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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
| By: | Lukas Althoff; Harriet M. Brookes Gray; Hugo Reichardt |
| Abstract: | How did the US become a land of opportunity? Previous historical research on intergenerational mobility has focused on father-son income correlations, masking the role of mothers. We introduce a new mobility measure that incorporates both parents' human capital, develop a latent variable method leveraging literacy as a proxy, and construct a representative linked panel that includes women. We find that intergenerational mobility—in both human capital and income—rose sharply from the 19th to the 20th century. Initially, maternal human capital was most predictive of children's outcomes. However, as schooling expanded, this reliance declined and intergenerational mobility rose. America's investment in mass education has therefore been central to its rise as a mobile society. |
| JEL: | C1 H10 H4 I20 J62 N0 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35152 |
| By: | Dribe, Martin (Department of Economic History, Lund University); Hedefalk, Finn (Department of Economic History, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | At the turn of the twentieth century, infant- and child mortality declined rapidly in many industrializing societies. In Sweden, this decline coincided with industrialization and urbanization, as well as a period of growing social disparities in childhood mortality. The inequality in child survival was connected to a range of factors, including access to water- and sanitation, housing conditions, infant care, and possibly nutrition. We study the importance of socioeconomic neighborhood context for under-five mortality in an industrializing Swedish town (1892–1939). We use individual-level socioeconomic and demographic data from population registers that have been geocoded at the block level and measure neighborhood conditions by the share of white-collar workers in the block. Cox models with time-varying block-level covariates to estimate the association between cumulative social neighborhood variables and the risk of child death. Our findings indicate that the socioeconomic status of the neighborhood was important for the risk of child death even when controlling for social class and family context. The association was present for both boys and girls and got weaker over time in the period we analyze. Social neighborhoods mattered more for infant mortality than for child mortality. In terms of causes of death, the associations were similar for airborne infectious diseases and food/waterborne diseases, while there was no association at all for other causes of death. These findings point to the importance of neighborhoods for child survival during the urban mortality transition and likely reflect both cultural and material causal pathways. |
| Keywords: | Infant mortality; child mortality; neighborhoods; socioeconomic status; health inequality; urban mortality transition; historical demography; Sweden |
| JEL: | I14 J13 N33 N34 R23 |
| Date: | 2026–04–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:luekhi:0267 |
| By: | Boelmann, Barbara (University of Cologne); Stapper, Carola (Johannes Kepler University Linz) |
| Abstract: | We shift the perspective from why men extended political rights to women toward what shaped women’s own demand. Exploiting World War I drafting variation, we study how male absence affected German women’s demand for the franchise. We construct a new panel of all suffragette clubs - a revealed-preference measure given high wartime costs. Women were more likely to keep clubs open where more men were absent, especially where women led war relief efforts, highlighting agency and leadership experience as the central mechanism. Demand persisted after enfranchisement, with more female candidates and higher female turnout in high-absence counties with a wartime club. |
| Keywords: | women's political representation, suffrage movement, agency |
| JEL: | J16 N44 D71 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18587 |
| By: | Johannes Boehm; Thomas Chaney |
| Abstract: | What was the role of trade, and how did economic activity evolve at the End of Antiquity, when political power shifts away from the Mediterranean towards northern Europe and the Middle East? To answer those questions, we assemble a database of hundreds of thousands of ancient coins from the fourth to the tenth century, estimate a dynamic model of trade and money where coins gradually diffuse along trade routes, and recover granular regional trade and real consumption time series. Our estimates suggest that: Mediterranean trade was disrupted by the newly formed border between Islam and Christianity; economic activity shifts away from the Mediterranean starting in the fifth century; real consumption peaks in the Middle East in the eighth century; and by the end of the ninth century, Atlantic regions from Islamic Spain to Frankish northwestern Europe have become the wealthiest regions of the ancient western world. |
| JEL: | F01 N73 O1 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35156 |
