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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2012‒12‒10
eleven papers chosen by |
| By: | David Greasley; Nick Hanley; Jan Kunnas; Eoin McLaughlin; Les Oxley; Paul Warde |
| Abstract: | This paper reports the first long-run test of how Genuine Savings (also called comprehensive investment or adjusted net savings) predicts future well-being. The theory of weak sustainability suggests that a country with a positive level of Genuine Savings (GS) should experience non-declining future utility. Despite the widespread uptake of GS, previous tests of its predictive power are for short time intervals. We assemble data for British capital back to 1750, and construct several net investment measures which are used to predict two alternative measures of future well-being: future consumption per capita and real wages. An allowance for a “value of time” due to technological progress is also included. Our results show that GS-type measures can predict changes in future well-being reasonably well over 50 or 100 years into the future. |
| Keywords: | sustainable development, weak sustainability,genuine savings, comprehensive investment, future well-‐being, British economic history |
| Date: | 2012–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:auu:hpaper:007&r=his |
| By: | Aoki, Masahiko (Asian Development Bank Institute) |
| Abstract: | This essay provides a game-theoretic, endogenous view of institutions, and then applies the idea to identify the sources of institutional trajectories of economic development in China, Japan, and Korea. It stylizes the Malthusian-phase of East Asian economies as peasant-based economies in which small families allocated their working time between farming on small plots—leased or owned—and handcrafting for personal consumption and markets. It then compares institutional arrangements across these economies that sustained otherwise similar economies. It characterizes the varied nature of the political states of Qing China, Tokugawa Japan, and Yi Korea by focusing on the way in which agricultural taxes were enforced. It also identifies different patterns of social norms of trust that were institutional complements to, or substitutes for, political states. Finally, it traces the path-dependent transformations of these state-norm combinations along subsequent transitions to post-Malthusian phases of economic growth in the respective economies. |
| Keywords: | china; japan; institutional complementarity; institutional change; capitalism; varieties of norms; political economy |
| JEL: | O43 O53 P51 |
| Date: | 2012–12–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbiwp:0397&r=his |
| By: | Rafael Domenech; Amparo Castello Climent |
| Abstract: | Using a broad number of indicators from an updated data set on human capital inequality for 146 countries from 1950 to 2010, this paper documents several facts regarding the evolution of income and human capital inequality. The main findings reveal that, in spite of a large reduction in human capital inequality around the world driven by a decline in the number of illiterates of several hundreds of millions of people, the inequality in the distribution of income has hardly changed. In many regions, the income Gini coefficient in 1960 was very similar to that in 2005. Therefore, improvements in literacy are not a sufficient condition to reduce income inequality, even though they improve life standards of people at the bottom of the income distribution. Increasing returns to education, external effects on wages of higher literacy rates or the simultaneous concurrence of other exogenous forces (e.g., globalization or skill-biased technological progress) may explain the lack of correlation between the evolution of income andeducation inequality. |
| Keywords: | Distribution of education, income inequality, human development, panel data |
| JEL: | I24 I25 O15 O50 |
| Date: | 2012–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bbv:wpaper:1228&r=his |
| By: | Ruiz-Porras, Antonio |
| Abstract: | We show an introduction to the econometric research that uses panel-data. In the first part, we describe the development of panel-data models from the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first one. In the second part, we describe the models with fixed, random and dynamic effects. In the subsequent parts we describe some trends in the econometric research referred to Mexico. Specifically, we show the trends that characterize published studies; and some trends in the use of the models in certain areas of knowledge (social sciences, economics, international economics, finance, public finance). We assess the trends with the articles in the REDALYC database referred to the period 2000-2011. |
| Keywords: | Panel-data Econometrics; Research; Mexico; Models; History of Econometrics |
| JEL: | B40 C33 |
| Date: | 2012–11–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:42909&r=his |
| By: | Lefteris, Tsoulfidis |
