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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
| By: | Donald Kohn (The author holds the Robert V. Roosa Chair in International Economics and is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.) |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ime:imedps:26-e-09 |
| By: | Roy, Tirthankar |
| Abstract: | The paper reinterprets the East India Company’s state-building effort in late eighteenth‑century Bengal by foregrounding the intertwined evolution of fiscal capacity and institutional reform. It argues that the Permanent Settlement of 1793 emerged not from a desire to follow Indian or English precedent, but from the Company’s struggle to concentrate fiscal powers. A debate on the need to obtain information on taxpayers, which delayed the reform, reveals this struggle. Repeated failures in data collection pushed the state to anchor the reform in an expanding judicial system capable of producing actionable information. The Settlement strengthened revenue flows, enabling the financing of a centrally controlled army and contributing to Britain’s wider imperial expansion. However, its long-term rigidity limited fiscal flexibility and impeded broader developmental outcomes. |
| Keywords: | British Empire; Permanent Settlement; fiscal state; property rights; zamindar; colonial law |
| JEL: | N0 |
| Date: | 2026–06–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:138689 |
| By: | Caprettini, Bruno |
| Abstract: | Can state-sponsored industrial espionage promote innovation and lead to self-sustained growth? I study the effect of 18th-century French industrial espionage on French innovation and industrial activity in the 19th century. Between 1730 and 1800 the French Bureau of Commerce promoted an ambitious plan aimed at stealing from Britain the new technologies of the Industrial Revolution, bribing British entrepreneurs and inventors to leave England and bring their expertise to France. I assemble a novel database with a comprehensive list of French espionage and combine it with newly digitized 17th- and 18th-century industrial surveys, 1800s industrial censuses, and the full list of early French patents. I find large, positive, and persistent effects of industrial espionage on industrial activity and innovation. |
| Keywords: | France |
| JEL: | O33 O14 N73 F63 O38 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21551 |
| By: | Voth, Hans-Joachim; Caprettini, Bruno; Trew, Alex |
| Abstract: | New evidence demonstrates a link between labor scarcity and the adoption of labor-saving technology in industrializing England. During the Napoleonic Wars, more than 10% of the male population served in the armed forces. Where recruitment was heavy, more machines economizing on labor were adopted. Naval recruitment, instrumented by warships’ coastal access, provides exogenous variation in labor scarcity and suggests that the link between labor shortages and adoption is causal. Where mechanical skills were abundant, the impact of labor scarcity on adoption appears to be larger. |
| Keywords: | Technology adoption |
| JEL: | N13 N43 O14 O31 O47 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21548 |
| By: | Sara Savini; Charlotte Le Chapelain; Claude Diebolt; Alexis Litvine |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how transport infrastructure shaped the diffusion of steam power across French departments between 1840 and 1911. Using a newly constructed annual departmental panel of steam engine stocks, firms, and installed horsepower, we reconstruct regional diffusion trajectories and estimate the causal impact of transport connectivity on mechanization. We combine department and year fixed effects with an instrumental-variable strategy based on successive French railway planning laws to address the endogeneity of railway expansion. The results reveal substantial territorial heterogeneity in the timing and speed of adoption, indicating that industrialization unfolded unevenly across space. Railway expansion exerted a positive and increasingly strong effect on steam adoption from the mid-1860s onward. An additional 100 kilometers of railway is associated with roughly six additional steam engines per 10, 000 inhabitants around 1865 and more than nine by 1900. Navigable waterways also promoted adoption, though their role evolved from complementing railways to becoming progressively substituted by them as the rail network matured. To identify the mechanisms underlying these effects, we construct time-varying measures of accessibility to coal markets and engineering expertise. The results indicate that improved access to coal significantly increased steam adoption throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, while access to engineering knowledge became important only in the 1890s as steam technology grew more complex. The findings suggest that the diffusion of general-purpose technologies depended not only on relative prices and local endowments but also on the infrastructures that reduced economic and informational frictions across space. |
| Keywords: | Technological diffusion · Transport infrastructure · Steam power · French industrialisation · Regional inequality |
| JEL: | N93 N73 O33 C23 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2026-22 |
| By: | Jona Whipple |
| Abstract: | The history of the creation of U.S. central banks includes political battles, financial crises, 77 years without a central bank—and one founding father’s enduring vision. |
| Keywords: | central banking; economic history; financial history; financial panics; financial crises |
| Date: | 2026–07–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:l00100:103481 |
| By: | Batiz-Lazo, Bernardo |
| Abstract: | Abstract This paper explores the evolution of the payment system in Mexico, highlighting the role of the Bank of Mexico in its modernisation. It is clear that the way in which we make our purchases has changed significantly since the creation of the Royal Mint in 1535 up to the introduction of CoDi in 2019. The Bank of Mexico, founded in 1925, has been a cornerstone of this transformation, implementing advanced technologies such as magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) in 1984 and the Interbank Electronic Payments System (SPEI) in 2004. This paper analyses how these innovations have improved the efficiency, security and accessibility of the payment system, benefiting the Mexican population and strengthening the national economy. Resumen Este artículo explora la evolución del sistema de pagos en México, destacando el papel del Banco de México en su modernización. Es patente que la forma en que realizamos nuestras compras se ha transformado desde la creación de la Casa de Moneda en 1535 hasta la introducción de CoDi en 2019. El Banco de México, fundado en 1925, ha sido un pilar en esta transformación, implementando tecnologías avanzadas como el reconocimiento de caracteres por tinta magnética (MICR) en 1984 y el Sistema de Pagos Electrónicos Interbancarios (SPEI) en 2004. Este trabajo analiza cómo estas innovaciones han mejorado la eficiencia, seguridad y accesibilidad del sistema de pagos, beneficiando a la población mexicana y fortaleciendo la economía nacional. |
| Keywords: | financial technology, payment system, central bank, Mexico tecnología financiera, fintech, sistema de pagos, banco central, México. |
| JEL: | G2 M1 M2 N1 N2 N8 O33 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:129757 |
| By: | Prados de la Escosura, Leandro |
