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.     

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 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.     

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.     

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。     

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.     

The pattern and causes of economic growth in India

This paper presents the broad macro parameters of the growthof the Indian economy since the nation's independence and across-country evaluation of where India stands, drawing outthe patterns discernible in these aggregative statistics. Thepaper gives an overview of the on-going debate on the componentsof the Indian growth and the relative importance of the differentpolicies in the 1980s and 1990s. It contributes to this debateby identifying the landmark years, and analysing the politicsbehind some of the economics. The paper also analyses the factorsbehind the changes in India's savings rate and the relationbetween growth and development, on the one hand, and the natureof labour market regulation, on the other.     

Factors affecting colonial industrialization in the endowment view of settlement versus extraction

The paper presents a model to discover the factors affecting the colonial industrialization, and to explain the empirical finding of the ‘reversal of fortune’ of Acemoglu et al. [Q. J. Econ. 117 (2002) 1231], based on an extended version of the ‘endowment theory’. Reversal of fortune implies that countries among the former European colonies that were less urbanized (relatively poor) in 1500 should be relatively rich today. The model is based on the Krugman’s geography model. We additionally assume that technology transfers including establishment of institutions are possible only through the settlement of economic agents from metro to colony. The model yields the following implications. First, various legal systems differing in the level of the rule of law do not affect the metro agent’s decision of settlement or extraction. Second, the less urbanized is the colony, the more likely metro farmers migrate into the colony, transferring metro technologies and institutions. This is consistent with the ‘reversal of fortune’. Third, the more likely the colony will experience metro agents’ migration (technology transfers) and the subsequent colonial industrialization with its lower mortality rate, with its higher availability of arable land, or with its smaller distance from the metro. Last, if the distance is large enough, it leads to a different equilibrium where subsidiaries of metro firms in the colony produce and supply all kinds of the manufactures goods to the colony in a self-sufficient fashion. Then, only the mortality rate and the availability of arable land matter, while the distance does not. This is more consistent with the case of former European colonies such as US, Canada, Australia, and others.     

The myth of the double-advantage: Black female managers

This article reports on interviews conducted with 25 middle- and senior-level black female managers in private-sector employment. Three hypotheses were examined: (1) the processes that sociologists and psychologists assume influence the nontraditional career choices of white women are not the same as those that influence black women; (2) contrary to popular belief, black women are not being promoted more rapidly than other, better qualified workers as a result of affirmative action; and (3) black female managers are likely to encounter the same limits to their mobility that anyone, regardless of race or gender, might encounter,and they are likely to encounter limits to their mobility on account of their race and sex. Each of these hypotheses received some support from this admittedly narrow database.     

Some problems of monetary dependency in West African States of French colonial legacy

Conclusion Some advantages of the franc zone and the Operation account to the Paris exchange market may have existed and still exist for the UMOA member states. These financial arrangements may have provided relative monetary stability to the Monetary Union of West African states. But they still favor French Treasury by bringing foreign currency to the Paris Exchange market.