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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2022‒07‒18
34 papers chosen by |
| By: | Kukic, Leonard; Arslantas, Yasin |
| Abstract: | While economic historians have invested a great deal of effort into understanding the economic consequences of religion, they have invested comparatively little effort into understanding the determinants of religious affiliation. This paper analyses conversions to Islam in the OttomanBosnia. Employing village-level data constructed from the Ottoman tax registers of 1468 and 1604, we find that households in the initially poorer villages were more likely to convert to Islam. This finding is consistent with the notion that the poll tax that non-Muslims had to pay stimulated the poorer Christians to convert to Islam. Using a stream of modern population censuses since the 19th century, we also find that our results hold after the end of the Ottoman rule and its discriminatory tax in 1878. We hypothesize that religious identity persisted because it became embedded into the rising national consciousness during the nineteenth century, reinforcing the cost of changing religion. |
| Keywords: | Economic History; Religion; Taxes; Bosnia; Ottoman Empire |
| JEL: | N33 Z12 |
| Date: | 2022–06–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:whrepe:35286&r= |
| By: | Stephen Broadberry; Jagjit S. Chadha; Jason Lennard; Ryland Thomas |
| Abstract: | This paper constructs a new chronology of business cycles in the United Kingdom from 1700 on an annual basis and from 1920 on a quarterly basis. The new chronology points to a number of observations about the business cycle. First, the cycle has significantly increased in duration and amplitude over time. Second, contractions have become less frequent but are as persistent and costly as at other times in history. Third, the typical recession has been tick-shaped with a short contraction and longer recovery. Fourth, the major causes of downturns have been sectoral shocks, financial crises and wars. |
| Keywords: | business cycles, economic history, united kingdom |
| JEL: | E32 N13 N14 |
| Date: | 2022–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nsr:escoed:escoe-dp-2022-16&r= |
| By: | David de la Croix; Frédéric Docquier; Alice Fabre; Robert Stelter |
| Abstract: | We argue that market forces shaped the geographic distribution of upper-tail human capital across Europe during the Middle Ages, and contributed to bolstering universities at the dawn of the Humanistic and Scientific Revolutions. We build a unique database of thousands of scholars from university sources covering all of Europe, construct an index of their ability, and map the academic market in the medieval and early modern periods. We show that scholars tended to concentrate in the best universities (agglomeration), that better scholars were more sensitive to the quality of the university (positive sorting) and migrated over greater distances (positive selection). Agglomeration, selection and sorting patterns testify to an integrated academic market, made possible by the use of a common language (Latin). |
| Keywords: | human capital; universities; discrete choice model; scholars; publications; agglomeration |
| JEL: | N33 |
| Date: | 2022–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:irs:cepswp:2022-04&r= |
| By: | Laurent Gauthier (LED - Laboratoire d'Economie Dionysien - UP8 - Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis) |
| Abstract: | This paper makes the argument for renewed cliometrics that could serve history. History and economics have grown relying on each other over the past century, but a disconnect has appeared, whereby the range between history and economics has been occupied by the latter. As a consequence, historians have tended to shun these fields of inquiry. We begin our analysis with a discussion of the complex set of separate domains that lie between history and economics, and determine certain salient features that define them, in particular the search for nomothetic explanations. We examine the reception of economic method by historians and point out that it has suffered both from this nomothetic angle and from the implicit presumption that economics are only applicable to the economy. Stressing the distinction between understanding and explaining in the philosophy of history, we show that, for historians, explaining should remain in the realm of history. We then propose that economics be considered a methodological auxiliary for understanding, as new cliometrics, not attempting to offer explanations. We discuss some examples of using microeconomics as a critical methodology in the study of ancient Greece. |
| Keywords: | cliometrics,historiography,cliodynamics,clionomics |
| Date: | 2022–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03289608&r= |
| By: | Vernon L. Smith (Economic Science Institute, Chapman University) |
| Abstract: | Thousand-word brief on key quotes from Adam Smith’s two books (TMS, WN) modelling Society and Economy |
| Keywords: | Experiment, theory, history of economic thought |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:chu:wpaper:22-09&r= |
| By: | Maria Marchenko (Department of Economics, Vienna University of Economics and Business); Karol Jan Borowiecki (Department of Economics, University of Southern Denmark); Nicholas Martin Ford (Department of Economic History, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | Most creatives acquire professional talents by learning from others, but in most settings it is difficult to estimate the existence of long-term effects. This paper explores the transmission of skills over a period of more than seven centuries by focusing on the case of music composers. We ask the question: how does a composer’s quality influence the quality of the composers he or she teaches? Our analysis builds on a unique dataset of 17,433 composers from around the world since the fourteenth century. By comparing actual teacher–student pairs with plausible counterfactual pairs and by using a two-stage framework, we show a strong effect of quality transmission. Moreover, we find quality transmission persists across multiple generations: from teacher to student, and subsequently to student’s student and so on. Our results provide new insights on drivers of creativity over the very long term, as well as the influence of teachers on students' achievements. |
