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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
| By: | William H. Lazonick |
| Abstract: | In my research on innovative enterprise and sustainable prosperity, I use the "theory of innovative enterprise" to examine how modes of corporate finance--founder investments, private placements, initial public offerings, retained earnings, secondary stock issues, employee stock options, short-term debt, long-term debt, and derivatives--support or undermine the three social conditions of innovative enterprise: strategic control, organizational integration, and financial commitment. In this paper, I focus on the role of the stock market in corporate finance, arguing that, in the United States, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the National Association of Security Dealers Automated Quotation (NASDAQ) system have functioned far more as value-extracting institutions (draining issuer companies of cash distributed to shareholders) than as value-creating institutions (providing issuer companies with cash to invest in productive capabilities). As an important example, I delve into how Apple, Inc. transformed from one of the most innovative companies in history to one the most financialized ones, reflecting a widespread change in the US economy from corporate innovation to corporate financialization. The stock market has become an institution that supports "predatory value extraction"--most impactfully manifested by the phenomenon of stock buybacks completed as open-market share repurchases. I conclude with brief statements on three major lessons related to economic ideology, economic performance, and economic policy that one can learn from my study of corporate finance in the theory of innovative enterprise. |
| Keywords: | Innovative enterprise; strategic control; organizational integration; financial commitment; corporate financialization; stock buybacks; Apple Inc. |
| JEL: | D2 D3 D46 G3 N22 O3 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lev:wrkpap:wp_1113 |
| By: | Samuel J. Hempel; JP Perez-Sangimino; Jessie Jiaxu Wang |
| Abstract: | The expansion of stablecoins has moved digital payment tokens from the periphery of financial markets to the center of policy discussions. With a global market capitalization in the mid-hundreds of billions of dollars and annual settlement volumes in the trillions as of 2025, stablecoins are increasingly viewed not merely as crypto‐market infrastructure but as potential competitors to traditional transaction accounts, particularly in payment processing, settlement functionality, and as short-term stores of value for transaction balances. |
| Date: | 2026–05–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgfn:103193 |
| By: | Gilles Paché (CERGAM - Centre d'Études et de Recherche en Gestion d'Aix-Marseille - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - UTLN - Université de Toulon) |
| Abstract: | The 1956 film If All the Guys in the World vividly illuminates the enduring importance of coordination, autonomy, and flexibility in the performance of distributed systems. Based on a true story, the plot demonstrates how a network of dispersed actors, even with limited technology, can achieve notable efficiency when each node acts independently while adhering to implicit conventions and collective coordination. The rescue of a fishing vessel crew, facing certain death after being poisoned, provides a compelling parallel with contemporary architectures, from cloud computing to adaptive supply chains, where resilience, redundancy, and responsiveness are indispensable. The article's originality lies in interpreting the film as a source of inspiration for modern engineering, showing that efficient distributed systems depend as much on human judgment and cooperative action as on technical infrastructures. |
| Keywords: | Autonomy, Collaboration, Distributed systems, Engineering, Human-driven coordination, Responsiveness, Amateur radio (HAM) operator |
| Date: | 2026–05–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05608994 |
| By: | Valenzuela-Rivera, Luis; Pastén, Roberto |
| Abstract: | Thirty years ago, Ecological Economics published a brief article by the Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef in which he proposed a ``threshold hypothesis'': there is a GDP level after which economic growth may lead to a deterioration in the quality of life rather than its improvement. Does the hypothesis stand to the new and better data available? This paper addresses this question. First, it provides methodological clarifications which are relevant to the testing of the hypothesis, which have so far overlooked in the literature. Key is that the hypothesis as defined by Max-Neef is not really testable, so a weaker version is proposed. Second, in light of these clarifications, we test this weaker version using all ISEW data available to date, as well as life satisfaction data. Neither indicator supports the threshold hypothesis. Empirical caveats remain in place, particularly in the lack of coherence across ISEW/GPI studies. Many gaps remain for further research. |
| Keywords: | Threshold Hypothesis; ISEW; GPI; Life satisfaction; Happiness |
| JEL: | I31 Q56 Q57 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:128419 |
