|
on Business, Economic and Financial History |
|
Issue of 2015‒05‒22
23 papers chosen by |
| By: | Leandro Prados de la Escosura (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) |
| Abstract: | How has Latin AmericaÕs wellbeing evolved over time? How does Latin America compare to todayÕs developed countries (OECD, for short)? What explains their differences? These questions are addressed using an historical index of human development. A sustained improvement in wellbeing can be observed since 1870. The absolute gap between OECD and Latin America widened over time, but an incomplete catching up Ðlargely explained by education- occurred since 1900, but faded away after 1980, as Latin America fell behind the OECD in terms of longevity. Once the first health transition was exhausted, the contribution of life expectancy to human development declined. |
| Keywords: | Latin America, Human Development, Positive Freedom, Life Expectancy, Education |
| JEL: | O15 O54 I00 N36 |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0077&r=his |
| By: | Christopher David Absell; Antonio Tena Junguito |
| Abstract: | The objective of this paper is to reappraise both the accuracy of the official export statistics and the conventional narrative of Brazilian export growth during the period immediately following independence. We undertake an accuracy test of the official values of Brazilian export statistics and find evidence of considerable under-valuation. Once corrected, during the postindependence decades (1821-1849) Brazil's current exports represented a larger share of its economy and its constant growth is found to be more dynamic than any other period of the nineteenth century. We posit that this dynamism was related to an exogenous institutional shock in the form of British West Indies slave emancipation that afforded Brazil a competitive advantage. |
| Keywords: | Brazil , trade accuracy , export growth , American tropical exports , Nineteenth century |
| JEL: | F14 N76 |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:whrepe:wp15-03&r=his |
| By: | Dong-No Kim (Yonsei University) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes why and how European social sciences were introduced in East Asian countries, especially China, Japan and Korea, during the early modern period. In the second half of the nineteenth century, East Asian intellectuals were eager to introduce Western social sciences to help overcome a national crisis they faced. To the extent that the crisis originated from internal deteriorations and external threats, they needed to find ways to transform their traditional political, economic and social systems into modern ones. Based on a perspective of evolutionism quite prevalent among East Asian intellectuals at that time, they believed that the competition among the nation-states could be determined by the consequences of modernization efforts. Although the slogans they adopted were heterogeneous, like zhongtixiyong in China, wakonyousai in Japan, and tongdosoki in Korea, they commonly implemented various measures to modernize their systems with the belief that the success of European states could be attributed to the modern institutions and techniques. One very effective way of modernizing the traditional systems in East Asia was to learn from the historical experiences of European countries and to introduce Western social sciences. East Asian intellectuals regarded European social sciences as the black box in which they could find the key secrete of European success. In this sense, they tried to make their nations strong and wealthy by studying European politics and economics as presented in various social science textbooks. Modern state formations and capitalist economy were the two key concepts they maintained in the attempts to modernize their countries. For instance, just as Japanese economics were dominated by liberalist economics and neo-historicism, respectively imported from Britain and Germany, these two trends ended up strongly influencing Chinese and Korean intellectuals. European economics taught East Asian intellectuals various ways to transform their economic structure: the implementation of national census, the construction of social infrastructures, the establishment of business firms, and the promotion of foreign trades. All these measures encouraged the introduction of modern capitalist economy in this area. |
| Keywords: | European social sciences, East Asia, modernization |
| JEL: | B10 B15 Z13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:1003918&r=his |
| By: | Peter McDonald (The Australian National University) |
| Abstract: | From the demographic perspective, the 21st century is the population ageing century. Population ageing is well underway in all Asian countries as a result of the spectacular falls in both fertility and mortality rates in the second half of the 20th century. |
| Keywords: | Demographic Trends, Asian Century, Intergenerational Policy |
