{"title":"Legacies of loss: The health outcomes of slaveholder compensation in the British Cape Colony","authors":"Igor Martins , Jeanne Cilliers , Johan Fourie","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101506","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101506","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Can wealth shocks have intergenerational health consequences? We use the partial compensation slaveholders received after the 1834 slave emancipation in the British Cape Colony to measure the intergenerational effects of a wealth loss on longevity. We find that a greater loss of slave wealth shortened the lifespans of the generation of slaveholders that experienced the shock albeit these effects are usually small and mostly confined to older cohorts of slaveholders who likely exploited slaves both as labor and capital inputs. The lifespans of those of the second generation who survived infancy were unaffected by the shortfalls and no effects of the shortfall were found for the third generation.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"89 ","pages":"Article 101506"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49903293","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}
David S. Jacks , Krishna Pendakur , Hitoshi Shigeoka
{"title":"Urban mortality and the repeal of federal prohibition","authors":"David S. Jacks , Krishna Pendakur , Hitoshi Shigeoka","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2023.101529","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2023.101529","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Federal prohibition was one of the most ambitious policy interventions in US history. However, the removal of restrictions on alcohol after 1933 was not uniform. Using a new balanced panel on annual deaths, we find that city-level repeal is associated with a 11.6% decrease in the rate of death by non-automobile accidents, a category which critically include accidental poisonings. We relate this finding to a large literature which emphasizes – but never precisely quantifies – the mortality effects of adulterated alcohol during federal prohibition. Thus, repeal likely led to a large annual reduction in accidental poisonings. However, combined with previous results showing even larger increases in infant mortality, repeal nonetheless likely had negative contemporaneous effects on public health.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"89 ","pages":"Article 101529"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49903295","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":"Revisiting the ‘Cobden-Chevalier network’ trade and welfare effects","authors":"Jacopo Timini","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101480","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101480","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study revisits the trade and welfare effects of 19th century bilateralism exploiting the latest developments in structural gravity models, including the consideration of domestic trade. Using bilateral trade data between 1855 and 1875, I show that the Cobden-Chevalier network, i.e. a system of bilateral trade agreements including the Most Favored Nation clause<span>, has large, positive and significant effects on members’ trade. These, however, are heterogeneous at the treaty-level. I then calculate its general equilibrium effects on total trade and welfare. They are considerable, while trade diversion effects are negligible. These results reshape the understanding of the Cobden-Chevalier network, helping in further rationalizing the “free trade epidemic” of the 1860s and 1870s.</span></p></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"89 ","pages":"Article 101480"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49903296","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":"Warfare and Economic Inequality: Evidence from Preindustrial Germany (c. 1400-1800)","authors":"Felix S.F. Schaff","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101495","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101495","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p><span>What was the impact of military conflict on economic </span>inequality? I argue that ordinary military conflicts increased local economic inequality. Warfare raised the financial needs of communities in preindustrial times, leading to more resource extraction from the population. This resource extraction happened via inequality-promoting channels, such as regressive taxation. Only in truly major wars might inequality-reducing destruction outweigh inequality-promoting extraction and reduce inequality. To test this argument I construct a novel panel dataset combining information about economic inequality in 75 localities, and more than 700 conflicts over four centuries. I find that the many ordinary conflicts — paradigmatic of life in the preindustrial world — were continuous reinforcers of economic inequality. I confirm that the Thirty Years’ War was indeed a great equaliser, but this was an exception and not the rule. Rising inequality is an underappreciated negative externality in times of conflict.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"89 ","pages":"Article 101495"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49903294","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":"The last Yugoslavs: Ethnic diversity and national identity","authors":"Leonard Kukić","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101504","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101504","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Nation-building is often proposed as a device for integration in ethnically divided societies. The determinants of national sentiment, however, remain imperfectly understood. This paper analyses the role of interethnic contact in the process of nation formation within multiethnic Yugoslavia, just before its disintegration in 1991. Using a variety of data sources and empirical strategies, I find that interethnic contact stimulated the formation of the Yugoslav nation. I argue that ethnic intermarriage is the key mechanism through which ethnic diversity influenced the adoption of a shared Yugoslav identity. These results illustrate the powerful effect that interethnic contact can have in reducing ethnic division even in a tense ethnic environment on the verge of conflict, like that of Yugoslavia.