| By: | Tetsuji Okazaki (The University of Tokyo) |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the impact of the Production Capacity Expansion Plan during World War II on steel production. We trace the construction progress of individual facilities included in the implementation plans and show that many of them—particularly blast furnaces and both open-hearth and converter furnaces—were completed during the war. The production capacity of facilities constructed under the Production Capacity Expansion Plan accounted for high percentage in the total production capacity not only at the end of the war, but also at the middle of the 1950s. Furthermore, a regression analysis using plant-level data on steel products shows that the plants for which the expansion of rolling facilities was included in the implementation plans exhibited higher output from 1942 onward, compared with other plants, relative to the pre- implementation period. This relationship remains statistically significant in 1950, 1955, and 1960. Taken together, these results suggest that the Production Capacity Expansion Plan had a positive impact on Japan’s steel production from the wartime period through the early phase of postwar high economic growth, primarily through the expansion of production facilities. |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tky:jseres:2026cj317 |
| By: | Daniela Vidart |
| Abstract: | This paper examines correspondence education as an alternative educational pathway in early 20th-century America. Using newly digitized records from the International Correspondence Schools—the largest such institution, with over 4 million students by 1940—linked to census data, I show that enrollment increased the likelihood of skilled employment by 6-10pp within 3-10 years, particularly among younger students who used it as a substitute for high school. I develop a general equilibrium Roy-style model where individuals sort into educational options by ability. Consistent with the model, correspondence education facilitated skill acquisition for lower-ability individuals and improved selection into high school, amplifying its returns. |
| JEL: | E24 I21 J24 N32 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35147 |
| By: | Kartik B. Athreya |
| Abstract: | Opening Remarks at The 2026 Federal Reserve Financial and Monetary History Conference. |
| Keywords: | financial and monetary history; economic history; conference |
| Date: | 2026–05–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednsp:103179 |
| By: | Felix Ward (Erasmus University Rotterdam); Casper de Vries (Erasmus University Rotterdam) |
| Abstract: | Does the preferential tax treatment of debt over equity cause banks to increase their leverage? We construct a novel dataset tracing the evolution of the debt tax shield for banks in advanced economies from 1870 to 2020. Exploiting variation from nearly all changes in banking-sector tax shields since the nineteenth century, we show that a 1 percentage point increase in the tax shield reduces bank capital ratios by 0.25-0.8 percentage points. Our estimates suggest that the tax advantage of debt was an important driver of the rise in bank leverage during the twentieth century. |
| Keywords: | corporate income taxation, debt bias, interest deductibility, financial stability |
| JEL: | E44 G21 G32 |
| Date: | 2026–04–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20260016 |
| By: | Ran Huang |
| Abstract: | The original SCR theory proposed that inflation has two distinct expressions: circulation inflation, measured by rising transaction prices, and reservation inflation, measured by the rising real weight of monetary symbols, debt contracts, reserve claims, and other nominal stores of value relative to physical goods. A companion Japan paper tested one side of this theory by showing that, after money entered a reserve-dominant phase, monetary-base expansion no longer translated strongly into consumer-price inflation. This paper tests the other side of SCR: whether reservation inflation can arise when monetary issuance is constrained and circulation inflation is absent. The classical gold-standard deflation of 1873-1896 provides a clean historical setting. Using long-run British retail price data and the Minneapolis Fed historical U.S. CPI series, I show that the price level declined in both economies. Between 1873 and 1896, Britain's price index fell from 18.0 to 14.7, while the U.S. historical CPI fell from 36.0 to 25.0. Yet this deflation mechanically increased the real value of fixed nominal claims. A fixed-claim reservation index rose by 22.4% in Britain and 44.0% in the United States. Thus, the episode combines negative circulation inflation with positive reservation inflation. The result suggests that hard money does not abolish inflationary pressure in the SCR sense; it changes its domain of expression. Together with the Japan case, this paper supports a phase-dependent view of inflation in which CPI is only one observable expression of the monetary-material asymmetry. |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2604.26248 |
| By: | Pauline Grosjean; Saumitra Jha; Michael Vlassopoulos; Yves Zenou |
| Abstract: | We show how exposure to partisan peers, under conditions requiring high stakes cooperation, can trigger the breakthrough of novel political beliefs. We exploit the large-scale, exogenous assignment of soldiers from each of 34, 947 French municipalities into line infantry regiments during World War I. We show that soldiers from poor, rural municipalities---where the novel redistributive message of the left had previously failed to penetrate---voted for the left by nearly 45% more after the war when exposed to left-wing partisans within their regiment. We provide evidence that these differences reflect persuasive information provision by both peers and officers in the trenches that proved particularly effective among those most likely to benefit from the redistributive policies of the left. In contrast, soldiers from neighbouring municipalities that served with right-wing partisans are inoculated against the left, becoming moderate centrists instead. |
