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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
| By: | Juhászová, Tereza |
| Abstract: | This article explores patterns of post-socialist reindustrialization in Eastern Slovakia—a region deeply shaped by heavy socialist industrialization and subsequently exposed to the tumultuous “manager’s privatization” of the 1990s. Bridging social and economic history, it argues that inherited industrial legacies—in know-how, infrastructure, workforce, and export orientation— persisted even after a sharp decline in the first decade following the fall of socialism. Through two case studies—the “giant” East Slovak Ironworks near the regional capital Košice and a smaller metalworking factory in the nearby town of Medzev—the article shows how foreign investment, limited state intervention, and local agency jointly enabled the partial revitalization of regionally significant industries, despite the absence of a coherent industrial policy and the dismantling of state coordination after 1989. Drawing on archival records, contemporary press, and biographical interviews, the study traces the long-term trajectories of these sites within both socialist development agendas and post-socialist restructuring. By demonstrating how industrial continuity and reactivation emerged largely in the absence of strategic governance and industrial policy, the article contributes to broader debates on post-socialist varieties of capitalism, state capacity, and the uneven geography of industrial transformation. By foregrounding continuity and reinvention, this nuanced perspective challenges binary accounts of post-socialist change. |
| Date: | 2026–10–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:e698d_v1 |
| By: | Oded Galor |
| Abstract: | What ignited humanity’s momentous ascent from millennia of stagnation to an era of sustained economic growth? And what are the roots of the vast disparities in the wealth of nations? These enduring mysteries, which have preoccupied scholars across generations, lie at the core of Unified Growth Theory. This encompassing framework captures the evolution of societies over the entire course of human history and identifies the universal wheels of change that governed humanity’s long journey, propelled the growth process, and shaped inequality across the globe. The theory uncovers the forces underlying the dramatic transformation in living standards over the past two centuries, emerging from an economic ice age of near stagnation, while highlighting the enduring historical roots of the immense divergence in the prosperity of nations. It suggests that forces set in motion in the distant past played a pivotal role in shaping development across the globe and remain essential for the design of effective policies that foster economic progress and mitigate inequality in the wealth of nations. |
| JEL: | B0 O10 O40 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35799 |
| By: | Novak, Christoph |
| Abstract: | This article examines the historical development of Berberism in Algeria from the emergence of Algerian nationalist movements in the 1930s to the aftermath of the Black Spring of 2001. It argues that Berberism should not be understood as a stable political ideology with a fixed substantive meaning, but rather as a changing political practice through which the idea of a distinctive Berber identity has been mobilised in response to particular political contexts. The analysis distinguishes three phases in the development of Berber activism. The first, exemplified by the Berber Crisis of 1948–49, was largely an elite struggle within the Algerian nationalist movement over the definition of the Algerian nation and the recognition of its linguistic and cultural plurality. The second, crystallised in the Berber Spring of 1980, transformed Berberism into a broader social movement centred on cultural recognition, linguistic rights and opposition to state Arabisation. During the subsequent period of political liberalisation and civil war, Berber activism became increasingly institutionalised through political parties, social movements and transnational networks. The third phase, associated with the Black Spring of 2001, marked a significant reorientation. The declining legitimacy of established Berberist parties and the emergence of the Citizens’ Movement shifted political mobilisation toward territorial, socio-economic and increasingly Kabylia-centred claims. Drawing on concepts of political identity, recognition, nationalism and imagined communities, the article argues that this development contributed to the emergence of a specifically Kabyle nationalism. Whereas Berberism provided a broader cultural and transnational identity, it lacked a clearly defined territorial project capable of consolidating a common political community. The post-2001 mobilisation in Kabylia, by contrast, increasingly linked cultural identity to a specific homeland, territorial political structures and demands for autonomy. The article therefore conceptualises the transition from Berberism to Kabyle nationalism not as a linear transformation, but as a reconfiguration of political actors, strategies, territorial imaginaries and claims to collective self-determination. The article was written in 2012. |