| Abstract: | Recent research confirms that per capita income in early modern Spain improved only marginally overall, while also revealing sustained growth through much of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, alongside a continued decline from the late sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries. These phases shaped Spain’s relative position within Western Europe and contributed to the Reversal of Fortune. This paper finds that labour productivity, proxied by output per working-age population, improved during the first three-quarters of the sixteenth century, then declined until the mid-seventeenth century, and that the subsequent recovery never reached the levels of the 1570s. What caused these episodes of growth and decline: changes in resource endowments or in the efficiency of their use? Phases of labour productivity growth were often driven by factor intensity, but efficiency losses underpinned periods of stagnation or decline, which contradicts the stylised view that factor intensity is the main driver of labour productivity in a pre-industrial economy. Compared with Great Britain, Spain showed an inverse, divergent pattern, moving from similar levels to less than half of Britain's by 1800. Efficiency was the main driver of the widening gap. Ingenuity appears, therefore, to be the driving force behind the Reversal of Fortune. |
| Keywords: | Spain; Britain |
| JEL: | E24 J24 N13 O47 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21503 |
| By: | Brey, Bjorn; Cefala, Edoardo; García-Peñalosa, Cecilia |
| Abstract: | Gender equality and economic growth have historically tended to move together yet identifying causal effects has been difficult. This paper uses data on the support for female suffrage in Switzerland in order to explore the impact of technology adoption on gender norms. We argue that the early adoption of electricity was conducive to local economic development, which in turn led to more egalitarian views on gender. To identify causality, we exploit geographic differences in the potential to generate electricity from waterpower. Our results show that early electricity adoption (by the 1910s) had a lasting impact on municipality vote shares in support of female suffrage in the ground-breaking 1959 referendum. We complement this finding with Cantonal referendums on female voting rights and federal electoral results to show that higher support for female political participation is observed in the data since the 1920s. We then examine how technology may have shaped gender attitudes and find that increased educational investment explains part of the shift. Fertility appears to respond to changing gender norms and reinforce them, but is unlikely the key mechanism in the causal chain. |
| Keywords: | Technological change |
| JEL: | J16 N33 O14 O33 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21271 |
| By: | Christopher Kennedy |
| Abstract: | This paper explains the mechanisms by which a major energy transition produced the US Great Depression. Stock market indices show the 1927-29 Wall Street Bubble was led by petroleum-based technologies--especially airplanes and agricultural machinery. The subsequent crash was triggered by oil discovery. Tractors replacing 32 percent of horses over the course of the 1920s led to a 26 percent increase in the net available farmland for domestic consumption. The oversupply of land lowered farm prices, causing deflation. The deflation was non-uniform, with prices of coal, metals, and building materials--essential for capital formation--rising in real terms. Railroads had hegemonic control over transportation and energy supply; their decline, complicated by technological lock-in, undermined the US financial system, contributing to bank failures. Several statistical tests corroborate the energy transition hypothesis. |
| Keywords: | Great Crash; Wall Street Bubble; Deflation; Coal; Petroleum; Tractors; Airplanes; Railroads |
| JEL: | Q4 N1 N5 N7 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lev:wrkpap:wp_1121 |
| By: | Bignon, Vincent; Mojon, Benoit; Ortiz Serrano, Miguel |
| Abstract: | The severity of financial crises is exacerbated by the lack of international liquidity or the absence of a global lender of last resort. This was evident during the Long Depression (1873–1896), the Great Depression (1929–1936), and, as we show in this paper, during the 1805–1806 crisis that followed the Battle of Trafalgar. The latter took Atlantic trade routes away from Spain and cut off Europe’s access to Latin American silver, the key high-powered money of the time. This silver shortage led the Banque de France to cut lending by nearly 50\% within three months, deliberately tightening credit to hoard specie and restore the value of its bank notes. In turn, no less than 20 Parisian banks failed, credit collapsed and European financial and money markets experienced acute stress, reflected in rising silver prices, pressure on the metallic reserves of other central banks such as the Banco de San Carlos in Madrid, and disruptions in bills of exchange markets across Europe, from Cádiz to Hamburg. The 1805–1806 crisis highlights how a safe asset's status requires both its resilient supply and the credibility of its issuer. |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21466 |
| By: | Albers, Thilo Nils Hendrik; Kersting, Felix; Reiske, Monique |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the political consequences of debt deflation in interwar Germany. Debt deflation arises when falling prices increase the real burden of pre-existing nominal liabilities. We study this mechanism in the agricultural sector, where farmers had accumulated substantial nominal debt before 1929. In the face of collapsing agricultural prices and falling revenues, the high nominal interest burden made this debt unsustainable. To isolate the political effect of this shock, we exploit pre-crisis differences in agricultural debt and product mix across counties to construct a measure of debt deflation intensity. Our main finding is that rural debt deflation substantially increased support for the Nazi party, reflecting substitution away from agrarian and conservative parties. A one-standard-deviation increase in exposure explains a fifth of one standard deviation in the Nazi party vote share rise between 1928 and 1932. The effect persists after controlling for income shortfalls, unemployment, and austerity, indicating that debt deflation drove radicalization independently of concurrent channels. A counterfactual exercise suggests that without debt deflation, the Nazi party's national vote share would have been insufficient to prevent less extreme parties from forming a majority coalition against it, rendering rural debt deflation a plausibly necessary condition for Hitler's rise to power. |
| Keywords: | Debt deflation; Political extremism; Weimar Germany; Nazi party |
| JEL: | N14 N54 D72 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21487 |
| By: | Ifergane, Tomer; Ray, Walker; van der Beek, Karine; Farbman, Lior |
| Abstract: | Land titling is expected to expand credit by making land pledgeable, but isolating this collateral channel empirically is difficult. We utilize English enclosures from 1750-1830 as a laboratory: privatization of "common waste" created newly mortgageable land, in contrast with "open-field" enclosures which largely reorganized already titled arable land. A stylized model with endogenous default predicts that an influx of newly pledgeable waste land lowers equilibrium collateral requirements, generating a local credit expansion but an increase in bankruptcies. Using a newly digitized universe of personal bankruptcies from the London Gazette, we find that the enclosure of common waste led to higher bankruptcies, particularly in industrial areas and during downturns. Bankruptcies are concentrated among industrial occupations with tight cash-flow cycles. In contrast, enclosures of open-field reduce bankruptcies. The results clarify a key collateral channel through which property reforms can deepen credit while increasing defaults. |
| Keywords: | Enclosures; Bankruptcy |
| JEL: | E44 G21 G33 K11 N13 N23 O11 O16 O43 Q15 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21455 |
