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Leaving the Enclave: Historical Evidence on Immigrant Mobility from the Industrial Removal Office The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-05-21 Ran Abramitzky, Leah Boustan, Dylan Shane Connor
The Industrial Removal Office funded 39,000 Jewish households to leave enclave neighborhoods in New York City from 1900 to 1922. Compared to neighbors with the same baseline occupation, program participants earned 4 percent more ten years after relocation. These gains persisted to the next generation. Benefits increased with more years spent outside of an enclave. Participants were more likely to speak
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Urban Political Structure and Inequality: Political Economy Lessons from Early Modern German Cities The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-15 Felix Schaff
What was the impact of urban political structure on preindustrial wealth inequality? I document that more closed political institutions were associated with higher inequality in a panel of early-modern German cities. To investigate the mechanisms behind that macro-relationship, I construct a unique individual-level panel dataset on personal wealth and political office-holding in the city-state of Nördlingen
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Measuring the Partisan Behavior of U.S. Newspapers, 1880 to 1980 The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-05 Shigeo Hirano, James M. Snyder
In this paper, we study newspaper partisan behavior and content, which we measure using coverage of and commentary on partisan activities, institutions, and actors. We use this measure to describe the levels of relative partisan behavior during the period 1880 to 1900, and to describe changes over the period 1880 to 1980. We find that, on average, newspapers were initially highly partisan, but gradually
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Careworn: The Economic History of Caring Labor The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-05 Jane Humphries
Economists ignore caring labor since most is provided unpaid. Disregard is unjust, theoretically indefensible, and probably misleading. Valuation requires estimates of time spent and the replacement or opportunity costs of that time. I use the maintenance costs of British workers, costs which cover both the material inputs into upkeep and the domestic services needed to turn commodities into livings
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Art and Markets in the Greco-Roman World The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-21 Federico Etro
We study art markets in the Greco-Roman world to explore the origins of artistic innovations in classical Greece and the mass production of imitative works in the Roman Empire. Economic factors may have played a role, on one side fostering product innovations when a few rival Greek city-states competed, outbidding each other to obtain higher-quality artworks, and on the other side fostering process
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The Political Economy of Status Competition: Sumptuary Laws in Preindustrial Europe The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-21 Desiree Desierto, Mark Koyama
Sumptuary laws that regulated clothing based on social status were an important part of the political economy of premodern states. We introduce a model that captures the notion that consumption by ordinary citizens poses a status threat to ruling elites. Our model predicts a non-monotonic effect of income—sumptuary legislation initially increases with income, but then falls as income increases further
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Economic Uncertainty and Divisive Politics: Evidence from the dos Españas The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-21 Sandra García-Uribe, Hannes Mueller, Carlos Sanz
This article exploits two newspaper archives to track economic policy uncertainty in Spain from 1905–1945. We find that the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936 was anticipated by a striking upward level shift of uncertainty in both newspapers. We study the reasons for this shift through a natural language processing method, which allows us to leverage expert opinion to track specific issues in our newspaper
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Impacts of the Relocation Program on Native American Migration and Fertility The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-21 Mary Kopriva
This paper estimates the migratory and fertility effects of the federal Relocation Program, which attempted to move Native American individuals to urban areas under the promises of financial assistance and job training. I find the Relocation Program increased the Native American population in the target cities by more than 100,000 people. I also find that second- and third-generation Native American
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Consumption Smoothing in the Working-Class Households of Interwar Japan The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-21 Kota Ogasawara
I analyze factory worker households in the early 1920s in Osaka to examine idiosyncratic income shocks and consumption. Using the household-level monthly panel dataset, I find that while households could not fully cope with idiosyncratic income shocks at that time, they mitigated fluctuations in indispensable consumption during economic hardship. In terms of risk-coping mechanisms, I find suggestive
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Sovereign Collateral The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-21 Marc Flandreau, Stefano Pietrosanti, Carlotta E. Schuster
Due to a dearth of data, nineteenth century lending to sovereign borrowers was a blind date. We argue this is the reason for collateral pledges found in contemporary lending covenants, which enabled not execution, but the production of reliable fiscal data. Lawyers injected collateral clauses in sovereign debt covenants to permit credible disclosure of hard-to-access tax data. The study foregrounds
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Opening Heaven’s Door: Public Opinion and Congressional Votes on the 1965 Immigration Act The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Giovanni Facchini, Timothy J. Hatton, Max F. Steinhardt