| Date: | 2026–10–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:urtcp_v1 |
| By: | Michael Fritsch (Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany); Michael Wyrwich (University of Groningen, The Netherlands, and Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany) |
| Abstract: | We examine the long-term relationship between historical levels of self-employment and economic performance in different regions of Germany. A particular distinction is made between West Germany and the eastern part of the country, that came after WWII for forty years under socialist regime. Regional self-employment rates exhibit high correlation over time periods exceeding a century. In West Germany, high and increasing levels of self-employment are significantly associated with high current levels of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per population, despite several major historical shocks. That such a relationship cannot be found in East Germany could be a legacy of the socialist period where the government performed anti-entrepreneurial policies. We also find a positive relationship between historical self-employment and patenting in both parts of the country. This relationship is, however, somewhat weaker in East Germany, which experienced considerably more historical shocks than West Germany. |
| Keywords: | Entrepreneurship, self-employment, regional prosperity, patenting, long-term effects |
| JEL: | L26 R11 O52 |
| Date: | 2026–09–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2026-010 |
| By: | Dray, Sacha; Landais, Camille; Stantcheva, Stefanie |
| Abstract: | We study the history and geography of wealth accumulation in the United States using newly collected historical property tax records from the early 1800s onward. These records come from the administration of the General Property Tax–a tax that aspired to cover all types of property. We construct wealth series at the state, county, and national levels. At the state level, we use annual assessed values of wealth from state-level reports drawn from multiple sources. Because assessed values may differ from market values, we also require assessment ratios, defined as the ratio of assessed to market wealth. We obtain state-level assessment ratios from decadal U.S. Census wealth data (drawn from various Census reports, including those on “Wealth, Debt, and Taxation”), in which the Census carried out detailed valuation work, complemented with information on changes in assessment practices from the state reports, to build higher-frequency series of assessment ratios. The result is long-run annual wealth series for states from 1850 (or earlier, depending on the state) to 1935. We obtain national wealth series by aggregating these state series. At the county level, we use assessed values (or market values where available) from the U.S. Census wealth data for each decade, and apply either state-level or county-level assessment ratios, where available, to obtain market values of wealth for each decade from 1850 to 1930. We use these data to show, first, that the United States experienced extraordinary wealth accumulation after the Civil War and until the Great Depression. Second, spatial inequality in the United States has been large and highly persistent since the mid- 1800s. We also examine the determinants of long-term wealth growth and find, among other results, that counties with a higher share of enslaved property before the Civil War or with higher wealth inequality experienced lower subsequent long-run wealth growth. |
| Keywords: | taxation;wealth tax;wealth;inequality;convergence;property tax |
| JEL: | J1 |
| Date: | 2026–09–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:138239 |
| By: | Aurélien Goutsmedt (ISPOLE - UCLouvain - Université Catholique de Louvain = Catholic University of Louvain, F.R.S.-FNRS, ICHEC - Brussels Management School [Bruxelles]); Francesco Sergi (LIPHA - Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire d'étude du Politique Hannah Arendt Paris-Est - UPEC UP12 - Université Paris-Est Créteil Val-de-Marne - Paris 12 - Université Gustave Eiffel); Juan Acosta (Univalle - Universidad del Valle [Cali]) |
| Abstract: | What do economists do in central banks? Why do central banks hire economists? This book investigates the evolving role of economists and economic knowledge within central banks, arguing that their current centrality is neither self-evident nor historically inevitable. While the presence and influence of economists in central banks today may seem natural, this book shows that it is the result of a complex, gradual, and uneven historical process shaped by institutional structures, disciplinary transformations, and shifting relationships between science and policy. Drawing on a rich but dispersed body of literature, the book traces how economists progressively gained authority through the establishment of statistics departments, the adoption of macroeconometric models, and the emergence of a shared cognitive infrastructure between academia and central banks. Rather than focusing on individuals or doctrines, it examines general trends and institutional shifts across a series of national case studies to show how central banks function as boundary organizations, at the intersection of policy and science. |