| By: | Sultan Mehmood; Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak |
| Abstract: | Why do climate shocks produce conflict (Hsiang et al., 2013)? We study the 1970 Bhola cyclone in East Pakistan, one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history, which killed an estimated 350, 000 people. Using satellite imagery, archival records, electoral returns, and insurgent biographies, we show that cyclone exposure amplified pre-existing separatist sentiment at the ballot box and increased citizens’ subsequent participation in guerrilla warfare against the state. Our estimates imply that exposure to the cyclone’s devastation induced an additional 48, 613 insurgents to join the guerrilla war effort. Effects are larger in areas with pre-existing political and economic grievances and weaker relief provision. Our analysis reveals the step-by-step mechanisms through which environmental shocks can produce conflict: they shift voting behavior, expose state indifference, and convert grievance into armed mobilization. |
| JEL: | D74 N45 Q54 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35360 |
| 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. |
| JEL: | E44 G01 G21 G28 N20 O43 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21410 |
| By: | den Besten, Tamar; Barnichon, Regis; Känzig, Diego; Singh, Aayush |
| Abstract: | We study the macroeconomic effects of tariff policy using U.S. historical data from 1840–2024. We construct a narrative series of plausibly exogenous tariff changes – based on major legislative actions, multilateral negotiations, and temporary surcharges – and use it as an instrument to identify a structural tariff shock. Tariff increases are contractionary: imports fall sharply, exports decline with a lag, and output and manufacturing activity drop persistently. The shock transmits through both supply and demand channels. Prices rise in the full sample but fall post-World War II, a pattern consistent with changes in the monetary policy response and with stronger international retaliation and reciprocity in the modern trade regime. |
| Keywords: | Trade policy |
| JEL: | E30 F13 F14 F41 H20 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21381 |
| By: | Ángel Luis González-Esteban (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid (Spain)); Pablo Delgado (Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza (Spain)); Vicente Pinilla (Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza (Spain)) |
| Abstract: | Food regimes (FRs) are rule-governed structures of production and consumption of food on a global scale. They comprise two principal elements: the institutional framework, which includes the degree of state regulation and the forms that national and international agricultural policies adopt, and the economic organization, encompassing the global distribution of food production, consumption, and trade, as well as the international allocation of labor and capital. According to these variables, historiography generally distinguishes between a 1st FR during the First Globalization (approximately between 1860 and 1914) and a 2nd FR in the decades following World War II (1947 to the 1970s). It has been argued that these regimes were mirror images concerning trade regulation and the direction of grain trade flows, as the first would have been characterized by free trade and grain flows from the periphery to the core, while the second would have been marked by significant state regulation and grain flowing from the core to the periphery. The characterization of these two regimes regarding the direction of trade flows was, however, overly focused on staple grains (mainly wheat). This article utilizes data from the International Institute of Agriculture and the FAO to broaden the product coverage and systematically study the transformations in international agricultural trade over this period. The analysis contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the idea of a “flip” in the direction of trade flows between the two regimes. |
| Keywords: | Food Regimes, Agricultural International Trade, First Globalization |
| JEL: | F14 N50 N70 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ahe:dtaehe:2602 |
| By: | Torben S. D. Johansen (University of Southern Denmark); Julius Koschnick (University of Southern Denmark); Christian Vedel (University of Southern Denmark) |
| Abstract: | Machine learning (ML) has rapidly transformed economic history, lowering costs of digitization, data linkage, and imputation, and making information in historical text usable at scale. This paper offers a practical guide to using these tools well. However, ML tools have also created new problems. Prediction errors are often systematically correlated with covariates of interest, so even highly accurate models can distort and sometimes reverse coefficients, and standard validation cannot detect this. Given that ML tools often perform worse for historical data, this problem is especially severe for the field of economic history. We also identify a solution to this problem. We show that recent debiasing methods can correct such bias for a wide class of applications, using a small, randomly sampled set of expert-coded labels while retaining the efficiency of large-scale prediction. We organize the field with a taxonomy of three ML tasks, survey the literature along it, and indicate where debiasing applies and where validation against proxies remains the only recourse. We close with best-practice guidance on digitization, model choice, and reproducibility. |
| Keywords: | Machine learning, Large language models, bias correction, economic history |
| JEL: | N01 C55 C80 C81 C82 C45 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0306 |
| By: | Costas Arkolakis (Yale University and NBER); Sun Kyoung Lee (University of Michigan); Michael Peters (Yale University and NBER) |
| Abstract: | Between 1880 and 1920, more than 20 million immigrants settled in the United States. We study how this migration wave affected innovation and growth. Using a newly constructed dataset linking individual census records to historical immigration records and the universe of US patents, we highlight a new channel through which immigrants contributed to growth: they disproportionately settled in urban innovation hubs. To quantify the aggregate and regional effects of this mass migration episode, we develop a new spatial growth model in which skilled workers have a comparative advantage in innovation and sort endogenously across space. We find that international arrivals after 1880 raised US income per capita by 8.2% by 1940. Removing the subsequent immigration restrictions of the 1920s would have raised income per capita by a further 1.7% by 2000. Immigrants' skill composition and their concentration in urban hubs are key drivers of these effects. |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2538 |
| By: | Huybers, Peter; Tabellini, Marco; Taylor, Charles A.; Toti, Francesco |
| Abstract: | What factors drove human migration before modern states, markets, and borders? We develop a framework of ecological sorting in which climate-specific subsistence knowledge depreciates with ecological distance. To test this, we use ancient DNA identity-by-descent segments to construct bilateral migration flows across Western Eurasia over the last 10, 000 years. We document four main findings. First, migration flows decline with differences in growing degree days, precipitation, and soil characteristics between origins and destinations. Second, the dimensions of climate that bind vary across subsistence systems: farmers exhibit strong thermal and soil matching, while pastoralists match most strongly on precipitation---consistent with differential ecological constraints and limiting factors. Third, periods of warming increase farmer expansion while cooling increases pastoral expansion in patterns that recover known archaeological migration episodes. Migration also acts as a margin of climate adaptation: populations exposed to temperature change move to destinations that partly offset the shift. Fourth, genetic flow predicts subsequent convergence in destination vegetation toward migrants’ ecological profiles, consistent with migration shaping landscape change and the demic diffusion of subsistence practices. |
