysis lends credence to the predictions of the theory. |
| Keywords: | cultural diversity, adaptation, fitness, cultural evolution, vertical transmission, social norms |
| JEL: | O10 Z10 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12928 |
| By: | Rasmussen, Ulrik Vachet |
| Abstract: | This paper addresses the problem of reconstructing the population development of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire despite the scarcity, inconsistency, and indirect nature of the available evidence. Its primary objective is to produce a continuous population curve spanning from 508 BC to AD 395, which is internally consistent in the assumptions of underlying growth and other factors over time. To achieve this, the study critically integrates multiple methodological approaches, including Beloch’s area-and-density estimates, Lo Cascio’s revisions, and Scheidel’s demographic critiques, alongside archaeological, economic, and comparative demographic evidence. By combining these methods and cross-validating their results, a coherent framework is established for estimating both population levels and growth rates. It adopts moderate empire-wide growth assumptions, 2-3‰ annually, while allowing for significant variation between core and newly incorporated territories. This enables the interpolation between key chronological benchmarks and the extension of estimates across periods lacking direct evidence. The resulting reconstruction yields a continuous demographic trajectory showing the full consequences of the growth assumptions. |
| Date: | 2026–08–18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:ys9nu_v1 |
| By: | Ryan Gallagher; Allison Shertzer; Tate Twinam |
| Abstract: | American suburbs are generally characterized by single-family neighborhoods featuring large lots, with few businesses or apartments. To understand the origins of this pattern of development, we construct the first panel dataset of suburban zoning maps and bylaws for a major American metropolitan area and ask how comprehensive land use regulation shaped the form of the suburbs of Chicago today. Our strategy identifies the impact of zoning using land that was undeveloped before such regulations were adopted. The typical post-zoning suburban neighborhood sets aside over 90 percent of land for single-family homes, but adopting the most diverse zoning we observe reduces the single-family share by about half, with most of this land redistributed to businesses and apartments in equal measure. Supply restrictions were also binding earlier than widely believed, and prewar minimum lot size regulations were associated with lots that were 20 percent larger than those that emerged from unregulated markets. Comprehensive land use regulation thus substantially increased the prevalence of single-family residential neighborhoods relative to the suburban form that would have prevailed without zoning, which would have featured more mixed uses and smaller lots. |
| Keywords: | zoning; land use regulation; urban form; suburban development |
| JEL: | K11 N92 R14 R31 R52 |
| Date: | 2026–08–13 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedpwp:103638 |
| By: | Caroline Namubiru; Jörg Baten; Alberto Batinti; Joan Costa-i-Font |
| Abstract: | Although compulsory education (CE) laws have widened access to schooling and shaped economic, social, and health outcomes, it remains unclear whether they reduce long-run health inequalities. We study the effect of CE policies on health inequality using height Gini indices for 66 countries between 1810 and 2000, estimating intent-to-treat effects through a staggered difference-in-differences design. Our results indicate that CE exposure reduces the height Gini. The inequality-reducing effect appears to operate mainly through increased years of schooling and reduced fertility. The effect is not uniform across regions, being largest in Europe, and it is driven largely by later extensions of CE duration rather than initial adoption alone. Overall, the findings indicate that education policy can meaningfully narrow health disparities over time, but its effectiveness depends on the scale of the mandate and the timing of adoption. |
| Keywords: | compulsory education, height, height inequality, health inequality, Gini index, economic development, human capital, education policy, anthropometric history, difference-in-differences |
| JEL: | I14 I15 I24 I25 I28 N30 O15 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12919 |
| By: | Radim Boháček; Michał Myck |
| Keywords: | political persecution; labor discrimination; wage differentials; life histories |
| JEL: | N34 J70 J31 C21 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cxu:wpaper:61 |
| By: | Auer, Raphael; Pedemonte, Mathieu; Schoenle, Raphael |