| Keywords: | Political Persuasion, Transmission, War, Voting Behavior, Conflict, Peer Effects, France, World War I |
| JEL: | D74 N44 L14 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:2539 |
| By: | Barry R. Chiswick; RaeAnn H. Robinson |
| Abstract: | This paper is concerned with analyzing the occupational attainment of American Jewish men compared to other free men in the mid-19th century to help fill a gap in the literature on Jewish achievement. It does this by using the full count (100 percent) microdata file from the 1850 Census of Population, the first census to ask the occupation of free men. Independent lists of surnames are used to identify men with a higher probability of being Jewish. These men were more likely than others to be managers, salesmen, and craft workers, and were less likely to be farmers and laborers. The Jewish men have a higher occupational income score on average. In the multiple regression analysis, it is found that among Jewish and other free men occupational income scores increase with age (up to about age 43 for all men), literacy, being married, having fewer children, being native born, living in the South, and living in an urban area. Even after controlling for these variables that impact the occupational income score, Jews have a significantly higher score, which is the equivalent of about the size of the positive effect of being married. Similar patterns are found using the Duncan Socioeconomic Index. This higher occupational status is consistent with patterns found elsewhere for American Jews for the 18th century and throughout the 20th century. |
| Keywords: | Jews, Occupational Status, Occupational Income Score, Duncan Socioeconomic Index, 1850 Census of Population |
| JEL: | N31 J62 J15 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:2541 |
| By: | Nikolova, Elena; Plopeanu, Aurelian |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates how the historical institutional legacies of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires affect present-day attitudes toward women and minorities in Romania. We conduct a thorough historical analysis which shows that the institutional setup in the Ottoman part of Romania was more favorable toward women and minorities compared to that in the Habsburg part. Using the 2016 round of the EBRD-World Bank Life in Transition Survey, we find that these differences in historical institutions have long-run impacts on attitudes today. While we find mixed support for our hypotheses when it comes to gender attitudes, consistent with our expectations, men and women in ex-Habsburg locations report that women have less decision-making power in the household, and are less tolerant towards people of different races, gay people, and Jews. The paper has important implications for advancing the debate on long-run imperial legacies by highlighting their persistent impact on women and minorities. |
| Keywords: | gender, diversity, Romania, persistence, empires |
| JEL: | N00 J16 P20 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1747 |
| By: | Johan Fourie (LEAP, Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University); Calumet Links (LEAP, Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University) |
| Abstract: | Households that migrate after a political crisis are not always those most directly harmed by it. We link Voortrekker genealogical records to the 1825 Cape Colony census using machine learning record linkage, obtaining 558 accepted Voortrekker–census links that correspond to 536 unique matched census households. Those households are compared to 9, 884 non-Voortrekker households. What distinguished Trekkers from stayers was household composition: Voortrekker households were larger, with more children and more working-age men. Wealth was statistically indistinguishable between migrants and stayers. Within districts, Trekkers held fewer slaves and produced less wheat and wine, the profile of pastoral frontier families pressing against the limits of available land. Using slave compensation records, we find no evidence that households with larger emancipation losses were more likely to trek. In Hirschman’s (1970) framework, exit was exercised not by those most aggrieved but by those for whom exit was cheapest: large, land-hungry households whose demographic circumstances made the interior’s grazing land the obvious destination. These findings offer the first individual-level quantitative evidence for the demographic-pressure interpretation of the Great Trek, and a direct test of the emancipation hypothesis that has been impossible until now. |
| Keywords: | Great Trek, migration selection, South Africa, slavery, fertility |
| JEL: | N37 J61 C45 O15 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sza:wpaper:wpapers396 |
| By: | Morales Meoqui, Jorge |
| Abstract: | The law of comparative advantage cannot be attributed to David Ricardo, James Mill, Robert Torrens or John Stuart Mill. Their writings, much like those of Adam Smith, strictly adhere to the classical rule for specialization, which asserts that one should acquire commodities abroad whenever offered cheaper than it would cost to produce them locally. They all viewed the cheaper price of foreign commodities as the logical starting point and condicio sine qua non of most exchanges between countries. Furthermore, the popular narrative about Ricardo’s alleged formulation of an alternative rule for specialization – the law or principle of comparative advantage – results from a misinterpretation of the well-known numerical example presented in Chapter 7 of his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. John Stuart Mill is largely responsible for this misinterpretation; he obviously deserves no recognition or praise for that. |
