{"title":"Monumental effects: Confederate monuments in the Post-Reconstruction South","authors":"Alexander N. Taylor","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101635","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101635","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper explores the contemporaneous effects of Confederate monuments dedicated in the Post-Reconstruction South. I combine monument, election, and census data to create an election-year panel dataset of former Confederate counties between 1878–1912, then exploit the temporally staggered and geographically distributed dedication of monuments using a generalized difference-in-differences design. I find that monuments caused increases in Democratic Party vote share and decreases in voter turnout, with less robust decreases in Black population share. I find some evidence that more intense monument-building is associated with a decrease in Black lynchings. I also find varying effects based on the era of monument dedication, the intensity of monument-building, and monument characteristics. To address potential mechanisms, I present evidence that monuments were associated with increased use of famous Confederate names for children and show that decreases in voter turnout occurred exclusively in areas with larger Black population shares. Overall, my results suggest monuments promoted a distorted view of Civil War history that primarily persuaded southern whites, but also contributed to Black political suppression. The findings have implications for current debates over Confederate monuments in the United States.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"95 ","pages":"Article 101635"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142670372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Who collaborates with the Soviets? Financial distress and technology transfer during the Great Depression","authors":"Jerry Jiang , Jacob P. Weber","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101637","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101637","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We provide evidence that financial distress induces firms to sell their technology to foreign competitors. To do so, we construct a novel, spatial panel dataset by individually researching and locating U.S. firms who signed Technology Transfer Agreements (TTAs) with the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s in various U.S. counties. By relating the number of TTAs signed in each county to the number of bank failures, we establish a significant, positive relationship between financial distress and the number of firms signing TTAs with the Soviet Union. Our findings suggest that banking panics may create opportunities for foreign countries to acquire affected firms’ technology.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"95 ","pages":"Article 101637"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142758697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Incredible commitment: Influence accumulation, consensus-making, and the collapse of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth","authors":"Mikołaj Malinowski","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101633","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101633","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>I aim to explain the petrification of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth's parliament due to the veto in the 17th and 18th centuries. I study genealogical data on senatorial ancestors and identify the formation of an oligarchic elite. I propose that the accumulation of influence by powerful individuals undermined their vested interest in the state's continuation. This weakened the elite's ability to credibly commit to political agreements, reach consensus, and sustain the extractive regime. I argue that the overly limited king failed to act as an arbiter in oligarchic disputes. This challenges the conventional view regarding the benefits of limited royal authority.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"95 ","pages":"Article 101633"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142793371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Stefan Bauernschuster , Matthias Blum , Erik Hornung , Christoph Koenig
{"title":"The political effects of the 1918 influenza pandemic in Weimar Germany","authors":"Stefan Bauernschuster , Matthias Blum , Erik Hornung , Christoph Koenig","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101648","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101648","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>How did the 1918 Influenza pandemic affect elections in Weimar Germany? We combine a panel of election results (1893–1933) with spatial heterogeneity in excess flu mortality to assess the pandemic’s effect on voting behavior across constituencies. Applying a dynamic differences-in-differences approach, we find that areas with higher influenza mortality saw a lasting shift towards leftwing parties. We argue that pandemic intensity increased the salience of public health policy, prompting voters to reward parties signaling competence in health issues. Alternative explanations such as pandemic-induced economic hardship, punishment of incumbents, or political polarization are not supported by our findings.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"96 ","pages":"Article 101648"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142901965","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The escape from hunger: The impact of food prices on well-being in Sweden, 1813–1967","authors":"Tommy Bengtsson, Luciana Quaranta","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101652","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101652","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study analyses how the standard of living for different social groups changed when Sweden developed from an agricultural to an industrial society and when the first steps towards a modern welfare society were taken. As a measure of living standards, we use the ability to overcome short-term economic stress caused by high food prices. We use individual-level longitudinal data from 1813 to 1967 for a rural/semi-urban area in southern Sweden with similar economic development, occupational structure, life expectancy and fertility to the country as a whole. We found that during the first part of the 19th century, when agriculture was reformed and grain became an export product, workers, but not farmers and other social groups, deliberately postponed births in response to rising food prices. Despite these efforts to maintain consumption, workers and their families suffered increased mortality risks during years of high food prices, indicating that they lived close to the subsistence margin and could not save to ensure consumption in bad times. In the second half of the 19th century, rising real wages improved workers’ living conditions and the mortality response to economic stress decreased. By the 20th century, as the economy progressed and welfare systems emerged, the mortality response disappeared entirely. In contrast, childbearing was still affected by economic cycles but now only during turmoil of the First World War and the 1918 influenza pandemic and not afterwards.