| Date: | 2026–10–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05083645 |
| By: | Korkut, Cem; Tuğrul, Mehmet; Aydınbaş, Yunus Emre |
| Abstract: | This study explores Timur’s economic legacy, examining the system he established to sustain and prosper his vast empire. Timur’s economic policies, which were closely linked to his conquests, played an important role in revitalizing the Silk Road and transforming cities such as Samarkand and Herat into economic and cultural centers. This study examines the main elements of Timur’s economic system, such as centralized administration, taxation system, development of cities and agricultural policies. It also highlights Timur’s efforts to secure long-distance trade routes and unite different reğions into a coherent economic framework. The analysis highlights the specific features and limitations of Timur’s model, especially its structure based on conquest-based wealth and the forced displacement of skilled human capital. It also addresses the socio-economic implications of Timur’s economic policies and contrasts the prosperity of urban centers with the burdens on rural populations. Timur’s economic strategies had a lasting impact on the economic history of Turkestan and Eurasia more broadly, demonstrating the transformative potential of trade, infrastructure and cultural development. |
| Keywords: | Turkestan, Silk Road, Timur’s economic legacy, Conquest economy |
| JEL: | N0 N00 N90 N95 |
| Date: | 2025–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:126549 |
| By: | Nymoen, Ragnar (Dept. of Economics, University of Oslo) |
| Abstract: | We analyse the role of the wage scope defined by the manufacturing sector in the history of wage coordination in Norway. Using econometric methods, we document a long-term empirical equation that link the national annual wage to the manufacturing-sector wage scope, defined as the value of labour productivity, and which is known as the ’main-course’. Tests of exogeneity support the interpretation of the main-course as a long-run driver of the national annul wage. Contributing to the literature on the wage–productivity nexus, we show that the productivity component of the main-course has been the dominant determinant of the secular growth in the purchasing power of annual wages. Changes in the relative price of manufacturing value added and consumer goods have played a subsidiary role, together with unemployment and reductions in annual working time. Identified structural breaks cluster in the 1920s and 1930s, reflecting economic crises and institutional change, while the estimated relationship remains consistent with Norway’s contemporary pattern wage bargaining system. |
| Keywords: | Pattern wage bargaining; Wage-price nexus; Main-course model; Wage coordination; Long-run relationship; Cointegration; Economic history |
| JEL: | B20 B40 C50 E30 N10 |
| Date: | 2026–09–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:osloec:2026_004 |
| By: | Harold L. Cole; Stefano Cravero; Jeremy Greenwood |
| Abstract: | The Second Industrial Revolution sparked a wave of new products and industrial processes, fueling an optimistic Roaring Twenties. But did excitement about technological progress contribute to an over accumulation of investment, despite a slowdown in new product development and satiated demand during the 1920s? And, was this over investment worsened by continuous process innovation? Could these factors have played a role in triggering the Great Depression? To explore these questions, a macroeconomic model that incorporates both process and product innovation is proposed. Proof-of-concept simulations are performed to assess whether these factors can help explain the Great Depression. The answer is yes. |
| JEL: | E13 E22 E24 E32 N12 O40 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35816 |
| 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: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26249 |
| By: | Albrecht Glitz; Adrian Lerche; Lukas Mergele |
| Abstract: | Economic espionage is a pervasive global phenomenon. We study how knowledge acquired through this clandestine activity affects firms' economic performance. Exploiting historical data from East Germany that trace the flow of scientific-technical information from its sources in the West to its recipients in the East, we show that economic espionage increased firms' productivity and reshaped their production structure and input choices. We further find that the resulting technical change was labor-augmenting and that the associated productivity gains propagated through the production network via input-output linkages. In the long run, firms receiving larger inflows of espionage information were significantly more likely to survive the transition to a market economy following German reunification. |
| Keywords: | Espionage, Knowledge Flows, Firm Adjustments, Productivity |
| JEL: | L2 N4 O3 P2 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26255 |
| By: | Lottie Field; Réka Juhász; Michele Zampa |