| By: | Filippo Boeri; Olmo Silva |
| Abstract: | In the late nineteenth century, Alfred Marshall identified three micro-foundations of agglomeration economies: labour pooling (LP), input sharing (IO), and knowledge spillovers (KS). An extensive literature has tested the existence of the three Marshallian forces in modern economies. However, there is limited quantitative evidence on the existence of such forces at the times of Marshall. To shed light on these issues, we exploit novel geo-localised census-level data on entrepreneurs and business proprietors retrieved from six consecutive UK Censuses (1851-1911), coupled with census-level workers' data, information on historical patents and historical IO tables. We estimate co-agglomeration models to assess the relative importance of LP, IO, and KS in explaining industrial clustering during Britain's industrialisation. Our results point to a strong role for KS and LP, but only limited evidence for IO. We also show that the strength of the three forces increased over time, and that there is considerable heterogeneity across industries with different characteristics. |
| Keywords: | agglomeration economies, Alfred Marshall, economic history, historical censuses |
| Date: | 2026–04–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp2174 |
| By: | Allisson, François; Chassonnery-Zaïgouche, Cléo |
| Abstract: | Maurice Dobb’s Wages, a short textbook-style work commissioned by John Maynard Keynes for the Cambridge Economic Handbooks series, was first published in 1928. It went through six revised editions by 1959, along with numerous reprints and translations up to the 1980s. This paper analyses the evolution of the book’s content in order to question the status of economic theory in relation to the study of labour issues. The first section examines the making of the handbook and shows how Wages addressed the usefulness of economic theory, particularly price theory. The second section traces the evolution of Dobb’s views on wages, shaped by his controversy with John Hicks in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The third section explores the growing scepticism of Wages across its subsequent editions and translations, following its trajectory from the centre to the periphery of economics. |
| Keywords: | Dobb (Maurice); textbook; wages; labour economics; wage theory |
| JEL: | B13 B24 J30 |
| Date: | 2026–05–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:138374 |
| By: | Eric Chyn; Katherine Cohen; Kareem Haggag; Bryan A. Stuart |
| Abstract: | In the United States, long hailed as the land of opportunity, is access to political office truly open across society, or do the most privileged children disproportionately rise to enter political life? This question speaks to a longstanding concern that elite families may entrench themselves in positions of power, reproducing a form of hereditary privilege within a democratic system. We study the family backgrounds of U.S. politicians over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and show that children from wealthy and privileged households have been substantially overrepresented in elected office. This imbalance has changed little over time and, at the highest levels of office, varies little across political parties. To test whether political access depends on family resources, we exploit the sudden economic shock caused by the end of slavery. Despite the large and concentrated losses at the top of the wealth distribution, the children of slaveholders continued to enter government at high rates. Finally, we examine whether politicians' socioeconomic origins shape policy by constructing a new sample of close elections linked to detailed information on U.S. House candidates' family backgrounds. Comparing otherwise similar districts in which a candidate from a high socioeconomic status family narrowly wins rather than loses, we find that districts represented by higher status candidates are less likely to support pro-tax positions in roll-call voting. Together, the evidence across our analyses shows that family background strongly predicts entry into political office and has measurable consequences for policy choices. |
| JEL: | H10 H70 J45 J62 P16 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35180 |
| By: | Juan Diego Cafferata Salazar; Guglielmo Maria Caporale; Luis Alberiko Gil-Alana |
| Abstract: | This paper uses fractional integration and cointegration methods to examine the persistence and long-run relationship between the S&P 500 index and the nominal yield to maturity of 10-year US Treasury bonds (GS10) over the period from January 1954 to December 2024. The results indicate that both series are highly persistent and can be characterised as non-stationary processes with an order of integration close to 1. Granger causality tests imply unidirectional causality running from stock prices (S&P 500) to bond yields (GS10). Further, both standard and fractional cointegration tests indicate the existence of a long-run relationship between the two series. |
| Keywords: | persistence, fractional integration, cointegration, stock prices, bond yields |
| JEL: | C22 E43 G12 C32 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12649 |
| By: | Singh, Pritam |