| Keywords: | climate |
| JEL: | N50 O13 Q54 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21495 |
| By: | Kenny, Sean; Stuart, Rebecca |
| Abstract: | We construct estimates of quarterly GDP (and GNP) for Ireland from 1950, linking to official data from 1995 onward, using a novel factor-augmented Chow-Lin interpolation. Compared to the only alternative series (OECD, 2025), our estimates exploit the variation in a large number of official quarterly economic data and are broadly consistent with contemporary reports. Our series permits a more granular identification of turning points in the Irish economy than was previously possible. The frequency and magnitude of quarterly contractions in the 1950s and 1980s dwarfed those of other decades resulting in lower average growth rates. In contrast, the 1990s are confirmed as a decisive period of higher growth and rapid convergence. |
| JEL: | E01 N14 O47 O40 P44 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21403 |
| By: | Freeman, Laurie A. |
| Abstract: | UC early undegraduate women |
| Keywords: | Arts and Humanities |
| Date: | 2026–07–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:cshedu:qt0t0876r1 |
| By: | Albers, Thilo Nils Hendrik; Nützenadel, Alexander; Scheib, Tobias |
| Abstract: | The regulatory cycle view suggests that periods of deregulation encourage increased risk-taking, which in turn leads to financial crises and subsequent re-regulation. To test this proposition, we develop a novel 10-item index capturing prudential and structural banking regulation across 14 countries over the past century. We find that deregulation is indeed associated with heightened risk appetite and credit expansion. However, the regulatory response to financial crises has changed significantly over time. Consistent with the financial trilemma, the evidence suggests that the cycle has weakened, as open capital accounts are increasingly incompatible with effective regulation at the national level. |
| JEL: | F68 G18 G28 N10 N40 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21419 |
| By: | Heblich, Stephan; Seror, Marlon; Xu, Hao; Zylberberg, Yanos |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of large, successful manufacturing plants on other local producers in China, focusing on “Million-Rouble Plants†built in the 1950s during a brief alliance with the U.S.S.R. The ephemeral geopolitical situation and the locations of allied and enemy airbases provide exogenous variation in plant siting. We find a boom-and-bust pattern: Counties hosting these plants were 80% more productive than control counties in 1982 but 20% less productive by 2010. This decline reflects the performance of local establishments, which exhibit low productivity, limited innovation, and high markup. Specialization hindered spillovers, preventing the emergence of new clusters and local entrepreneurship. |
| Keywords: | Specialization; Place-based policies; Spillovers |
| JEL: | R11 R53 J24 N95 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21527 |
| By: | de Pleijt, Alexandra; Koschnick, Julius; Wallis, Patrick |
| Abstract: | We provide evidence that education contributed to England’s Industrial Revolution by increasing upper-tail human capital. Contrary to the prevailing view that schooling was irrelevant to early industrialization, we show that the expansion of schooling lowered barriers to entering apprenticeships in skill-intensive trades. We introduce new parish-level data on 3, 000 school foundations, 46, 000 charitable bequests, and 350, 000 apprenticeship contracts between 1711 and 1805. Using a staggered difference-in-differences design exploiting educational endowments through wills, we show that the expansion of schooling increased apprenticeship training, particularly in occupations requiring reading, writing, and mathematical skills that were crucial for the Industrial Revolution. |
| Keywords: | Education; Skill formation; Human capital; Innovation; Industrial revolution |
| JEL: | N13 I21 J24 O14 O33 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21279 |
| By: | Ager, Philipp; Coluccia, Davide |
| Abstract: | This paper provides novel evidence on how technological change shaped women's labor market participation, fertility, and marriage in 19th-century Massachusetts. We distinguish between the sewing machine's dual role as a manufacturing technology and as a household appliance. Using rich town- and individual-level longitudinal data, we show that this innovation induced divergent responses across the wealth distribution. Women from lower-wealth households increased labor supply, delaying marriage and reducing fertility. In contrast, for wealthier women, the sewing machine functioned as a domestic efficiency tool, enabling earlier family formation and greater civic engagement while reducing market work. Our findings demonstrate how household constraints and social norms mediate the effects of labor-saving technologies, suggesting that technological progress can reinforce inequality by influencing women's economic and social roles. |
| Keywords: | Technology; Gender; Female labor force participation; Fertility |
| JEL: | J13 J16 N31 N61 O33 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21496 |
| By: | Cervellati, Matteo; Lazzaroni, Sara; Marciante, Gianni; Masella, Paolo |
| Abstract: | The roots of sustained growth in England are increasingly located in the period from the Scientific Revolution to the Age of the Enlightenment. Productivity increases have been suggestively linked to the development of communication infrastructures and the diffusion of useful knowledge. In this paper, we isolate the empirical impact of the evolution of the postal system in England and Wales over the period 1570-1769 on interpersonal communication exchanges in the context of the Republic of Letters. We exploit a quasi-natural experiment due to a postal system reform leading to the opening of the pre-existing network to the public in 1635. We build a novel geo-referenced database involving about 56, 000 letters by roughly 9, 000 correspondents. Using difference-in-differences, we show that the reform led to a substantial increase in interpersonal communications. The main findings are confirmed by event-study analyses and an instrumental-variables strategy, bolstering confidence in a causal interpretation of our estimates. Looking at the patterns of interactions, we detect a sizable intensification of communications between scholars and professionals. We collect the content of around 30, 000 letters, classify their topics exploiting unsupervised text analysis, and detect a sizable impact of the reform on the evolution of communications related to useful knowledge. Finally, drawing on biographical data, we document the effects on innovation activities. Taken together, the findings provide the first systematic evidence of the role of the postal system for the rise of the Knowledge Economy in England on its way to the Industrial Revolution in the early modern period. |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21550 |
