|
on Business, Economic and Financial History |
|
Issue of 2017‒11‒19
28 papers chosen by |
| By: | Marc Badia-Miró (Universidad de Barcelona (España).); Esteban Nicolini (Universidad Nacional de Tucumán (Argentina).; Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino (Argentina).); Henry Willebald (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía) |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to analyze the evolution of regional income disparities in the South American Southern Cone (SASC) in historical perspective. One of the first results of our analysis is that most of the regional inequality in this geographic area stems from differences within countries rather than from disparities across countries. The second result is that the evolution of regional inequality between the end of the 19th century and the second third of the 20th century is different in each country: while Chile shows a higher inequality and a U-shaped evolution (reduction of inequality and a slight increase in the 1960), Uruguay presents a monotonically declining inequality and Argentina exhibits a U-shaped evolution with decreasing disparities until the beginning of the 20th century and increasing inequality afterwards. When the entire subnational units are analyzed together, we find a U-shaped curve which started at the end of the 19th century with high levels of inequality, a minimum is found in the 1940s and another local maximum ended with the collapse of the Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) polices in the 1960s-1970s. We also analyze regional convergence in the long run for the Southern Cone at both national and regional level. The existence of convergence at a national level depends on the periods and countries: while Uruguay shows convergence in all the analyzed sub-periods, the provinces of Argentina only converge during the period of the first globalization; most of the departments of Chile converge in general but the presence of outliers induces the rejection of convergence hypothesis during the first globalization. Convergence at a regional level (including all the sub-national units from the three countries in the same analysis) is accepted for the period of the first globalization but rejected for the central decades of the 20th century. The empirical findings are interpreted as the result of the combination of the varying potential of the sub-national units for taking advantage of (i) the forces of agglomeration (inducing high growth rates in the main cities and, in particular, in the administrative capitals), (ii) the abundance of natural resources, and (iii) the stimulus originated in technological change, integration (or dis-integration) to international markets and public policies for industrialization. |
| Keywords: | Latin America, regional convergence, regional inequality, Southern Cone |
| JEL: | N16 N56 N96 R12 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulr:wpaper:dt-11-17&r=his |
| By: | Cemal Eren Arbatli; Gunes Gokmen |
| Abstract: | We study the long-term economic legacy of highly-skilled minorities a century after their wholesale expulsion. Using mass expulsions of Armenian and Greek communities of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century as a unique natural experiment of history, we show that districts with greater presence of Armenian and Greek minorities at the end of the 19th century are systematically more densely populated, more urbanized, and more developed today. Results are robust to accounting for an extensive set of geographical and historical factors of development and minority settlement patterns. Matching type estimators, instrumental variable regressions, and a sub-province level case study corroborate our findings. Importantly, we provide evidence on the channels of persistence. Armenian and Greek contribution to long-run development is largely mediated by their legacy on local human capital accumulation. In comparison, the mediating effect of minority asset transfer on development appears less important. |
| Keywords: | human capital, economic development, expulsion, minorities, ethnicity, Armenians, Greeks, persistence |
| JEL: | O10 O43 P48 N40 Z12 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6268&r=his |
| By: | Bordo, Michael D; Monnet, Eric; Naef, Alain |
| Abstract: | The Gold Pool (1961-1968) was one of the most ambitious cases of central bank cooperation in history. Major central banks pooled interventions - sharing profits and losses- to stabilize the dollar price of gold. Why did it collapse? From at least 1964, the fate of the Pool was in fact tied to sterling, the first line of defense for the dollar. Sterling's unsuccessful devaluation in November 1967 spurred speculation and massive losses for the Pool. Contagion occurred because US policies were inflationary and insufficiently credible as well. The demise of the Pool provides a striking example of contagion between reserve currencies. |
