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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
| By: | Myles, Jamieson |
| Keywords: | Trade finance, Cooperative business, Cotton, Federal credit institutions, History of capitalism |
| JEL: | N00 J54 N12 N22 N42 N52 P10 P13 Q13 Q14 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gnv:wpaper:unige:181156 |
| By: | Vasiliki Fouka; Theo Serlin |
| Abstract: | How does economic modernization affect group identity? Modernization theory emphasizes how labor migration led to the adoption of common identities. Yet economic development may reduce incentives to emigrate, preserving local cultures. We study England and Wales during the Second Industrial Revolution, a period characterized by the development of new industries and declines in transportation and communication costs. Using microdata on individuals’ names and migration decisions, we quantify identity change and its variation across space. We develop and estimate a quantitative spatial model in which migration and cultural identities are inter-dependent. Different components of economic modernization had different effects on identity change. Falling migration costs homogenized peripheral regions. In contrast, industrial development led to heterogeneity, increasing the overall prevalence of the culture of London, while also creating local identity holdouts by reducing out-migration from industrializing peripheries. Modernization promotes both national identities and persistent local identities in peripheral regions that industrialize. |
| Keywords: | migration, identity, industrialization |
| JEL: | J61 N33 N63 Z10 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11441 |
| By: | Bengtsson, Erik; Kersting, Felix |
| Abstract: | In a large social science literature, unequal rural class structures ("landlordism") are associated with authoritarian political outcomes. This paper revisits the debate focusing on the electoral consequences of land inequality in Prussia, the locus classicus of the pernicious effects of landlordism, and Sweden, often perceived as Prussia’s opposite, with a farmer-dominated social structure and stable democratization. Investigating the late 19th and early 20th century, we show that agrarian inequality was higher in Sweden than in Prussia, already putting the theory of a landlordism-authoritarianism connection in question. In contrast to the existing hypothesis, our within country-analysis indicates no positive correlation between land inequality and electoral support for the Conservative and Nazi parties and a positive correlation with turnout. We discuss social mobilization and declining social control of the landed elites as mediating institutional factors. |
| Date: | 2024–11–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:2jgq8 |
| By: | Heather Ford; Mary-Frances Styczynski |
| Abstract: | In 1994, a symposium was held on the measurement of the U.S. monetary aggregates. As a result of this symposium, the main components and data sources used at the time to construct the U.S. monetary aggregates were documented for posterity in A Historical Perspective on the Federal Reserve's Monetary Aggregates: Definition, Construction and Targeting by Richard Anderson and Kenneth Kavajecz. |
| Date: | 2024–11–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgfn:2024-11-12-1 |
| By: | Carlo Medici |
| Abstract: | This paper shows that immigration fostered the emergence of organized labor in the United States. I digitize archival data to construct the first county-level dataset on historical U.S. union membership and use a shift-share instrument to isolate a plausibly exogenous shock to the labor supply induced by immigration, between 1900 and 1920. Counties with higher immigration experienced an increase in the probability of having labor unions, the number of union branches, the share of unionized workers, and the number of union members per branch. This increase occurred more prominently among skilled workers, particularly in counties more exposed to labor competition from immigrants, and in areas with less favorable attitudes towards immigration. Taken together, these results are consistent with existing workers forming and joining labor unions for economic as well as social motivations. The findings highlight a novel driver of unionization in the early 20th-century United States: in the absence of immigration, the average share of unionized workers during this period would have been 22% lower. The results also identify an unexplored consequence of immigration: the development of institutions aimed at protecting workers’ status in the labor market, with effects that continue into the present. |
| Keywords: | labor unions, immigration, labor market competition, discrimination |
| JEL: | J15 J50 J70 N31 N32 P10 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11437 |
| By: | Gazdar, H. |
| Keywords: | Agrifood systems; Policies; Agricultural growth; Hunger; Poverty; Land resources; Water resources; Food security; Colonization; Agrarian reform; Green revolution; History; Political aspects |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iwt:bosers:h052517 |