| Abstract: | We study how politics shapes industrial policy through two paradigmatic twentieth-century cases: the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno in Italy (1950–1984) and Kennedy's Moonshot in the United States (1961–1972). Drawing on historical and primary political sources, we show that each policy originated in a broader political project rather than in an economic diagnosis: the Christian Democrats' pursuit of national integration and democratic consolidation, and Kennedy's New Frontier. We introduce the concept of industrial policy vision - a publicly articulated, transformational objective that political leaders attach to a set of ideals and pursue through state-led intervention in the economy - and develop a five-component definition that makes it empirically tractable. We then trace each vision through decades of newspaper coverage, combining topic modeling and sentiment analysis with systematic close reading. In both cases, public debate proceeded largely within the frame the vision set, granting the policies tolerance for setbacks and expense. The cases diverge in their fates: the Moonshot's bounded vision was redeemed on schedule, while the Cassa's open-ended vision was exhausted by accumulated failure and the policy outlived it only briefly. This divergence points to our central conclusion: while a vision holds, it sets the terms on which an industrial policy's performance is judged, including what counts as failure and how much time the policy is given to deliver. |
| JEL: | D78 L52 N42 N44 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35802 |
| By: | Michael D. Bordo (Rutgers University and NBER); Carolyn A. Wilkins (Princeton University and Bank of England) |
| Abstract: | This paper uses the history of private money to assess the conditions under which stablecoins could function safely at scale and what their growth may imply for U.S. monetary power. Historical systems of private money in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Sweden, and Switzerland show that par circulation depended on institutional arrangements rather than payment technology. Drawing on the monetary history of private money, convertibility, and international currencies, the paper identifies five foundations for scalable private money: credible convertibility, high quality and transparent backing, a uniform regulatory perimeter, par clearing infrastructure, and credible crisis management and loss allocation. Stablecoins may improve settlement speed, programmability, and cross-border access, but they do not remove these requirements. Applying this framework to contemporary stablecoins and the GENIUS Act, the paper finds that the Act addresses several of these foundations more fully than others, with crisis management and cross-border coordination less fully developed. Dollar stablecoins could extend the reach of dollar settlement, but historical experience reviewed here suggests that whether this strengthens the dollar system depends both on the institutional framework supporting stablecoins and on the deeper foundations of U.S. monetary dominance: confidence in U.S. institutions, fiscal capacity, monetary credibility, and the rule of law. |
| Keywords: | Stablecoins, digital money, private money, commitment, coordination, crisis management, international role of the dollar, dollar dominance, cross-border cooperation, rules, regulations, rails |
| JEL: | E42 E44 G15 N20 N40 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pri:cepsud:359 |
| By: | Arai, Shungo |
| Abstract: | This study examines how first-mover advantage was converted into durable elite dominance in seventeenth-century colonial Virginia, using this structural logic to critically evaluate twenty-first-century space resource law. Drawing on a Multilayered Frontier Capital Accumulation Model (MFCAM) that integrates frontier theory, world-systems theory, and institutional path dependence, the study addresses four research questions (RQ1–RQ4). Historical analysis shows how the First Families of Virginia (FFV), preempting land under the 1618 headright system, monopolized power through mutually reinforcing mechanisms of institutional pre-emption, marital closure, and symbolic capital accumulation, thereby converting land capital into political and cultural capital to maintain that dominance. At the same time, the study traces the formation of a lower-white stratum through indentured servitude, post-release landlessness, and racial divide-and-rule policies after Bacon's Rebellion (1676) and shows that elite and lower-class formation were two sides of the same institutional design. A comparison with the Massachusetts Bay Colony suggests these outcomes depended on early institutional choices. Based on these findings, the study conceptualizes a "Space Headright System" (SHS) comprising priority access to institutional design, revolving-door relations between regulators and industry, and the accumulation of legal precedent. By examining Section 402 of the 2015 U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, the Artemis Accords, and national space resource laws, it assesses risks of lower-class formation such as space indentured servitude and space company towns. The study advances a conditional warning: if current legal trajectories continue, they suggest convergence toward a Virginia-type stratified order. To avert this, three policy recommendations (primary rules)—an international space cadastre, a Space Commons Fund, and treaty-based protections for later settlers—are proposed, alongside secondary design requirements to guard the implementing institutions against regulatory capture. |