| By: | Motonori Ishii (Waseda University, Graduate School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this paper is to reinterpret F. A. Hayek's theory of prices within the context of British classical economics (hereinafter referred to as "the Classical School"). Although Hayek hailed from the Austrian School, which was founded on a critique of the Classical School, he viewed modern economics—from the Marginal Revolution onward—as an economics in which subjectivism had been grafted onto the Classical School. In fact, Hayek reinterpreted the concept of the "natural price" in the Classical School—a price determined in light of social and historical circumstances and converging toward that level through competition. Hayek interpreted this as a system of negative feedback and recognized Smith as its pioneer. Hayek's interest lay in elucidating why markets move toward equilibrium even though people possess only fragmentary and unsystematized knowledge; he identified conventions—which stabilize people's expectations—as the key factor. Hayek defended the natural price as a price supported by convention, and in that sense, his theory of prices owes much to Smith's theory of the natural price. |
| Keywords: | Hayek, Classical Economics, Austrian School, Marginal Revolution, Natural Price |
| JEL: | B12 B13 B31 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wap:wpaper:2608 |
| By: | Tuncer, Ali Coskun |
| Abstract: | Using a monthly security-level dataset, this paper reconstructs market size, composition, and equity returns for Alexandria, Cairo, and Istanbul. By 1913, equity capitalization reached 40% of GDP in Egypt but 14% in Ottoman Turkey. Growth came through new issuance rather than price appreciation, while risk-adjusted returns were low. Istanbul returns co-moved more strongly with London, reflecting foreign-incorporated mining and banking firms linked to international capital markets, while Egypt’s larger market was concentrated in land and mortgage finance tied to its cotton economy. The findings show that legal regimes governing foreign capital shaped how peripheral exchanges interacted with global financial markets. |
| Keywords: | Stock market capitalization |
| JEL: | N25 G15 F65 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21520 |
| By: | Horn, Sebastian; Reinhart, Carmen; Trebesch, Christoph |
| Abstract: | States are major international financiers, but their role is poorly understood. We study state-driven cross-border lending over two centuries using a new database covering 1.2 million official loans and grants by 134 governments and 70 multilateral institutions since 1790. We document a dual, state-contingent structure of international credit. In normal times, private creditors dominate cross-border lending. In adverse states of the world, such as wars and financial crises, official creditors step in, at times on a massive scale. These official flows are driven by great powers, are highly subsidized, and are largely absent from canonical models in international macroeconomics. |
| Keywords: | Sovereign debt; Capital flows; Financial crises; Bailouts; War finance; Disaster risk |
| JEL: | E42 F33 F34 F35 F36 G01 G20 N1 N2 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21556 |
| By: | Cermeño, Alexandra L.; Quintigliano, Alessandra; Weisdorf, Jacob |
| Abstract: | Africa’s historical borderlands are persistently associated with low levels of economic development. This paper examines how these regions respond to development interventions, asking how much the long-run development advantage associated with colonial Christian missions attenuates near the borders. Combining georeferenced data on 3, 365 pioneering mission stations with high-resolution satellite night-time luminosity data, we show that the positive association between proximity to missionary activity and contemporary economic development weakens sharply near the borders. This result is robust across a wide range of specifications and is corroborated by evidence from Demographic and Health Surveys on household wealth and human capital |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21364 |
| By: | Noémie Lacroix (CIHAM - Histoire, Archéologie et Littératures des mondes chrétiens et musulmans médiévaux - ENS de Lyon - École normale supérieure de Lyon - Université de Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - UJML - Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3 - Université de Lyon - AU - Avignon Université - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Jean-Paul Rehr (CIHAM - Histoire, Archéologie et Littératures des mondes chrétiens et musulmans médiévaux - ENS de Lyon - École normale supérieure de Lyon - Université de Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - UJML - Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3 - Université de Lyon - AU - Avignon Université - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, UNITO - Università degli studi di Torino = University of Turin); Leif Scheuermann |
| Keywords: | Medieval history, fairs, merchants, digital humanities |
| Date: | 2025–03–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05649921 |
| By: | Albers, Thilo Nils Hendrik; Kersting, Felix; Stieglitz, Timo |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how industrialization shaped wealth, its distribution, and elite composition in Prussia, using novel county wealth-tax records and individual-level millionaire data. To identify the effect of industrialization, we instrument industrial employment with proximity to carboniferous strata. More industrialized counties were wealthier, but the gains mainly accrued to the top 1 percent; they were also more unequal and less dominated by nobles at the top. Millionaire-level returns by asset type reveal a rate-of-return mechanism behind rising wealth concentration: industrial wealth earned higher, more dispersed, and scale-dependent returns than agricultural wealth. Differential entry into industrial ownership drove elite turnover. |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21362 |
| By: | Emilio Ocampo |
| Abstract: | This paper evaluates a largely overlooked thesis developed by Juan Bautista Alberdi of Argentina’s 19th-century economic development using econometric time-series methods. Annual series of GDP per capita, export performance, and monthly London prices of bonds issued by the Republic of Argentina and the Province of Buenos Aires are used to test whether major institutional events in 1853, 1862, and 1880 correspond to statistically significant structural changes in economic performance and sovereign credit risk. The results provide consistent evidence of institutional turning points consistent with Alberdi’s thesis and challenge conventional interpretations that identify the early 1860s as the start of Argentina’s convergence to the Western Offshoots. |
| JEL: | N16 N26 N46 O43 P16 F14 C22 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cem:doctra:924 |
| By: | Reka Juhasz (UBC, NBER, CEPR); David Krisztian Nagy (CREI, CEPR); Claudia Steinwender (LMU Munich, CEPR); Woan Foong Wong (University of Oregon, NBER, CEPR) |
| Abstract: | Maritime transport remains the backbone of global trade, yet the port and shipping network that carries it has been transformed by containerization and related technological advances. Drawing on newly available granular data—digitized historical shipping records, georeferenced ship movements, and shipment-level routing information—we present five stylized facts on the structure and evolution of the maritime network. Global shipping activity is highly concentrated among a changing lineup of dominant top ports even as lower-ranked ports disperse, while state-owned Chinese port terminal operators increasingly account for these global volumes, boosting overall port operations while delivering efficiency gains mostly to Chinese vessels. We use these facts to organize a synthesis of a fast-growing literature: containerization reshaped which port cities could expand, reinforced hub-and-spoke concentration that yields large but localized welfare gains, embedded ports in multimodal networks that amplify the returns to infrastructure, and generated market power, congestion, and environmental costs. Together, this evidence shows how evolving maritime technologies simultaneously deepen global integration and heighten the economic and geopolitical importance of critical nodes in the transport network—and of who controls them. |