| Abstract: | Is inflation (still) a global phenomenon? We study the international co-movement of inflation based on a dynamic factor model and in a sample spanning up to 56 countries during the 1960-2023 period. Over the entire period, a first global factor explains approximately 58% of the variation in headline inflation across all countries and over 72% in OECD economies. The explanatory power of global inflation is equally high in a shorter sample spanning the time since 2000. Core inflation is also remarkably global, with 53% of its variation attributable to a first global factor. The explanatory power of a second global factor is lower, except for select emerging economies. Variables such as a broad dollar index, the US federal funds rate, and a measure of commodity prices positively correlate with the first global factor. This global factor is also correlated with US inflation during the 70s, 80s, the GFC, and COVID. However, it lags these variables during the post-COVID period. Country-level integration in global value chains accounts for a significant proportion of the share of both local headline and core inflation dynamics explained by global factors. |
| Keywords: | Globalization; Inflation; Phillips curve; Monetary policy; Global value chains; International inflation synchronization |
| JEL: | E31 E52 E58 F02 F41 F42 F14 F62 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19226 |
| By: | Remy Levin; Daniela Vidart |
| Abstract: | We design a method for measuring the risk preferences of agents in the deep past. The method combines a structural model of crop choice as a portfolio allocation with machine-learning prediction of expected crop returns, using historic agronomic and climate data. We estimate county-level risk preferences for the United States and farmer-level preferences in Kansas from 1889 to 1929. More risk averse farmers leveraged less, were less likely to purchase novel WWI Liberty Bonds, and were more likely to participate in local risk-sharing institutions. We show that higher risk aversion predicts slower tractor adoption and farm mechanization during the 1920s. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.15876 |
| By: | Andrew Sharpe; Stephen Tapp |
| Abstract: | Over the past half century, Canada’s labour productivity growth has slowed dramatically, falling from 3.7 per cent annually in 1947–73 to less than 1 per cent since 2000. This paper asks whether weak public policy explains that decline and whether new pro-productivity policies could reverse it. Using long-run data and the policy typology of Van Ark et al. (2023), we examine Canada’s record on factor accumulation, technological and structural change, market functioning and resource allocation, and international integration. Our analysis suggests that successive Canadian governments have generally pursued relatively market-oriented, pro productivity reforms — such as liberalizing trade, delivering a stable, predictable inflation environment, modernizing and cutting taxes, and investing in human capital — yet productivity growth continued to falter. The main drivers appear to be declining technological progress and inadequate business investment, not an absence of policy effort. We conclude that, while new policy reforms are desirable and worthwhile (such as easing interprovincial barriers and sharpening competition), they are unlikely to deliver a major revival of Canada’s long-term productivity growth. |
| Keywords: | productivity policy, Canada, secular decline, pro-productivity, technological progress, business investment |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sls:resrep:2504 |
| By: | Colin C. Caines; Florian Hoffmann; Gueorgui Kambourov |
| Abstract: | We document a strong, positive relationship between occupational problem complexity, measured from US data on problem-solving requirements, and occupational wage growth since 1980. In contrast, employment shifts toward more complex occupations have been modest, suggesting a race between the demand for and supply of complex skills. We rationalize these findings by formulating and structurally estimating a quantitative general equilibrium model on the granular occupational level. In our model, workers have heterogeneous comparative advantages in solving complex problems and physical capital admits capital-skill complementarity in occupation space. The equilibrium features Positive Assortative Matching of worker skills to occupational problem complexity, and the model quantitatively explains the evolution of the occupational wage- and employment structure over the last four decades. The model estimates uncover two distinct periods of technological change. Until around 2000, rising complexity premia were driven by capital-skill complementarity and declining equipment capital prices. Post-2000 patterns reflect supply-side technological change whereby occupations became more efficient in utilizing worker skills for complex problem-solving. Our framework helps unify distinct approaches to studying task automation and task augmentation on the one hand and skill-biased technological change on the other. |
| Keywords: | occupational task content; complex tasks; wage polarization; skills |
| JEL: | E24 J21 J23 J24 J31 |
| Date: | 2026–08–14 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgif:103645 |
| By: | Andrew Sharpe; Paul Pietraru |
| Abstract: | This report provides estimates for the Index of Economic Well-being (IEWB) for Canada for the 1981-2023 period. The IEWB is a composite measure developed by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards that assesses the economic well-being of Canadians through the lens of consumption flows, stocks of wealth, economic equality, and economic security. The report finds that the IEWB increased in Canada at a compound annual growth rate of 0.62 per cent between 1981 and 2023, well below that of GDP per capita (1.12 per cent). The rise was driven by increased consumption and stocks of wealth. Both economic equality and especially economic security declined and thus hindered advancement in the index. |