| Keywords: | creativity, transmission of ideas, music history, teacher influence |
| JEL: | I21 J24 N30 O31 Z11 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwwuw:wuwp321&r= |
| By: | Eric Mosinger (Department of Political Science, Carleton College); Kai Thaler (Department of Global Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara,); Diana Paz García (Macalester College); Charlotte Fowler (Columbia University) |
| Abstract: | Are grievances a necessary condition for civil resistance campaigns? Accumulating political or economic grievances play a key causal role in nearly every extant account of sudden mass protest. In this article, we present evidence that historical framing can enable sudden mass uprisings even where long-standing anti-regime grievances are absent. Protest cascades can emerge to challenge relatively stable and popular governments through four interdependent historical framing mechanisms. First, bystanders may make analogies to historical contentious episodes, leading them to compare their present government to an earlier hated regime. Second, individuals or groups may imagine themselves as occupying paradigmaticroles from past popular struggles, allowing them to develop prescriptions for collective action. Third, protesters can adopt tailor-made symbolic and tactical repertoires from previous contentious episodes. Finally, protesters may concentrate protests within symbolic space, reinforcing the other three mechanisms. We develop our theory with evidence from Nicaragua's 2018 mass uprising. This protest wave nearly toppled Daniel Ortega, previously Latin America's most popular president, after violence between pro-government forces and protestors activated powerful frames resonating with Nicaragua's history of dictatorship and revolution. |
| Keywords: | Nicaragua, protest, grievances, civil resistance |
| Date: | 2020–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hic:wpaper:334&r= |
| By: | Ellora Derenoncourt; Chi Hyun Kim; Moritz Kuhn; Moritz Schularick |
| Abstract: | The racial wealth gap is the largest of the economic disparities between Black and white Americans, with a white-to-Black per capita wealth ratio of 6 to 1. It is also among the most persistent. In this paper, we construct the first continuous series on white-to-Black per capita wealth ratios from 1860 to 2020, drawing on historical census data, early state tax records, and historical waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances, among other sources. Incorporating these data into a parsimonious model of wealth accumulation for each racial group, we document the role played by initial conditions, income growth, savings behavior, and capital returns in the evolution of the gap. Given vastly different starting conditions under slavery, racial wealth convergence would remain a distant scenario, even if wealth-accumulating conditions had been equal across the two groups since Emancipation. Relative to this equal-conditions benchmark, we find that observed convergence has followed an even slower path over the last 150 years, with convergence stalling after 1950. Since the 1980s, the wealth gap has widened again as capital gains have predominantly benefited white households, and income convergence has stopped. |
| JEL: | J15 N11 N12 |
| Date: | 2022–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30101&r= |
| By: | António Henriques; Nuno Palma |
| Abstract: | Why did the countries that first benefited from access to the New World - Castile and Portugal - decline relative to their followers, especially England and the Netherlands? The dominant narrative is that worse initial institutions at the time of the opening of the Atlantic trade explain the Iberian divergence. In this paper, we build a new dataset which allows for a comparison of institutional quality over time. We consider the frequency and nature of parliamentary meetings, the frequency and intensity of extraordinary taxation and coin debasement, and real interest rates together with spreads for public debt. We find no evidence that the political institutions of Portugal and Spain were worse until the English Civil War. |
| Keywords: | Atlantic Traders; New Institutional Economics; the Little Divergence |
| JEL: | N13 N23 O10 P14 P16 |
| Date: | 2022–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:man:sespap:2204&r= |
| By: | Brian Beach; W. Walker Hanlon |
| Abstract: | Digitized historical newspaper databases offer a valuable research tool. A rapidly expanding set of studies use these databases to address a wide range of topics. We review this literature and provide a toolkit for researchers interested in working with historical newspaper data. We provide a brief description of the evolution of historical newspapers, focusing on aspects that are likely to have implications for the design of empirical studies. We then review the main databases in use. We also discuss some key challenges in using these data, most importantly the fact that even the most extensive datasets contain only a selected sample of the universe of historical newspaper articles. We offer tools for evaluating the comprehensiveness of available newspaper datasets, show how to assess potential identification concerns, and suggest some solutions. |
| JEL: | N0 |
| Date: | 2022–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30135&r= |
| By: | Amiel Drimbe (Baptist Theological Institute of Bucharest, Romania) |