| Keywords: | Bretton Woods; central bank cooperation; Gold Pool; international monetary system; reserve currencies; sterling crisis |
| JEL: | E42 F31 F33 N14 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12425&r=his |
| By: | Igor Fedyukin (National Research University Higher School of Economics); Robert Collis (National Research University Higher School of Economics); Ernest A. Zitser (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper reconstructs the origins and the meaning of the “Most Illustrious and Incomparable Order of Antisobres,” that was to be instituted in 1728 in St Petersburg by Duke de Liria, the Spanish ambassador. While this unusual fraternal society might have never taken off the ground and remained on paper only, this episode serves as an important missing link, bridging the Petrine and immediately post-Petrine forms of sociability, on the one hand, and both their contemporary Western European analogues and later Russian formats of socializing, on the other. The article also demonstrates how such formats of fraternizing were central for international diplomacy of the era. Insofar as Duke de Liria was a prominent Jacobite, this microstudy also contributes to the early history proto-masonic societies in which Jacobites were important players |
| Keywords: | Peter I, Fraternal Orders, Sociability, Drinking, Masons, Jacobites |
| JEL: | Z |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:157/hum/2017&r=his |
| By: | Victor Gay |
| Abstract: | I explore the pathways underlying the diffusion of women's participation in the labor force across generations at the individual level. I rely on a severe exogenous shock to the adult sex ratio, World War I military fatalities in France, which generated a short-run upward shift in female labor force participation. I find that this shock to female labor transmitted across generations: women residing under the same institutional conditions but born in locations exposed to higher military death rates were more likely to be in the labor force from 1962 to 2012. Three primary mechanisms account for the long-run impact of World War I military fatalities on women's working behavior: vertical intergenerational transmission (from mothers and fathers to daughters), transmission through marriage (from husbands to wives, and from mothers in-law to daughters in-law), and oblique intergenerational transmission (from migrants to non-migrants). Consistent with theories of intergenerational diffusion of female labor force participation, I provide supporting evidence that WWI military fatalities altered preferences and beliefs about female labor in the long run. |
| JEL: | J16 J22 N34 Z13 |
| Date: | 2017–11–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jmp:jm2017:pga905&r=his |
| By: | Miguel D. Ramirez (Department of Economics, Trinity College) |
| Abstract: | This paper critically discusses the important and relevant—not to mention controversial— views of Ricardo and Marx on the impact of machinery on labor productivity, the organization of production, and the wages and employment prospects of the working class during the capitalism of their day. First, the paper turns to Ricardo’s assessment of the introduction of machinery and its likely effects on the laborer and the rate of profit and accumulation—one which went through a substantial revision (and reversal) between the first and third editions of his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. Then we discuss Marx’s own critical analysis of the historical development of machinery and its impact on the labor process, the so-called “compensation principle,” and how the rising organic composition of capital ostensibly generates a “redundant or surplus-population”during the course of capitalism development. We highlight Marx’s intellectual debt to Ricardo (and John Barton) insofar as his theory of technological unemployment is concerned. Lastly, the paper summarizes the views of Ricardo and Marx and offers some concluding remarks. |
| Keywords: | : Capital; compensation principle; fixed vs. circulating capital; gross vs. net income; machinery; rate of surplus-value (profit); Say’s Law of Markets; surplus-population; time of production; turnover of capital |
| JEL: | B10 B12 B14 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tri:wpaper:1706&r=his |
| By: | Alexander Klein; Sheilagh Ogilvie |
| Abstract: | Do factor endowments explain serfdom? Domar (1970) conjectured that high land-labor ratios caused serfdom by increasing incentives to coerce labor. But historical evidence is mixed and quantitative analyses are lacking. Using the Acemoglu-Wolitzky (2011) framework and controlling for political economy variables by studying a specific serf society, we analyze 11,349 Bohemian serf villages in 1757. The net effect of higher land-labor ratios was indeed to increase coercion. The effect greatly increased when animal labor was included, and diminished as land-labor ratios rose. Controlling for other variables, factor endowments significantly influenced serfdom. Institutions, we conclude, are shaped partly by economic fundamentals. |