| By: | Gómez Herráez, José María (Universitat Jaume I) |
| Abstract: | Las concepciones económicas y sociales de Manuel Azaña no han recibido la atención diferenciada que su pensamiento político y su actuación en cargos supremos durante la república española sí tuvieron. Sin embargo, en sus intervenciones entre 1900 y 1930 estas ideas resultan fundamentales tanto por su interés en interpretar y superar el atraso económico español en el contexto europeo como por el modo en que tales nociones marcan otras reflexiones suyas, como las de carácter político. Desde que en abril de 1931 asumió altas funciones de gestión bajo el nuevo régimen republicano, los temas de la reforma agraria, la hacienda pública y otros diversos de naturaleza económica y social adquirieron clara primacía en sus discursos y en sus diarios. Durante la guerra civil española y en su exilio inicial, Azaña opina sobre cuestiones como el proceso revolucionario promovido principalmente por anarquistas y la adversa coyuntura económica de los años treinta como principal inconveniente para el sistema republicano. |
| Keywords: | Manuel Azaña; segunda república española; ideas económicas y sociales; regeneracionismo; reforma agraria; finanzas públicas |
| JEL: | B31 N33 N34 O20 P16 |
| Date: | 2024–11–18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000418:021232 |
| By: | Jerry Jiang; Jacob P. Weber |
| Abstract: | We provide evidence that financial distress induces firms to sell their technology to foreign competitors. To do so, we construct a novel, spatial panel dataset by individually researching and locating U.S. firms who signed Technology Transfer Agreements (TTAs) with the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s in various U.S. counties. By relating the number of TTAs signed in each county to the number of bank failures, we establish a significant, positive relationship between financial distress and the number of firms signing TTAs with the Soviet Union. Our findings suggest that banking panics may create opportunities for foreign countries to acquire affected firms’ technology. |
| Keywords: | Banking panic; technology assistance; know-how diffusion; industrialization; industrial policy |
| JEL: | G21 N6 O33 |
| Date: | 2024–11–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednsr:99078 |
| By: | Melissa Rubio-Ramos; Christian Isendahl; Ola Olsson |
| Abstract: | In early states, government elites provided both productivity-enhancing infrastructure, such as irrigation systems, as well as seemingly non-productive monumental architecture like temples and pyramids. The nature of this ”bread-and-circuses”-tradeoff is not well understood. In this paper, we examine this phenomenon in the Classic Maya civilization (c. 250-950 CE) where city-state elites chose between investing in essential water management infrastructure (reservoirs, canals), and monumental architecture. We analyze information from 870 dated monuments from 110 cities. Correlating this dataset with a proxy record for variations in annual rainfall, we find–perhaps counter-intuitively–that monumental construction activity was more intense during drought years. A text analysis of 2.2 million words from deciphered hieroglyphic inscriptions on monuments, further shows higher frequencies of terms associated with war or violent conflict during periods of drought. We propose that in the Classic Maya setting, with numerous small city-states, monument construction functioned as a costly signalling device about state capacity, designed to attract labor for future control of revenue. |
| Keywords: | bread and circuses, public goods, monumental architecture, drought, Maya |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11439 |
| By: | McKenzie, Rex; Koutny, Christian |
| Abstract: | This paper develops the concept of the hyper-capitalist urban node (HCUN) as a new theoretical framework for understanding how financial capitalism transforms contemporary cities. Through systematic analysis of London's economic, social, and technological changes from 1992 to 2023, we demonstrate that global financial centres have evolved beyond established models of the global city. Drawing on comprehensive longitudinal data, we identify six distinctive characteristics of HCUNs: financial sector dominance, extreme income polarisation, housing financialisation, the political-financial nexus, technological acceleration, and social-spatial transformation. London's empirical evidence demonstrates how these characteristics manifest in concrete terms through dramatic shifts in employment structure, housing markets, income distribution, and spatial organisation. We argue that HCUNs represent not merely a quantitative intensification of existing urban processes, but rather a qualitative shift in how cities function within global capitalism. The analysis reveals fundamental contradictions within the HCUN model, explaining why conventional urban policies often fail to achieve their intended outcomes. Through this research, we advance both theoretical understanding of contemporary urban transformation and methodological approaches to studying it, including the development of the HCUN Index. Our findings demonstrate the need for fundamental innovation in urban theory and governance to address the distinctive challenges posed by financial capitalism's intensifying influence over urban development. |