| JEL: | J11 J14 J18 |
| Date: | 2015–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eab:laborw:24833&r=his |
| By: | Lyttkens, Carl Hampus (Department of Economics, Lund University); Gerding, Henrik (Department of Classical Archaeology and Ancient History, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | Perikles is usually seen as a great statesman and clever leader of the Athenians. In the mid fifth century BC, he seems however to have been in serious political trouble and may well have been in danger of losing the struggle for power and of being ostracised. The fact that his incentives changed considerably at this point in time is ignored in traditional historical accounts. In contrast, we see the fierce competition as a motivation for several important policy measures introduced by Perikles at this particular time: the pay to jurors, the new law on citizenship (which has been a puzzle to many historians), and the building projects on the Acropolis and elsewhere. Compared to traditional analyses, an economic rational-actor approach thus provides a diachronic analytical benefit by focusing on the way incentives change over time and it provides a synchronic benefit by dealing with various decisions in a common framework. |
| Keywords: | economics; ancient history; Athens; Perikles; law on citizenship; Parthenon; payment to jurors |
| JEL: | B40 N43 |
| Date: | 2015–04–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2015_013&r=his |
| By: | Adolfo Rodriguez (Universidad de Costa Rica) |
| Abstract: | In the first three pages of his Capital, without any warning to the reader, Marx introduces a modification of the traditional meaning of the term “use value”. For Locke, Quesnay, and Smith, “use value” was the ability of a thing to satisfy human needs, for Marx it becomes the thing itself. This change of meaning has not been properly perceived, and many authors continue to attribute to Marx the same conception of use value than his predecessors have. When Marx translates some passages of Aristotle’s Politics from English to German, his translation surprisingly attributes the term “use value” to Aristotle; worse, Marx does not attribute to Aristotle the predominant meaning of this term but the new meaning adopted by him. This note offers a brief history of the term “use value”, summarizes the significant change of meaning introduced by Marx, conjectures about the possible motivations of Marx to act this way, and finally documents the amazing translation of Marx. |
| Date: | 2014–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fcr:wpaper:201402&r=his |
| By: | Peter Csanyi (Alexander Dubcek University of Trencin) |
| Abstract: | The goal of this paper is to describe and analyze the theories of political organization of Central Europe during the interwar period, especially from the Czechoslovak perspectives. Some connections between the European integration process, and a national and a civil identity are outlined, in particular the problems of the Central European national states in the process of the European integration. The discourse on the Central Europe is one of the most difficult, because it has many aspects: political, cultural, philosophical, historical, religious, ethnic, psychological and economic.Small states, such as the interwar Czechoslovak Republic was, depend on their surroundings. They do not have enough power to enforce a balance of power favorable to themselves. If they originated as an expression of a temporary state of the balance of power, they are condemned to dissolution. Some representatives of the Czech and Slovak nations attempted to understand and confront these realities with a practical policy. I guess that if we want to understand these theorists and politicians, it will be important to know and understand the view of Central Europe, which they represent.The most of the integration projects of 1920s and 1930s reflect the fear of economic and political strengthening of Germany, optimistic hope of democratization of the USSR, and seeking for allies in the Central European region. |
| Keywords: | Central Europe, political organization, theories, Czechoslovak perspectives, nation |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:1004159&r=his |
| By: | Ruth H. Bloch; Naomi R. Lamoreaux |
| Abstract: | The freedom of citizens to form voluntary associations has long been viewed as an essential ingredient of modern civil society. Our chapter revises the standard Tocquevillian account of associational freedom in the early United States by accentuating the role of state courts and legislatures in the creation and regulation of nineteenth-century American nonprofit corporations. Corporate status gave associations valuable rights that went beyond the basic right of individuals to associate. Government officials selectively used their power to grant and enforce corporate charters to reward politically favored groups while denying equivalent rights to groups they viewed as politically or socially disruptive. |
