Economic History eJournal最新文献

{"title":"Growth Fatigue","authors":"Mikidadu Mohammed","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3422200","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3422200","url":null,"abstract":"This paper uncovers a new economic growth phenomenon whereby an economy becomes increasingly unresponsive to economic growth policies. This new phenomenon is referred to as growth fatigue. In this short paper, I document the growth fatigue phenomenon for the economy of Japan. My observations on Japan suggest that growth fatigue typically occurs in matured economies and that its causes are largely unknown.","PeriodicalId":176096,"journal":{"name":"Economic History eJournal","volume":"75 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134100301","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A New Estimate of the Hawaiian Population for 1778, the Year of First European Contact","authors":"David A. Swanson","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3917957","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3917957","url":null,"abstract":"A high level of uncertainty surrounds the size of the Hawaiian population at the time of first European contact in 1778. Estimates range from 200,000 to 1,000,000. While some estimates have more of an empirical base than others, none of them takes advantage of the high level of momentum found in demographic processes, something that is done in this paper using “backcasting,” a demographic forecasting method run in reverse from known data. Using a commonly used technique for this purpose, the 1910 count of Native Hawaiians by age in Hawaiʻi is taken back to 1770 in decennial cycles. Interpolating between the 1780 and 1770 estimates yields an estimated 683,200 Hawaiians in 1778. Another finding is that the population reaches stability (a constant relative age structure over time) by 1820.","PeriodicalId":176096,"journal":{"name":"Economic History eJournal","volume":"93 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114484848","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Devotion and Development: Religiosity, Education, and Economic Progress in 19th-Century France","authors":"M. Squicciarini","doi":"10.1257/AER.20191054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/AER.20191054","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies when religion can hamper diffusion of knowledge and economic development, and through which mechanism. I examine Catholicism in France during the Second Industrial Revolution (1870–1914). In this period, technology became skill-intensive, leading to the introduction of technical education in primary schools. I find that more religious locations had lower economic development after 1870. Schooling appears to be the key mechanism: more religious areas saw a slower adoption of the technical curriculum and a push for religious education. In turn, religious education was negatively associated with industrial development 10 to 15 years later, when schoolchildren entered the labor market. (JEL D83, I21, I26, N33, Z12)","PeriodicalId":176096,"journal":{"name":"Economic History eJournal","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121620454","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Killing ‘Homo Economicus’ (Jeremy Bentham) Is Much, Much, Much, More Easier Said Than Done: Only the Smith – Keynes Inexact Measurement Approach Can Neutralize the Strong Attraction of Bentham’s Mathematical Rational Utility Maximization Model","authors":"M. E. Brady","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3410737","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3410737","url":null,"abstract":"The tremendous attraction and allure of Bentham’s original rational, utility maximizing, calculator model, which Bentham wrote out in plain English so as to capture as large an audience as possible, to economists has been greatly underestimated by the opponents of the ‘Homo Economicus’ model, which was the creation of Jeremy Bentham in 1787, the same year that he launched his attacks on both Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776). Benthamite Utilitarian ethics allows a practitioner to appear to be a hard scientist because he/she will be using a lot of equations and numbers, what can be called mathematical benefit – cost analysis, in his/her argument, as opposed to the user of duty ethics or virtue ethics, who will not be using any such mathematical approach. \u0000 \u0000Bentham‘s shrewd, in depth understanding and grasp of the desire for approbation, recognition, and applause on the part of economists, who wanted to be held in the same regard as physicists, leads directly to the neoclassical economics of Max U, which is simply a mathematical translation of Bentham’s already completely worked out concept of a rational calculator, adding marginal utility and diminishing marginal utility to utility maximization. New neoclassical economists then added the rational expectations-real business cycle-Dynamic stochastic General Equilibrium approach, based on the Normal and Log Normal probability distributions, which extends Bentham’s basic static pendulum-oscillation, external, exogenous shock model to intertemporal analysis. \u0000 \u0000Bentham recognized that Smith’s emphasis on an inexact, interval valued, imprecise approach to probability, due to the fact of uncertain evidence (1776,pp.105-113,228-245,419-423,714), had to be undermined if his utilitarian ethics approach, based on precise and exact utility maximization, was to succeed in replacing Smith’s Virtue ethics approach. \u0000 \u0000Bentham similarly recognized that he had to attack and neutralize Smith’s emphasis on the