| Abstract: | Modern scholars consider that the worst year in the history of humankind was 536 CE. Since there was no separation between the Church and the State in the Byzantine Empire, the predominantly Christian population who had endured the calamities of the year was let down by both religious and political central institutions. When centralized institutions fail, local chaos often ensues. As is most often the case, the first to suffer are those most vulnerable – the poor and the lowly. Moreover, in the vacuum created by the disregard of the Church, masses of people looked for answers in religious superstition, while showing a disinclination to trust the science of the day. Others developed a sense of hatred and suspicion towards foreigners, whom they blamed for the ongoing calamities. The safety measures that saved the lives of many came from the local administrators or the people themselves, not from the central institutions. |
| Keywords: | 536 CE, calamities, Justinian, Church leadership, Christianity, religion and politics, social tensions, superstition |
| Date: | 2022–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:raiswp:0183&r= |
| By: | Julia Cage (ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research - CEPR); Edgard Dewitte (ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | We study electoral campaigns over the long run, through the lens of their spending. In particular, we ask whether changing media technologies and electoral environments impacted patterns of spending and their correlation with electoral results. To do so, we build a novel exhaustive dataset on general elections in the United Kingdom from 1857 to 2017, which includes information on campaign spending (itemized by expense categories), electoral outcomes and socio-demographic characteristics for 69, 042 election-constituency candidates. We start by providing new insights on the history of British political campaigns, in particular the growing importance of advertising material, including via digital means, to the detriment of paid staff and electoral meetings. We then show that there is a strong positive correlation between expenditures and votes, and that overall the magnitude of this relationship has strongly increased since the 1880s, with a peak in the last quarter of the 20th century. We link these transformations to changes in the conduct of campaigns, and to the introduction of new information technologies. We show in particular that the expansion of local radio and broadband Internet increased the sensitivity of the electoral results to differences in campaign spending. These results encourage greater contextualization in the drafting of campaign finance regulations. |
| Keywords: | Elections,Campaign finance,Electoral expenditures,Information technologies |
| Date: | 2021–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpspec:hal-03384143&r= |
| By: | Borowiecki, Karol Jan (Department of Economics); Ford, Nicholas Martin (Department of Economic History, Lund University); Marchenko, Maria (Department of Economics, Vienna University of Economics and Business) |
| Abstract: | Most creatives acquire professional talents by learning from others, but in most settings it is difficult to estimate the existence of long-term effects. This paper explores the transmission of skills over a period of more than seven centuries by focusing on the case of music composers. We ask the question: how does a composer’s quality influence the quality of the composers he or she teaches? Our analysis builds on a unique dataset of 17,433 composers from around the world since the fourteenth century. By comparing actual teacher–student pairs with plausible counterfactual pairs and by using a two-stage framework, we show a strong effect of quality transmission. Moreover, we find quality transmission persists across multiple generations: from teacher to student, and subsequently to student’s student and so on. Our results provide new insights on drivers of creativity over the very long term, as well as the influence of teachers on students’ achievements. |
| Keywords: | creativity; transmission of ideas; music history; teacher influence |
| JEL: | I21 J24 N30 O31 Z11 |
| Date: | 2022–06–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:sdueko:2022_007&r= |
| By: | Marchenko, Maria; Borowiecki, Karol Jan; Ford, Nicholas Martin |
| Abstract: | Most creatives acquire professional talents by learning from others, but in most settings it is difficult to estimate the existence of long-term effects. This paper explores the transmission of skills over a period of more than seven centuries by focusing on the case of music composers. We ask the question: how does a composer’s quality influence the quality of the composers he or she teaches? Our analysis builds on a unique dataset of 17,433 composers from around the world since the fourteenth century. By comparing actual teacher–student pairs with plausible counterfactual pairs and by using a two-stage framework, we show a strong effect of quality transmission. Moreover, we find quality transmission persists across multiple generations: from teacher to student, and subsequently to student’s student and so on. Our results provide new insights on drivers of creativity over the very long term, as well as the influence of teachers on students' achievements. |
| Keywords: | creativity, transmission of ideas, music history, teacher influence |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wus005:8642&r= |
| By: | Julia Cage (ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, LIEPP - Laboratoire interdisciplinaire d'évaluation des politiques publiques (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po); Edgard Dewitte (ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, LIEPP - Laboratoire interdisciplinaire d'évaluation des politiques publiques (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies electoral campaigns over the long run, through the lens of their spending. In particular, we ask whether changing media technologies and electoral environments have impacted patterns of campaign spending, and their correlation with electoral results. To do so, we build a novel exhaustive dataset on general elections in the United Kingdom from 1857 to 2017, which includes information on campaign spending (itemized by expense categories), electoral outcomes and sociodemographic characteristics for 69,042 election-constituency-candidates. We start by providing new insights on the history of British political campaigns, documenting in particular the growing importance of advertising material (including via digital means), to the detriment of paid staff and electoral meetings. Using a saturated fixed effects model, we then show that there is a strong positive correlation between expenditures and votes, and that overall the magnitude of this relationship has strongly increased since the 1880s, peaking in the last quarter of the 20th century. We link these transformations to changes in the conduct of campaigns, and to the introduction of new information technologies. We show in particular that the expansion of local radio and broadband Internet increased the sensitivity of the electoral results to differences in campaign spending. |