| Keywords: | transport networks; ports; international trade; trade costs; containerization; geoeconomics; |
| JEL: | F13 F14 R41 R42 |
| Date: | 2026–07–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:579 |
| By: | Bhusal, Bhishma; Callen, Michael; Pande, Rohini; Prillaman, Soledad; Singhania, Deepak; Subedi, Apurva |
| Abstract: | How does wartime rebel governance shape post-conflict institutions? We study this in Nepal, where the Maoist People's War (1996–2006) dismantled a 240-year caste-based monarchy and ended with Maoists entering democratic politics. During the conflict, Maoists established sub-national ``People’s Governments" that administered justice, collected taxes, and delivered local services. Using a spatial regression-discontinuity design, we show that exposure to People's Governments increased political knowledge and participation especially among historically marginalized indigenous groups (Janajatis). Exposure also reshaped party institutions and inter-party competition: candidate-selection committees in more exposed areas have 26 percent more Janajati members who, drawing on novel implicit-attitude data, exhibit less pro-upper caste bias. Non-Maoist parties' Janajati nomination rates nearly double in fully exposed areas, consistent with competition for newly mobilized voters. Nearly two decades on, local governments in exposed areas score 0.2–0.3 standard deviations higher on state capacity indices and receive 13 percent more in conditional federal grants. These findings show that when rebel groups enter competitive democratic politics, wartime governance institutions can — through citizen mobilization, party gatekeeping, and cross-party competition — enable a more inclusive and capable post-war state. |
| Keywords: | Conflict; Political selection; State capacity; Institutions; Nepal |
| JEL: | D72 O17 H11 D73 O12 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21532 |
| By: | den Besten, Tamar; Känzig, Diego |
| Abstract: | We study the macroeconomic effects of tariff policy using U.S. historical data from 1840–2024. We construct a narrative series of plausibly exogenous tariff changes – based on major legislative actions, multilateral negotiations, and temporary surcharges – and use it as an instrument to identify a structural tariff shock. Tariff increases are contractionary: imports fall sharply, exports decline with a lag, and output and manufacturing activity drop persistently. The shock transmits through both supply and demand channels. Prices rise in the full sample but fall post-World War II, a pattern consistent with changes in the monetary policy response and with stronger international retaliation and reciprocity in the modern trade regime. |
| Keywords: | Trade policy |
| JEL: | E30 F13 F14 F41 H20 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21354 |
| By: | Doepke, Matthias; Foerster, Hanno; Hannusch, Anne; Tertilt, Michèle |
| Abstract: | During the first half of the twentieth century, many US states enacted laws restricting women's labor market opportunities, including maximum hours restrictions, minimum wage laws, and night-shift bans. The era of so-called protective labor laws came to an end in the 1960s as a result of civil rights reforms. In this paper, we investigate the political economy behind the rise and fall of these laws. We argue that the main driver behind protective labor laws was men's desire to shield themselves from labor market competition. We spell out the mechanism through a politico-economic model in which singles and couples work in different sectors and vote on protective legislation. Restrictions are supported by single men and couples with male sole earners who compete with women for jobs. We show that the theory's predictions for when protective legislation will be introduced are well supported by US state-level evidence. |
| JEL: | D13 D72 D78 E24 J12 J16 N30 O10 O43 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21284 |
| By: | Alex Amiotte Suchet (IDHES - Institutions et Dynamiques Historiques de l'Économie et de la Société - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - UP8 - Université Paris 8 - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - UEVE - Université d'Évry-Val-d'Essonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - ENS Paris Saclay - Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay) |
| Abstract: | Contemporary economic policies have become increasingly reliant on lending and guarantee instruments managed by public banks. Does this trend signal a return of the state, or rather the financialisation of public action? This article explores the long- term institutional transformations of public SME financing in France, analysing the evolving roles of finance, businesses and the state. Drawing on historical institutionalism and the political economy of financialisation, it examines both the creation and the gradual financialisation of the institutional arrangement governing public SME financing. Based on extensive sources – 108 archive boxes, additional historical materials, and ten semi-structured interviews – the study traces the emergence of a financialised institutional arrangement that has underpinned French economic policy since the late 1990s. Initially centred on public guarantees developed in the interwar period, the introduction of public loans in the 1980s produced a fragile arrangement that ultimately facilitated financialisation through the integration of financial devices and actors. This periodisation based on valuation powers helps to explain the recent conjunction of renewed public intervention and the consolidation of financialisation dynamics. |
| Abstract: | Les politiques économiques contemporaines s'appuient de plus en plus sur des instruments de crédit et de garantie gérés par les banques publiques. Cette tendance marque-t-elle un retour de l'État ou plutôt la financiarisation des politiques publiques ? Cet article explore le changement institutionnel de long terme du financement public des PME en France, en analysant l'évolution des rôles respectifs de la finance, des entreprises et de l'État. Avec l'institutionnalisme historique et l'économie politique de la financiarisation, il étudie à la fois la création et la financiarisation progressive de l'arrangement institutionnel régissant le financement public des PME. S'appuyant sur des sources historiques – 108 boîtes d'archives, des documents historiques supplémentaires et dix entretiens semi-structurés –, l'enquête retrace l'émergence d'un dispositif institutionnel financiarisé qui sous-tend la politique économique française depuis la fin des années 1990. Initialement centré sur les garanties publiques mises en place pendant l'entre-deux-guerres, l'introduction des prêts publics dans les années 1980 a donné naissance à un arrangement fragile qui a finalement facilité la financiarisation par l'intégration de dispositifs et d'acteurs financiers. Cette périodisation fondée sur les pouvoirs de valorisation permet d'expliquer la conjonction récente entre une intervention publique renouvelée et la consolidation des dynamiques de financiarisation. |
| Keywords: | financialisation, institutional change, institutional arrangement, public financing, public banks |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05330715 |
| By: | Juan Carlos De Pablo |