| Abstract: | In the mid-nineteenth century, the British Empire was facing a sanitation crisis. Epidemics transported through faster steamships imperilled the imperial economy, threatened labour productivity, and restricted the oceanic mobility of its subjects. However, finding a cheap sanitary workforce that could remove disease-carrying night soil (a euphemism for human excreta) on ships and in colonies was challenging. Several colonies were experiencing labour shortages, and the British officials considered poor white European seamen to be racially too superior, and West African sailors to be too indolent to perform sanitary duties on ships. Through the case study of Natal, a British colony in South Africa, this article shows how, given changing racial sensibilities and labour shortages, officials turned to lower-caste indentured Indian labourers to meet the needs for sanitation at sea and in colonies. While the history of how Indian indentured labour filled the labour gap in sugar plantations after the abolition of slavery in 1833 is well known, the centrality of lower-caste indentured Indian labourers in the sanitation infrastructure that made British imperial expansion possible remains largely undocumented. Contrary to dominant historical viewpoints, which suggest that indentured labour flattened caste-based occupational structures, this history of sanitation reveals a deeper entanglement between caste and indentured labour. |
| JEL: | N0 |
| Date: | 2026–05–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:137991 |
| By: | Oded Galor |
| Abstract: | This essay suggests that the evolution of human cooperation over the course of human history should be viewed as a two-layer process. A foundational layer, rooted in subsistence and ecological pressures, shaped cooperative dispositions unevenly, whereas an expansionary layer, rooted in conflict and stratification, generated large-scale cooperation in societies in which its seeds were formed. The first evolutionary layer unfolded over the grand arc of human evolution, reinforcing the capacity for small-scale cooperation in hunter-gatherer societies while favoring traits complementary to cooperation only in some sedentary societies. The second evolutionary layer emerged as rising population density heightened external threats, fostered coercive centralized authority, and raised the returns to public infrastructure. In environments where cooperative traits had already evolved, warfare, extraction, and infrastructure provision reinforced these predispositions, transforming them into durable collective institutions. Yet in settings where such cultural foundations were absent, large-scale collective action was more challenging, and conflict was often destabilizing, magnifying division and political fragility. Recognizing the profound global heterogeneity in this foundational layer of cooperative behavior is essential for identifying the origins of large-scale cooperation and the conditions under which conflict reinforced cooperative capacity rather than intensifying fragmentation. |
| Keywords: | Cultural Evolution, Unified Growth Theory, Future-oriented mindset, Cooperation, Malthusian epoch, The Journey of Humanity |
| JEL: | O10 Z10 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26119 |
| By: | Tetsuji OKAZAKI |
| 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 Japans 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:cnn:wpaper:26-004j |
| By: | Faguet, Jean-Paul; Matajira, Camilo; Sánchez, Fabio |
| Abstract: | The Spanish encomienda, a colonial forced-labour institution that lasted three centuries, killed many indigenous people and caused others to flee into nomadism. What were its long-term effects? We digitize a great deal of historical data from the mid-1500s onwards, impute prehispanic populations at municipal level, and reconstruct the Spanish conquerors’ route through Colombia using detailed topographical features to calculate their least-cost path. We show that Colombian municipalities with encomiendas in 1560 enjoy better outcomes today across multiple dimensions of development than those without: higher municipal GDP per capita, tax receipts, and educational attainment; lower infant mortality, poverty, and unsatisfied basic needs; larger populations; and superior fiscal performance and bureaucratic efficiency, but also higher inequality. Why? Mediation analysis using data on local institutions, populations and racial composition in 1794 shows that encomiendas affected development primarily by helping build the local state. Deep historical evidence fleshes out how encomenderos founded local institutions early on in the places they settled. Places lacking encomiendas also lacked local states, often for centuries. Local institutions mobilized public investment in ways that doubtless suited encomenderos, but, over time, spurred greater economic and human development. |
| Keywords: | Encomienda; institutions; forced labor; state capacity; extraction; colonialism; development; Colombia |
| JEL: | N36 N96 O10 |
| Date: | 2026–03–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:128579 |
| By: | Juraj Å imÄ isko; Å tefan Rehák |