| Abstract: | Cet article étudie les campagnes électorales sur le long terme, à travers le prisme de leurs dépenses. En particulier, nous investiguons l'impact des évolutions majeures dans les technologies de l'information et les contextes électoraux sur les niveaux, allocations et influences des dépenses des candidats. Pour ce faire, nous construisons un nouvel ensemble de données exhaustif sur les élections générales au Royaume-Uni de 1857 à 2017, qui comprend des informations sur les dépenses de campagne (détaillées par catégories de dépenses), les résultats électoraux et les caractéristiques sociodémographiques de 69042 candidats-élections-circonscriptions. Nous commençons par apporter de nouveaux éclairages sur l'histoire des campagnes politiques britanniques, en documentant notamment l'importance croissante du matériel publicitaire (y compris via des moyens numériques), au détriment du personnel rémunéré et des meetings électoraux. À l'aide d'un modèle à effets fixes, nous montrons ensuite qu'il existe une forte corrélation positive entre les dépenses des candidats et les résultats électoraux de ceux ci, et que, dans l'ensemble, la magnitude de cette relation a fortement augmenté depuis les années 1880, pour atteindre un pic dans le dernier quart du XXe siècle. Nous lions ces transformations à des changements dans les stratégies de campagne et à l'introduction de nouvelles technologies de l'information. Nous montrons en particulier que l'expansion de la radio locale et de l'ADSL a augmenté la sensibilité des résultats électoraux aux différences de dépenses de campagne. |
| Keywords: | Electoral campaigns,Campaign spending,Elections |
| Date: | 2022–03–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpspec:hal-03619549&r= |
| By: | Pierre-Philippe Combes (Institut d'Études Politiques [IEP] - Paris, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Laurent Gobillon (PSE - Paris School of Economics - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Yanos Zylberberg (University of Bristol [Bristol]) |
| Abstract: | A recent literature has used a historical perspective to better understand fundamental questions of urban economics. However, a wide range of historical documents of exceptional quality remain underutilised: their use has been hampered by their original format or by the massive amount of information to be recovered. In this paper, we describe how and when the flexibility and predictive power of machine learning can help researchers exploit the potential of these historical documents. We first discuss how important questions of urban economics rely on the analysis of historical data sources and the challenges associated with transcription and harmonisation of such data. We then explain how machine learning approaches may address some of these challenges and we discuss possible applications. |
| Keywords: | Machine learning,History,Urban economics |
| Date: | 2021–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpspec:halshs-03231786&r= |
| By: | Muriel Gilardone (CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UR1 - Université de Rennes 1 - UNIV-RENNES - Université de Rennes - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | This chapter shows that Sen's (2009) non-welfarist approach to justice is greatly influenced by 1) his work on famines; 2) his empirical work on gender inequalities, specifically within the Indian society, that helped him to refine his approach to hunger; and 3) his involvement in the creation of the human development approach. All these engagements — seemingly completely separate from his theoretical work in welfare economics — have, in fact, fostered the formulation of a novel approach in which agency and public reasoning are the core elements. |
| Keywords: | Amartya Sen,agency,public action,famines,gender inequalities,human development,perception bias,democracy,public reasoning,non-welfarism |
| Date: | 2021–03–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-03690014&r= |
| By: | Kitamura, Shuhei |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the role of property rights and agricultural technology in factor reallocation and structural transformation. Using a novel dataset, I show that the land reform enforced by the Allies after World War II, which redistributed the ownership of farmlands from landlords to tenants and promoted equality, led farmers to use more low-cost agricultural machines when they became available and to rely less on family labor for production, resulting in an increase in the outmigration of farmers' children from rural to urban areas and an increase in agricultural income. Then, I quantify the impact of the factor reallocation on the entire economy using a two-sector neoclassical growth model, and find that (a) both labor and capital reallocation affected economic growth, and (b) the standard of living during the postwar period was significantly lower without such reallocation. These results indicate that not only labor, but also capital, including agricultural machines, is an important factor for structural transformation, and that property rights play a vital role in this process. |
| Date: | 2022–05–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:wh5qx&r= |
| By: | Marijn A. Bolhuis; Judd N. L. Cramer; Lawrence H. Summers |