internal, endogenous threat to the macro economy that came from a certain segment of the upper income class that Smith labelled as prodigals, imprudent risk takers and projectors, in order to replace Smith’s virtue ethics emphasis on the virtues of prudence and temperance, which directly conflicted with Bentham’s emphasis on utility maximization and claim that the love of money was an insatiable desire of all men. The virtues of prudence and temperance require the complete total rejection of any insatiability assumption. \u0000 \u0000J. M Keynes, following Smith’s approach, put forth a nearly identical version of Smith’s original inexact approach to measurement that was based on Boole’s upper – lower probabilities approach. Keynes’s inexact approach to probability in Part II of the A Treatise on Probability, and statistics in part V, which he used in the General Theory as the foundation for his liquidity preference theory of the rate of Interest, which he called approxi","PeriodicalId":176096,"journal":{"name":"Economic History eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124322281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Colonial North Carolina’s Paper Money Regime, 1712-1774: A Comment on Cutsail and Grubb","authors":"R. Michener","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3410525","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3410525","url":null,"abstract":"In a recent NBER paper, Cutsail and Grubb argue that North Carolina’s colonial bills of credit were valued like discount bonds, with a current market value largely determined by the discounted value of the bills when paid into the treasury in taxes or other public payments. Grubb has previously published several papers making similar claims about other colonies. This comment argues Cutsail and Grubb’s methodology, history, data series, and econometrics, as applied to North Carolina, are all seriously flawed.","PeriodicalId":176096,"journal":{"name":"Economic History eJournal","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129537376","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On R. Muth’s Impossible Dream: Trying to turn Subjective Probabilities into Objective Probabilities","authors":"M. E. Brady","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3398766","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3398766","url":null,"abstract":"R. Muth’s 1961 Econometrica paper is based on a fundamental and basic confusion on his part about the nature of subjective and objective probability that is impossible to remedy. A bifurcation occurred among scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians, starting in the mid 17th century with the work of Pascal, Fermat,and Cardano, about whether probability was subjective or objective. It could not be both. It had to be one or the other.<br><br>Subjective probability always dealt with probability as being inside or internal to the human mind. It was a degree of belief of an individual based on his mental, personal, and psychological assessment of the data and factors he believed were involved in determining the behavior of the particular phenomena. On the other hand, Objective probability was always outside or external to the human mind. It was a part of the empirical, real world of phenomena that could be observed and was completely independently from any personal, emotional, mental, psychological or subjective factors. Objective probability was always a relative frequency in occurrence that would approach the true or correct answer in the limit as the number of observations of the particular phenomena approached infinity or some very large number that was an approximation of infinity. Historically, there are no adherents of the subjective approach to probability who accept the objective approach to probability and there are no adherents of the objective approach to probability who accept a subjective approach to probability. There is not, nor could there ever be, a subjective –objective hybrid theory because the definitions of subjective and objective probability directly contradict and conflict with each other.<br><br>Muth had no historical knowledge of these two completely different definitions, forms, concepts and approaches to probability. Neither did the referees of his paper for Econometrica nor any proponent, advocate, supporter or user of what Muth claimed was the rational expectations hypothesis, which was that, for a given information set, the subjective estimates of probability (subjective probability distributions) were distributed around one single, objective, true, correct objective probability distribution. Muth apparently never realized that his definition was an oxymoron. It is impossible by definition. Nowhere in any of his references are there any that deal with the completely different theories of subjective and objective probability; there are no references to any sources in the history of science, history of probability, history of statistics, philosophy of science, philosophy of probability, or philosophy of statistics. There are no references to methodology or epistemology or to the philosophy of social science.