| Date: | 2026–04–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:4h5ks_v1 |
| By: | Barry R. Chiswick; RaeAnn H. Robinson |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the characteristics of the free population who were recorded as "owners" of enslaved people in the antebellum Southern states. We utilize the first nationally representative sample linking enslaved and free people - the 1/100 sample microdata files of the 1850 Census of Population from Schedule 1 on free people, and Schedule 2 on the enslaved population - to identify the slaveholders and their slaveholdings. The reduced form regression analyses consider both owning at least one enslaved person, and among slaveholders the number held. The findings indicate that 90 percent of the enslaved population were reportedly held by free males, that among men this was more likely for those who were married, but among women it was lower for the married, that for both genders slaveholding increased with age, being literate, and having been born in the US. Moreover, it varied by free men's occupation, in part because of the extent of self-employment and in part due to their wealth. While most slaveholders were self-employed farmers, many of the slaveholders were professionals, including clergy, doctors, and lawyers who used enslaved people in their household, in their professional practice, or in the farms/plantations that they also owned. |
| Keywords: | Enslaved People, Slaveholders, 1850 Census of Population, Schedule 2 - Slave Inhabitants, Occupations, Gender, Literacy, Nativity |
| JEL: | N10 N9 N31 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:2542 |
| By: | Leander Heldring; Davis Kedrosky; James A. Robinson; Matthias Weigand |
| Abstract: | Many states exhibit high degrees of capacity without the fiscal resources necessary to fund a modern bureaucracy. We argue that they achieve this by exploiting features of the social structure of the societies they govern to motivate individuals to engage in bureaucratic and governance tasks without pay. We develop and illustrate the concept of the “Embedded State” using a unique survey of British urban government from 1835. Since British local authorities had few resources, only two-thirds of positions were paid. We first show that unpaid positions were significantly more productive than paid ones. We then show that unpaid positions conveyed prestige and were ‘stepping stone’ positions, provided different on-the-job incentives, and were taken up by the socio-economic elite. We also show that the successful Embedded State featured patronage and corruption and could not fully motivate unpaid bureaucrats to implement onerous tasks. |
| JEL: | D73 H11 H41 H50 N13 N43 N44 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35130 |
| By: | Ronan C. Lyons; Allison Shertzer; Rowena Gray |
| Abstract: | The Rent of Primary Residence (RoPR) series constructed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) implies that nominal rental prices increased by just 2.6% per year from 1914 to 2006 while overall prices grew by 3.3%. We show that this “falling real rents” puzzle can be explained by the evolving treatment of shelter in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). In this paper we construct a new, methodologically consistent shelter price series using the Historical Housing Prices (HHP) Project rental index. We also construct a revised set of shelter weights going back to 1914 and combine them with the price series to create an alternate CPI that applies the owners’ equivalent rent (OER) concept of shelter consistently across time. The HHP shelter price series increases by a factor of 28.4 (compared with the 10.7 increase in RoPR) and lifts average CPI growth from 3.3% to 3.6% per year. The revised series eliminates the long-run decline in real rents in the CPI and provides a new benchmark for assessing trends in the cost of living and real income in the U.S. over the twentieth century. |
| JEL: | N01 O18 R3 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35124 |
| By: | Giuliano, Paola (University of California, Los Angeles) |
| Abstract: | This chapter reviews the growing literature on the origin, persistence and evolution of cultural norms. I begin by examining the deep historical forces that shape the formation of cultural norms, with particular attention to the role of geography, pre-industrial societal characteristics, political institutions, and historical shocks. I then analyze the mechanisms through which cultural norms persist and evolve, emphasizing the roles of vertical, horizontal, and oblique transmission. Next, I examine the complex interaction between culture and institutions, and discuss the conditions under which cultural norms change. Several conclusions emerge. Cultural norms tend to persist over remarkably long periods, though the speed of change varies significantly across traits. Understanding the origins and persistence of cultural norms has important implications for policy: policies that ignore local cultural context risk failure or unintended consequences, while well-designed interventions can successfully shift norms. Finally, I discuss the growing evidence on cultural mismatches - situations where norms that were adaptive in historical environments become maladaptive in new contexts - and outline directions for future research. |
| Keywords: | cultural norms, cultural evolution, historical persistence |