The 1965 Immigration Act represented a radical shift in U.S. policy, which has been credited with dramatically expanding the volume and changing the composition of immigration. Its passing has often been described as the result of political machinations negotiated within Congress without regard to public opinion. We show that congressional voting was consistent with public opinion on abolishing the
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Using Digitized Newspapers to Address Measurement Error in Historical Data The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-19 Andreas Ferrara, Joung Yeob Ha, Randall Walsh
This paper shows how to remove attenuation bias in regression analyses due to measurement error in historical data for a given variable of interest by using a secondary measure that can be easily generated from digitized newspapers. We provide three methods for using this secondary variable to deal with non-classical measurement error in a binary treatment: set identification, bias reduction via sample
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Institutions, Trade, and Growth: The Ancient Greek Case of Proxenia The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-10 Pier Paolo Creanza
Recent scholarship contends that ancient Mediterranean economies grew intensively. An explanation is that Smithian growth was spurred by reductions in transaction costs and increased trade flows. This paper argues that an ancient Greek institution, proxenia, was among the key innovations that allowed such growth in the period 500–0 BCE. Proxenia entailed a Greek city-state declaring a foreigner to
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Whither Education? The Long Shadow of Pre-Unification School Systems into Italy’s Liberal Age (1861–1911) The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-18 Monica Bozzano, Gabriele Cappelli, Michelangelo Vasta
This paper contributes to the literature on the determinants of the expansion of mass schooling and the long-term legacy of educational institutions. Based on a new provincial-level dataset for Italy in the period 1861–1911, we argue that different models of schooling provision adopted by the different pre-unification polities influenced primary-education organizations across macro-regions up to WWI
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The HOLC Maps: How Race and Poverty Influenced Real Estate Professionals’ Evaluation of Lending Risk in the 1930s The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-16 Price V. Fishback, Jessica LaVoice, Allison Shertzer, Randall P. Walsh
During the late 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) developed a series of area descriptions with color-coded maps of cities that summarized mortgage lending risk. We analyze the maps to explain the oft-noted fact that black neighborhoods overwhelmingly received the lowest rating. Our results suggest that racial bias in the construction of the HOLC maps can explain at most 4 to 20 percent
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Drafting the Great Army: The Political Economy of Conscription in Napoleonic France The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-01 Louis Rouanet, Ennio E. Piano
Napoléon Bonaparte revolutionized the practice of war with his reliance on a mass national army and large-scale conscription. This system faced one major obstacle: draft evasion. This article discusses Napoléon’s response to widespread draft evasion. First, we show that draft dodging rates across France varied with geographic characteristics. Second, we provide evidence that the regime adopted a strategy
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Job Tenure and Unskilled Workers before the Industrial Revolution: St Paul’s Cathedral 1672–1748 The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-31 Meredith M. Paker, Judy Z. Stephenson, Patrick Wallis
How were unskilled workers selected and hired in preindustrial labor markets? We exploit records from the rebuilding of St Paul’s Cathedral, London (1672–1748), to analyze the hiring and employment histories of over 1,000 general building laborers, the benchmark category of “unskilled” workers in long-run wage series. Despite volatile demand, St Paul’s created a stable workforce by rewarding the tenure
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The Historical Gender Gap Index: A Longitudinal and Spatial Assessment of Sweden, 1870–1990 The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-30 Faustine Perrin, Tobias Karlsson, Joris Kok
This paper investigates the evolution of gender equality in Sweden during a phase characterized by industrialization, urbanization, and demographic transition. To this end, we build a database with quantitative indicators to construct a spatial Historical Gender Gap Index. We find that after a period of stagnation, Sweden made significant progress in closing the gender gap from the 1940s onward to
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The Efficiency of Occupational Licensing during the Gilded and Progressive Eras: Evidence from Judicial Review The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-27 Mark Tooru Kanazawa
This paper proposes a novel approach to assessing the efficiency and distributional consequences of occupational licensing statutes during the Gilded and Progressive eras, based on the practice of judicial review. At the time, state judges ruling on the constitutionality of police powers regulation operated under powerful legal norms that militated against redistribution and class legislation. Evidence
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The Transportation Revolution and the English Coal Industry, 1695–1842: A Geographical Approach The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-27 Robert C. Allen
Cross sections of coal prices in England for 1695, 1795, and 1842 are used to infer transportation rates by sea, river, canal, and road. The effectiveness of monopolies, the degree of market integration, and the patterns of regional supply of each mining district are then established. The growth rates of productivity in sea, river, and road transport from 1695–1842 are computed and combined with a
