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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2016‒06‒18
ten papers chosen by |
| By: | Campbell, Gareth; Rogers, Meeghan; Turner, John D. |
| Abstract: | The London Stock Exchange was the largest capital market in the world at the beginning of the twentieth century, but Britain also had numerous other stock markets based in provincial cities and towns. This paper provides the first in-depth quantitative assessment of these markets. We find that they were an important source of financing for regional companies up until circa 1900 and our evidence suggests that their post-1900 decline was largely due to the changing characteristics of publicly-listed firms. We also find that the provincial and London markets became increasingly integrated over time. |
| Keywords: | capital market,provincial stock exchanges,integration,cross listing |
| JEL: | G10 N23 N24 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:qucehw:201603&r=his |
| By: | BASSINO, Jean-Pascal; ENG, Pierre van der |
| Abstract: | This paper uses expenditure-based PPPs to create direct estimates of GDP per capita for 12 Asian countries in comparable prices for six benchmark years during 1913-1969. The paper finds that levels of real GDP per capita were in several countries comparable to those in Japan in 1913. GDP per capita of Japan and other Asian countries diverged during and after World War I. The paper questions whether Asia's 'little divergence' between Japan and other Asian countries dates back to the late-18th century. It draws attention to the different resource endowments of Japan, China and India compared to other Asian countries, and their implications for the development trajectories of Asian countries. The paper also demonstrates that using historical PPP estimates yields estimates of GDP per capita that diverge from those based on retropolations of the single 1990 PPP-converted benchmark year. It concludes that historical estimates of PPPs are needed to confirm analyses of comparative economic performance based on GDP per capita data. |
| Keywords: | Asia, PPPs, economic growth, Great Divergence, little divergence |
| JEL: | N15 O47 P52 |
| Date: | 2016–05–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:hiasdp:hias-e-28&r=his |
| By: | Grégoire Mallard (Department of Anthropology and Sociology of Development); Jérôme Sgard (Centre de recherches internationales) |
| Abstract: | Contractual Knowledge: One Hundred Years of Legal Experimentation in Global Markets, edited by Grégoire Mallard and Jérôme Sgard, extends the scholarship of law and globalization in two important directions. First, it provides a unique genealogy of global economic governance by explaining the transition from English law to one where global exchanges are primarily governed by international, multilateral, and finally, transnational legal orders. Second, rather than focusing on macro-political organizations, like the League of Nations or the International Monetary Fund, the book examines elements of contracts, including how and by whom they were designed and exactly who (experts, courts, arbitrators, and international organizations) interpreted, upheld, and established the legal validity of these contracts. By exploring such micro-level aspects of market exchanges, this collection unveils the contractual knowledge that led to the globalization of markets over the last century. |
| Keywords: | law; globalization; global Markets; economic governance; financial crises |
| Date: | 2016–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/3snuc7o9rg8bv8860ken7l2agm&r=his |
| By: | Bhalotra, Sonia (University of Essex); Karlsson, Martin (University of Duisburg-Essen); Nilsson, Therese (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the potential of an infant intervention to improve life expectancy, contributing to emerging interest in the early life origins of chronic disease. We analyse a pioneering program trialled in Sweden in the 1930s, which provided information, support and monitoring of infant care. Using birth certificate data from parish records matched to death registers, we estimate that the average duration of program exposure in infancy led to a 1.54% point decline in the risk of infant death (23% of baseline risk) and a 2.37% decline in the risk of dying by age 75 (6.5% of baseline risk). |
| Keywords: | Maternal care; Infant care; Early life interventions; Barker Hypothesis; Program |
| JEL: | H41 I15 I18 |
| Date: | 2016–05–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1124&r=his |
| By: | Marcella Alsan; Marianne Wanamaker |
| Abstract: | For forty years, the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male passively monitored hundreds of adult black males with syphilis despite the availability of effective treatment. The study's methods have become synonymous with exploitation and mistreatment by the medical community. We find that the historical disclosure of the study in 1972 is correlated with increases in medical mistrust and mortality and decreases in both outpatient and inpatient physician interactions for older black men. Our estimates imply life expectancy at age 45 for black men fell by up to 1.4 years in response to the disclosure, accounting for approximately 35% of the 1980 life expectancy gap between black and white men. |
| JEL: | I14 O15 |
| Date: | 2016–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22323&r=his |
| By: | Paula Rodríguez-Modroño (Department of Economics, Quantitative Methods and Economic History, Universidad Pablo de Olavide); Mauricio Matus López (Department of Economics, Quantitative Methods and Economic History, Universidad Pablo de Olavide); Lina Gálvez-Muñoz (Department of Economics, Quantitative Methods and Economic History, Universidad Pablo de Olavide) |