| Date: | 2026–10–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:zthvd_v1 |
| By: | John List |
| Abstract: | The Perry Preschool Project was an experiment conducted from 1962 to 1967 to test how high-quality early childhood education could affect the IQ of at-risk African American children from low-income families in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Graduation, earnings, and crime all moved. Rates of return of 7–10% reshaped policy. But Perry was a product of its era: one treatment, one site, a small sample, and 40 years of waiting before the evidence crystallized. It could tell us that early investment works. It could not tell us why it works, which components matter, or how to deliver them at scale. To fill this gap, Professor List and his team began their own study in 2008, randomizing children in Chicago Heights, Illinois, into a series of interventions and applying a battery of assessments aimed at understanding the mechanisms through which early childhood education affects human capital formation over the life cycle. In these slides, we go through the results of this experiment and put into perspective the lessons learned from this modern Perry Preschool Project. |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:feb:framed:00840 |
| By: | Michael J. Andrews; Ryan R. Hill; Joseph Price; Riley Wilson |
| Abstract: | Occupation choice is a key determinant of economic mobility. This paper studies how childhood neighbors influence occupational choices and later-life earnings. Using linked historical U.S. census records for over six million boys and four million girls, we reconstruct neighborhood microgeography to identify childhood neighbors and their occupations. We find that living next door to someone in a given occupation increases the probability of working in that same occupation 30 years later by about 10 percent relative to other children on the same street. The transmission effect is higher with more intense exposure, in more connected neighborhoods, and when neighboring families are more similar. Exposure to high-income or highly educated neighbors has lasting economic effects, leading to significant gains in adult income and education even compared to other children from the same street. These findings suggest that neighborhood networks play an important role in shaping intergenerational economic mobility. |
| JEL: | J24 J62 N32 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35810 |
| By: | Yannis Kastis; Hillary Vipond |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how the organization of production shapes the adoption of new technologies. We examine a shift in production organization in English tailoring induced by the arrival of Jewish tailors fleeing pogroms in the Russian Empire between 1881 and 1905. When Jewish immigrant tailors arrived in England, native tailors were mostly self-employed and used sewing machines, introduced in the 1860s, to raise individual productivity. In Russia, where sewing machines were largely unavailable to them, Jewish tailors worked in ready-to-wear production, which involved a modular approach and greater collaboration within workshops. Upon arriving in England, they combined the sewing machines with their organizational practice to introduce the so-called "Jewish task system", which relied on an extensive division of labor and enabled clothing production to scale. Combining original data on production tasks with firm-level data, and using immigrant settlement patterns predating the introduction of the sewing machine as an instrument, we show that immigrant arrivals induced native tailors to reorganize production toward this system, accelerating both the diffusion of the sewing machine and England's transition to mass-produced clothing. Our findings show that organizing production efficiently around a new technology is a prerequisite for its diffusion. |
| Keywords: | organization of production, technology adoption, immigration |
| JEL: | L23 O33 J61 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26253 |
| By: | Benjamin W. Arold; Afonso Alves Monteiro; Constantine Yannelis |
| Abstract: | This paper studies whether school prayer and Bible reading affect adult beliefs and behavior. We exploit the U.S. Supreme Court's early-1960s school-prayer decisions, which removed these practices only from states where they were still legal. Linking this state-by-cohort variation to adult outcomes in the General Social Survey, we estimate the long-run effects of removing school prayer on religiosity, family formation, labor market outcomes, gender attitudes, and social views. The abolition of school prayer lowers adult religiosity; reduces marriage and fertility; increases employment; and shifts gender and selected social attitudes in a less traditional direction. The employment effect is driven by women, and may operate partly through decreased full-time homemaking and less traditional gender roles. A decomposition indicates that school prayer bans explain more than half the decline in American religious attendance, and roughly one quarter of the decline in fertility and rise in female labor force participation. The findings show that even brief daily devotional practices in childhood can shape adult beliefs, family life, and economic behavior. |