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Railways, Development, and Literacy in India The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-26 Latika Chaudhary, James Fenske
We study the effect of railroads, the single largest public investment in colonial India, on human capital. Using district-level data on literacy and two different identification strategies, we find railroads had positive effects on literacy, in particular on male and English literacy. We show that railroads increased literacy by raising secondary and elite primary schooling, rather than vernacular
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The Glorious Revolution and Access to Parliament The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-08-31 Kara Dimitruk
This paper shows that the Glorious Revolution of 1688 broadened access to Parliament for families needing rights to sell land in so-called estate bills. Bills were on average 14–27 percentage points more likely to be for gentry families and not aristocratic families in legislative sessions after the Revolution compared to sessions before. Regression and archival evidence suggest that parliamentary
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Internal Borders and Population Geography in the Unification of Italy The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-08-31 Brian A’Hearn, Valeria Rueda
We offer new evidence on the spatial economic impact of Italian unification. Adopting municipal population as a proxy for local economic activity, we construct a new geocoded dataset spanning the pre- and post-unification periods and discover robust evidence of an acceleration in growth near the former borders. A disproportionate improvement in market access boosted growth in these locations when barriers
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Churches as Social Insurance: Oil Risk and Religion in the U.S. South The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-08-31 Andreas Ferrara, Patrick A. Testa
Religious communities are important providers of social insurance. We show that risk associated with oil dependence facilitated the proliferation of religious communities throughout the U.S. South during the twentieth century. Known oil abundance predicts higher rates of church membership, which are not driven by selective migration or local economic development. Consistent with a social insurance
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Plantation Mortgage-Backed Securities: Evidence from Surinam in the Eighteenth Century The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-08-31 Abe de Jong, Tim Kooijmans, Peter Koudijs
In the second half of the eighteenth century, Dutch bankers channeled investors’ funds to sugar and coffee plantations in the Caribbean, Surinam in particular. Agency problems between plantation owners, bankers, and investors led to an arrangement called negotiaties. Bankers oversaw plantations’ cash flows and placed mortgage debt with investors. We demonstrate how this securitization arrangement worked
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We Do Not Know the Population of Every Country in the World for the Past Two Thousand Years The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-08-31 Timothy W. Guinnane
Economists have reported results based on populations for every country in the world for the past two thousand years. The source, McEvedy and Jones’ Atlas of World Population History, includes many estimates that are little more than guesses and that do not reflect research since 1978. McEvedy and Jones often infer population sizes from their view of a particular economy, making their estimates poor
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State Capacity, Property Rights, and External Revenues: Haiti, 1932–1949 The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-07-21 Craig Palsson
External revenues blunt investments in fiscal capacity. But how do external revenues affect investments in legal capacity? In a simple model of state capacity investment, external revenues should be positively correlated with investments in legal capacity. But this implication could flip if fiscal capacity lowers the cost of legal capacity investments. I test the model by looking at Haiti in 1942 when
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British-French Technology Transfer from the Revolution to Louis Philippe (1791–1844): Evidence from Patent Data The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-07-18 Alessandro Nuvolari, Gaspare Tortorici, Michelangelo Vasta
This paper examines the patterns of technology transfer from Britain to France during the early phases of industrializing using a dataset comprising all patents granted in France in the period 1791–1844. Exploiting the peculiarities of French legislation, we construct an array of patent quality indicators and investigate their determinants. We find that patents filed by British inventors or French
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Dust Bowl Migrants: Environmental Refugees and Economic Adaptation The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-07-18 Richard Hornbeck
The 1930s American Dust Bowl created archetypal “Dust Bowl migrants,” refugees from environmental collapse. I examine this archetype, comparing migration from more-eroded and less-eroded counties to distinguish Dust Bowl migrants from other migrants. Dust Bowl migrants were “negatively selected,” in years of education, compared to other migrants who were “positively selected.” Dust Bowl migrants had
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The Country They Built: Dynamic and Complex Indigenous Economies in North America before 1492 The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-05-18 Ann M. Carlos
The economic history of the United States is that of Europeans and their institutions. Indigenous nations are absent. This absence is partly due to a lack of data but perhaps also to a perception that Indigenous communities contributed little to U.S. growth. Three case studies explore the economic complexity and social stratification across different nations/regions prior to contact. Migrants to the
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Reconstruction Aid, Public Infrastructure, and Economic Development: The Case of the Marshall Plan in Italy The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-05-02 Nicola Bianchi, Michela Giorcelli
