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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2014‒03‒30
sixteen papers chosen by |
| By: | Jane Humphries (University of Oxford); Jacob Weisdorf (University of Southern Denmark, CEPR) |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a wage series for unskilled English women workers from 1260 to 1850 and compares it with existing evidence for men. Our series cast light on long run trends in women’s agency and wellbeing, revealing an intractable, indeed widening gap between women and men’s remuneration in the centuries following the Black Death. This informs several recent debates: first whether or not “the golden age of the English peasantry” included women; and second whether or not industrialization provided women with greater opportunities. Our contributions to both debates have implications for analyses of growth and trends in wellbeing. If the rise in wages that followed the Black Death enticed female servants to delay marriage, it contributed to the formation of the European Marriage Pattern, a demographic regime which positioned England on a path to modern economic growth. If the industrial revolution provided women with improved economic options, their gains should be included in any overall assessment of trends in the standard of living distorts the overall evaluation of the gains from industrialization. |
| Keywords: | Black Death; England; gender wage gap; industrial revolution; gender segregation, wages; women. |
| JEL: | J3 J4 J5 J6 J7 J8 N33 |
| Date: | 2014–03–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nuf:esohwp:_127&r=his |
| By: | Izdebski, Adam; Koloch, Grzegorz; Słoczyński, Tymon; Tycner-Wolicka, Marta |
| Abstract: | In this paper we introduce a new source of data to economic history: palynological data, i.e. information about pollen grains which are preserved in bottom sediments of various water basins. We discuss how this data is collected and how it should be interpreted; develop new methods for aggregating this information into regional trends in agricultural output; construct an extensive data set with a large number of pollen sites from Central Europe; and use our methods to study the economic history of Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, Bohemia, Brandenburg, and Lower Saxony since the first century AD. |
| Keywords: | agricultural output, biological measures of economic history, Central Europe, palynology |
| JEL: | C65 N01 N50 N53 N93 O13 Q19 |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:54582&r=his |
| By: | Sophie BOUTILLIER (Université du Littoral / Lille Nord de France, SITE/Clersé, UMR 8019); Patrick MATAGNE (Université de Poitiers, Laboratoire RURALITE, EA 2252) |
| Abstract: | La naissance de l’économie politique est communément liée à la publication en 1776 de « La richesse des nations » par A. Smith, le fondateur de l’école classique. Le principal objet de l’école classique est la production de richesses. Selon Smith, la richesse est le produit du travail et du commerce international. L’écologie devient également une discipline scientifique un siècle plus tard avec notamment les travaux d’E. Haeckel et d’E. Warming. Notre objectif est de revenir sur l’histoire de l’économie en tant que discipline scientifique, et d’étudier son développement en parallèle avec celui de l’écologie – à travers l’écart chronologique d’un siècle entre les deux disciplines. La pollution a pourtant toujours existé, sous des formes différentes. Par exemple, Engels (1883) explique comment des civilisations anciennes (Grèce, Mésopotamie, etc.) ont disparu en raison d’un déséquilibre entre ressources naturelles et besoins humains. Les « passeurs » sont des économistes ou des naturalistes qui ont construit des ponts entre les deux disciplines scientifiques depuis le 19ème siècle. The birth of political economics is commonly linked with the publication in 1776 of “the Wealth of nations” by A. Smith, the founder of the classical School. The main issue of classical economics is the production of wealth. According to Smith, wealth is the result of labour and international trade. Ecology became a scientific discipline too a century later, at the end of the 19th century, especially thanks to the works of E. Haeckel and E. Warming. Our goal is to go back to the basics of political economics as a scientific discipline, and to study the way it developed in parallel with ecology – though there is a chronological gap between both disciplines. Nevertheless, pollution has always existed but it has taken various shapes. For example, Engels (1883) explains how ancient civilizations (Greece, Mesopotamia, and so on) have been partly destroyed because of an imbalance between physical resources and human needs. The “boatmen” are economists or naturalists who have built bridges between the two scientific disciplines since the 19th century. |
| Keywords: | histoire économique, histoire de la théorie économique, histoire des sciences, écologie, economic history, history of the economic thought, history of sciences, ecology |
| JEL: | B1 N |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rii:rridoc:37&r=his |