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"96 ","pages":"Article 101652"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142901964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reassessing the great compression among top earners: The overlooked role of taxation and self-employment","authors":"Miguel Artola Blanco , Victor Manuel Gómez-Blanco","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101651","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101651","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper provides new estimates of wage inequality in the United States from 1918 to 1949, leveraging a novel top-income methodology that integrates both tax records and census data. Our analysis reveals no sustained decline in wage inequality before the Second World War but a marked decrease during the war years. This decline was driven primarily by stagnation among the top 1 % of earners and significant wage growth at the lower end of the income distribution. However, the relative underperformance of the top earners was largely influenced by a major compositional shift triggered by unprecedented increases in corporate and personal income tax rates. These tax changes led to a shift in business preferences toward partnerships, resulting in a substantial transition from salaried employment to self-employment. This shift, previously overlooked in inequality studies, resulted in a 30 % overestimation of wage compression, significantly altering the wage distribution dynamics of the 1940s.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"96 ","pages":"Article 101651"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142874743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Aftermath of the February Flood of 1825: Social and Demographic Change in the Krummhörn Region, East Frisia","authors":"Kai P. Willführ , Josep Sottile Perez","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101650","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101650","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In February 1825, the dikes broke after a spring tide in the Krummhörn region in East Frisia, Germany, causing a severe disaster. Although the flood did not claim many victims, substantial damage was done to the farmland, and the economic crisis that followed permanently changed the social structure in the Krummhörn. We study family reconstitutions of the region linked to information about socioeconomic status, detailed reports of the flood damage, and information on crop prices for the entire study period. We innovate on the literature through our reconstruction of property damage at the parish level, as well as of the economic development in the region, combined with family reconstitutions. We investigate the short-term impact of the flood on marital fertility and child mortality, as well as the long-term impact on age at first childbirth and age at first marriage of individuals who experienced the flood early in life. We use Cox proportional hazard models to study mortality. The timing and the likelihood of transitions are investigated with the help of mixed parametric cure models. We find that child mortality, but not infant mortality, increased in the flood aftermath, but that this increase in mortality was not attributable to the flood-related damage. Furthermore, we find no evidence of changes in the timing of first childbirth or marriage among the affected individuals. These findings contrast with the results of several other studies indicating that external shocks and crisis experience early in life affect life course outcomes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"96 ","pages":"Article 101650"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142901967","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"World War II service and the GI Bill: New evidence on selection and veterans’ outcomes from linked census records","authors":"William J. Collins , Ariell Zimran","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101649","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101649","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We examine new datasets of records linked between the 1940 and 1950 US censuses to characterize selection into military service during World War II and to analyze differences in veterans’ post-war educational and labor market outcomes relative to nonveterans. Motivated by potentially disparate selection into and effects of service, we pay particular attention to groups distinguished by age, pre-war educational attainment, race, and nativity. We find that veterans were positively selected on pre-war educational attainment, but negatively or neutrally selected in terms of own or fathers’ pre-war labor market characteristics. Younger veterans fared better in terms of education and labor market outcomes in 1950 than nonveterans who were observationally similar in 1940. Older veterans exhibited relative gains in education compared to observationally similar nonveterans, but not in labor market outcomes. Black veterans’ relative gains in education were large, but black veterans not in school were less likely to be employed than observationally similar nonveterans in 1950. All groups of veterans were more likely to be government employees after the war and were under-represented in self employment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"96 ","pages":"Article 101649"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142990489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Agglomeration and creativity in early modern Britain","authors":"Gary W. Cox , Valentin Figueroa","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101644","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101644","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>When did western cities become the engines of creativity modern theorists envision them to be? We approach this issue by investigating how much elite authors benefited from agglomerating in early modern London. Building a new panel dataset documenting the place of residence and annual publications of 2,026 prolific authors over the period 1482–1800, we conduct longitudinal author-level analyses. Our results suggest agglomeration benefits in London’s knowledge economy reached levels comparable to those documented in modern cities by the late 16th century. Exploring mechanisms, we find that moving to London improved opportunities for collaboration and, relatedly, the quality of books produced. We find similar agglomeration economies (and mechanisms) in the towns leading Britain’s industrial revolution in the 18th century (but not before).</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"95 ","pages":"Article 101644"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142746435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Are some piece rates better than others? Cross-sectional variation in piece rates at a US cotton factory","authors":"Joyce Burnette","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101631","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101631","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>While piece rates were a common form of payment in manufacturing, historians have rarely tried to understand the cross-sectional structure of piece-rate prices. This paper examines piece rates paid to weavers at a US cotton factory and demonstrates that in most cases expected daily earnings were constant across different piece rates. While some rates did result in higher daily earnings, there is no evidence of gender discrimination in the assignment of such rates.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"94 ","pages":"Article 101631"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142445431","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}