| Keywords: | Index of Economic Well-Being, IEWB, well-being, consumption flows, wealth, economic equality, economic security, provinces |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sls:resrep:2505 |
| By: | Vidal, Florian; Halloy, José (Université Paris Cité) |
| Abstract: | This article analyses the contemporary international system through a pluridisciplinary lens integrating imperial history, complex systems theory, and Earth system science. Situated within the dynamics of the Anthropocene, it reconceptualizes contemporary great-power competition by examining socio-technical systems (STS) predicated on the intensive consumption of fossil fuels and mineral resources. We posit that the prevailing STS metabolic regime is unsustainable in the long term, owing to the significant constraints imposed by geological and planetary boundaries. These limitations will become increasingly pronounced as the effects of the systemic crisis intensify. This regime not only perpetuates imperialist logics, visible in rivalries over resources essential for technological dominance, but also generates a ‘zombified’ technosphere that actively disrupts Earth system processes and jeopardizes planetary habitability. The article consequently advocates for de-imperialism as an essential trajectory, requiring a shift to networked and systemic geopolitics via the active dismantling of imperial structures. |
| Date: | 2026–05–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:q53np_v1 |
| By: | Julien Labonne; Pablo Querubín; Martín Rossi; Sebastian M. Saiegh; Ivan San Miguel; Shanker Satyanath |
| Abstract: | Elites maintain disproportionate political power even in formally inclusive political systems, yet the institutions through which they coordinate and reproduce this advantage remain poorly understood. We study membership in the Buenos Aires Jockey Club—Argentina's most prominent elite social club—exploiting staggered variation in family entry. Using difference-in-differences techniques, we find that Jockey Club membership increased the probability of holding legislative office by approximately four percentage points—more than twice the control-group mean. Consistent with a network-based mechanism, membership also increased families' centrality in elite marriage networks—a resource that can facilitate political success through access to party nominations and voter mobilization. This electoral advantage declines substantially after the 1912 Sáenz Peña democratizing reforms, suggesting that the political returns to club membership are conditional on institutional contexts that make elite network connections valuable. Our findings shed light on how elite social institutions reproduce political inequality where personal connections are essential for accessing political office. |
| JEL: | D70 D72 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35611 |
| By: | Haas, Armin; Reimer, Friederike; Guter-Sandu, Andrei; Murau, Steffen |
| Abstract: | Im Sommer 1931 erreichte Deutschland den Tiefpunkt der Weltwirtschaftskrise. Nach der Machtübernahme der Nationalsozialisten im Jahr 1933 wurde Hjalmar Schacht zum Präsidenten der Reichsbank ernannt und entwickelte das „Mefo-Verfahren“, um die gesetzlichen Beschränkungen der Reichsbank hinsichtlich der Kreditausweitung zu umgehen und die deutsche Wiederaufrüstung entgegen den Bestimmungen des Versailler Vertrags zu finanzieren. „Mefo“ steht für die „Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft“, eine Briefkastenfirma, die von fünf führenden deutschen Industrieunternehmen gegründet und von Mitarbeitern der Reichsbank sowie des Militärs betrieben wurde. Mit einem Eigenkapital von lediglich einer Million Reichsmark ausgestattet, war die Mefo Schuldnerin von Wechselverbindlichkeiten im Umfang von zwölf Milliarden Reichsmark. Trotz seiner historischen Bedeutung ist das Mefo-Verfahren aus geldtheoretischer Perspektive bislang nur unzureichend theoretisch aufgearbeitet worden und wird häufig mit dem Mythos einer „finanziellen Magie“ erklärt. Wir analysieren die Mefo-Operation anhand der Theorie der monetären Architektur und verstehen die Mefo-Gesellschaft als eine bilanzexterne Fiskalagentur, die geschaffen wurde, um die Wiederaufrüstung als politisch gewollte großskalige Transformation des Kapitalstocks zu finanzieren. Wir unterteilen das Mefo-Verfahren in drei klar voneinander abgegrenzte Phasen – die Phase der verdeckten monetären Finanzierung (Juli 1933 bis Februar 1936), die Phase der Schattenwährung (Februar 1936 bis März 1938) sowie die Phase der Konsolidierung und Kriegsfinanzierung (April 1938 bis Mai 1945) – und rekonstruieren mithilfe von Bilanzmethodologie die zugrunde liegenden finanzwirtschaftlichen Mechanismen. Einerseits rekonstruieren wir Transaktionsbilanzen, um die Zahlungs- und Finanzierungsströme in idealisierter Form darzustellen, und skizzieren Bestandsgrößen anhand von idealisierten Abbildungen der monetären Architektur als hierarchisches Netzwerk von Bilanzentitäten, die durch verschiedene Kreditinstrumente miteinander verschränkt sind. Andererseits untersuchen wir, wie die Schritte Bilanzverlängerung, langfristige Fundierung, Absicherung und abschließende Bilanzverkürzung ex ante geplant wurden und sich ex post tatsächlich entwickelten. Unsere Analyse zeigt, dass die Mefo-Wechsel entgegen Schachts ursprünglichem Plan letztlich auf der Bilanz der Reichsbank landeten, wo sie bis zum Zusammenbruch der deutschen Staatsstrukturen im Mai 1945 dauerhaft fundiert wurden. Abschließend verknüpfen wir unsere Analyse mit quantitativen Daten zur Mefo-Gesellschaft sowie zum gesamtwirtschaftlichen und makrofinanziellen Umfeld, um Schlussfolgerungen über die Bedeutung der Mefo-Operation für die finanzielle Expansion nach 1931 zu ziehen. |