| By: | Jérémy Ducros (PSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques - CNRS : UMR8545 - École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) - École des Ponts ParisTech (ENPC) - École normale supérieure [ENS] - Paris - Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA), EEP-PSE - Ecole d'Économie de Paris - Paris School of Economics - Ecole d'Économie de Paris); Angelo Riva (PSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques - CNRS : UMR8545 - École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) - École des Ponts ParisTech (ENPC) - École normale supérieure [ENS] - Paris - Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA), EEP-PSE - Ecole d'Économie de Paris - Paris School of Economics - Ecole d'Économie de Paris, EBS - European Business School - European Business School) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we look back at the XIX century France to shed light on effect of competition in the stock exchange industry. During the XIX century the Paris financial centre plays a central role in the French financial markets. Nevertheless, six organized regional exchanges do exist along all the second half of the century. A recent literature started to study the complex functioning of the Paris financial centre as well as the interaction between its two components, the official Paris Bourse and its OTC rival, the Coulisse. Nevertheless, a very small literature is devoted to the regional French exchanges. By studying the interactions between Paris and Lyon, we find that, after the 1881-1882 boom and burst, the Lyon Stock Exchange has to struggle for surviving facing fierce competition from the Paris Bourse and main national banks particularly after the 1898 reorganisation of the Paris _nancial centre, while the strong activity of Coulisse before the 1895 gold mines crash had a positive effect on the Lyon one. After the 1898 reorganisation, the Lyon Stock Exchange survived thanks to a new listing policy favourable to SMEs and the development of second-tier market for both these unofficially traded SMEs and unlisted risky (mainly foreign) stocks. On the other side, the progressive homogenisation of the official market imposed by regulators to enhance their control over the French securities market acted as force driving trading to Paris: only the facilities the Lyon Exchange gave to the main banks of the financial centre maintained some activity. |
| Keywords: | Lyon Stock Exchange ; Paris Stock Exchange ; Coulisse ; Competition ; Exchanges |
| Date: | 2014–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:psewpa:halshs-00960528&r=his |
| By: | David De Remer |
| Abstract: | Why did countries achieve a consensus to restrict export subsidies and export-promoting domestic subsidies when the World Trade Organization (WTO) began in1995, but not decades earlier under the General Agreement on Tari¤s and Trade(GATT)? This question poses a challenge for the theory of trade agreements becauseexport promotion improves the terms of trade of importers, so subsidy restrictions re-duce the welfare of importing nations. This paper argues that cross-border externalitiesarising from political economy and pro t-shifting can explain the historical pattern ofsubsidy rules. Motives to restrict export promotion do not exist when trade policiesare chosen noncooperatively, because import tari¤ revenue neutralizes any motive forexport promotion. Once import tari¤s fall, as in the 1950s and 1960s, then motivesto restrict export promotion can arise. Governments prefer to protect domestic salesthrough international subsidy restraints rather than to allow consumers to bene t fromunfettered subsidization. Governments could in theory have eliminated the need forsubsidy rules by eliminating domestic intersectoral misallocation or by adjusting bothimport taxes and export subsidies consistent with the GATT principle of reciprocity,but I argue that in practice they have not done so. GATT documents and the WTOnegotiating history provide support for the theory that the WTO subsidy rules addressan international pro t-shifting problem. |
| Date: | 2013–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/153041&r=his |
| By: | Sara Torregrosa Hetland (Universitat de Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | The main objective of this paper is to calculate the distribution of the tax burden across income levels in Spain between 1960 and 1990. The chosen period covers the final years of Franco’s dictatorship and the first ones of the present parliamentary regime, and is thus meant to explore how political change was reflected on taxation. Does transition entail a fiscal revolution? Here is one case study developed and compared to other national experiences. Effective tax reform seems to have been politically blocked during the dictatorship, with public budgets growing fundamentally on the grounds of social security contributions. Democracy brought about a comprehensive transformation starting in 1977, which aimed at improving fairness (progressivity) and increasing revenue (to fund the development of the Welfare State). In this work I analyse whether the reforms entailed effective changes in the distribution of the tax burden, by imputing tax collection to taxpayers, based on income and consumption micro-data from Household Budget Surveys. The results show a persistent (albeit decreasing) regressivity in the tax system, which caused an increasingly negative redistribution of income. Pre-Tax incomes grew unequal during the period and net incomes even more so as a result: the tax reform did not fulfill its equalizing promises. The joint effect of the fiscal system, however, seems to have been slightly positive due to progressive social spending. |
| Keywords: | Tax system, progressivity, redistribution, income inequality |
| JEL: | D31 N34 N44 H23 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ieb:wpaper:2013/6/doc2014-8&r=his |
| By: | Vagner José Moreira |
| Abstract: | In this article, search the memories of the communist uprising of 1949, Fernandópolis, in the Northwest of São Paulo, Brazil. The dispute around the memory and the construction of meanings is related to the hiding the historical struggle for land and against exploitation in the country. The official versions about the movement are marked for limited communism memories. Other memories relate to the struggle of workers during the decades of 1940-50 to the land struggles of rural landless contemporary. This interpretive act is relevant, since attributes meaning to fact and constitute in evidence plural experiences. |