| JEL: | Z1 P0 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18583 |
| By: | Grimm, Maximilian; Schularick, Moritz; Verner, Emil |
| Abstract: | Financial liberalization is often seen as a way to deepen credit markets and stimulate economic growth, but it may also fuel credit booms that end in crisis. We construct a new cross-country database of banking regulation policies covering 21 regulatory indicators for 18 advanced economies since World War II. We distinguish liberalizations that directly relax constraints on credit supply from broader financial reforms. Liberalizations that directly affect credit supply lead to substantial expansions in private credit. Credit expansion is concentrated in non-tradable sectors and is not accompanied by higher interest rates or credit spreads in the short run, consistent with an outward shift in credit supply. Real GDP rises over the following 2 to 4 years, but the gains are temporary. On average, GDP returns to trend in the medium run, and there is an increase in the risk of financial crisis and worse downside growth outcomes. Only liberalizations that directly expand credit supply generate these boom-bust dynamics. Based on these estimates, financial liberalization is welfare-improving for coefficients of relative risk aversion below 7.2, a moderately high value. |
| Keywords: | banking regulation, financial liberalization, bank lending, growth, banking crises |
| JEL: | E44 G01 G21 G28 N20 O43 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:340837 |
| By: | Doxey, Alison (University of Chicago); Karger, Ezra (Chicago Federal Reserve Bank); Nencka, Peter (Miami University) |
| Abstract: | Between 1850 and 1910, the share of young Americans living in towns with high schools increased from 17% to 46% - the fastest expansion of school access in U.S. history. Using new data on every high school in the United States, we show that this expansion transformed economic opportunities for many young adults but widened class and racial inequalities. We find sharp increases in school attendance rates for high school-aged children in towns that opened a high school relative to children in nearby towns without one. Linking children to adult outcomes, we show that high schools increased women’s labor force participation and job quality, while reducing the probability of early marriage and childbearing. Increased access to high school accounts for a third of the increase in women’s labor force participation between 1870 and1930. High schools had the largest effects on children from already-wealthy families, and did not, on average, benefit Black children. While the high school movement substantially narrowed gender gaps in labor market outcomes, it also widened existing race- and class-based disparities. |
| Keywords: | high schools, education, economic history |
| JEL: | I26 J24 J16 D63 N31 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18580 |
| By: | Paola Giuliano |
| Abstract: | This chapter reviews the growing literature on the origin, persistence and evolution of cultural norms. I begin by examining the deep historical forces that shape the formation of cultural norms, with particular attention to the role of geography, pre-industrial societal characteristics, political institutions, and historical shocks. I then analyze the mechanisms through which cultural norms persist and evolve, emphasizing the roles of vertical, horizontal, and oblique transmission. Next, I examine the complex interaction between culture and institutions, and discuss the conditions under which cultural norms change. Several conclusions emerge. Cultural norms tend to persist over remarkably long periods, though the speed of change varies significantly across traits. Norms rooted in deep historical values are the most resistant to change, while attitudes related to pro-sociality and redistribution adapt more quickly. Understanding the origins and persistence of cultural norms has important implications for policy: policies that fail to account for local cultural context risk being ineffective or generating unintended consequences, while well-designed interventions can successfully shift cultural norms. Finally, I discuss the growing evidence on cultural mismatches — situations where norms that were adaptive in historical environments become maladaptive in new contexts — and outline directions for future research. |
| JEL: | P0 Z1 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35125 |
| By: | Vincent Geloso; Patrick Crawford |
| Abstract: | We investigate the relationship between media competitiveness and political mobilization during the Quebec Rebellion of 1837--38. We argue that the rebellion was shaped by newspaper coordination of political action. Drawing on a new spatial dataset of newspaper agents, we test whether local media competitiveness predicts the intensity of rebel mobilization, independent of the partisan alignment of the press. The effect is magnified in areas where seigneurial (i.e., feudal) tenure persisted, suggesting a complementarity between institutionally concentrated grievance and competitive press exposure. Adding newly created human capital controls---school enrollment and literacy---does not attenuate the competition effect. Globally, media competition transformed latent discontent into active participation in the conflict. These results offer insight into the economics of rebellions and uprisings. Nous étudions la relation entre la compétitivité médiatique et la mobilisation politique durant la rébellion du Québec de 1837--38. Nous soutenons que la rébellion a été façonnée par la coordination de l’action politique par les journaux. À partir d’un nouvel ensemble de données spatiales sur les agents de journaux, nous testons si la compétitivité médiatique locale prédit l’intensité de la mobilisation rebelle, indépendamment de l’alignement partisan de la presse. L’effet est amplifié dans les zones où le régime seigneurial (c’est-à-dire féodal) persistait, ce qui suggère une complémentarité entre des griefs institutionnellement concentrés et l’exposition à une presse concurrentielle. L’ajout de nouveaux contrôles de capital humain — taux de scolarisation et alphabétisation — n’atténue pas l’effet de la concurrence. De manière générale, la concurrence médiatique a transformé un mécontentement latent en participation active au conflit. Ces résultats apportent un éclairage sur l’économie des rébellions et des soulèvements. |