| Date: | 2024–08–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:sf378_v1 |
| By: | Choi, Jaedo; Levchenko, Andrei; Ruzic, Dimitrije; Shim, Younghun |
| Abstract: | We quantify the contribution of the largest firms to South Korea's economic performance over the period 1972-2011. Using firm-level historical data, we document a novel fact: firm concentration rose substantially during the growth miracle period. To understand whether rising concentration contributed positively or negatively to South Korean real income, we build a quantitative dynamic heterogeneous firm small open economy model. Our framework accommodates a variety of potential causes and consequences of changing firm concentration: productivity, distortions, selection into exporting, scale economies, and oligopolistic and oligopsonistic market power in domestic goods and labor markets. The model is implemented directly on the firm-level data and inverted to recover the drivers of concentration. We find that most of the differential performance of the top firms is attributable to higher productivity growth rather than increasingly favorable distortions. Exceptional performance of the top 3 firms within each sector relative to the average firms contributed 20.8% to the 2011 real GDP and 6.6% to the net present value of welfare over the period 1972-2011. Thus, the largest Korean firms were superstars rather than supervillains. |
| Keywords: | market power |
| JEL: | F12 F16 L11 N15 O40 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19207 |
| By: | Haelim Anderson; Charles W. Calomiris; Jennifer S. Rhee |
| Abstract: | We study how extended stockholder liability shaped bank resolution during and after the Panic of 1893, comparing California state banks (unlimited liability) with national banks (double liability). Using newly assembled data linking California state bank presidents to census records and national bank stock ownership data from Examination Reports, we measure managers’ personal exposures to extended liability. For California state banks, traditional fundamentals predict involuntary liquidations but do not explain voluntary exits. Instead, voluntary exits are driven by managers’ liability exposure, local economic risk, and personal wealth, consistent with managers responding to unlimited liability by initiating preemptive, orderly resolutions. For national banks under double liability, voluntary and involuntary liquidations are more similar, and personal exposure plays a smaller role in risk management. These findings show that substantial personal liability exposure can operate for modern prudential tools like compensation clawbacks and living wills. However, such extended liability also magnifies credit contractions during downturns, highlighting a fundamental tradeoff between micro-stability and macroeconomic fragility in regulatory design. |
| JEL: | D82 E32 G21 N12 N22 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35598 |
| By: | Paul Gregg; Yuyan Jiang; Lindsey Macmillan; Nikki Shure; Gill Wyness |
| Abstract: | This paper provides new evidence on intergenerational income persistence for a recent UK cohort. Using Next Steps, a longitudinal study of people born in England in 1989-90 linked to administrative education records, we estimate the association between parental income in adolescence and sons' earnings at age 32, compare the results with the 1970 British Cohort Study, and decompose persistence by early cognitive skills, noncognitive traits and educational attainment. Our preferred estimates show an intergenerational income elasticity of 0.214 and a rank-rank coefficient of 0.287. The rank-rank estimate is almost identical to the comparable estimate for the 1970 cohort, suggesting little change in relative income persistence across cohorts, although age-32 elasticities are likely to understate lifetime persistence. Education is the main observed mechanism: GCSE attainment, A-level attainment and degree completion account for a substantial share of persistence, while measured noncognitive traits explain little once education is included. The findings show that, despite educational expansion, family-income gradients in attainment remain central to the intergenerational transmission of economic advantage. |
| Keywords: | intergenerational income mobility, socioeconomic inequality, education, skills |
| Date: | 2026–08–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp2206 |
| By: | Engel, Charles; Wu, Steve Pak Yeung |