| Date: | 2024–11–15 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:fhk2c |
| By: | Paul, Saumik (University of Manchester) |
| Abstract: | Since the advent of British rule in 1765, the colony of Bengal, once hailed as the most fertile and prosperous region of India, witnessed numerous incidents of food shortages. Apart from the supply and demand side factors are typically associated with a food shortage at an escalated or disastrous level (famine), the role of persistent and long-term factors is also critical. This paper, both qualitatively and quantitatively, provides a deeper understanding of the process of agrarian transformation in Bengal. It argues that the 1943 Bengal famine could have been less likely had there been a buoyant agricultural credit market and a better patronage system with less exploitative farming practices. Quantitatively, I find that frequency of distress sale of occupancy holdings in the 1930s is positively associated with the famine intensity throughout many districts, and this relationship increases in the presence of sharecroppers' struggles. |
| Keywords: | famine, land transfer, Bengal |
| JEL: | N O |
| Date: | 2024–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17432 |
| By: | Orkun Saka; Yuemei Ji; Clement Minaudier |
| Abstract: | We show that politicians facing a binding term limit are more likely to engage in financial de-liberalisation than those facing re-election, but only in the wake of a financial crisis. In particular, they implement policies that tend to favour incumbent financial institutions over the general population, such as increasing barriers to entry in the banking sector. We rationalise this behaviour with a theory of political accountability in which crises generate two opposite effects: they increase the salience of financial policies to voters but also create a window of opportunity for politicians captured by the financial industry to push potentially harmful reforms. In line with the implications of our model, we show that revolving doors between the government and the financial sector play a key role in encouraging bank-friendly policies after crises. |
| Keywords: | financial crises, political accountability, democracies, term-limits, special-interest groups |
| JEL: | D72 D78 G01 P11 P16 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11461 |
| By: | Maya, Guillermo (Universidad Nacional de Colombia) |
| Abstract: | Existe la ilusión o pretensión de que todos los países gozan de una soberanía plena y que son entidades políticas iguales. Sin embargo, la realidad es completamente distinta. La relación entre naciones es una relación de poder. Es decir, hay países que son dominantes y otros subordinados, y otros que son intermedios con mas grados de libertad que los segundos. Si bien Inglaterra dominó el mundo en el siglo XIX, a lo largo de tres continentes —Asia, África y América—, Estados Unidos (EE. UU.) tomó la hegemonía mundial en el siglo XX, después de la segunda postguerra, como líder del “mundo libre” pero no se considera a si mismo como un imperio, sino una república constitucional. |
| Keywords: | imperialismo; Gran Bretaña; Estados Unidos; Siglo XIX; Siglo XX |
| Date: | 2023–09–13 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000418:021223 |
| By: | Rainer Kotschy; David E. Bloom; Andrew J. Scott; Rainer Franz Kotschy |
| Abstract: | Analysis of population aging is typically framed in terms of chronological age. However, chronological age itself is not necessarily deeply informative about the aging process. This paper reviews literature and conducts empirical analyses aimed at investigating whether chronological age is a reliable proxy for physiological functioning when used in models of economic behaviour and outcomes. We show that chronological age is an unreliable proxy for physiological functioning due to appreciable differences in how aging unfolds across people, health domains, and over time. We further demonstrate that chronological age either fails to predict economic variables when used in lieu of physiological functioning, or that it predicts additional effects on economic behavior and outcomes that are largely unrelated to physiological aging. Continued reliance on chronological age as a proxy for physiological functioning might impede the ability of societies to fully harness the benefits of increasing longevity. |
| Keywords: | population aging, chronological aging, physiological aging, physiological functioning, longevity |
| JEL: | I10 I30 J10 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11451 |