The Marshall Plan (1948–1952) was the largest aid transfer in history. This paper estimates its effects on Italy’s postwar economic development. It exploits differences between Italian provinces in the value of reconstruction grants they received. Provinces that could modernize their infrastructure more quickly experienced higher increases in agricultural production, especially for perishable crops
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The Feudal Origins of Manorial Prosperity: Social Interactions in Eleventh-Century England The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-04-04 Vincent Delabastita, Sebastiaan Maes
Does the prosperity of medieval manors depend on their position in the feudal system? How large are these effects? And what are the underlying economic mechanisms? Using Domesday Book, a unique country-wide survey conducted by William the Conqueror, we reinterpret the eleventh-century English feudal system as a network in which manors are linked to one another based on their common ownership structure
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The Impact of Business Cycle Conditions on Firm Dynamics and Composition The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-03-29 Cihan Artunç
This paper estimates the causal impact of short-term aggregate fluctuations in Egypt, 1911–48, using global cotton price shocks. Firm entry was procyclical, and exit was acyclical. There were persistent differences between cohorts over the cycle; expansionary cohorts were of lower quality. The evidence supports models of firm entry with ex-ante heterogeneity. The findings highlight the extensive margin
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Social Mobility in Sweden before the Welfare State The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-03-28 Thor Berger, Per Engzell, Björn Eriksson, Jakob Molinder
We use historical census data to show that Sweden exhibited high levels of intergenerational occupational mobility several decades before the rise of the welfare state. Mobility rates were higher than in other nineteenth- and twentieth-century European countries, closer to those observed in the highly mobile nineteenth-century United States. We leverage mobility variation across Swedish municipalities
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Whitelashing: Black Politicians, Taxes, and Violence The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-03-28 Trevon D. Logan
This paper provides the first evidence of the effect of tax policy on violent attacks against Black politicians. I find a positive effect of local tax revenue on subsequent violence against Black politicians. A dollar increase in per capita county taxes in 1870 increased the likelihood of a violent attack by more than 25 percent. The result is robust to controls for numerous economic, historical, and
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Political Dynasties in Defense of Democracy: The Case of France’s 1940 Enabling Act The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-03-24 Jean Lacroix, Pierre-Guillaume Méon, Kim Oosterlinck
The literature has pointed out the negative aspects of political dynasties. But can political dynasties help prevent autocratic reversals? We argue that political dynasties differ according to their ideological origin and that those whose founder was a defender of democratic ideals, for simplicity labeled “pro-democratic dynasties,” show stronger support for democracy. We analyze the vote by the French
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Financial Failure and Depositor Quality: Evidence from Building and Loan Associations in California The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-03-16 Todd Messer
Flightiness, or depositor sensitivity to liquidity needs, can be an important determinant of financial distress. I leverage institutional differences—that attract depositors with varying flightiness—across building and loan associations in California during the Great Depression. A new type of plan, the Dayton plan, involved less restrictive savings plans and lower withdrawal penalties. Dayton plans
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Landholding Inequality and the Consolidation of Democracy: Evidence from Nineteenth-Century France The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-03-16 Adrien Montalbo
In this article, I investigate the effect of landholding inequalities on the democratization process in nineteenth-century France. I focus on the 1849 election, which followed the establishment of the Second Republic (1848–1851), and on the first six elections of the Third Republic (1870–1940), which took place between 1876 and 1893. I find that stronger landholding inequalities were associated to
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Institutional Change and Property Rights before the Industrial Revolution: The Case of the English Court of Wards and Liveries, 1540–1660 The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-01-30 Sean Bottomley
Secure property rights are usually considered to be essential for sustained economic development. In England, it is debated whether property rights have been secure since the medieval period or if they were only established after the Glorious Revolution. In this context, the paper examines the Court of Wards, which from 1540 to 1646 administered the Crown’s right to take custody of children and their
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Market Access and Information Technology Adoption: Historical Evidence from the Telephone in Bavaria The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-01-26 Florian Ploeckl
Does market access affect information technology by shaping its diffusion and adoption? The introduction of the telephone in Bavaria is used to demonstrate that local and external market access affected both. External connections shortened the diffusion time of exchanges by 3 percent on average, while 4 percent of lines were due to such inter-city communication links. However, relatively stronger local
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Migrant Self-Selection and Random Shocks: Evidence from the Panic of 1907 The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-01-26 David Escamilla-Guerrero, Moramay López-Alonso