| Abstract: | Exchange-rate models fit very well for the U.S. dollar in the 21st century. A “standard†model that includes real interest rates and a measure of expected inflation for the U.S. and the foreign country, the U.S. comprehensive trade balance, and measures of global risk and liquidity demand is well-supported in the data for the U.S. against other G10 currencies. The monetary and non-monetary variables play equally important roles in explaining exchange rate movements. In the 1970s – early 1990s, the fit of the model was poor but the fit (as measured by t- and F-statistics, and R2s) has increased almost monotonically to the present day. We make the case that it is better monetary policy (inflation targeting) that has led to the improvement, as the scope for self-fulfilling expectations has disappeared. We provide a variety of evidence that links changes in monetary policy to the performance of the exchange-rate model. |
| JEL: | F31 |
| Date: | 2024–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19328 |
| By: | Johan Fourie |
| Abstract: | Economics journals ration access to peer review with time and money. A July 2026 census of 500 RePEc-ranked economics journals accepting unsolicited submissions finds that 113 (22.6 per cent) charge a fee, with incidence falling from 68 per cent in the top 50 to 2 per cent in the bottom 50. A sequential-submission model shows that waiting pays part of the capacity-clearing price, leaving the fee as a residual. Because rejected manuscripts move down the ranking, a fee reduces system-wide referee demand only when authors stop, shorten their submission chains or switch to journals requiring fewer reports. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.14760 |
| By: | Funk, Patricia; Iriberri, Nagore; Venus, Nicole |
| Abstract: | We study the evolution of female representation in editorial roles for 15 top journals in economics from 1960 to 2019. We first document that the share of women in editorial roles has steadily increased over the past six decades. Second, we investigate whether this increase is due to an expansion of the pool of qualified female economists, or due to a change in the preference for appointing women. We find evidence for both using a large database on detailed CVs of more than 37, 000 economists. Third, we study the implications of female editors on the type and quality of accepted papers and potential trickle down effects on female authors’ publishing prospects. Finally, to understand whether there are gender gaps in the probability of being offered and/or of accepting editorial positions, we administer a large-scale survey among most prominent scholars in economics. We only find evidence for the offering channel. |
| JEL: | J16 A11 C83 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19303 |
| By: | Yoto V. Yotov (School of Economics, Drexel University and Center for Global Policy Analysis (CGPA)); Gabriel Felbermayr (Vienna University of Economics and Business and Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO)); Heider Kariem (Vienna University of Economics and Business and Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO)); Aleksandra Kirilakha (School of Economics, Drexel University); Ohyun Kwon (University of Pennsylvania and Center for Global Policy Analysis (CGPA)); Constantinos Syropoulos (School of Economics, Drexel University and Center for Global Policy Analysis (CGPA)); Erdal Yalcin (HTWG Konstanz University of Applied Sciences) |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of financial sanctions on international trade. To pursue this objective, we assemble new data that distinguish between six types of financial sanctions across all countries in the world over the period 1950-2025. Combining these data with aggregate and disaggregated trade data in a structural gravity framework, we find that financial sanctions can exert substantial adverse effects on trade. However, these effects are highly heterogeneous across sectors, across sanction cases, and, most importantly, across the different types of financial sanctions in our data. Payment restrictions are most effective in eliminating trade between senders and targets. Unlike sanctions on goods, they also significantly reduce trade between targets and third countries. |
| Keywords: | Financial sanctions; Payment restrictions; International trade; The Global Sanctions Data Base (GSDB) |
| JEL: | F13 F14 F51 F52 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:drx:wpaper:202614 |
| By: | Johan Fourie |
| Abstract: | Artificial intelligence is associated with larger research teams, yet in mathematics, among the most codifiable fields, individual researchers working with AI now produce research-grade results. A span-of-control model reconciles these observations. AI lowers execution cost, which expands laboratory scale, and automates codifiable tasks, which lowers the member share of each unit. Team size is therefore quasi-concave in AI capability, with at most one peak. The model predicts that a fully codifiable team peaks when effective automation coverage reaches a closed-form threshold, typically near complete coverage, and, among fields with shared primitives that possess an interior peak, those with less irreducibly human task content peak first. Under explicit priors, the 90 percent forecast intervals for the fully codifiable peak span 2026 to 2030. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.08437 |