| Abstract: | This article presents and critically evaluates the Greek sovereign defaults and puts them into historical perspective. More specifically, each of the four defaults of the Greek State (1827, 1843, 1893 and 1932) was not an isolated episode in the turbulent economic history of capitalism, but rather it was a manifestation of the respective worldly depressionary periods of 1815-1845, 1873-1896, 1920 - 1940(5). In other words, the depressions increased substantially the likelihood of a default especially for the weaker economies. This by no means implies that the Greek sovereign defaults were to occur as in a natural phenomenon-like way, but rather to show that in each particular default the general economic conditions, in combination with wrong economic policies pursued, in most cases, by inept governments further increased the likelihood of a default, as this can be judged from the Greek experience of the past four defaults. Different economic policies could have postponed or even rescued the country from sovereign defaults and their dire consequences for the vast majority of people. Furthermore, the paper shows that post-default economic life was exceedingly more difficult and it took decades until the return to normalcy. |
| Keywords: | Sovereign default; depressions; long waves; Greek economy |
| JEL: | N10 N20 B50 H63 N40 |
| Date: | 2012–10–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:42843&r=his |
| By: | Vladimir Mau (Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy) |
| Abstract: | It is for nearly half a century that the problem of measuring efficiency of provision of assistance by more developed countries to less developed ones has been in the center of attention of economists. Notably, in the period after World War II the world has witnessed several stages (models) of assistance that appeared different both in terms of countries-recipients of that and by forms of the assistance provided. |
| Keywords: | economic assistance, Russian economy, assistance efficiency |
| JEL: | O19 H77 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gai:wpaper:0038&r=his |
| By: | TUNCEL, Cem Okan |
| Abstract: | The main aim of this study is to analyze the connection between financial liberalization and financial crises in historical context. The global economy is experiencing crisis which has been hailed as the most devastating crisis of capitalism since the great depression of 1929. Post World War II economic history can be thought of as evolving within two distinct political-economic regimes. The high growth Golden Age or Keynesian Regime was based on socially or politically ‘embedded’ domestic markets, government responsibility for aggregate demand growth, and state control over cross-border economic activity. It lasted until the early 1970s, to be replaced, after a decade of turbulence, by the Neoliberal Regime, built on deregulation, liberalization, privatization, and ever-tighter global integration. The Neoliberal Regime took root in the 1980s and consolidated in the 1990s.Financialization which is a major phenomenon of neoliberal regime, means the increasing role of financial motives, financial markets, financial actors and financial institutions in the operation of domestic and international economies. In this period, many developed and developing countries have liberalized their financial markets. The financial liberalization opens up new opportunity for financial sectors often resulting in excessive risk taking because of lack of adequate regulation particularly emerging economies. After liberalization of period, most countries tend to go though a “boom-bust” cycle especially in the case of external liberalization. As a result, currency and banking crises (twin crises) are closely linked in aftermath of liberalization. In this paper, policy framework is also discussed from developing countries perspective. |
| Keywords: | Financial Liberalization; Financialization; Financial Crises; Developing Countries |
| JEL: | E44 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:42422&r=his |
| By: | Caspari, Volker; Eschenhof-Kammer, Sabine; Pertz, Klaus |
| Abstract: | We use the two-sector specific factors model, which is known from the theory of international trade, in a growth context to describe major trends of long-run economic development. The endogenous technical progress functions establish the link between the agricultural and the manufacturing sector through the ratio of agricultural to total employment, which is determined by the savings propensities of wage-earners, landlords and capitalists, and by the investment ratio in manufacturing. Without reference to more complicated micro-based models of human capital accumulation highlighting changes in preferences of households and/ or shifts in attitudes of firms towards education, the calibrated two-sector specific factors model can replicate major historical trends and structural turnarounds. |
| Keywords: | Economic growth, technical change, distribution of income, Industrial Revolution |
| Date: | 2012–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dar:ddpeco:59638&r=his |
| By: | Rafael Domenech; Monica Correa-Lopez |