<br><br>Muth used the 1944 Von Neumann-Morgenstern approach to Expected Utility as the foundation for his theory of consumer and producer maximization of utility and profit in his 1961 article. However, it was made","PeriodicalId":176096,"journal":{"name":"Economic History eJournal","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133623220","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ora et Guberna. The Economic Impact of the Rule of St Benedict in Medieval England","authors":"D. Rossignoli, Federico Trombetta","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3457764","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3457764","url":null,"abstract":"Does it matter, in terms of economic performance, whether it is a secular or a religious ruler who exercises political power? To answer this question, we have used data on land ownership and economic productivity in Medieval England, characterised by institutional variation at local level. Exploiting the Norman conquest of England as a historical experiment, we compare a measure of the economic performance of estates controlled by secular feudal landlords, Benedictine monasteries or bishops and other ecclesiastical landlords. We show that holdings governed by Benedictine monasteries experienced a significantly higher growth rate in productive capacity, when compared with those controlled by secular landlords. Collecting new data about abbots’ biographical information, we provide evidence suggesting that part of the effect is due to the selection of the monastic leadership through elections. Finally, we rule out alternative potential channels.","PeriodicalId":176096,"journal":{"name":"Economic History eJournal","volume":"67 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133832705","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Struggle Towards Macroeconomic Stability: Analytical Essay","authors":"A. Razin","doi":"10.3386/W25816","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/W25816","url":null,"abstract":"This essay offers an economic-history perspective of the long struggle towards macroeconomic stability. The paper is a broad analytical overview of major exogenous shocks and shifts in macroeconomic policy and institutions in Israel since the 1977-1985 great inflation through the global financial crisis and the effects of those shifts on long term growth, inflation, the business cycle, the Phillips curve and related economic developments. The paper will discuss three main issues. The first one on the inflation crisis focuses on the 1985 stabilization and on its impact on subsequent reform of monetary institutions. The second discusses the impact of globalization on growth, inflation and the Phillips curve. The third contains a discussion of the reasons for the relatively good performance of Israel during the 2008 global crisis, including foreign exchange market intervention. Henceforth we highlight: (1) the role of macro-populism in generating hyperinflation; (2) the role of seigniorage revenue in generating the hyperinflation; (3) distributive effects of inflation stabilization, which are political driving forces behind the need for across-the-broad-coalition for a successful stabilization policy; (4) the effects of globalization on the Philips Curve and thereby on domestic inflation-- means of transforming an inflation regime to a one with price stability; (5) the role of financial prudence regulatory institutions, which serve to explain the Israeli macroeconomic robustness in the face of the 2008 external depression-deflation global forces; and, (6) Israel’s government-deficit and money-creation experience, which help evaluate recent theory—the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).","PeriodicalId":176096,"journal":{"name":"Economic History eJournal","volume":"1155 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129472368","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Manuals of Economics During the Ventennio: Forging the Homo Corporativus?","authors":"R. Faucci, N. Giocoli","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3367059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3367059","url":null,"abstract":"The paper surveys forty manuals of economics and related disciplines published in Italy during Fascism. We try to understand to what extent those textbooks contributed to the regime’s goal of creating the ideal fascist citizen, the so-called homo corporativus. It is argued that, at least in their manuals, a majority of Italian economists were rather unsupportive of that goal and endorsed corporatist ideas only superficially.","PeriodicalId":176096,"journal":{"name":"Economic History eJournal","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114743214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Stalin and the Origins of Mistrust","authors":"Milena Nikolova, Olga Popova, Vladimir Otrachshenko","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3390315","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3390315","url":null,"abstract":"We show that current differences in trust levels within former Soviet Union countries can be traced back to the system of forced prison labor during Stalin's rule, which was marked by high incarceration rates, repression, and harsh punishments. We argue that those exposed to forced labor camps (gulags) became less trusting and transferred this social norm to their descendants. Combining contemporary individual-level survey data with historical information on the location of forced labor camps, we find that individuals who live near former gulags have low levels of social and institutional trust. Our results are robust to a battery of sensitivity checks, which suggests that the relationship we document is causal. We outline several causal mechanisms and test whether the social norm of mistrust near gulags developed because of political repression or due to fear that inmates bring criminality. As such, we provide novel evidence on the channels through which history matters for current socio-economic outcomes today.","PeriodicalId":176096,"journal":{"name":"Economic History eJournal","volume":"174 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122999953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}