We study the impact of the 1907 Panic, the most severe economic crisis before the Great Depression, on the selection of Mexican immigration. We find that migrants were positively selected on height before the crisis. This pattern changed to negative selection during the crisis but returned to positive selection afterward. Adjustments in selection were partially mediated by the enganche, a historical
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Sectarian Competition and the Market Provision of Human Capital The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-01-09 Heyu Xiong, Yiling Zhao
We study the role of denominational competition in the expansion of higher education in the nineteenth-century United States. We document that nearly all colleges established in this period were affiliated with a Christian denomination. Empirical analysis reveals a robust positive relationship between the denominational fragmentation of the county and the number of colleges established. We take several
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Was Marshall Right? Managerial Failure and Corporate Ownership in Edwardian Britain The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-01-09 Michael Aldous, Philip T. Fliers, John D. Turner
Alfred Marshall argued that the malaise of public companies in Edwardian Britain was due to the separation of ownership from control and a lack of professional management. In this paper, we examine the ownership and control of the c.1,700 largest British companies in 1911. We find that most public companies had a separation of ownership and control, but that this had little effect on their performance
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Pandemics Depress the Economy, Public Health Interventions Do Not: Evidence from the 1918 Flu The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-02 Sergio Correia, Stephan Luck, Emil Verner
We study the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on mortality and economic activity across U.S. cities during the 1918 Flu Pandemic. The combination of fast and stringent NPIs reduced peak mortality by 50 percent and cumulative excess mortality by 24 to 34 percent. However, while the pandemic itself was associated with short-run economic disruptions, we find that these disruptions were
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Black and White Names: Evolution and Determinants The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-02 Hui Ren Tan
Black and white Americans tend to have different names today. This divide was long in the making. I show that the racial divergence in naming patterns was a gradual and continuous process spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I then exploit the migration of households from the South to determine if place matters for name choices. Children born after their households moved receive names that
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Economic Growth in Germany, 1500–1850 The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-02 Ulrich Pfister
New data are used to construct a time series of real GDP in Germany for the period 1500–1850 using an indirect output estimation technique that relies on wages, prices, and sectoral employment. Until the mid-seventeenth century, real GDP per capita moved inversely with population. The eighteenth century saw a modest rise in output per head. From the late 1810s, economic growth gradually accelerated
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Residential Exodus from Dublin Circa 1900: Municipal Annexation and Preferences for Local Government The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-02 Silvi K. Berger, Franco Mariuzzo, Peter L. Ormosi
Dublin experienced a marked stagnation in population growth in the second half of the nineteenth century, accompanied by decaying infrastructure and poor public health. Historians have emphasized that this crisis was coupled with poor governance of the city of Dublin—manifested by eroding public services together with increasing tax burdens to counteract growing debt. This paper studies the municipal
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Railways, Growth, and Industrialization in a Developing German Economy, 1829–1910 The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-02 Sebastian Till Braun, Richard Franke
This paper studies the average and heterogeneous effects of railway access on parish-level population, income, and industrialization in Württemberg during the Industrial Revolution. We show that the growth-enhancing effect of the railway was much greater in parishes that were larger and more industrial at the outset. However, such early industrial parishes were rare in the relatively poor German state
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Intergenerational Mobility in a Mid-Atlantic Economy: Canada, 1871–1901 The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-09-28 Luiza Antonie, Kris Inwood, Chris Minns, Fraser Summerfield
This article uses new linked full-count census data for Canada to document intergenerational occupational mobility from 1871 to 1901. We find significant differences among Canadian regions and language groups, with linguistic minorities experiencing notably lower rates of intergenerational mobility. International comparisons place Canada midway between other economies in the Americas and the most mobile
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U.K. Investment Trust Valuation and Investor Behavior, 1880–1929 The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-09-28 Dimitris P. Sotiropoulos, Janette Rutterford, Daniele Tori
This study looks at the valuation of U.K. investment trusts for the 50 years following their appearance as companies in the 1880s. Based on a large and unique dataset compiled from primary sources, our calculations reveal a huge variation between the ordinary share prices of investment trusts and their underlying net asset “fundamental” values. This mismatch is a well-known puzzle in modern financial
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Modernization in Progress: Part-Year Operation, Mechanization, and Labor Force Composition in Late Imperial Russia The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-09-27 Amanda Gregg, Tamar Matiashvili