| Keywords: | School prayer; religious education; religiosity; childhood socialization; family formation; female labor supply |
| JEL: | Z12 I21 J12 J16 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26244 |
| By: | Dribe, Martin (Lund University); Stanfors, Maria (Lund University) |
| Abstract: | Married men commonly earn more than unmarried. Explanations emphasize either productivity gains from marriage or positive selection into marriage. Using longitudinal data on men in Sweden 1947–2022, combining historical population records for a regional sample with full-count modern administrative registers, we analyze information on earnings and occupation for both men and their spouses. We estimate linear regression, two-way fixed-effects, event-study models, and residualized quantile regression to capture aspects of the marriage premium. We find a stable marriage premium over 70 years. While OLS estimates are substantially attenuated in fixed-effects models, indicating an important role for selection, a positive premium remains. There were large changes over time in the underlying mechanisms. Until the 1980s, the premium was highest for men with lower earnings, while this pattern reversed after 1990 when the premium was larger at higher earnings. Before 1970 there is some support for a causal marriage premium, while this changed in later periods, when there was strong earnings growth in the years leading up to marriage. The persisting marriage premium suggests that marriage is still crucial for men’ labor market outcomes. |
| Keywords: | marriage premium, register data, earnings, quantile regression, event study |
| JEL: | J12 J22 J24 J31 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18973 |
| By: | Jesús Fernández-Villaverde; Patrick Norrick |
| Abstract: | As of 2026, humanity is likely below replacement fertility. That has never happened before, not in wars or pandemics. But the real surprise is that the fall has been concentrated in low- and middle-income countries and among poorer and less educated women. We fit a single-factor model to 236 countries since 1950: the common component peaked in 1978, and what drives fertility down today are country-specific trends, 219 of them negative and not one leveling off. None of the commonly cited mechanisms can account for this pattern, so we offer a conjecture: modernity itself, which makes a third child expensive and childlessness cheap. Children come in integers, so it takes very little to move a cohort’s fertility rate from 1.8 to 1.3. And nothing in an economy pushes fertility back to 2.1. We close with the main economic consequences, in particular slow growth. |
| JEL: | E11 J11 J13 O24 O40 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35809 |
| By: | Christopher A. Hartwell |
| Abstract: | Organizations may perceive disorder in their environment as a threat which can impede the attainment of desired goals. In such a situation, organizations may become single minded, obsessed, and rely on brute force to attempt to bend the external environment to their will. These efforts may be enabled by perceived power imbalances between the organization and other actors in the environment, but they may also be stymied by the complexity of other organizations in the institutional field. This paper examines such an example in Soviet Kazakhstan from 1929 to 1933, when the All Union Communist Party pursued a policy of sedentarization of the nomadic people. Forcibly migrating nomads to collective farms under a brutal policy of repression, the Soviet bureaucracy at all levels saw no policy as off-limits to achieving its goals but continued to run up against resistance from the complex organizational forms inherent in Kazakh nomadism. Using archival documents, testimonies from Kazakhs, and arrest records from this time period, I show just exactly how the Soviet apparatus pulled the devil from the machine and how, ultimately, the machines were doomed to failure. However, the human cost of forced migration continues to linger. |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2609.31916 |
| By: | Sergio Cesaratto |
| Abstract: | These notes compare the interpretations of pay-as-you-go (PAYG) and fully funded (FF) pension systems and proposals of reform provided by alternative economic theories. After outlining the debate on the intra-temporal or intertemporal nature of PAYG, we will focus on the issues of pension reforms aimed at expanding the funded pillar. We will particularly discuss the issue of the transition from PAYG to funded systems. Mainstream support for reforms has often been based on comparing the rates of return on contributions from the two systems. Criticism of the funded pillar has often been heard from heterodox economists being based on the relative higher risk of capitalization. However, both points of view neglect the issue of transition, as if the choice were in the abstract between PAYG and the FF pillar. In this sense, twenty years ago Cesaratto (2005) contributed to fill a severe gap both in conventional and in post-Keynesian analyses. Other innovative contributions will be noted in passing, such as the outline of a classical surplus-theory of the social state and of the role of public pension-spending in demand-led output theories. |