| Abstract: | There have been important methodological changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) over time. These distort comparisons of inflation from different periods, which have become more prevalent as inflation has risen to 40-year highs. To better contextualize the current run-up in inflation, this paper constructs new historical series for CPI headline and core inflation that are more consistent with current practices and expenditure shares for the post-war period. Using these series, we find that current inflation levels are much closer to past inflation peaks than the official series would suggest. In particular, the rate of core CPI disinflation caused by Volcker-era policies is significantly lower when measured using today’s treatment of housing: only 5 percentage points of decline instead of 11 percentage points in the official CPI statistics. To return to 2 percent core CPI inflation today will thus require nearly the same amount of disinflation as achieved under Chairman Volcker. |
| JEL: | C43 E21 E31 E37 |
| Date: | 2022–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30116&r= |
| By: | Wehrheim, Lino |
| Abstract: | The importance of mass media is reflected, among other things, in the fact that their coverage on certain topics - contrary to findings from communication research - is often seen as a reflection of the topics that are discussed by society. In Germany, this can be observed especially for the news magazine Der Spiegel, whose self-declared claim is to "hold up a mirror to the world". Accordingly, scholars from different disciplines frequently use its reporting, especially its cover stories, to support their own narratives, especially regarding general accounts on 'the zeitgeist'. Based on this observation, I propose the following thought experiment: suppose we were to look not only at individual cover stories with their individual topics, but at all cover stories - which picture of German contemporary history would then emerge? To answer this question, I use methods from the digital humanities / digital history to retrieve the topics and tonality of all cover stories published between January 1947 and December 2017. This way, I identify the topics that have dominated the Spiegel's front pages, which might be regarded as a trace or abbild of the narratives that shaped public discourse since the early days of the Federal Republic or even the zeitgeist itself. |
| Keywords: | zeitgeist,narratives,media analysis,topic modelling,sentiment analysis |
| JEL: | N00 Z13 B40 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:pp1859:34&r= |
| By: | Acheson, Graeme G.; Aldous, Michael; Quinn, William |
| Abstract: | Research on the financial events of 1720 in Britain has overwhelmingly focused on the South Sea Company, but price movements were much more dramatic in the shares of the newly incorporated London Assurance (LA) Company. This paper uses unique archival material on the London Assurance to address three important debates around the 1720 bubble. First, it examines competing claims around the bubble's price dynamics, finding that the largest price movements were driven by changes in the market structure for LA shares rather than by news about fundamentals. Second, it explores how the shareholder base changed during the bubble, finding that informed insiders were more likely to exit for a profit at the peak of the bubble. Finally, an examination of LA shareholder behaviour up to 1737 suggests that the bubble caused a loss of shareholder expertise, with detrimental consequences for the Company's governance. These results demonstrate how a bubble in the shares of a newly created company can lead to an exodus of informed investors, damaging the company's long-term prospects. |
| Keywords: | South Sea Bubble,London Assurance Company,Market Structure,AssetPricing,Shareholder Behaviour |
| JEL: | N23 N83 G12 G22 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:qucehw:202208&r= |
| By: | Audrey Colonel (UGA UFR ARSH - Université Grenoble Alpes - UFR Arts & Sciences Humaines - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes) |
| Abstract: | A jewel of French industry territorialized in specific geographical areas, glove-making - which consists in the manufacture of skin gloves - was very active over the past centuries, particularly in Paris, Grenoble, Millau, Saint-Junien, Chaumont and Niort. This activity has been illustrated by the commercial qualities of actor in the sector, of which the manufacturers' trade unions are an example. In 1919, by endowing the sector with the magazine Ganterie, the glove industry's technical press, the Chambre syndicale des fabricants de gants de Grenoble, in partnership with Lyon, built a showcase for French glove-making that was given to foreign buyers through texts and images. The images selected for this work were chosen from among those on the theme of places of production and work around which some companies communicate when they acquire new industrial buildings which they then consider modern in a sector long perceived as archaic. The sample of images sheds light on the practices of French glove-makers in the inter-war period with regard to the use of visual discourse in commercial promotion in which places of production and work are a recurring theme. This work aims to understand the stakes involved in the creation of this type of magazine for the companies making up the sector and to analyze the place of images in the commercial practices of companies in the inter-war period through the case of glove-making. |
| Abstract: | Fleuron de l'industrie française territorialisée dans des zones géographiques spécifiques, la ganterie – qui consiste en la fabrication de gants de peau – était très active au cours des siècles passés, notamment à Paris, Grenoble, Millau, Saint-Junien, Chaumont et Niort. Cette activité s'est illustrée par les qualités commerciales des acteurs du secteur, dont les chambres syndicales des fabricants donnent l'exemple. En dotant le secteur de la revue Ganterie, presse technique de l'industrie du gant, en 1919, la Chambre syndicale des fabricants de gants de Grenoble, en partenariat avec le publiciste lyonnais Pierre Argence, construit une vitrine de la ganterie française donnée à voir aux acheteurs étrangers au travers de textes et d'images. Les images sélectionnées dans le cadre de ce travail ont été choisies parmi celles portant sur la thématique des lieux de production et du travail autour desquelles certaines entreprises communiquent lorsqu'elles se dotent de nouveaux bâtiments industriels qu'elles considèrent alors comme modernes dans un secteur longtemps perçu comme archaïque. L'échantillon d'images permet d'éclairer les pratiques des gantiers français dans l'entre-deux-guerres quant à l'utilisation du discours visuel dans la promotion commerciale dans lequel les lieux de production et le travail sont une thématique récurrente. Ce travail vise à comprendre les enjeux de la création de ce type de revue pour les entreprises composant le secteur et à analyser la place des images dans les pratiques commerciales des entreprises dans l'entre-deux-guerres à travers le cas de la ganterie. |