| Abstract: | Patenting is strongly concentrated in cities, and innovation-related outputs tend to scale superlinearly with urban population. Yet the interpretation of this relationship remains contested. This paper examines whether the superlinear scaling of patenting persists once the endogeneity of city size is addressed. Using across-section of 362 European Functional Urban Areas, we estimate the elasticity of patent output with respect to population using ordinary least squares and two-stage least squares. Contemporary population is instrumented by terrain ruggedness and historical rural population in 1770. The results confirm that patenting scales super-linearly with city size, and that instrumental-variable estimates are substantially larger than the corresponding OLS estimates. These findings suggest that the urban scaling of patenting in Europe is consistent with a positive e!ect of urban scaleon innovation. The paper contributes to the urban scaling literature by providing instrumental-variable evidence for the European context. |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:2604 |
| By: | Papadopoulou, Aggela; Gouzoulis, Giorgos |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the evolution of trade union density in Greece between 1970 and 2020. While unionization grew substantially across most Western economies during the postwar reconstruction period, Greek organized labour largely missed this expansion due to the disruptions of the Greek Civil War (1946-49) and the military dictatorship (1967-74). Unionism expanded briefly after the restoration of democracy in 1974, but this proved short-lived. With the global rise of neoliberalism, Greece reverted to an anti-union regime, a trend that intensified following the Eurozone crisis. Building on this historical account, the paper employs time-series regression analysis to show that the deregulation of wage-setting and the decentralization of collective bargaining significantly undermined unionization. It further demonstrates that inflationary pressures and the servicization of the economy contributed to the long-run decline in union density. |
| Keywords: | Trade Union Density, Collective Bargaining, Wage Setting, Greece |
| JEL: | J51 J58 N34 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1756 |
| By: | Izaguirre, Lorena |
| Abstract: | This article addresses a central question: how are colonial hierarchies of race, class, gender, and geography mobilized within intimate, co-ethnic networks to legitimize labor exploitation? Drawing on the case of Peruvian migrants in São Paulo’s artisanal workshops—spaces that double as homes and workplaces—I argue that exploitation is underpinned by a distinctly gendered mechanism: the instrumentalization of affective ties. Combining the lenses of the coloniality of power (Quijano, 2000) and the coloniality of gender (Lugones, 2008), I propose the notion of an unwritten “affective contract” that anchors inequality, particularly for Indigenous women. Based on biographical interviews, the analysis unfolds in four parts: (a) recruitment processes and the dynamics of dependent mobilities; (b) intimacy as a gendered mechanism of labor control; (c) the role of affective contracts in shaping labor relations; and (d) the blurring of family and work boundaries. The article extends coloniality theory by tracing its intimate, gendered micro-mechanisms and contributes to migration studies by showing how kinship and paisano networks reproduce historical inequalities in South–South migration. |
| Date: | 2026–05–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:e6cpd_v1 |
| By: | Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy; Yun So |
| Abstract: | This paper documents variation in intergenerational income mobility (IIM) over time and between different regions of New Zealand. Our sample is a cohort of males born between 1963 and 1982 that reached adulthood over a period spanning the policy reforms of the 1980s. We show that the intergenerational elasticity of income (IGE) measure of IIM is higher for men born later in the sample, suggesting that IIM has decreased over the period of rising income inequality following the reforms. To more closely examine the statistical association between income inequality and IIM, we exploit spatiotemporal variation in IGE estimates and Gini coefficients to show that growing up in regions or periods in which there is higher income inequality is associated with lower IIM. Although these results do not imply causality, they are consistent with an international literature that establishes a statistical association between income inequality and IIM. |
| Keywords: | Intergenerational Income Mobility; Intergenerational Elasticity of Income; Income Inequality |
| JEL: | J62 D31 D63 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cyc:wpaper:022 |