| Keywords: | Pension reforms, Pay-as-you-go, Fully Funded schemes, Neoclassical theory, Classical-Keynesian approach Jel Classification:E11, E12, E22, H55, E24 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usi:wpaper:948 |
| By: | Alberto G. Musalem |
| Abstract: | St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem spoke at an event hosted by the Centre For Macroeconomics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He shared his view that a central bank should communicate how it turns incoming information into monetary policy – the framework for policy decisions. President Musalem discussed three gains from having a clearly communicated framework: smoother monetary policy transmission, better economic outcomes and stronger accountability to the public. Following his speech, titled "How and Why, " he participated in a Q&A moderated by Ricardo Reis, A. W. Phillips Professor of Economics at LSE. |
| Keywords: | central bank communication; monetary policy framework; monetary policy transmission; central bank accountability |
| Date: | 2026–09–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedlps:103832 |
| By: | Trung V. Vu |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the role of long-term population relatedness in shaping global variation in state capacity. It argues that longer periods of ancestral separation are associated with greater divergence in intergenerationally transmitted civic norms governing voluntary compliance with state institutions. Ancestral distance may also hinder the international diffusion of effective state institutions, contributing to persistent cross-country differences in state capacity. The empirical analysis shows that countries with greater ancestral distance from the global frontier of effective state institutions exhibit lower state capacity. Dyadic regressions further indicate that ancestral distance is associated with greater divergence in state capacity. To examine a potential cultural foundation of this relationship, I exploit variation in cultural backgrounds among second-generation immigrants residing in the same country. I find that immigrant populations with greater ancestral distance exhibit larger differences in self-reported attitudes towards voluntary tax compliance. Taken together, the findings suggest that ancestral distance is an important historical predictor of cross-country disparities in state capacity, consistent with a role for divergence in civic norms and barriers to institutional diffusion. |
| Keywords: | ancestral distance, long-term relatedness, state capacity, civic culture |
| JEL: | H11 H77 O11 O19 P51 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:een:camaaa:2026-84 |
| By: | Augustin Bergeron; Jean-Paul Carvalho; Joseph Henrich; Nathan Nunn; Jonathan L. Weigel |
| Abstract: | This chapter examines the consequences of zero-sum environments for cultural change, innovation, and long-term economic growth. We introduce innovation into the framework developed by Bergeron et al. (forthcoming), in which zero-sum environments give rise to demotivating beliefs. Although demotivating beliefs improve static efficiency by limiting excessive competition in zero-sum environments, we show that they can also impede long-term growth. Because demotivating beliefs suppress effort, they can also reduce learning-by-doing and other production spillovers. Hence, they can inhibit innovation and act as a cultural evolutionary kludge. We apply the model to explain the cultural changes associated with Western Europe's economic rise after 1500. |
| JEL: | N10 O10 Q55 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35813 |
| By: | Akbulut-Yuksel, Mevlude (Dalhousie University); Aydemir, Abdurrahman (Sabanci University); Kirdar, Murat (Koc University); Turan, Belgi (TOBB University of Economics and Technology) |
| Abstract: | We ask whether cultural constraints are a development bottleneck in conservative middle-income economies, limiting women's entry into manufacturing and slowing fertility decline and human-capital accumulation. We exploit the 1989 forced migration of ethnic Turks from Bulgaria to Turkiye. Refugee women shared native women's language, religion, and ethnicity but had much higher employment, especially in manufacturing. We combine difference-in-differences with an instrument based on where the state settled earlier ethnic Turkish migrants. Exposure to refugee women raised native women's participation and employment a decade later, especially in male-dominated tradable manufacturing. Native men saw no significant gains. A one-percentage-point higher refugee-to-native ratio raises native women's manufacturing employment by 0.9 percentage points, about 23 percent of the 1990 mean. Exposure reduced fertility and raised middle-school completion among native girls and boys. The results suggest that an exogenous cultural shock relaxed a binding constraint on women's modern-sector entry, a margin central to structural transformation and demographic transition. Intermarriage and World Values Survey evidence is consistent with this view. |
