Protecting the borrower: An experiment in colonial India

We study the impact of the Deccan Agriculturists' Relief Act (DARA), a key legislation to protect debtors that was enacted in western colonial India. Using a panel dataset and a difference-in-difference estimation, we find a substantial short-run decline in mortgage-backed credit after the passage of DARA. The contraction in credit did not reduce cropped area or agricultural investments in bullocks and carts, but may have led to less intensive cultivation.     

Traditional vocations and modern professions among Tamil Brahmans in colonial and post-colonial south India

Since the nineteenth century, Tamil Brahmans have been very well represented in the educated professions, especially law and administration, medicine, engineering and nowadays, information technology. This is partly a continuation of the Brahmans' role as literate service people, owing to their traditions of education, learning and literacy, but the range of professions shows that any direct continuity is more apparent than real. Genealogical data are particularly used as evidence about changing patterns of employment, education and migration. Caste traditionalism was not a determining constraint, for Tamil Brahmans were predominant in medicine and engineering as well as law and administration in the colonial period, even though medicine is ritually polluting and engineering resembles low-status artisans' work. Crucially though, as modern, English-language, credential-based professions that are wellpaid and prestigious, law, medicine and engineering were and are all deemed eminently suitable for Tamil Brahmans, who typically regard their professional success as a sign of their caste superiority in the modern world. In reality, though, it is mainly a product of how their old social and cultural capital and their economic capital in land were transformed as they seized new educational and employment opportunities by flexibly deploying their traditional, inherited skills and advantages.     

Pre‐colonial culture,post‐colonial economic success? The Tswana and the African economic miracle

Cultural explanations of economic phenomena have recently enjoyed a renaissance among economists. This article provides further evidence for the salience of culture through an in‐depth case study of one of the fastest‐growing economies in the world during the last 50 years—Botswana. The unique culture that developed among the Tswana before and during the early days of colonialism, which shared many features with those of western nation‐states, appears to have contributed significantly to the factors widely seen as determinants of Botswana's post‐colonial economic success: state legitimacy, good governance and democracy, commercial traditions, well‐established property rights, and inter‐ethnic unity. Neighbouring Southern African cultures typically did not exhibit these traits.     

Intra-household labor allocation in colonial Nigeria

We use a year-long panel of time-use data from colonial Nigeria to show that labor complementarities and strategic concerns shaped the time-use decisions of African households. Using quantitative and ethnographic approaches, we show that health shocks imposed time costs that followed the gender division of labor. The labor of others did not automatically compensate for this. Whether individuals could respond by recruiting substitutes depended on social standing, urgency of work, and type of illness. Labor was coordinated between spouses. Child labor was coordinated with parental work, aided child care, and allowed children to build skills and resources.     

Public finance in Korea under Japanese rule: Deficit in the colonial account and colonial taxation

The government accounts of the Japanese Empire with two of its major colonies, Taiwan and Korea, are compared for the colonial period 1903 (Taiwan) or 1911 (Korea) through 1938. Korea appears undertaxed by comparison to Taiwan or Japan. This appears to be due to lower per capita income but also to the loss of customs revenues and income tax revenues caused by Japanese colonial policy. These policies, despite subsidization of the Korean colonial government by Japanese taxpayers, did not increase national welfare.     

The spread of empire: Clio and the measurement of colonial borrowing costs1

Modern cliometric studies use dummy variables to measure the effects of institutions. The dummy variable approach can be misleading, as illustrated by recent research on the impact of colonial rule on borrowing terms. We show how trying to measure a ‘colonial effect’ without an analysis of the financial consequences of political subjection can be misleading. The main effect of the British Empire was to remove the default risk. Establishing how this was done, and with what effects, should take us closer to a proper understanding of the effect of empire.     