| JEL: | N11 |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21153&r=his |
| By: | Pawel Bukowski |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates the long-lasting effects of institutions imposed by the three Empires: Austro-Hungary, Prussia and Russia during the Partition of Poland on the performance of Polish students. Using the two-dimensional geographical Regression Discontinuity Design I show that the Habsburg Empire had a long-lasting positive effect on the performance of students compared to the Russian Empire. The magnitude of the effect is similar to the performance gap between white and black students in the US. At the same time however, there is no difference between the Prussian and Russian Empires. I argue that the main channels of influence are the role of ethnic tolerance and the political purpose of education. The Austrian and Prussian educational systems were very similar as the former was practically copied from the latter. However, the attitudes toward the Polish population and the role of education in this respect widely differed. While in the Prussian Empire education was the main tool of Germanization, in the Habsburg Empire it was seen as a tool to spread modern national identities. The alternative explanations are also discussed. These include migration-based self selection of people, urbanization patterns and other features of the Austrian and Prussian education systems. |
| Date: | 2015–03–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ceu:econwp:2015_3&r=his |
| By: | Adolfo Rodriguez (Universidad de Costa Rica) |
| Abstract: | The terms employed by Smith to refer to value and measure of value are used in his time with imprecision, which has led to different interpretations about his position on these issues. It is no coincidence that Smith is considered the father of the theory of labour value developed by David Ricardo and Karl Marx and simultaneously of the cost-of-production theory developed by John Stuart Mill and Alfred Marshall. This note reviews the criticisms made by Ricardo and Marx on Smith’s position about value and measure of value. According to these authors, Smith is not consistent in proposing that value of a commodity is defined or measured as the amount of labour necessary to produce it and simultaneously as the amount of labour that can be purchased by this commodity. After demonstrating that the interpretation made by Ricardo and Marx on Smith’s arguments is wrong and that the criticized inconsistency does not really exist, I will argue that Smith proposes a labour theory of value that substantially corresponds to the one developed later by Marx. |
| Date: | 2014–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fcr:wpaper:201401&r=his |
| By: | Monica Bozzano |
| Abstract: | In most developed countries the gender gap is nearly closing in the health and educational spheres while there is still sizeable gender inequality in the economic and political dimensions. Why do women’s economic decision-making and political empowerment vary so widely? What are the main potential determinants of such variations? In this paper we explore the association between two specific facets of women’s empowerment, the percentage of women holding office in local political bodies and the percentage of women in high-ranking jobs, with the cultural environment in which women make their career decisions. Our hypothesis is that culture, in particular those values embodied by religious culture, plays a central role in shaping norms and beliefs about the role and involvement of women in society. Moreover we suggest that these cultural norms are inherited from the past and therefore have a high degree of inertia. Over a cross section of Italian provincial data, both OLS and IV results indicate that our measures of women’s empowerment are strongly associated with religious culture, as proxied by religious marriages. These results are robust and consistent across specifications |
| Keywords: | women’s empowerment, politics, glass ceiling, religion, family culture, historical determinants |
| JEL: | J16 J7 N30 R1 Z10 Z12 |
| Date: | 2015–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mod:recent:110&r=his |
| By: | Kamran Khavarani (None); Parisa Amirmostofian (None) |