| Keywords: | serfdom; land-labor ratio; institutions; labor coercion; rural-urban interaction |
| JEL: | J47 N33 O43 P48 |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ukc:ukcedp:1717&r=his |
| By: | Velde, Francois R. (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago) |
| Abstract: | I study the business practices of the Comédie française, the main theater in Paris, between 1680 and 1793. The theater was an actors’ partnership and operated within a (contested) oligopoly. Newly available data provide revenues by price category for over 32,000 performances. Attendance varied considerably from one performance to the next. Total revenues increased in the second half of the 18th century as demand for entertainment in Paris boomed. The increase came in part from box rentals (by performance or by season). Pricing practices changed over time, as premium pricing for high-demand events made way for premium pricing on specific weekdays, and ultimately constant pricing. The repertory consisted of proven classics to which successful novelties were added. As demand grew, the theater provided more variety and more novelty. |
| Keywords: | Entertainment industry; history of theater; oligopoly; France; Paris; Comédie Française |
| JEL: | L82 N73 N83 |
| Date: | 2017–11–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedhwp:wp-2017-24&r=his |
| By: | Kersting, Felix (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) |
| Abstract: | Industrialization and the rise of nationalism were the two major developments in Germany before the World War I. A novel county-level dataset reveals that industrialization and nationalism measured by membership in the \"Kriegervereine\'\", the biggest civil organization at the time, were negatively correlated. Using coal potential as an IV for identification, I find strong evidence for a causal impact of industrialization on nationalism. In order to detect possible mechanisms, a three stage IV regression model produces strong support that migration and trade union membership were crucial factors that linked industrialization and nationalism. |
| Keywords: | nationalism; industrialization; prussia; |
| JEL: | N13 N33 |
| Date: | 2017–11–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:52&r=his |
| By: | Hanappi, Hardy |
| Abstract: | Innovation in theory building usually follows the prescription of ‘normal science’ as described by Thomas Kuhn in his account on the history of theoretical physics, see [Kuhn, 1962]. What already had been postulated by Descartes, compare [Descartes, 1637], as a signum of science, namely the systematic advance towards smaller, more specialized, partial problems that are easier to solve, this procedure still prevails in the social sciences till today. Contrary to this piecemeal engineering approach, Joseph Schumpeter made the character mask of the revolutionary entrepreneur to his hero of progress – at least as far as innovation in the production of commodities is concerned, [Schumpeter, 1911]. Of course, history shows that both forms of innovation are alternating: If the slow advance and broadening of a prevailing mainstream gets stuck and the contradictions it produces start to accumulate quickly, then it is time for a revolution – in the material world (compare [Hanappi & Wäckerle, 2016]) as well as in its scientific correlate. It is time for a metamorphosis. In which direction a theoretical innovation in times of metamorphosis shall point clearly has to remain an unanswered question. The best characterization of its general methodological form still seems to be Schumpeter’s dictum. It is a new combination of (existing) elements. The existing elements typically should concern burning problems of the troubled mainstream (compare [Hanappi, 2016]), and the adjective ‘new’ means that they so far are not connected to each other in the stagnating mainstream approach. The global political economy as well as its theoretical reflection in mainstream theory undoubtedly currently is in a state that calls for a revolutionary metamorphosis. This paper therefore sets out to develop a new combination of three seemingly unconnected ideas, which each address a fundamental contradiction. The first idea concerns the contradiction between the rich and the poor parts of the global economy, the second idea concerns the driving force of progress of the human species and its impediments, and the third idea concerns the contradiction between syntax and semantics of the formal representation of the first two contradictions. Contrary to papers in ‘normal science’, which in a conclusion propose a solution for their research question, this paper avoids to pretend a finite horizon of its arguments. As is appropriate for a proposed theoretical innovation it just offers a new open-ended contribution to the rapidly evolving discourse in the middle of metamorphosis. |