| Keywords: | workers, memory, social movement, agrarian revolution, Communist Party |
| JEL: | J43 J81 J83 P32 |
| Date: | 2014–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:seh:wpaper:1405&r=his |
| By: | Maloney, William F.; Caicedo, Felipe Valencia |
| Abstract: | Using newly collected national and sub-national data, and historical case studies, this paper argues that differences in innovative capacity, captured by the density of engineers at the dawn of the Second Industrial Revolution, are important to explaining present income differences, and, in particular, the poor performance of Latin America relative to North America. This remains the case after controlling for literacy, other higher order human capital, such as lawyers, as well as demand side elements that might be confounded with engineering. The analysis then finds that agglomeration, certain geographical fundamentals, and extractive institutions such as slavery affect innovative capacity. However, a large effect associated with being a Spanish colony remains suggesting important inherited factors. |
| Keywords: | Technology Industry,E-Business,Tertiary Education,Political Economy,ICT Policy and Strategies |
| Date: | 2014–03–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6814&r=his |
| By: | Faridah Djellal (CLERSE - Centre lillois d'études et de recherches sociologiques et économiques - CNRS : UMR8019 - Université Lille I - Sciences et technologies); Faïz Gallouj (CLERSE - Centre lillois d'études et de recherches sociologiques et économiques - CNRS : UMR8019 - Université Lille I - Sciences et technologies) |
| Abstract: | Gabriel Tarde was a French sociologist and criminologist whose work is rediscovered from time to time. Economists of innovation have paid insufficient attention to an author who devoted a large part of his work to the laws of imitation and invention. The purpose of this paper is threefold. The first is to give a succinct account of these laws of imitation and invention. The second is to re-examine and extend the debates on the similarities between Schumpeter and Tarde. The third and main purpose is to examine the similarities, hitherto unexplored to the best of our knowledge, between Tarde's work and contemporary neo-Schumpteterian and evolutionary theories. |
| Keywords: | Tarde, Schumpeter, evolutionary theory, innovation, imitation. |
| Date: | 2014–03–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00960607&r=his |
| By: | Alex Bamji |
| Abstract: | In early modern Venice, a wide range of people offered care, goods and services for the health of the city’s numerous inhabitants. This study utilises Venice’s civic death registers to assess when and why the sick and dying accessed medical care, and how this changed over the course of the early modern period. The detailed registers permit consideration of the profile of medical practitioners, key aspects of patient identity, the involvement of institutions in the provision of medical care, and the relationship between type of illness and the propensity of the sufferer to seek medical support. This study assesses the type, number, density and distribution of practitioners in the city. It demonstrates that recourse to medical care was largely determined by age, social status and type of illness. The lack of financial resources or family support did not preclude access to medical care, due to a web of institutions which offered care to a diverse clientele. |
| Keywords: | age; death; medical care; medical practitioners; Venice |
| JEL: | I3 |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:wpaper:56122&r=his |
| By: | Victor Hugo de Oliveira (IPECE); Climent Quintana-Domeque |
| Abstract: | We study the relationship between environmental conditions at birth and adult stature using cohort-state level data in Brazil. We find that GDP per capita in the year of birth, not infant mortality rate, is a robust correlate of population stature in Brazil during the period 1950-1980. Our results are robust to a battery of robustness checks. Using a useful bracketing property of the (state) fixed effects and lagged dependent variables (heights) estimators, we find that an increase in GDP per capita of the magnitude corresponding to that period is associated with 43%-68% of the increase in adult height occurring in the same time span. Income, not disease, appears to be the main correlate of Brazilian population heights in the second half of the 20th Century. |
| Keywords: | infant mortality, income, adult height, bracketing property, fixed effects estimator, lagged dependent variable estimator |
| JEL: | I12 O54 |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2014-008&r=his |
| By: | Nicos Christodoulakis |
| Abstract: | The paper provides a quantitative analysis of the armed confrontation that took place in Greece between the Communist Party and the Centre-Right Government during 1946-1949. Using monthly data for battle casualties a dynamic Lotka-Volterra framework is estimated, pointing to the existence of a conflict trap that explains the prolongation of the civil war and its dire consequences for the country. To examine the extent to which the confrontation was influenced by socio-economic factors, a regional analysis finds that political discontent was mainly correlated with pre-war grievances rather than class-structure, while the mobilization of guerilla forces was crucially affected by morphology and the local persecutions by the Government. The economic cost of the conflict is estimated to be close to an annual GDP, and its effect to last for at least a decade, in line with similar findings in contemporary civil wars. The failure to prevent the conflict or stop its escalation is discussed together with some conclusions for the long term repercussions and the current social discontent in Greece. |