| By: | Trine Bille (Copenhagen Business School); Hendrik Sonnabend (University of Hagen) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses gender differences in leadership in the German movie industry using a uniquely long-run dataset covering nearly 88, 000 films and more than 27, 000 directors from the late nineteenth century to 2023. Treating film directors as key leadership positions in a project-based creative labour market, we distinguish between career persistence and access to economically sustainable projects. Methodologically, we combine non-parametric survival functions and semi-parametric Cox proportional hazard models with film-level linear probability models including year fixed effects and detailed controls for experience, education, and production characteristics. This framework allows us to distinguish gender differences in exit behaviour from those in project allocation. We document a substantial historical underrepresentation of women, although participation has increased markedly since the 1960s. Survival estimates show no evidence that female directors exit the profession more rapidly than men once cohort and age-at-entry effects are accounted for. However, women are significantly less likely to direct commercial films—projects most closely associated with income generation. These gaps are large in unconditional models but largely explained by differences in accumulated experience. Conditional on commercial experience, women are no less likely than men to continue directing such projects. We further provide evidence suggesting that formal film education and public funding contribute to narrowing gender gaps, highlighting the role of institutions in shaping leadership opportunities. |
| Keywords: | leadership, Gender, Film Directors, Careers, Public Funding, Film Schools |
| JEL: | J16 L82 Z10 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cue:wpaper:awp-05-2026 |
| By: | Taha, Mai; Salem, Sara |
| Abstract: | Histories of capitalism in Egypt and the broader postcolonial world have much to gain from theorizing the home as a space of labor and care as a form of work. In this article the authors think with two Egyptian novels—The Open Door by Latifa al-Zayyat and Dhat by Sonallah Ibrahim—that center intimacy, care, and the home in their understandings of political and economic change. Representing both a revolutionary and a counterrevolutionary moment in Egypt, the two novels engage revolutionary politics through the lens of what they feel like, highlighting the affective nature of such moments. Moreover, centering the home as a space from which to theorize capitalism shows that social reproduction has always been part of the story of modern Egypt, and that the home has always been a political space, despite its haunting absence in work on capitalism in Egyptian history. When the home and what it feels like become a starting theoretical point, the functioning of capitalism becomes entangled with care work and the depletion that often comes with it. The authors trace this through both novels, addressing how one might theorize global capitalism through the home, through the novel, and through the past. |
| Keywords: | Egypt; capitalism; social reproduction; revolution |
| JEL: | R14 J01 |
| Date: | 2026–04–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:129610 |
| By: | Balestra, Mattia; Cainelli, Giulio; Ganau, Roberto; Matsiuk, Nadiia; Pasquato, Mario; Pierdicca, Roberto |
| Abstract: | We combine history with economic geography to shed light on the long-run determinants of territorial development differentials in Italy. Specifically, we study the effects of historical sovereignty change on current local economic development. We measure historical sovereignty change as the yearly number of changes of sovereignty that occurred in the period 1000–1861—that is, until the unification of Italy—and assess its effects on labor productivity in 2018. We estimate a negative effect of historical sovereignty change on current local economic development, and identify—both theoretically and empirically—civic capital as a plausible underlying mechanism. |
| Keywords: | historical sovereignty change; civic capital; Italy; local economic development |
| JEL: | R11 N00 |
| Date: | 2026–05–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:138356 |
| By: | João Tovar Jalles |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the persistence of Portugal’s post-1974 growth gap relative to a synthetic counterfactual, focusing on the role of structural reforms. Building on evidence of a structural break following the Carnation Revolution, the analysis shifts attention from the initial divergence to the mechanisms sustaining it over subsequent decades. A novel dataset of annual institutional reforms covering labour market regulation, unemployment benefits, collective bargaining, minimum wages, and product market regulation is constructed for the period 1970–2025. Using local projection methods, the paper estimates the dynamic effects of these reforms on the evolution of the gap and its underlying channels. The results reveal a clear asymmetry across institutional domains. Product-market liberalization is associated with a gradual narrowing of the gap, while labour-market rigidities are linked to its persistence, particularly at medium to longer horizons. These effects operate primarily through the investment channel, with limited contributions from employment and productivity dynamics. Moreover, the impact of reforms is state-dependent: external constraints significantly amplify both the adverse effects of rigidities and the benefits of liberalization. Robustness checks and placebobased inference using OECD countries confirm the stability of the findings. Overall, the results highlight the importance of institutional design and macroeconomic context in shaping long-run growth and adjustment dynamics in small open economies. |