| Keywords: | company,technical press,glove factory,glove maker,industry,work,Publicité -- Histoire,Entreprise,Travail,Ganterie,Gantier,Presse technique |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03612590&r= |
| By: | Laurence Barry; Arthur Charpentier |
| Abstract: | Since the beginning of their history, insurers have been known to use data to classify and price risks. As such, they were confronted early on with the problem of fairness and discrimination associated with data. This issue is becoming increasingly important with access to more granular and behavioural data, and is evolving to reflect current technologies and societal concerns. By looking into earlier debates on discrimination, we show that some algorithmic biases are a renewed version of older ones, while others show a reversal of the previous order. Paradoxically, while the insurance practice has not deeply changed nor are most of these biases new, the machine learning era still deeply shakes the conception of insurance fairness. |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2205.08112&r= |
| By: | Mai, Nhat Chi |
| Abstract: | The market is not guided by an invisible hand. It stems from tangled networks that bind the past with the present, human with nonhuman actors, and local with global processes. Like a rhizomic plant whose underground shoots constantly seek new terrain, these exchange networks continually expand, take root, and rupture to rework frontier lives and landscapes. This book explores these historical, social, and material relationships along the Cambodia-Vietnam border. It reveals the workings of these commodity networks and how they merge to drive frontier transformation. |
| Date: | 2022–02–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:m3u75&r= |
| By: | Stefano DellaVigna; Woojin Kim |
| Abstract: | Economists have studied the impact of numerous state laws, from welfare rules to voting ID requirements. Yet for all this policy evaluation, what do we know about policy diffusion—how these policies spread from state to state? We present a series of facts based on a data set of over 700 U.S. state policies spanning the past 7 decades. First, considering the introduction of new laws, state capacity seems to have a small role, in that larger and richer states are only slightly more likely to innovate policy. Second, the diffusion of policies from 1950 to 2000 is best predicted by proximity: a state is more likely to adopt a policy if nearby states have already done so. Third, instead since 2000, political alignment outperforms geographic proximity in predicting diffusion. Fourth, the diffusion of COVID state policies, as opposed to vaccination mandates since the 1970s, follows similar patterns of political polarization. Models of learning and correlated preferences could account for these patterns, including the decreased role of geography over time, if ideas spread more easily and preference correlation has become more political than geographical. We document, however, a role for party control: similarity in state party control predicts policy adoption in the last two decades, even controlling for voter political preferences. We conclude that party polarization has emerged as a key factor recently for policy adoption. Finally, building on these results, we broadly classify the patterns of policy diffusion in a set of difference-in-differences papers. |
| JEL: | D04 H3 J68 |
| Date: | 2022–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30142&r= |
| By: | Pierre Cotterlaz (ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | Spatial frictions are key to explain many economic phenomena. This thesis provides three pieces of evidence on the origins, prevalence and consequences of such frictions.In the first chapter, we focus on spatial frictions in the diffusion of knowledge. We explain the puzzling persistence and stability of the spatial decay in patent citation flows by innovator networks. We establish that knowledge percolates: firms disproportionately cite new patents from prior contacts, and form links with contacts of their contacts. Embedding this percolation into a network formation model is sufficient to rationalize the negative link between aggregate knowledge flows and distance.In the second chapter, we shed some light on the role of spatial information frictions in shaping international trade flows. We use the specific context of the XIXth Century, during which the creation of international news agencies facilitated the transmission of information across countries. We show that trade between a pair of countries increases when both are covered by a news agency. The reduction in information friction was therefore one of the many factors behind the First Globalization.The last chapter investigates whether transport costs are the main component of within-country trade costs. While it is well-established that international trade costs are not limited to transport costs, evidence is much scarcer for intra-national trade flows. We use hurricane Sandy as a natural experiment shifting upwards transport costs in some areas of the US to establish that if transport costs were the sole driver of the distance elasticity of trade flows within the US, this distance elasticity would be much lower. |