| Abstract: | The motivation for this research is to address a major problem in the world of visual arts, with a thundering vibration of mixed and confusing signals, and evaluate the difference between "art" and its opposite, the "personart." Being an architect and a painter for over half a century, I sense humanity is begging for an answer for a simple question: “What is art and what is not art?” The answer to this question was clear during the grand humanistic era of the ancient Achaemenid Empire. "Effective Goodness" was the ONLY value and meaning then. For years since, tastemakers have taken advantage of a prevailing ambiguity. Artfully, they have influenced the minds of the naïve for profit making. They successfully have brainwashed the public, depriving them of the ability to choose freely. As a result, a serious debate of the status of a major controversy has ensued. Recently, Apsden [FT, WEF 2015], notes: "There have been enormous changes in the ecology of the art world in the last 20 years….” [Apsde is right, except for the fact that 20 years is a gross underestimation.] On the one hand, consider the great Hellenic philosopher Socrates view “…meanings cannot be understood without the knowledge of their opposites. On the other hand, Bertold Brecht’s insight that “Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.” Its resonance is strong, indeed. In balance, art is mastery in a craft (e.g., painting) that reflects universal values and beautifies life. That is the "creation" that is "art," and a hammer with which to shape the reality for the good, sanguine. THE contradictory to art is the “personart,” any kind of production, merely a limited expression of the mind of a person, a group or a specific ideology, lacking mastery and void of universality. They are the "personarts," a mirror held to a limited reality, far from being an art. I propose: “art is only that form of creation that in harmony with universal value emanate positive energy and beautifies life, otherwise it is a ‘personart’.” [Khavarani, 2013] Data abundant. I analyze numerous “personarts,” from a variety of sources, amassed for years. |
| Keywords: | Art for Goodness, Bad Art, Personart |
| JEL: | Z11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:1003439&r=his |
| By: | Diogo de Melo Lourenço (FEP-UP) |
| Abstract: | In his Scientism and the Study of Society, Hayek wishes to show the errors to which the moral scientist is led by emulating the methods of the natural sciences. The present paper argues that Hayek’s argument relies on a differentiation between the natural sciences and what he calls “ordinary experience” that is based on an unacceptable appearance-reality distinction and an implausible ontology. An alternative justification for the differentiation is offered by appealing to the manifold goals and social contexts of inquiry. Also, according to Hayek, the moral scientist needs to understand agents’ attitudes, and such understanding is possible because there is a similarity between the mind of the moral scientist and that of the agent. This paper tries to elucidate what Hayek thinks such similarity to be and how it may lead to the understanding of others. It proposes two alternatives: first, understanding as the projection of mental categories from behavioral evidence, and second, by looking forward to Hayek’s The Sensory Order, understanding as a functional correspondence between structures in the central nervous system. |
| Keywords: | Hayek, Scientism, The Sensory Order, Attitudes |
| JEL: | B31 B41 B53 |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:por:fepwps:560&r=his |
| By: | Zannoni, Mario |
| Abstract: | The first known formal assessment of Parmigiano-Reggiano quality dates back to 1867 and was done by a commercial company to promote trade. In 1934, the Consortium, a collective organization of producers, introduced controls to improve market image by using a mark of quality. Beginning in 1954, and continuing after the PDO recognition by the European Union in 1992, the government became an actor in the qualification process of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Evolution and changes in the quality control of Parmigiano-Reggiano were influenced more by the demands of the trade than by changes in production practices due to the modernization of the process. |
| Keywords: | Parmigiano-Reggiano Cheese, Designation of Origin, Trade, Quality Control, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, |
| Date: | 2015–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:eaa145:200230&r=his |
| By: | Mariana Mazzucato; L. Randall Wray |
| Abstract: | This paper discusses the role that finance plays in promoting the capital development of the economy, with particular emphasis on the current situation of the United States and the United Kingdom. We define both "finance" and "capital development" very broadly. We begin with the observation that the financial system evolved over the postwar period, from one in which closely regulated and chartered commercial banks were dominant to one in which financial markets dominate the system. Over this period, the financial system grew rapidly relative to the nonfinancial sector, rising from about 10 percent of value added and a 10 percent share of corporate profits to 20 percent of value added and 40 percent of corporate profits in the United States. To a large degree, this was because finance, instead of financing the capital development of the economy, was financing itself. At the same time, the capital