The law of trademarks in India

A law for the registration of trademarks was first enacted in India in 1940. This was replaced by the Trade and Merchandise Marks Act, 1958, which is now in force. This placed the trademarks Registry and the Patent Office under a common head. The trademarks Register is divided into two parts, distinctive marks being registered in Part A and marks capable of distinguishing in Part B. There is also provision for defensive registration. The duration of registration is 7 yr but may be renewed. There are provisions for preventing trafficking in trademarks. Permission of the Central Government is necessary for registration as a registered user. Civil, and sometimes criminal, proceedings can be initiated for infringement.     

The colonial roots of land inequality: geography,factor endowments,or institutions?

Land inequality is one of the crucial underpinnings of long‐run persistent wealth and asset inequality. This article assesses the colonial roots of land inequality from a comparative perspective. The evolution of land inequality is analysed in a cross‐colonial multivariate regression framework complemented by an in‐depth comparative case study of three former British colonies: Malaysia, Sierra Leone, and Zambia. The main conclusion is that the literature tends to overemphasize the role of geography and to underestimate the role of pre‐colonial institutions in shaping the colonial political economic context in which land is (re)distributed from natives to colonial settlers.     

The progress of school education in India

This paper provides an overview of school education in India.First, it places India's educational achievements in internationalperspective, particularly against countries with which it isnow increasingly compared, especially China. Second, the paperexamines schooling access in terms of enrolment and school attendancerates, and schooling quality in terms of literacy rates, learningachievement levels, school resources, and teacher inputs. Third,the paper investigates the role of private schooling in India,examining the extent of growth of private schooling and surveyingevidence on the relative effectiveness and unit costs of privateand public schools. Last, the paper discusses some major publiceducation initiatives. The concluding section suggests a futureresearch agenda and appeals for rigorous evaluation of the impactsand costs of the numerous existing educational interventions,in order to learn about their relative cost-effectiveness forevidence-based policy-making.     

Finance and Inequality: The Case of India

Although theory emphasizes the role of financial market frictions in explaining income inequality, there is little empirical research exploring how financial development and financial sector reforms influence the evolution of income inequality. This article examines how finance impacts income inequality in India using annual time series data for over half a century. The results indicate that while financial development helps reduce income inequality, financial liberalization seems to exacerbate it. The results are robust to the use of different measures for financial development and financial liberalization.     

American colonial incomes, 1650–1774

New data now allow conjectures on the levels of real and nominal incomes in the 13 American colonies. New England was the poorest region, and the South was the richest. Colonial per capita incomes rose only very slowly if at all, for five reasons: productivity growth was slow; population in the low‐income (but subsistence‐plus) frontier grew much faster than that in the high‐income coastal settlements; child dependency rates were high and probably even rising; the terms of trade were extremely volatile, presumably suppressing investment in export sectors; and the terms of trade rose very slowly, if at all, in the North, although faster in the South. All of this checked the growth of colony‐wide per capita income after a seventeenth‐century boom. The American colonies led Great Britain in purchasing power per capita from 1700, and possibly from 1650, until 1774, even counting slaves in the population. That is, average purchasing power in America led Britain early, when Americans were British. The common view that American per capita income did not overtake that of Britain until the start of the twentieth century appears to be off the mark by two centuries or more.     

The historical origins of the Philippine economy: a survey of recent research of the Spanish colonial era

This article surveys recent research of the Spanish colonial era in the Philippines since the late eighteenth century. While highlighting imperfections in our understanding, the article establishes the parameters with which the Philippine economy entered the twentieth century. It outlines the intensification of Spanish colonial rule through changes in the taxation system, particularly the expansion of forced tobacco cultivation until its abolition in 1882. Since then, the Spanish set out to further change and intensify colonial rule but contradictions in the system of colonial rule caused the effort to come to an abrupt end in 1898.     

论中国与印度的经济合作

中印两国同为发展中大国,两国加强经济合作具有重要意义。近年来,中印经济合作取得了显著的成就,但仍存在一些问题与不足。中印两国应当继续保持高层互访,加强民间交流,推动贸易多样化,扩大双边贸易额,加强经贸协作的制度化建设,在可持续发展方面开展合作与交流,使双边经济合作进一步深入发展。