This paper investigates part-year factory operation, a common but understudied dimension of industrializing economies, in a prototypical late-industrializing setting that offers rich factory-level data: Imperial Russia. Newly compiled data provides detailed descriptions of all Russian manufacturing firms operating in 1894 and shows that factories operating a greater number of annual working days were
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Demographic Shocks and Women’s Labor Market Participation: Evidence from the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in India The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-08-17 James Fenske, Bishnupriya Gupta, Song Yuan
How did the 1918 influenza pandemic affect female labor force participation in India over the short run and the medium run? We use an event-study approach at the district level and four waves of decadal census data in order to answer this question. We find that districts most adversely affected by influenza mortality saw a temporary increase in female labor force participation in 1921, an increase
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Taming the Global Financial Cycle: Central Banks as Shock Absorbers in the First Era of Globalization The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-08-01 Guillaume Bazot, Eric Monnet, Matthias Morys
The Classical Gold Standard period, with high capital mobility and fixed-exchange rates, is usually seen as the extreme case of international constraints on monetary policy. Contrary to this view, we show how central bank balance sheets offset the effects of international shocks on domestic interest rates. In contrast, in the United States, a gold standard country without a central bank, the reaction
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Can Stimulating Demand Drive Costs Down? World War II as a Natural Experiment The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-07-11 François Lafond, Diana Greenwald, J. Doyne Farmer
U.S. military production during World War II increased at an impressive rate and led to large declines in unit costs. However, the literature has focused on elucidating detailed mechanisms behind this relationship, using small datasets on specific products. Here we take a step back and, looking at an unprecedently large collection of data, we show that both exogenous technological progress and endogenous
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Connecting the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions: The Role of Practical Mathematics The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-07-06 Morgan Kelly, Cormac Ó Gráda
Disputes over whether the Scientific Revolution contributed to the Industrial Revolution begin with the common assumption that natural philosophers and artisans formed distinct groups. In reality, these groups merged together through a diverse group of applied mathematics teachers, textbook writers, and instrument makers catering to a market ranging from navigators and surveyors to bookkeepers. Besides
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The Borchardt Hypothesis: A Cliometric Reassessment of Germany’s Debt and Crisis during 1930–1932 The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-07-05 Tai-kuang Ho, Ya-chi Lin, Kuo-chun Yeh
This research examines whether an alternative exchange rate policy could have mitigated Germany’s recession from April 1930 to May 1932, when Heinrich Brüning was Reichskanzler of the Weimar Republic. Using an open-economy dynamic model as our analytical framework, we examine the arguments against adopting the devaluation policy. Our counterfactual analysis suggests that a widely held belief—that floating
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Why Join the Fed? The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-06-14 Charles W. Calomiris, Matthew Jaremski
We study the decisions of state-chartered banks to join the Fed in its first decade. Ours is the first study to combine state regulatory environment characteristics and individual bank characteristics to explain Fed membership choice. Regulatory environments that reduced the benefit of discount window access or increased the regulatory cost of joining the Fed led to fewer banks joining. Individual
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“Mechanization Takes Command?”: Powered Machinery and Production Times in Late Nineteenth-Century American Manufacturing The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-06-07 Jeremy Atack, Robert A. Margo, Paul W. Rhode
During the nineteenth century, U.S. manufacturers shifted away from the “hand labor” mode of production, characteristic of artisan shops, to “machine labor,” which was increasingly concentrated in steam-powered factories. This transition fundamentally changed production tasks, jobs, and job requirements. This paper uses digitized data on these two production modes from an 1899 U.S. Commissioner of
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An Alternative Institutional Approach to Rules, Organizations, and Development The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-05-19 John Joseph Wallis
In the middle of the nineteenth century, a handful of societies began creating and enforcing impersonal rules, rules that treat everyone the same, on a broad scale. The existing institutional literatures, while appreciating the importance of impersonal rules for the rule of law, have not understood how they contribute to economic and political development through rules that are enforced but not followed:
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Financial Developments in London in the Seventeenth Century: The Financial Revolution Revisited The Journal of Economic History (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-04-26 Nathan Sussman
A novel series of interest rates paid by the Corporation of London shows that interest rates in London declined by 350 basis points during the seventeenth century. The decline followed a similar pattern in Europe. Records from the Corporation’s archive provide evidence for financial development: an increase in the number and volume of debt instruments, an increase in the number of lenders, and the