| Abstract: | Les frictions spatiales jouent un rôle crucial dans l'explication de nombreux phénomènes économiques. Dans cette thèse, nous étudions les origines, la prévalence et les conséquences de telles frictions à travers trois exemples. Dans le premier chapitre, nous nous intéressons aux frictions spatiales pesant sur la diffusion de la connaissance. Nous expliquons l'effet négatif de la distance sur les flux de citations entre brevets par la structure des réseaux d'innovation. Nous montrons que la connaissance percole: les entreprises tendent à citer davantage les nouveaux brevets de leurs contacts existants, et à former de nouveaux liens avec des contacts de leurs contacts. Dans le second chapitre, nous explorons les liens entre frictions informationnelles et commerce international. Nous utilisons le contexte spécifique du XIXe siècle, au cours duquel émergent des agences de presse mondiales, facilitant le partage d'informations sur les marchés étrangers. Nous montrons que deux pays commercent davantage une fois qu'ils bénéficient de ce choc positif sur la capacité à obtenir de l'information. Les agences de presse s'insèrent donc parmi les nombreux facteurs explicatifs de la Première Mondialisation. Le dernier chapitre cherche à déterminer si les coûts de transport constituent l'essentiel des obstacles au commerce à l'intérieur d'un pays. Nous utilisons l'ouragan Sandy comme une expérience naturelle à l'origine d'une hausse des coûts de transport pour les flux transitant par certaines zones, et montrons que l'élasticité intra-USA des flux commerciaux à la distance serait bien plus faible si les coûts de transport étaient les seuls responsables de cette élasticité. |
| Keywords: | Trade costs,Innovation,Networks,News agencies,Coûts du commerce,Réseaux,Agences de presse |
| Date: | 2021–06–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpspec:tel-03436173&r= |
| By: | Jyotsna Jha; Niveditha Menon; Neha Ghatak |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the political economy of women's-empowerment-related policy-making in India through a re-examination of the context of both the genesis and closure of a major programme, Mahila Samakhya. Mahila Samakhya, which embodied feminist philosophy and pedagogy, started in 1987 with the aim of creating the education-based empowerment of Dalit and Adivasi women in rural India, and was inexplicably shut down in 2014. |
| Keywords: | Women's empowerment, Feminism, Collectivization, Local history, Political economy, Feminist economics |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2022-56&r= |
| By: | Ganderson, Joseph |
| Abstract: | This article charts surprising departures in how the two major British parties have cultivated and regulated financial services since the 1990s. During this time, Labour leaderships have consistently sought to accommodate the City, while the Conservatives have defied it at important junctures. This pattern of behaviour challenges the assumption in classical business power theory that Conservatives should be more attuned to finance's preferences than Labour. The article attributes this to the parties’ distinct understandings of the interplay between the sector's business power and their own statecraft, which derive from substantially varying political links with the City. Labour's repeated charm offensives are prompted by a sensitivity to disinvestment and perpetually weak political ties. The Conservatives’ approach is less sensitive to the sector's economic weight and is underwritten by enduring political ties. The article examines these differences over time and with special reference to two episodes: post-financial crisis banking reforms and Brexit. |
| Keywords: | City of London; banking and finance; party politics; Conservatives; Labour; business power; Wiley deal |
| JEL: | F3 G3 |
| Date: | 2022–05–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:115129&r= |
| By: | Ivan Mendieta-Muñoz, Daniel Ossa |
| Abstract: | We contribute to the study of the conceptualization and measurement of the rate of profit of the financial and nonfinancial sectors. We assemble a new data set for the US economy to construct measures of the profit rate for each sector: the return on equity, the return on assets, and the shareholder's dividend yield. We study how the periodic components of the measures of profitability in each sector have changed over time, how these have been correlated at different frequencies, and what has been the evolution of such correlations. We find that the dominant correlation between the measures of profitability across sectors is located at business cycle frequencies, and that there has been a shift in the lead-lag relationship between financial and nonfinancial profitability: from 1970 to the mid-1990s, profitability in the nonfinancial sector led profitability in the financial sector; while since the mid-1990s the latter has led the former. |
| Keywords: | profitability, financial corporations, nonfinancial corporations, business cycles, financialization. JEL Classification: B50, C32, E11, E32, G20 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uta:papers:2022_02&r= |
| By: | W. Walker Hanlon; Stephan Heblich; Ferdinando Monte; Martin B. Schmitz |
| Abstract: | How do communication costs affect the production of new ideas and inventions? To answer this question, we study the introduction of the Uniform Penny Post in Great Britain in 1840. This reform replaced the previous system of expensive distance-based postage fees with a uniform low rate of one penny for sending letters anywhere in the country. The result was a large spatially-varied reduction in the cost of communicating across locations. We study the impact of this reform on the production of scientific knowledge using citation links constructed from a leading academic journal, the Philosophical Transactions, and the impact on the development of new technology using patent data. Our results provide quantitative causal estimates showing how a fall in communication costs can increase the rate at which scientific knowledge is exchanged and new ideas and technologies are developed. This evidence lends direct empirical support to an extensive theoretical literature in economic growth and urban economics positing that more ideas can emerge from communication between individuals. |