| Keywords: | Civil war, Greece, production function, equilibrium and stability conditions |
| JEL: | C62 E23 N44 O52 |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hel:greese:83&r=his |
| By: | Jean-Yves Moisseron; Frederic Teulon |
| Abstract: | One may think that Islam has not much to say on the Crisis of Capitalism because the corpus underpinning the Islamic thought: The Coran and the Sunnah were established long before the development of capitalism. Islamic economy would be then adapted to Pre-capitalist societies. Zakat may be useful to undeveloped society and prohibition of Riba may be convenient only with traditional economy based mainly on trade. One can stand that Islamic thought is not convenient for developed capitalism and for modern societies. The history of Islamic economics proves the contrary. |
| Date: | 2014–02–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipg:wpaper:2014-152&r=his |
| By: | David Cuberes (University of Sheffield); Rafael González-Val (Universidad de Zaragoza & IEB) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the effect of the Spanish Reconquest, a military campaign that aimed to expel the Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula, on the population of its most important cities. The almost four centuries of Reconquest offer a “quasi-natural” experiment to study the persistence of population shocks at the city level. Analyzing city growth before and after the onset of the Reconquest, we find that it had a significant negative effect on the population of the main Iberian cities. However, when we control for time effects, we conclude that in most cities this effect was transitory. In order to quantify the duration of the shock driven by the Reconquest we then estimate its average effect on the urban share of these cities considering the time dimension of the entire panel of cities simultaneously and adding city-specific time trends. Our estimates suggest that these cities regained their pre-Reconquest shares on average in less than 100 years. These results are robust to controlling for a large set of country and city-specific socioeconomic indicators and spatial effects. Our findings suggest that the locational fundamentals that determined the relative size of Iberian cities before the Reconquest were more important determinants of the fate of these cities than the direct negative impact that the Reconquest had on their population. |
| Keywords: | Urban primacy, locational fundamentals, city growth, lock-in effects |
| JEL: | R12 N9 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ieb:wpaper:2013/6/doc2014-4&r=his |
| By: | Sebastian Galiani; Iván Torre; Gustavo Torrens |
| Abstract: | We exploit three natural experiments in Argentina in order to determine if legislative malapportionment is the cause of the biases existing in the country’s federal tax sharing scheme. We find that legislative malapportionment has had no significant effect on the federal tax sharing scheme during periods when democratic governments were in place; nor did we find any evidence that the tax sharing distribution pattern became less biased under centralized military governments. We argue that these results are attributable to two of Argentina’s institutional characteristics: first, the predominance of the executive branch over the legislature; and, second, the lack of any significant difference in the pattern of geographic representation in the executive branch under democratic and autocratic governments. Thus, the observed biases in the distribution of tax revenues among the Argentine provinces are not caused by legislative malapportionment, but are instead the result of a more structural political equilibrium that transcends the geographic distribution of legislative representation and even the nature of the political regime. |
| JEL: | D72 D78 H3 |
| Date: | 2014–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:19995&r=his |
| By: | Zeting LIU (Lab.RII, ULCO/Clersé-UMR8019, Université Lille Nord de France, RRI) |
| Abstract: | En appuyant sur une analyse historique depuis la première prise en conscience de problème environnemental en Chine dans les années 1970 jusqu’à ce jour, cette étude montre que 1) la politique de la protection environnementale ne peut pas fonctionner quand elle est déconnectée des politiques publiques dans le domaine de l’économie. 2) Si la promotion de l’innovation verte en Chine est considérée comme une moyenne pour remédier le déséquilibre environnemental, elle est aussi un outil de réaliser son ambition de devenir leader mondial dans la révolution verte. By using a historical analysis from the first shot in conscience environmental problem in China in the 1970s until today, this study shows that 1) the policy of environmental protection won’t work if disconnected to public policy in the area of economy. 2) While the promotion of green innovation in China is considered a medium to address the environmental imbalance, it is also a tool to achieve its ambition to become a world leader in the green revolution. |
| Keywords: | politique industrielle et d’innovation, politique de la protection, environnementale, croissance vert, révolution verte, Chine, industrial and innovation policy, environmental protection, green growth, green revolution, China |
| JEL: | O31 O38 O33 P11 Q01 |
| Date: | 2014–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rii:riidoc:280&r=his |