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"88 ","pages":"Article 101504"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50167404","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":"Foutu maximum: The political economy of price controls and national defense in revolutionary France","authors":"Louis Rouanet","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101478","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101478","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>War necessitates both allocating real resources to defense and certain interest groups being in favor of the government raising resources to wage war. Price controls can be a tool for governments to mobilize additional resources while buying the support of certain key interest groups, hence making war politically viable. France during the revolutionary Terror, the first instance of widespread price controls used in times of war, is used to illustrate this hypothesis. Urban capitalists benefited from price controls on agricultural output combined with forced sales. At the same time, I estimate that in the six months preceding the abolition of price controls, the government saved, by using them (and in real terms), the equivalent of roughly 40% of the annual 1790 central government budget. Consistent with my theory, once the exigencies of the war attenuated and as collective action became more costly for the urban population, price controls were abandoned.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"88 ","pages":"Article 101478"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50167412","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":"Exploring 200 years of U.S. commodity market integration: A structural time series model approach","authors":"James M. Harrison","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2023.101514","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eeh.2023.101514","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper uses a structural time series model to explore U.S. commodity market convergence, efficiency, and intertemporal smoothing from 1750–1949. I find near-continuous convergence that is largely concentrated in the frontier, broad antebellum efficiency gains, and intertemporal smoothing from the 1880s onward among the most perishable goods. The results reveal new periods of integration across all three metrics and underscore the rapid rate of integration on the frontier.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"88 ","pages":"Article 101514"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50167214","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":"Sweet equality: Sugar, property rights, and land distribution in colonial Java","authors":"Pim de Zwart, Phylicia Soekhradj","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2023.101513","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2023.101513","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This article exploits a unique district-level dataset to investigate the relationship between sugar cultivation, property rights systems and land distribution in colonial Java around the turn of the twentieth century. We demonstrate a negative and statistically significant relationship between sugar cultivation and the landholder Gini. An IV strategy, employing a newly computed index of sugar suitability as instrument, suggests that this effect is causal. It is argued that sugar production in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries stimulated the expansion and persistence of communal landholding. This communal landholding consequently led to more equally distributed plots among landholders in the early twentieth century. We emphasize the importance of local property rights institutions in mitigating the effects of export production on socioeconomic outcomes.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"88 ","pages":"Article 101513"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50203370","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":"Historical gender discrimination does not explain comparative Western European development: evidence from Portugal, 1300-1900","authors":"Nuno Palma , Jaime Reis , Lisbeth Rodrigues","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101481","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101481","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Gender discrimination has been pointed out as a determining factor behind the long-run divergence in incomes of Southern vis-à-vis Northwestern Europe. In this paper, we show that women in Portugal were not historically more discriminated against than those in other parts of Western Europe, including England and the Netherlands. We rely on a new dataset of thousands of observations from archival sources covering six centuries, and we complement it with a qualitative discussion of comparative social norms. Compared with Northwestern Europe, women in Portugal faced similar gender wage gaps, married at similar ages, and did not face more restrictions on labor market participation. Consequently, other factors must have been responsible for the Little Divergence of Western European incomes.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"88 ","pages":"Article 101481"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50167406","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":"Spoils of War: The Political Legacy of the German hyperinflation","authors":"Gregori Galofré-Vilà","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101479","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101479","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p><span><span>I study the link between monetary policy and electoral outcomes by linking new data on the 1923 German hyperinflation and the vote share of the main parties of Weimar Republic from 1924 to 1933. Exploiting cross-sectional variation in prices in over 280 cities, I find that </span>inflation predicts the vote share of the </span><em>Volksrechtspartei</em><span>, an association-turned-party of inflation victims, and positively correlates with the Communists in the 1932 elections. Hyperinflation also leads to a decline in turnout, with a loss of confidence in the German institutions. However, contrary to received wisdom, areas more affected by inflation did not see a higher vote share for the Nazi party. Results are robust to a range of specifications, including models in differences, panel data with fixed effects, Coarsened Exact Matching estimation, Conley standard errors, and an instrumental variable strategy.</span></p></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"88 ","pages":"Article 101479"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50203367","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}