| Abstract: | Para muchos economistas, el principal mensaje que surge de la Riqueza de las naciones es la mano invisible. Pero en esta monografía me ocupo de la división del trabajo porque al comienzo de un escrito un autor suele plantear la cuestión más importante. No solo la puso al comienzo de la Riqueza de las Naciones, sino que por sus implicancias pienso que Adam Smith se hubiera inmortalizado igual, aunque no hubiera luego hablado de la mano invisible, de la falta de benevolencia del carnicero, etc. La primera sección de esta monografía plantea la sustancia del hallazgo descripto por Adam Smith en las primeras páginas de la Riqueza de las naciones, por el cual merece ser recordado 250 años después. La segunda sección se ocupa de otros aspectos referidos a esta obra. |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cem:doctra:921 |
| By: | Doepke, Matthias; Klasing, Mariko |
| Abstract: | Children and their parents resemble each other in terms of economic preferences such as patience and risk tolerance. What drives the intergenerational correlation in preferences? We build a model of preference formation that combines genetic transmission, state influence through childcare institutions, and altruistic parental socialization, where parents seek to endow children with preferences conducive to success. To assess the importance of these channels, we exploit German reunification as a natural experiment that simultaneously removed state indoctrination and transformed economic incentives. For risk tolerance-a trait with arguably high returns during a rapid transition to a market economy-parent-child correlations decline by more than a third among East German families after reunification, consistent with parents actively instilling new values in their children to prepare them for capitalism. For trust and patience, correlations rise as the state withdraws and socialization in the family looms larger. These contrasting patterns suggest that parents do not just aim to reproduce their own preferences but adapt their socialization effort to the world their children will face. |
| Keywords: | Intergenerational preference transmission; Cultural transmission; Cultural change; German reunification; Risk tolerance; Family economics |
| JEL: | D10 I20 J13 Z10 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21307 |
| By: | Benjamin Milner (University of Alberta) |
| Abstract: | This paper breaks new ground in tracing the effects of historical child labour reform from childhood through to adulthood. I first show that by decreasing the opportunity cost and increasing the returns to schooling, Britain’s 1860 Mining Act led to increased human capital acquisition among the children of coal miners. Then, using full-count census records linked across decades, I demonstrate that positive effects extended well into adulthood, as these same children became significantly more likely to obtain high skill, human capital-intensive occupations. |
| Keywords: | Child Labour; Education; UK; Resource Industry; Compulsory Schooling |
| JEL: | N13 N33 I28 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:albaec:023032 |
| By: | Koyama, Mark |
| Abstract: | Adam Smith's account of medieval towns in Book III of The Wealth of Nations remains one of the most influential analyses of how commerce transformed feudal Europe. This paper formalizes Smith's argument as a game between kings, lords, and towns. The king-town alliance emphasized by Adam Smith emerges when towns are wealthy enough to offer fiscal and military support but lords remain a serious threat. However, when kings become excessively predatory, towns may ally with lords (as in the Magna Carta crisis); when towns are too weak to offer substantial support, kings ally with lords instead (as in Eastern Europe). A dynamic extension shows that the king-town equilibrium is self-undermining: commercial growth erodes lordly military power through Smith's ``diamond buckles'' mechanism, eventually enabling royal absolutism. In contrast, the king-lords equilibrium is self-reinforcing, suppressing urban development and preserving feudal institutions. The framework highlights how small differences in initial urban development could generate dramatically different long-run trajectories and illuminates both the brilliance and the limitations of Smith's conjectural history. |
| Keywords: | Institutions; Economic history |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21458 |
| By: | Giuliano, Paola |
| 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. |
| Keywords: | Cultural norms; Cultural evolution; Historical persistence |
| JEL: | Z1 P0 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21401 |
| By: | Mitchener, Kris; Pina, Gonçalo |
| 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. |
| JEL: | H63 N14 E43 E65 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21425 |
| By: | Heldring, Leander; Kedrosky, Davis; Robinson, James A.; Weigand, Matthias |
| 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. |
| Keywords: | Government; Public goods; State capacity; Bureaucracy; England |
| JEL: | H11 H41 N43 N44 N13 D73 H50 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21460 |
| By: | Ray Barrell; Shama Bernard; Dilruba Karim; Iana Liadze |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the causes of crises over the post war period in 14 OECD economies. We look first at the definition of crises and survey the literature on the links between credit growth and crises over the last 100 years or so. We then examine the determinants of financial crises in market economies, stressing the roles of bank capital, banking structure, property prices and current account deficits in the post Bretton Woods era. We look at the role of credit growth in crisis determination and note that it is present in the post Bretton Woods era. We argue that increases in capital ratios would systematically reduce the risk of crisis incidence in market economies over the next few years. We test for the interaction between capital and bank cash in the determination of crises, and the causality between house price growth and credit growth. A longer‐term analysis of the post‐war period is undertaken, and our core results on the importance of bank capital reserves are upheld. |
| Keywords: | Financial Stability, Banking Crises, Macroprudential Policy |
| JEL: | E44 G01 G18 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nsr:niesrd:579 |
| By: | Chenard, Antonin; Eichengreen, Barry; Monnet, Eric; Morvillier, Florian |
| Abstract: | We analyze an aspect of the international monetary system that has been the subject of little research: the distinction between foreign exchange reserves held as deposits and held as securities. We assemble new data for 109 countries in the period 1950-2022 based on previously unutilized statistics from central bank annual reports. We show that there has been movement since the late 1990s toward holding a larger share of reserves in the form of securities. Securities now account for almost two-thirds of total foreign exchange reserves, up from one-third a quarter century ago. This shift is concentrated in the decade between the emerging market crises of the late 1990s and the 2008 global financial crisis. It is associated with the accumulation of excess reserves, what central bank reserve managers refer to as the †investment tranche†of their reserve portfolios. |
| Keywords: | International monetary system; Foreign exchange reserves |
| JEL: | F30 F31 F33 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21488 |
| By: | Guichardaz Remy; Pénin Julien |