| Keywords: | Political Economy, Innovation in Theory |
| JEL: | C50 P10 P16 |
| Date: | 2017–10–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:82511&r=his |
| By: | Melitz, Jacques |
| Abstract: | The paper takes issue with the mainstream economic analysis of the enormous flow of silver into China in 1550-1820. First, I challenge the view that arbitrage between gold and silver in European trade with China was important except for one twenty-year spell. Next, I argue that had China imported gold, its history would have been much the same. I also dispute the idea that the persistence of the silver inflows from 1550 to 1820 implies any persistent disequilibrium, and I maintain that economic theory can easily accommodate the view that the inflow of silver into China sponsored growth in China. |
| Keywords: | silver flows into China 1550-1820; silver/gold exchange rates; transaction costs in international trade |
| JEL: | F36 N1 N15 N25 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12427&r=his |
| By: | Steven M. Smith (Division of Economics and Business, Colorado School of Mines) |
| Abstract: | Surface water irrigators in arid regions confront public good issues for building and maintaining shared infrastructure as well as common-pool resource issues to appropriate the surface water. Drawing on the unique history of New Mexico, I explore how the transition in the early 20 th century from the original small decentralized communal Spanish irrigation systems (acequias) to centralized quasi-public irrigation districts altered agricultural development and production. My results confirm that that irrigation districts can significantly improve outcomes when investing in costly infrastructure to expand irrigated acreage, increasing farmland values up to 33 percent. However, I find no broader evidence that the centralized control of water distribution provides any gains to acreage previously under irrigation by the decentralized acequias. |
| Keywords: | common-pool resources, transaction costs, externalities, governance structure |
| JEL: | N52 O13 Q15 Q25 |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mns:wpaper:wp201709&r=his |
| By: | Yaroslava Babych (International School of Economics at Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi) |
| Abstract: | Do political regime changes as well as the quality of political institutions help predict the turning points in a country’s growth history? I show that controlling for a variety of economic factors, both democratic and autocratic regime changes help predict growth “takeoffs†. However, I find evidence that countries with low levels of income per capita benefit less from democratizations. This threshold level of income is estimated using Hansen’s threshold regression methodology. The threshold regression approach also reveals non-linearities in the effect of trade openness and level of political development on growth. In particular, I find that countries in the mid-range of trade openness benefit the most from an increase in trade volumes. In addition, the paper presents a methodology for identifying growth takeoffs which defines takeoffs relative to country’s own economic history while taking into account the historical growth conditions in the rest of the world. |
| Keywords: | economic growth; growth takeoffs; democratization; regime change; threshold effects |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tbs:wpaper:17-008&r=his |
| By: | Peter H. Lindert (University of California–Davis) |
| Abstract: | Starting from today’s collection of estimates of fiscal distribution within each of 53 countries, we can begin mapping a history of how redistribution has evolved historically, and to project some influences on its trends in the next few decades. There appears to have been a global shift toward progressive redistribution over the last hundred years in all prosperous countries. The retreats toward regressive redistribution have been rare and have been reversed. As a corollary, the rise in income inequality since the 1970s owes nothing to any retreat from progressive government spending. Adding the effects of rising subsidy for public education on the later inequality of adult earning power strongly suggests that a fuller, longer-run measure of fiscal incidence would reveal a history of still greater shift toward progressivity, most notably in Japan, Korea, andTaiwan. The key determinant of progressivity in the decades ahead is population aging, not inequality itself or immigration backlash. |
| JEL: | H22 H23 H24 N30 |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tul:ceqwps:73&r=his |
| By: | Igor Fedyukin (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper is an attempt to reconstruct the social and cultural life of young aristocrats in mid-eighteenth century St Petersburg by focusing on one aristocratic circle, one that revolved around Prince Nikita Trubetskoi, the procurator-general. In particular it traces the ways on which sociable behavior and libertine practices intertwined with early traces of “Enlightenment,” affective turn, and discoursing on imporartnt societal issues such as the rules of noble service and the status of the nobility. |