development of the economy suffered perceptibly. If we apply a broad definition--to include technological advances, rising labor productivity, public and private infrastructure, innovations, and the advance of human knowledge--the rate of growth of capacity has slowed. The past quarter century witnessed the greatest explosion of financial innovation the world had ever seen. Financial fragility grew until the economy collapsed into the global financial crisis. At the same time, we saw that much (or even most) of the financial innovation was directed outside the sphere of production--to complex financial instruments related to securitized mortgages, to commodities futures, and to a range of other financial derivatives. Unlike J. A. Schumpeter, Hyman Minsky did not see the banker merely as the ephor of capitalism, but as its key source of instability. Furthermore, due to "financialisation of the real economy," the picture is not simply one of runaway finance and an investment-starved real economy, but one where the real economy itself has retreated from funding investment opportunities and is instead either hoarding cash or using corporate profits for speculative investments such as share buybacks. As we will argue, financialization is rooted in predation; in Matt Taibbi's famous phrase, Wall Street behaves like a giant, blood-sucking "vampire squid." In this paper we will investigate financial reforms as well as other government policy that is necessary to promote the capital development of the economy, paying particular attention to increasing funding of the innovation process. For that reason, we will look not only to Minsky's ideas on the financial system, but also to Schumpeter's views on financing innovation. |
| Keywords: | Banker as Ephor of Capitalism; Capital Development; Finance; Global Financial Crisis; Innovation; Minsky; Schumpeter |
| JEL: | B5 B51 B52 G G1 G2 H6 L5 N1 O1 O2 O3 O4 P1 |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lev:wrkpap:wp_837&r=his |
| By: | Pedro Malan; Regis Bonelli |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipe:ipetds:0026&r=his |
| By: | Eliana A. Cardoso |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipe:ipetds:0006&r=his |
| By: | Edgardo Zablotsky |
| Abstract: | La actividad filantrópica de Barón Maurice de Hirsch está claramente signada por una característica distintiva: no proveer caridad sino intentar la rehabilitación económica de los beneficiarios mediante la educación y el entrenamiento profesional. En 1891Hirsch funda la Jewish Colonization Association (J.C.A.) a través de la cual habría de conducir la inmigración de miles de personas desde el Imperio Ruso hacia nuestro país y su establecimiento en colonias agrícolas. Mucho se ha escrito sobre las colonias del Barón de Hirsch, pero sistemáticamente se olvida que la creación de la J.C.A., como un instrumento para llevar a cabo el proyecto inmigratorio y la totalidad de dicho proyecto, fue fruto de la casualidad. Una casualidad nacida en la imposibilidad de Hirsch de mejorar la calidad de vida de los judíos rusos en su país de origen, mediante un proyecto educativo que no logró llevar a cabo dados los condicionamientos impuestos al mismo por el gobierno del Zar. Este paper describe y analiza dicho proyecto con el fin de resaltar que su objetivo siempre fue la rehabilitación económica de los beneficiarios a través de la educación y el entrenamiento profesional, y que aún el proceso inmigratorio que daría origen a las colonias agrícolas en la Argentina fue una fortuita derivación de esta visión sobre la filantropía y no un fin original en sí mismo. Por ello, no es atrevido afirmar que de haber sido aceptado por el gobierno del Zar el proyecto educativo del Barón de Hirsch la inmigración a nuestro país nunca se hubiese llevado a cabo. |
| Keywords: | Barón de Hirsch, educación, Jewish Colonization Association |
| JEL: | D64 |
| Date: | 2015–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cem:doctra:561&r=his |
| By: | Arjun Jayadev (University of Massachusetts at Boston); Rahul Lahoti (Georg-August-University Göttingen); Sanjay G. Reddy (The New School for Social Research and the Initiative for Policy Dialogue) |
| Abstract: | Using newly comprehensive data and tools from the Global Consumption and Income Project or CGIP, covering most of the world and five decades, we present a portrait of the changing global distribution of consumption and income and discuss its implications for our understanding of inequality, poverty, inclusivity of growth and development, world economic welfare, and the emergence of a global ‘middle class’. We show how regional distributions of income and consumption have evolved very differently over time. We also undertake sensitivity analysis to quantify the impact of various choices made in database construction and analysis. We find that levels of consumption and income have increased across the distribution, that the global distribution