| Abstract: | In Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Schumpeter famously predicts the likely replacement of capitalism by socialism and claims that a socialist economy could be perfectly workable. While most commentators have interpreted the book as a neutral or even favorable assessment of socialism’s feasibility, a few of them have noted the ironic tone that pervades parts of the book. Yet, the implications of this irony for Schumpeter’s assessment of socialism remain largely unexplored. This article argues that Schumpeter’s apparent defense of socialism is best understood as a sustained ironic demonstration designed to expose the limits of socialist planning rather than to endorse its superiority over capitalism. Drawing on concepts that lie at the heart of Schumpeter’s theoretical framework, notably the distinction between growth and development, the opposition between perfect competition and plausible capitalism, and the central role of the entrepreneur in the emergence of novelty, we show that Schumpeter could not consistently maintain that a socialist economy would be capable of reproducing the developmental performance of capitalism. Behind an explicit but mostly ironic claim asserting the viability of socialism, CSD provides in fact a demonstration that socialism cannot match capitalism’s ability to generate the stream of discontinuous innovations that constitute economic development. |
| Keywords: | Schumpeter, entrepreneur, capitalism, socialism, development, growth |
| JEL: | B15 B25 O3 P3 P5 P41 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2026-19 |
| By: | Jaremski, Matthew (Department of Economics and Finance, Huntsman School of Business, Utah State University & NBER); Mitchener, Kris James (Department of Economics, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University, NBER, CEPR, CESifo & CAGE); Rieder, Kilian (Economics and Research Department, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Eurosystem) & CEPR. Otto-Wagner Platz 3, 1090 Vienna, Austria) |
| Abstract: | Firms often rebrand to counter negative shocks, but can it work? Using a historical natural experiment, we analyse a large sample of companies from the same industry (banking) that shared very similar names, but overwhelmingly decided to change them in response to a common, negative news shock. U.S. entry into World War I in 1917 created a sudden anti-German backlash against anything that invoked an association with the now enemy. The shock itself was thus orthogonal to bank fundamentals and pre-existing trends, but pushed banks to reconsider their brands. After 1917, the few German-named banks that kept their tainted names saw significant declines in assets, deposits, and market share relative to other banks. However, German-named banks that rebranded mitigated much of the negative shock. Specifically, German-named banks that adopted a new non-ethnic brand name avoided between 75% and 85% of the anti-German effect, and those that adopted a new patriotic brand name were able to neutralize it completely. Overall, we find that "crisis rebranding" paid off in our historical setting regardless of the chosen brand, with patriotic rebranding proving the most effective at offsetting the exogenous shock. |
| Keywords: | Corporate brands, brand management, brand equity, news shocks, reputation, World War I, commercial banks, patriotism JEL Classification: D22, G21, L25, M31, N12 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:812 |
| By: | Hatton, Tim |
| Abstract: | Late nineteenth-century globalisation was fostered by falling transport costs in ocean shipping as average freight rates fell by about half. The literature has emphasised the importance of progress in steamship technology in explaining this trend. Passenger fares did not share this long run decline even though passenger ships incorporated the same technological advances as those carrying goods. For passenger shipping, increasing space per passenger and improving quality of service absorbed much of the gains from technological progress. From the late 1880s cartels set minimum fares and established market sharing pools, which encouraged the shipping lines to compete on quality. |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21549 |
| By: | Melillo, Andrea; Pascali, Luigi; Prem, Mounu; Trento, Francesca Asja |
| Abstract: | What role did the Republic of Letters play in Europe’s transition to sustained innovation? We combine a corpus of digitized correspondence within the Republic of Letters with European aristocratic genealogies, historical postal routes, and a database of notable individuals to trace the diffusion and consequences of Enlightenment correspondence between 1600 and 1850. We first show that the Republic spread, in part, through aristocratic kinship networks: aristocrats connected to already participating peers entered earlier, and their probability of entry declined sharply with network distance. To isolate a causal channel, we exploit changes in postal distances along pre-existing kinship paths to already-inoculated aristocrats, while controlling directly for local postal access. We then aggregate this variation to European grid cells and estimate the effect of exposure to the Republic on the rise of applied science, innovation, and economic activity. Cells instrumented into the Republic experienced a near- doubling in applied scientists and inventors roughly three decades after first contact, with no pre-trends and effects concentrated in scientific and technical correspondence rather than religion or philosophy. |
| JEL: | N13 O31 O33 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21562 |
| By: | François Facchini (UP1 UFR02 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - École d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | History, and historians, strive to separate the wheat from the chaff. This exercise is commendable, but one must avoid errors in classification, lest one reject the wheat and retain only the chaff. When attempting to distinguish progressive intellectuals, who move with the times, from those who oppose social progress by defending the strong against the weak, immorality against morality, and self-interest against the common good, it is best to avoid mistakes. This article aims to correct such errors. It recalls, as is fairly well known, Keynes's openly eugenicist positions and refutes the rumors of racialism surrounding James Buchanan, based on work recently published in the journal Public Choice. |
| Abstract: | L'Histoire, et les historiens, s'emploient à séparer le bon grain de l'ivraie. L'exercice est louable mais encore faut-il ne pas se tromper dans les classements sous peine de rejeter le bon grain et de ne garder que l'ivraie. Lorsque l'on prétend distinguer les intellectuels progressistes, qui vont dans le sens de l'histoire, des intellectuels qui s'opposent au progrès social en défendant les forts contre les faibles, l'immoralité contre la moralité, l'intérêt égoïste contre le bien commun, mieux vaut ne pas faire d'erreur. Ce sont de telles erreurs que cet article entend corriger. Il rappelle, ce qui est assez bien connu, les positions ouvertement eugénistes de Keynes et dément les rumeurs de racialisme de James Buchanan sur la base de travaux publiés récemment dans la revue Public Choice à ce sujet. |
| Keywords: | Racialism, Corporatism, Eugenism, Keynes, Corporatisme, Eugenisme, Buchanan, Racialisme |
| Date: | 2025–10–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cesptp:hal-05598689 |
| By: | Antonie, Luiza; Inwood, Kris; Minns, Chris; Summerfield, Fraser |
| Abstract: | This paper uses linked Census records from 1871 to 1901 to compute intergenerational mobility for Canadian regions and census divisions. The results reveal sharp differences in mobility over space: Ontario featured high relative and absolute mobility, Quebec low relative and absolute mobility and the Maritimes low absolute mobility. Local differences in human capital endowments and labour market inequality are correlated with division mobility patterns but do not account for regional differences, where migration and structural change toward industry and services appear important. Comparing spatial patterns of Canadian mobility in the 19th century to today shows substantial changes for Quebec districts. |
| JEL: | J62 N31 |
| Date: | 2026–06–21 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:138720 |