| Keywords: | Russia, nobility, service, affective turn, Elizabeth, sociability, libertines |
| JEL: | Z |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:156/hum/2017&r=his |
| By: | Frieling, Julius (E.ON Energy Research Center, Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN)); Madlener, Reinhard (E.ON Energy Research Center, Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN)) |
| Abstract: | We analyze the relationship between factor augmenting technical change and factor substitution through a nested CES function using capital, labor, and energy inputs. We use US aggregate data on output, factor use, and factor prices for the years 1929–2015 to show the interdependence and coevolution of the different input factors. We demonstrate the robustness of the system of equations approach for estimating such a production function. We find that the input factors are gross complements, and that in the time period considered, technical change was mostly labor saving, while the linear time trend of energy augmenting technical change was zero. |
| Keywords: | aggregate production; technical change; multi-factor production; energy demand |
| JEL: | C13 C32 E23 O33 Q43 |
| Date: | 2017–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:fcnwpa:2017_002&r=his |
| By: | Douglas S. Massey; Amelie F. Constant |
| Abstract: | This paper charts the growth and development of the Latino population of the northeastern U.S. from 1970 to 2015. The relatively small population dominated by Puerto Ricans and concentrated in New York and a few other cities has evolved into a large, diverse, and more geographically dispersed population. It grew from 1.9 to 7.7 million persons and rose from 3.8% to 10.5% of the regional population. It has increasingly suburbanized with roughly equal numbers of Latinos living in cities and suburbs. They are the most diverse Latino population of all regions in the U.S., they are not dominated by Mexicans, they are predominantly documented, and the large majority are citizens. |
| Keywords: | Latinos, immigration, United States |
| JEL: | J15 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6521&r=his |
| By: | Ergen, Timur; Kohl, Sebastian |
| Abstract: | This paper explains the different trajectories of German and American competition policy and its permissiveness towards economic concentration in the last few decades. While the German political economy had moved to a stronger antitrust regime after 1945 and stuck to it even after the economic governance shifts of the 1980s, the traditional antitrust champion, the United States, has shed considerable parts of its basic governance toolkit against anticompetitive conduct since the 1960s. Drawing on theories of institutional change driven by bureaucratic and professional elites, the paper claims that different pathways of professional ideas in competition policy can account for the cross-country differences. In the 1960s and early 1970s, movements to strengthen competition policy in the direction of an active deconcentration of industry emerged in both countries. While German as well as American professionals reacted to the impending encroachment of societal concerns into antitrust with economized notions of the policies' goals, they did so in fundamentally different ways. Whereas US professionals proposed an effect-based approach in which consumer welfare and gains in efficiency may justify less competition, the more strongly law-based profession in Germany to a degree strengthened a form-based approach aiming at the preservation of competitive market structures. Such extrapolitical pathways of ideas, we argue, provide important guidelines for the implementation of competition policy by administrations and courts, whose decisions can have a far-reaching impact on industries and political economies as a whole. |
| Keywords: | competition,law,economization,professions,ideas,Wettbewerb,Recht,Ökonomisierung,Professionen,Ideen |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:mpifgd:1718&r=his |
| By: | Hans-Werner Sinn |
| Abstract: | Marx made significant contributions to macroeconomics, laying the grounds for both Keynes’s theory of aggregate demand and Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction. His law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall parallels Alvin Hansen’s theory of secular stagnation which has recently received much attention among scholars studying the financial crises in Japan, the US and the Eurozone. This article argues that part of the new stagnation does not result from a natural exhaustion of investment possibilities, but from an overly loose central bank monetary policy that keeps zombie banks and their zombie clients alive and blocks the emergence of new start-up firms. |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6463&r=his |