| Keywords: | Rebellions, Uprisings, Economic History Media, Newspapers, Competition, Quebec, Canada, Rébellions, Soulèvements, Histoire économique, Médias, Journaux, Concurrence, Québec, Canada |
| JEL: | N41 D74 D83 L82 R12 |
| Date: | 2026–04–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cir:cirwor:2026s-07 |
| By: | Kris James Mitchener; Goncalo Pina |
| Abstract: | State-contingent debt (SCD) instruments have been proposed as an improvement to sovereign debt markets, but their issuance costs are not well understood. We estimate the SCD premium at issuance and for more than a decade thereafter, employing a quasi-twin bond strategy that uses two very similar French government bonds issued in 1956: one conventional bond and one state-contingent bond with coupons linked to industrial production. At issuance, the expected yield on the SCD bond was 77 basis points higher than its twin. Due to robust growth in the French economy ex-post, the realized SCD premium at issuance was roughly twice as large (146 basis points). However, rising market prices of the state-contingent bond reduced both spreads to zero by 1964. They rose again in May 1968 following an unexpected general strike, which significantly reduced French industrial production; however, by 1970, the SCD premium had fallen to values close to zero. |
| Keywords: | state-contingent debt, risk premia, public debt, GDP bonds, capital markets (France) |
| JEL: | H63 N14 E43 E65 F4 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12630 |
| By: | Velazco, Jacqueline |
| Abstract: | Peru, a small open economy, has experienced recurrent cycles of crisis and recovery closely linked to shifts in external demand. Its long-run growth pattern is characterised by primary commodity exports and manufactured imports. Development strategies since the late nineteenth century can be broadly grouped into: primary export diversification, import-substituting industrialisation, and, from 1990 onwards, the promotion of non-traditional exports. Against this backdrop, the paper aims to address, from a long-term perspective, the question of the role of agriculture in Peru's growth process for the period 1896-2012. To achieve this, two analyses were conducted. The first aims to identify the relationship between agricultural GDP, industrial GDP, mining GDP, and other sectors, including services and energy. It is assumed that these sectors represent the state of urban development, and it is of interest to understand their level of interaction with agriculture. The second analysis aims to empirically verify the export-led growth (ELG) hypothesis and the import-led growth hypothesis (ILG). Time-series co-integration techniques were employed. Econometric findings pointed out a negative relationship between agriculture and industry. The paper identifies bidirectional links between agriculture and urban sectors (services and energy), with food flows, migration and labour markets connecting rural households’ diversified livelihoods to city-based employment. It also finds that Peru exhibits both export-led and import-led growth dynamics: agricultural and non-agricultural exports, together with imports of inputs and capital goods, jointly underpin a feedback relationship between trade and long-run economic growth. |
| Keywords: | Financial Economics |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aes026:397898 |
| By: | Laura Caron |
| Abstract: | Between 1949 and 1980, every U.S. state mandated public schools to provide educational services for disabled students. This is one of the largest education reforms in U.S. history, but little is known about its impacts. Given scarce data in this period, I compile survey and administrative datasets and set up a difference-in-difference design using variation in the mandates' timing. I show that the mandates increased both services for disabled students and preschool enrollments. In adulthood, disabled individuals below school age at a mandate's implementation became about 20% less likely to have no education, attained up to 0.23 more years of education, and were more likely to have worked. Although this policy could have taken away resources from non-disabled students, in fact, education and employment also increased for non-disabled individuals. These effects align with evidence that the mandates increased spending per student by up to 15%. Families were also impacted: the mandates increased employment among mothers of disabled children and the probability that disabled individuals became household heads. Over the long term, the mandates paid for themselves by generating government revenues in excess of their cost. These results provide new evidence on the large, broad impacts of expanding access to education for disabled students. |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2604.25767 |