has become more relatively equal due to falling inter-country relative inequality, and that by some measures global poverty has declined greatly but by others it has hardly declined at all, even over the fifty years. The global middle class has grown markedly in certain countries but only slightly worldwide. Most of the marked changes have occurred after 1990. China’s rapid economic growth is by far the most important factor underlying almost all of them, notwithstanding sharply increasing inequalities within the country. Most improvements outside of China are associated with rapid developing country growth after 2000, and are of unknown durability. Country-experiences vary widely; there is for instance some evidence of ‘inequality convergence’ with previously more equal countries becoming less equal over time and the obverse. We provide support for previous findings (e.g. the replacement of the global ‘twin peaks’ by a unimodal distribution) but also arrive at some conclusions that overthrow old ‘stylized facts’ (e.g. that the Sub-Saharan African countries, and not Latin American ones, have the highest levels of inequality in the world, when measured using standardized surveys). The GCIP provides a resource for ongoing analysis, and forecasting, of developments in the world distribution. |
| Keywords: | Global Distribution; Inequality; Poverty; Economic Growth; Welfare |
| JEL: | D30 D31 D60 D63 I30 O10 O15 P50 |
| Date: | 2015–05–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:got:gotcrc:174&r=his |
| By: | Ricardo Paes de Barros; Lauro Ramos |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipe:ipetds:0037&r=his |
| By: | Ángel de la Fuente |
| Abstract: | En este trabajo se elaboran series homogéneas de distintos agregados de empleo y de VAB a precios corrientes y constantes para el conjunto de España durante el período 1955-2014. Las series se construyen mediante el enlace de diversas bases de la CNE y de la Contabilidad Trimestral, introduciéndose también una corrección tentativa para reconciliar las series de empleo de la CNE con las de la EPA. |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fda:fdaeee:eee2015-11&r=his |
| By: | KONISHI Yoko; NOMURA Koji |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this paper is to analyze the sources of energy efficiency improvement in Japanese industries over the period 1955-2012, based on the new estimates of substitutions of KLEM (capital, labor, energy, and materials) inputs and the biases of technical changes. The first advantage of our analysis is that we apply the framework of econometric modeling developed in Jin and Jorgenson (2010), which provides a more flexible treatment of technology as an unobservable or latent variable. The second advantage is that we develop industry-level data of the quality-adjusted outputs and KLEM inputs for 35 non-government industries in Japan, maintaining as much consistency as possible with the Japanese System of National Accounts.Our industry data indicate that energy efficiencies in most Japanese industries worsened before the oil embargo in 1973, reflecting the stabilization of oil prices relative to the increasing prices of capital and labor. The period from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s was the golden age, in which energy efficiencies improved considerably mainly due to the substitution effects caused by the rapid increases in energy prices. The opportunities to involve the energy-saving technical change diminished until the late 1990s, and the bias of technology changed to energy-using in the 2000s in most industries. This indicates that it will be much harder for Japanese industries to improve their energy efficiencies in the future, compared to the past experiences during the golden age, not only from higher costs for substitutions from energy to other inputs, but also from our projected bias of technical changes for energy until 2030. |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:15058&r=his |
| By: | Marcus Noland (Peterson Institute for International Economics); Kevin Stahler (Peterson Institute for International Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the growing diversity of participation and achievement in the Olympics. A wide set of socioeconomic variables is correlated with medaling, particularly with respect to the Summer Games and women's events. Host advantage is particularly acute in judged contests such as gymnastics. However, there is evidence that the influence of correlates such as country size, per capita income, and membership in the communist bloc is declining over time as competition becomes increasingly diverse. These effects are less evident in the Winter Games, events that require significant capital investments, and judged contests. |
| Keywords: | women, globalization, sports, Olympics, doping |
| JEL: | J16 L83 Z13 |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iie:wpaper:wp15-9&r=his |