| By: | Baldwin, John R.; Li, Jiang |
| Abstract: | Le present document porte sur l?evolution recente de l?importance de la propriete etrangere dans le secteur canadien de la fabrication dans les annees 2000, et presente aussi une comparaison avec les decennies precedentes, soit la periode de 1973 a 1999. L?importance des entreprises etrangeres dans le secteur de la fabrication correspond a la part de la production sous controle etranger, et l?evolution est examinee a divers niveaux : agrege, secteur et industrie. |
| Keywords: | Balance of international payments, Business ownership, Business performance and ownership, Economic accounts |
| Date: | 2017–10–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:stc:stcp3f:2016387f&r=his |
| By: | Jeremy Edwards |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the Becker-Woessmann (2009) argument that Protestants were more prosperous in nineteenth-century Prussia because they were more literate, a version of the Weber thesis, and shows that it cannot be sustained. The econometric analysis on which Becker and Woessman based their argument is fundamentally flawed, because their instrumental variable does not satisfy the exclusion restriction. When an appropriate instrumental-variable specification is used, the evidence from nineteenth-century Prussia rejects the human-capital version of the Weber thesis put forward by Becker and Woessmann. |
| Keywords: | Protestantism, Weber thesis, human capital, instrumental variables |
| JEL: | Z12 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6646&r=his |
| By: | Edwin M. Truman (Peterson Institute for International Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines two episodes of international economic policy coordination: the efforts to modify the Bretton Woods international monetary system in the 1960s and early 1970s and to reform the system after the closing of the US official gold window on August 15, 1971. The paper examines the diagnoses of the problem in each episode, the treatments applied, and the results in the short run and longer run. In the short run, both episodes were failures. The international monetary system that emerged in the mid-1970s, while less systemic than some would like, has nevertheless stood the test of time, although proposals for its reform continue to be discussed. |
| Keywords: | balance of payments, Bretton Woods, capital flows, Committee of Twenty, exchange rates, gold, International Monetary Fund, international monetary system, special drawing rights |
| JEL: | F30 F32 F33 F53 |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iie:wpaper:wp17-11&r=his |
| By: | Gregory Clark; Andrew Leigh; Mike Pottenger |
| Abstract: | The paper estimates long run social mobility in Australia 1870-2017 tracking the status of rare surnames. The status information includes occupations from electoral rolls, and records of degrees awarded by Melbourne and Sydney universities. Status persistence was strong throughout, with an intergenerational correlation of 0.7-0.8, and no change over time. Notwithstanding egalitarian norms, high immigration and a well-targeted social safety net, Australian long-run social mobility rates are low. Despite evidence on conventional measures that Australia has higher rates of social mobility than the UK or USA, status persistence for surnames is as high as that in England or the USA. |
| Keywords: | intergenerational mobility, social mobility, inequality |
| JEL: | J62 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6650&r=his |
| By: | Philipp Ager (Department of Business and Economics, University of Southern Denmark); Casper Worm Hansen (Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen) |
| Abstract: | The introduction of immigration quotas in the 1920s fundamentally changed U.S. immigration policy. We exploit this policy change to estimate the economic consequences of immigration restrictions for the U.S. economy. The implementation of the quota system led to a long-lasting relative decline in population growth in areas with larger pre-existing immigrant communities of affected nationalities. This effect was largely driven by the policy-restricted supply of immigrants from quota-affected nationalities and lower fertility of first- and second-generation immigrant women. In the more affected areas labor productivity growth in manufacturing declined substantially and native workers were pushed into lower-wage occupations. While native white workers faced sizable earnings losses, black workers benefited from the quota system and improved their relative economic status within the more affected areas. |
| Keywords: | Immigration restrictions, productivity growth, local labor markets, racial wage gap |
| JEL: | J31 J61 N31 O15 |
| Date: | 2017–10–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kud:kuiedp:1722&r=his |