| JEL: | N9 O3 R1 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30076&r= |
| By: | David Gabauer (Data Analysis Systems, Software Competence Center Hagenberg, Austria); Rangan Gupta (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield 0028, South Africa); Sayar Karmakar (Department of Statistics, University of Florida, 230 Newell Drive, Gainesville, FL, 32601, USA); Joshua Nielsen (Boulder Investment Technologies, LLC, 1942 Broadway Suite 314C, Boulder, CO, 80302, USA) |
| Abstract: | Firstly, we use the Multi-Scale LPPLS Confidence Indicator approach to detect both positive and negative bubbles at short-, medium- and long-term horizons for the stock markets of the G7 and the BRICS countries. We were able to detect major crashes and rallies in the 12 stock markets over the period of the 1st week of January, 1973 to the 2nd week of September, 2020. We also observed similar timing of strong (positive and negative) LPPLS indicator values across both G7 and BRICS countries, suggesting interconnectedness of the extreme movements in these stock markets. Secondly, we utilize these indicators to forecast gold returns and its volatility, using a method involving block means of residuals obtained from the popular LASSO routine, given that the number of covariates ranged between 42 to 72, and gold returns demonstrated a heavy upper tail. We found that, our bubbles indicators, particularly when both positive and negative bubbles are considered simultaneously, can accurately forecast gold returns at short- to medium-term, and also time-varying estimates of gold returns volatility to a lesser extent. Our results have important implications for the portfolio decisions of investors who seek a safe haven during boom-bust cycles of major global stock markets. |
| Keywords: | Gold, Stock Markets, Bubbles, Forecasting, Returns, Volatility |
| JEL: | C22 C53 G15 Q02 |
| Date: | 2022–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pre:wpaper:202228&r= |
| By: | Daniel S. Hamermesh; Jeff Biddle |
| Abstract: | We examine patterns of work in the U.S. from 1973-2018 with the novel focus on days per week, using intermittent CPS samples and one ATUS sample. Among full-time workers the incidence of four-day work tripled during this period, with over 8 million more full-time workers on four-day weeks. The same growth occurred in the Netherlands, Germany, and South Korea. The rise was not due to changes in demographics or industrial structure. Four-day full-time work is more common among less educated, younger, and white non-Hispanic workers, among men, natives, and people with young children; and among police and firefighters, health-care workers, and in eating/drinking places. Based on an equilibrium model of its prevalence, we show that it results more from workers’ preferences and/or daily fixed costs of working than from employers' production costs. We verify the implication that the wage penalty for four-day work is greater where such work is more prevalent, and we show that the penalty has diminished over time. |
| JEL: | J11 J22 |
| Date: | 2022–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30106&r= |
| By: | Berniell, Lucila; Bonavida, Cristian; de la Mata, Dolores; Schargrodsky, Ernesto |
| Abstract: | En este trabajo aportamos nuevas mediciones de movilidad educativa intergeneracional para América Latina y el Caribe a partir de datos censales armonizados para 22 países. Producimos estimaciones de medidas de movildiad absolutas y relativas para cohortes nacidas entre 1930 y 2010. Las medidas absolutas muestran que la región experimentó una alta movilidad en la parte inferior de la distribución, aunque ciertos grupos de la población (hombres, grupos étnicos minoritarios y residentes en áreas rurales) se encuentran más rezagados. Se observan menos progresos teniendo en cuenta medidas de movilidad relativa, sin presentarse patrones claros según género o lugar de residencia. Existe convergencia entre áreas geográficas al interior de los países en métricas de movilidad relativa, aunque los resultados son mixtos según la métrica de movilidad absoluta considerada. Se realizan ejercicios de robustez para descartar sesgos por corresidencia y comparaciones con otras fuentes de información que permiten validar la fiabilidad de las métricas de movilidad calculadas a partir de censos. |
| Keywords: | Desarrollo, Educación, Investigación socioeconómica, Políticas públicas, |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dbl:dblwop:1864&r= |
| By: | Gaëlle Cotterlaz-Rannard (IREGE - Institut de Recherche en Gestion et en Economie - USMB [Université de Savoie] [Université de Chambéry] - Université Savoie Mont Blanc, UNIGE - Université de Genève); Michel Ferrary (UNIGE - Université de Genève) |
| Abstract: | Researchers have endeavored to explore business models, i.e., how companies create and capture economic value to grow and increase profits. However, nonprofit organizations, whose purpose by definition is to create not economic but societal value, have often been overlooked. We address this oversight by proposing a theoretical model that highlights the mechanisms of societal value creation and capture at the core of nonprofit organization's business models. Based on Bourdieu's theory of forms of capital, we point out that the capability of nonprofit organizations to create societal value relies on the accumulation of economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capital ex-ante and the capture of value created is achieved ex-post through its conversion into the four forms of capital. Through the case study of the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, we illustrate these mechanisms of societal value creation and capture following a longitudinal approach. This article contributes to the literature on nonprofit organization's business models by proposing a new understanding of the mechanisms of societal value creation and capture. |
| Keywords: | Business model,nonprofit organizations,societal value creation,societal value capture,Bourdieu's theory |
| Date: | 2021–07–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-03649767&r= |