| Keywords: | Structural reforms; Growth gap; Labour market rigidity; Product market regulation; Portugal. |
| JEL: | E24 E32 O43 O52 P16 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ise:remwps:wp04142026 |
| By: | Steininger, L. E. |
| Abstract: | In this essay, I study a hitherto neglected yet central complicity between the reigning logics of monetary governance and heteronormativity. In so doing, my analysis exposes hegemonic assumptions in IPE that often remain unchallenged. Drawing on queer-feminist scholarship, I first argue that heteronormativity is premised on the ideologically conservative claim that gender identity and associated language (abstraction) must be grounded in, and ontologically preceded by, a material biological sex (‘essence’). I then demonstrate that a strikingly similar structure underpins the Monetarist inflation form – defined as an imbalance between the quantity of money (abstraction) and the quantity of goods or services (‘essence’). Employing this homology makes visible how central bank inflation-targeting regimes enact gendered norms that devalue femininely coded domains and cast gender equality as both politically destabilizing and economically unfeasible. This essay seeks to queer monetary policy by highlighting the intersections between gendered ontology and IPE, contributing to the literature on anti-essentialism and demand management. Finally, I propose a non-essentialist approach to price stability, which I intend to develop further in future work. |
| Keywords: | anti-essentialism; gender; heteronormativity; inflation; monetarism; price stability |
| JEL: | A14 B54 E31 E58 |
| Date: | 2026–03–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:137946 |
| By: | Luca V.A. Colombo; Michele Magnani; Massimiliano Gaetano Onorato |
| Abstract: | In the early 1920s, Italian fascism grew from a marginal group into an organized party capable of challenging incumbent political forces and precipitating democratic backsliding. A key driver of this expansion was the strategic use of violence by squads that moved across municipalities to strike opponents and local institutions. We show that road networks were central to the diffusion of fascist violence: by lowering travel times and facilitating rapid incursions, roads made violence harder to anticipate and more effective. We document that such violence profoundly altered local political institutions, accelerating the consolidation of fascist control within a few years. |
| JEL: | D74 N44 N74 P16 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bol:bodewp:wp1222 |
| By: | Lutz Kilian |
| Abstract: | Interest has recently increased in the question of whether the destabilization of inflation during the 1970s might repeat itself in the 2020s. |
| Keywords: | inflation; monetary policy; oil |
| Date: | 2026–02–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:d00001:102856 |
| By: | Lisa Chauvet; Abel Francois; Jean Lacroix |
| Abstract: | How do conflicts shape territories in the long run? To answer this question, this paper dissects population dynamics within Normandy throughout the 20th century. Despite the destruction caused by the 1944 Allied Landings, Normandy reversed the demographic decline it had experienced until 1940 — a dynamic at odds with previous literature showing a negative or neutral effect of conflicts. Using a difference-in-differences estimator, we confirm that within Normandy, combat duration dampened population growth in the short run. In the medium run, areas exposed to combat recovered and later overshot the population levels implied by their initial trend. An analysis of a comprehensive inventory of all dwelling units 25 years after WWII suggests that the post-war reconstruction effort explains this counterintuitive pattern. These results evidence the importance of reconstruction policies after conflicts. Beyond geographic fundamentals and random factors, they carve the spatial distribution of economic activities. |
| Keywords: | conflict, World War II, reconstruction, economic geography |
| JEL: | N44 N94 R12 J10 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12658 |
| By: | Davide Cipullo; Massimiliano Gaetano Onorato; Gianmario Pelleschi |
| Abstract: | We study the long-run health effects of illegal toxic waste disposal conducted by organized crime in Italy. We exploit quasi-random variation in historical wind direction around contaminated sites combined with a difference-in-differences design. Using administrative data on cancer deaths spanning four decades, we find that wind exposure to pollutants increases the number of cancer deaths substantially. The effects emerge after long latencies and grow over time. In later years, wind exposure implies roughly two additional cancer deaths per municipality-year relative to unexposed municipalities equally proximate to contaminated sites. Our findings reveal a previously unmeasured health externality of organized crime. |
| Keywords: | organized crime, environmental externalities, pollution and health, state capacity, cancer mortality |
| JEL: | K42 Q53 I18 D62 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12644 |