| By: | Daniel Levy (International School of Economics at Tbilisi State University; Department of Economics, Bar-Ilan University; Department of Economics, Emory University; Rimini Center for Economic Analysis, ITALY;); Avichai Snir (Department of Banking and Finance, Netanya Academic College, Netanya 42365, ISRAEL) |
| Abstract: | Recent studies in psychology and neuroscience find that fictional works exert strong influence on readers and shape their opinions and worldviews. We study the Potterian economy, which we compare to economic models, to assess how Harry Potter books affect economic literacy. We find that some principles of Potterian economics are consistent with economists’ models. Many others, however, are distorted and contain numerous inaccuracies, which contradict professional economists’ views and insights, and contribute to the general public’s biases, ignorance, and lack of understanding of economics. |
| Keywords: | Economic and Financial Literacy, Political Economy, Public Choice, Rent Seeking, Folk Economics, Harry Potter, Social Organization of Economic Activity, Literature, Fiction, Potterian Economy, Potterian Economics, Popular Opinion |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tbs:wpaper:17-002&r=his |
| By: | Esteve García, Vicente; Navarro Ibáñez, Manuel; Prats Albentosa, María Asuncíon |
| Abstract: | According to several empirical studies, the Present Value model fails to explain the behaviour of stock prices in the long-run. In this paper, the authors consider the possibility that a linear cointegrated regression model with multiple structural changes would provide a better empirical description of the Present Value model of U.S. stock prices. The methodology is based on instability tests recently proposed in Kejriwal and Perron (The limit distribution of the estimates in cointegrated regression models with multiple structural changes, 2008, and Testing for multiple structural changes in cointegrated regression models, 2010) as well as the cointegration tests developed in Arai and Kurozumi (Testing for the null hypothesis of cointegration with a structural break, 2007) and Kejriwal (Cointegration with structural breaks: an application to the Feldstein- Horioka Puzzle, 2008). The results obtained are consistent with the existence of linear cointegration between the log stock prices and the log dividends. However, the empirical results also show that the cointegrating relationship has changed over time. In particular, the Kejriwal-Perron tests for testing multiple structural breaks in cointegrated regression models suggest a model of three or two regimes. |
| Keywords: | present value model,stock prices,dividends,cointegration,multiple structural breaks |
| JEL: | C22 G12 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwedp:201793&r=his |
| By: | Gustavo Javier Canavire-Bacarreza; Michael Jetter; Alejandra Montoya-Agudelo |
| Abstract: | This paper suggests that societies exhibiting a large degree of educational polarization among its populace are systematically more likely to slip into civil conflict and civil war. Intuitively, political preferences and beliefs of highly educated citizens are likely to differ fundamentally from those of uneducated citizens. We propose an index of educational polarization and test its predictive power in explaining the likelihood of civil conflict and civil war, analyzing 146 countries (equivalent to over 93 percent of the world population) from 1950 to 2014. Our results produce strong evidence for a positive, statistically powerful, and economically sizeable relationship. In our benchmark estimation, a one standard deviation increase in educational polarization is associated with a 4.6 and 3.8 percentage point rise in the chances of civil conflict and civil war, respectively. These results are robust to the inclusion of the conventional control variables, country-fixed effects, and country-specific time trends. |
| Keywords: | civil conflict, civil war, educational polarization, panel data |
| JEL: | D63 D74 I24 O15 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6267&r=his |
| By: | Carolina Barry |
| Abstract: | Este artículo pretende aportar conocimiento sobre uno de los grandes problemas que trae aparejado un liderazgo carismático: la sucesión del líder. El caso de estudio es el de Eva Perón, un tipo particular de liderazgo que compartió en forma simultánea con Juan D. Perón. El trabajo también analiza el rol político de quien fuera elegida para intentar reemplazarla, Delia Degliuomini de Parodi. / This article aims to provide knowledge about charismatic leadership and dilemmas that arise with succession to the disappearance of their leader. The case study is about Eva Peron, a particular kind of leadership because it was a double charismatic leadership and shared with President Juan D. Peron. It also discusses the political role of who was chosen to replace her, Delia Degliuomini de Parodi. |
| Date: | 2017–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cem:doctra:616&r=his |