| Keywords: | structural transformation, demographic transition, cultural barriers, refugees, women's employment, manufacturing |
| JEL: | J16 J13 O11 O14 R23 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18983 |
| By: | Matus-Lopez, Mauricio |
| Abstract: | Objective. To collect and analyze longitudinal data on hospital discharges in Chile between 1952 and 2020, both at the national level and within the public subsystem. Patterns of change were identified in relation to the following key institutional milestones: the Curative Medicine Act of 1968, the creation of the National Health Services System in 1979, and the implementation of the Universal and Guaranteed Access Reform in 2005. Methods. A first-of-its-kind time series was constructed using official sources from the Ministry of Health and institutional documents. Indicators were calculated for the total number of discharges, discharge rates per thousand population, and comparisons with the United States. The analysis included exploratory graphics and construction of segmented regression models. Results. Hospital discharges rose steadily, with two periods mirroring robust expansion of the private sector: between 1982 and 1987 and between 2006 and 2019. Public provision of hospital services slowed or decreased with the 1979 reform and with the 2005 reform, although not with the 1968 reform. Conclusion. This study provides empirical evidence on the long-term trajectory of Chilean hospital services and confirms a structural contrast between the country's major health system models and the differences in their reforms. It also underscores the need for long-term information to analyze the impact of health reforms. |
| Date: | 2025–07–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:sc24a_v1 |
| By: | Christopher J. Neely |
| Abstract: | Monetary policy has been the primary tool of macroeconomic management since the 1970s. As a result, the effects of monetary shocks became an important area of policy research. In the 1980s, event studies showed that U.S. monetary-aggregate announcements strongly affected asset prices, although no single model readily explained the responses. Greater central-bank transparency in the 1980s and 1990s increased interest in measuring monetary policy's effects on financial and macroeconomic variables. In the 1990s, researchers predominantly used vector autoregressions (VARs) to estimate the effects of monetary shocks. This work raised questions about why monetary shocks explained little output variation and sometimes implied theoretically implausible price responses. Increasing Fed transparency allowed researchers to make substantial progress in measuring surprises from high-frequency interest-rate changes. The 2007-2009 Global Financial Crisis further intensified interest in monetary shocks. Subsequent research has examined dimensionality and time variation, information content, predictability, explanatory power, policy horizons, and information sets. Researchers have proposed many measures, but their relationships are often unclear. This paper reviews the literature on monetary shocks, their motivations, their construction, and the inference drawn from them. |
| Keywords: | monetary policy shocks; central-bank information effects; federal funds target; forward guidance; high-frequency identification; structural vector autoregressions; external instruments |
| JEL: | E52 E58 E44 C32 C36 G12 |
| Date: | 2026–09–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedlwp:103833 |
| By: | Michael D Bordo (Rutgers University and NBER); Cecile Bastidon (U. Toulon & CAC-IXXI Complex Systems Institute, Lyon, and OFCE-Sciences Po, Paris) |
| Abstract: | We propose stress tests based on an original International Monetary System (IMS) model with regime switchings. The model is calibrated for nine reference currencies from the beginning of the Classical Gold Standard to the present. Regime switchings in currency dominance are related to combinations of conditions on a multidimensional environment variable that includes five classes of shocks: technology; development; monetary, financial and fiscal institutions; democracy and conflicts; and the regulatory environment. We provide an original database of events for these five classes of shocks, which is used for calibration. The calibration highlights the important role of the democracy and conflicts component in regime switchings. The calibrated model is then used to perform stress tests on the current prospects of currency dominance for a broad set of scenarios. A salient result from the scenarios we tested is that the dominance of the US dollar is at most marginally affected. No other currency emerges as a major player, suggesting strong inertia in the system’s current centripetal dynamics. |
| Keywords: | International monetary system; Currency dominance; Democracy; Conflicts; Geopolitics; Monetary and financial graphs; Non-linear modeling; Conditional Markov chains |
| JEL: | C3 C82 E42 F33 G15 N2 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pri:cepsud:355 |