| Abstract: | En este trabajo se muestra que, desde la incorporacion a la UEM, la evolucion de la cuota exportadora de Espana en el comercio mundial y, por lo tanto, su proceso de internacionalizacion han venido determinados por un amplio conjunto de variables, que van mucho mas alla de la evolucion de los precios relativos internacionales. Las decisiones empresariales sobre los factores de produccion (tamano de la empresa, inversion en capital fisico, calidad del capital humano o gasto en I+D y en adopcion tecnologica) y sobre las estrategias de mercado y financiacion (diversificacion productiva, financiacion alternativa a la bancaria o expansion via inversion directa en el exterior) han dado forma y fondo al proceso de internacionalizacion. Dada la diversidad de determinantes, el ambito de actuacion de la politica economica ha de ser multidimensional y articularse en una doble vertiente: las mejoras en el funcionamiento de los mercados de factores productivos (mercados de trabajo y de capitales, acceso a la financiacion y a nuevas tecnologias e innovaciones productivas) y mejoras en los mercados de bienes y servicios |
| Keywords: | competitividad precio; cuotas de exportación; empresas exportadoras |
| JEL: | D22 F14 |
| Date: | 2012–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bbv:wpaper:1229&r=his |
| By: | Petersen, Thomas; Faber, Malte |
| Abstract: | Die Diskussion um Karl Marx ist lange Zeit nur ideologisch positionell geführt worden. Wer sich nicht als Gegner oder Befürworter der Marxschen Lehre erklärte, hatte es schwer, in dieser Diskussion Gehör zu finden. Im letzten Viertel des vorigen Jahrhunderts hat jedoch sowohl in philosophischer als auch wirtschaftswissenschaftlicher Hinsicht eine neue Art der Auseinandersetzung mit den Werken von Karl Marx begonnen. Dabei haben die Kontrahenten sowohl auf marxistischer als auch auf nichtmarxistischer Seite viel ideologischen Ballast beiseite geräumt, und in manchen Positionen hat man sich auch in inhaltlicher Hinsicht angenähert. Trotzdem ist die Diskussion in einem wichtigen Aspekt fragmentarisch geblieben. Auch wenn marxistische und nichtmarxistische Ökonomen nun eine gemeinsame Sprache gefunden haben, so gilt das weit weniger für Philosophen und Ökonomen. Charakteristischerweise zeigt sich das an der Rolle Hegels. Während viele Philosophen dazu neigen, Marx von Hegel her zu verstehen, tendieren Ökonomen und auch der Ökonomik nahestehende Philosophen dazu, Hegel zu vernachlässigen oder ihm allenfalls eine verwirrende oder störende Rolle im Marxschen Denken zuzugestehen. In unserem Essay wollen wir daher herausarbeiten, dass der Bezug zu Hegel und zu der Tradition der Philosophie überhaupt ein konstitutiver Bestandteil der Marxschen Theorie und gerade auch ihres ökonomischen Teils ist. Dabei versuchen wir nichts weniger als eine Gesamteinschätzung der Marxschen Lehre und ihrer oft verwirrenden Vielschichtigkeit zu geben. Im Einzelnen werden wir auf Marx’ Hegelbezug und den historischen Materialismus mit seinen Grundbegriffen, den Produktivkräften und Produktionsverhältnissen eingehen. Von daher werden wir eine Einschätzung von Marx’ Analyse der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise geben und dabei versuchen, ihre qualitativen und quantitativen Aspekte gesondert herauszuarbeiten. Zentrale Aussagen der Marxschen Ökonomik wie die Arbeitswertlehre und das Gesetz vom tendenziellen Fall der Profitrate werden wir im Licht der modernen Wirtschaftswissenschaften diskutieren. Dabei werden auch wichtige Einsichten von Marx hinsichtlich der Umwelt- und Rohstoffprobleme, vor denen wir heute stehen, zur Sprache kommen. Nicht zuletzt gehen wir auf die Konsequenzen ein, die sich aus Marx’ Ansatz für das Problem der Gerechtigkeit und der Einkommensverteilung ergeben. Und schließlich wollen wir erklären, woher bei Marx das notorische Defizit einer politischen Theorie rührt. |
| Keywords: | Marxsche Philosophie; Marxsche Ökonomik; Historischer Materialismus; Dogmengeschichte; Arbeitswertlehre |
| JEL: | Q P E11 D3 B31 B24 B10 A31 A1 |
| Date: | 2012–01–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:awi:wpaper:0520&r=his |
| By: | van den Berg, Gerard J. (University of Mannheim); Lundborg, Petter (Lund University); Vikström, Johan (IFAU) |
| Abstract: | We study the short-run and long-run economic impact of one of the largest losses that an individual can face; the death of a child. We utilize unique merged registers on the entire Swedish population, combining information on the date and cause of death with parents' labor market outcomes, health outcomes, marital status, and subsequent fertility. We exploit the longitudinal dimension of the data and deal with a range of selection issues. We distinguish between effects on labor and various non-labor income components and we consider patterns over time. We find that labor market effects are persistent. |
| Keywords: | sickness absenteeism, depression, child mortality, labor supply, bereavement, employment, marriage, death, divorce, mental health, fertility |
| JEL: | I12 I11 J14 J12 C41 |
| Date: | 2012–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7010&r=his |