| Abstract: | The 20th century has witnessed an increase in the female participation force in Western countries, especially since 1940s. Explanations behind the more intensive use of female labour are of different nature: globalization forces, the relative female/male wage linked to an increase in education and productivity, the tertiarization of the economy, and other institutional and cultural factors that allow women to control fertility, invest in assets other than the family ones and alter female bargaining power. Since these phenomena are complex and might respond to specific reasons and timing in different countries, it is important to advance on country case studies in a comparative basis. While in other Western countries the increase in female labor participation started to be significant in the 1960s and 1970s, Spanish female activity rates started to rise dramatically in the 1980s, concurrently with the deep integration of Spain in international markets, especially through the entry in the European Union in 1986. In this paper, we will analyze the reasons behind the decalage in female labor force participation in Spain after WWII in comparison with other Western countries, and the subsequent catching up from the 1980s in order to determine the level of influence of Spanish integration in international markets, as well as other economic, institutional and cultural factors. |
| Keywords: | female labor force, globalization, gender analysis, inequality |
| JEL: | F66 J1 J2 N14 N34 |
| Date: | 2016–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pab:wphaei:16.02&r=his |
| By: | Sebastian Gechert; Christoph Paetz; Paloma Villanueva |
| Abstract: | Exploiting official historical records of the German Bundestag and Bundesrat, the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and the German statutory pension insurance scheme, we construct a narrative of legislated social security changes for Germany between 1970 and 2013 in order to identify important discretionary shocks to the social security system. The historical account covers major changes in transfers and social security benefits and contributions for pensions, health care, long-term care and unemployment insurance on the German federal level and thus complements the tax narrative of Uhl (2013). Based on the provided information we are able to code a rich bottom-up time-series of fiscal policy shocks for empirical macroeconomic analysis, addressing the identification problem. Therefore, we collect information regarding the underlying motivation, the dates of the legislative process and the prospective financial impact, closely following the methodology of Romer and Romer (2010) and Uhl (2013). |
| Keywords: | Narrative Record Identification, Action-Based Approach, Social Security |
| JEL: | E62 H20 H30 H55 N00 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imk:wpaper:170-2016&r=his |
| By: | Guillaume Daudin (LEDa - Laboratoire d'Economie de Dauphine - Université Paris IX - Paris Dauphine); Raphaël Franck (Bar-Ilan University - Bar-Ilan University [Israël]); Hillel Rapoport (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, PSE - Paris School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | France experienced the demographic transition before richer and more educated countries. This paper offers a novel explanation for this puzzle that emphasizes the diffusion of culture and information through internal migration. It tests how migration affected fertility by building a decennial bilateral migration matrix between French regions for 1861-1911. The identification strategy uses exogenous variation in transportation costs resulting from the construction of railways. The results suggest the convergence towards low birth rates can be explained by the diffusion of low-fertility norms by migrants, especially by migrants to and from Paris. |
| Keywords: | Fertility,France,Demographic Transition,Migration |
| Date: | 2016–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:gmonwp:halshs-01321952&r=his |
| By: | Martha Zaslow; Rachel Anderson; Zakia Redd; Julia Wessel; Paula Daneri; Katherine Green; Elizabeth W. Cavadel; Louisa Tarullo; Margaret Burchinal; Ivelisse Martinez-Beck |
| Abstract: | This monograph addresses the hypotheses that preschool children benefit most strongly when early care and education (ECE) is at or above a threshold of quality, has specific quality features, and/or is of longer duration. |
| Keywords: | quality thresholds, early care, education |
| JEL: | I |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpr:mprres:9417465ba3d7407e9531f0cbeaf4fbe5&r=his |
| By: | Zinngrebe, Yves |
| Abstract: | Conservation movements in developing countries, such as Peru, arise in relation to predominant perceptions concerning development and progress. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Peruvian government adopted a development vision that promoted the colonisation of the Amazon region, which led to the expansion of agricultural, infrastructural and extractive projects. As a reaction to this development paradigm, citizens formed various conservationist groups to push the protection of biodiversity onto the political agenda. This article analyses how these different groups emerged and started to develop a discourse on biodiversity conservation. After conducting qualitative interviews with stakeholders, discourse groups were identified and described with regard to their historical appearance. For example, in the 1980s, a group of mainly biologists started forming NGOs and supporting projects in and around protected areas. Contrastingly, another group is looking at conservation as a traditional, cultural activity of indigenous people. With the ratification of the Convention for Biological Diversity (CBD) in the early 1990s, a new political momentum led to important legislative and institutional changes, which stood in contrast to the general development agenda of resource based growth. A new perspective started to enter the discourse with the creation of regional governments in 2002, which led to new practical questions about local biodiversity management. After studies like the Millennium Ecosystem report and the TEEB assessment (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity), economic approaches to biodiversity conservation initiated a new perspective on biodiversity policy. While those different discourse groups do not automatically contradict or exclude each other, this article sheds light on the different historical situations and motivations underlying these discourses. |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:daredp:1606&r=his |