Rickman revisited: the population growth rates of English counties in the early modern period1

In the 1830s, Rickman, who had supervised the taking of the first four censuses, secured additional returns of baptisms, burials, and marriages from all Anglican incumbents whose registers began early. He made use of the returns to produce new estimates of the population of each county from the sixteenth century onwards. His estimates were published in the 1841 census after his death and have been very widely quoted ever since. This article presents new county estimates, taking advantage of the fact that it is now possible to avoid some of the logical difficulties that Rickman encountered because independent estimates of national population totals are now available.     

Policy choice and economic growth under factional politics: Evidence from a Chinese Province

This paper investigates how political elites make policy choices that have bearing on an authoritarian regime's economy, from the perspective of factional politics. A local leader makes policies primarily to secure his political survival, which is contingent on the support from either his higher-level patrons or his local grassroots constituents. Using a simple model, we show that a local politician with close factional ties to high-level patrons will invest more in sending loyalty signals to the latter to receive their protections, while a poorly-connected politician will make more effort to spur a broad-based economic growth that economically benefits his local constituents. Using a unique county level data on the factional politics of Zhejiang Province, China, we find that counties with weaker (closer) factional ties have lower (higher) tax burdens per capita, while spending more (less) on local public goods provision. The results are stable after various robustness tests.     

道光后期州县征漕收支及其与陋规加派的关系——以浙江乌程县为中心的考察

道光时期是重要的社会转型期,学术界从不同视角予以广泛的关注。目前学术界的研究较少涉及州县征漕费用的数额、构成和比例。道光年间尤其道光后期,州县征漕收支数目庞大,弄清数目的实际状况有助于加深对地方弊政的理解。吴煦档案中的乌程县漕用各费的账册资料,记录了该县办漕的收支状况。乌程县征漕费用总计约3万两,由漕务开支、衙门规费、运军兑费三部分构成。清中后期州县的法定漕费远不敷用,州县财政对漕务陋规形成依赖;上级官员、运丁和地方绅衿分润州县漕规收入,形成惯例;州县官则率由旧章,对已有的利益格局通常不做改变。征漕费用和陋规加派具有稳定性和延续性,当需要因事加征时,往往援例加征。征漕陋规虽名义上归州县官所有,但各类开支从规费中支出,所以征漕规费并非州县官的纯收入。州县官借征漕而获利之数,因时、因地、因人而不同。地方财政依赖陋规加派,而陋规又被各利益集团分润,这是清政府腐败集团化的呈现,也是清中后期朝廷囿于“不加赋”之名,惰于进行制度改革的恶果。     

Adopting a new technology: potatoes and population growth in the periphery

Sweden's population doubled in size between 1750 and 1850 despite a century of stagnating per capita incomes and real wages, which has led many historians to attribute the population explosion to the introduction of the potato. This article provides the first systematic evidence on the potato's contribution to Swedish living standards and population growth. Potatoes at least doubled output per acre, and welfare ratios that account for potato consumption imply that they raised living standards significantly for labourers. Estimates that exploit regional differences in the suitability of land for cultivating potatoes further show that cities, counties, and rural parishes with more land suitable for potato cultivation experienced a sharp relative acceleration in population growth as the potato spread in the early nineteenth century. An expansion of the population was mainly driven by relative increases in fertility and, consistent with Malthusian predictions, there was no long‐run impact on per capita incomes. According to these estimates, the introduction and spread of the potato can account for one‐tenth of population growth between 1800 and 1850, thus suggesting that it was an important catalyst for the Swedish population explosion.     

Illuminations and distortions: Gregory King's Scheme calculated for the year 1688 and the social structure of later Stuart England1

This critique of King's well‐known Scheme of the social order in 1688 examines his purposes, the Scheme's evolutionary process, and the taxation data (hearth, poll, window, and marriage duty) that King used to construct it, before contrasting his conclusions with recent research. His social hierarchy emerges as a rather crude and backward‐looking stereotype based on too many intelligent guesses, with his treatment of the poorer families being least satisfactory. Overall, King's population totals appear sound, his national income estimate low, and various mean household sizes and family and children's totals unreliable.     

Serbia on the path to modern economic growth

Given the scanty and inadequate studies on Serbia's growth performance before the First World War, this paper presents production-side GDP estimates for Serbia for six years between 1867 and 1910. It probes into the growth dynamics, assessing convergence with the more developed countries of north-western Europe, as well as progress towards achieving modern economic growth. Although the economy showed some dynamism in terms of overall GDP, per capita GDP in pre-First World War Serbia grew by only 0.28 per cent per annum, as much of the overall GDP growth was eroded by rapid population growth. Far from converging with north-western Europe, Serbia continued to fall behind. Sluggish structural transformation and slow income per capita growth suggest that Serbia's transition to modern economic growth was in its infancy. Growth in the dominant agricultural sector was extensive, driven by expanding arable land and population growth. Land was affordable and easy to obtain; hence, peasants invested little in new technologies. Meanwhile, the modern industrial and service sectors were below a threshold that could sustain rapid growth. Nevertheless, this study also highlights the rapid expansion of a small modern sector and export diversification that reflected emergent ‘green shoots’ in 1905–10.     

Urban population in late medieval England: the evidence of the lay subsidies

Was there a growth in the proportion of the population living in England's towns in the later middle ages? Uncertainty about national population trends and about the taxation multipliers needed to arrive at population totals has made it difficult to answer this question. A direct comparison of the proportion of taxpayers that was urban in 1377 and 1524 suggests that the urban share of population was static or may even have declined in this period. However, such decline provides no simple index of urban prosperity or decay: a decline in urbanization could be the product of rural buoyancy rather than of urban recession.     

Do Air Quality Alerts Affect Household Migration?

This article examines the effect of air quality information on immigration and emigration of households in California counties by measuring the change in the number of air quality alert days. Based on panel data for 2000–2014, I find evidence suggesting that more frequent air quality alerts reduce the rate of population growth in a county by decreasing immigration of households. This is driven by “Unhealthy” air alerts, which signals weaker air quality than “Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups.” The negative impacts on immigration are larger for high household income counties and are strongest when there is a sharp increase in the number of air quality alerts.     

Clark's Malthus delusion: response to ‘Farming in England 1200–1800’

Clark's claims about the scale of English agricultural output from the 1200s to the 1860s flout historical and geographical reality. His income‐based estimates start with the daily real wages of adult males and assume that days worked per year were constant. Those advanced in British economic growth make no such assumption and instead are built up from the output side. They correlate better with population trends and are consistent with an economy slowly growing and becoming richer. Clark's denial that such growth occurred, his assertion that substantially more land must have been under arable cultivation, his belief that conditions of full employment invariably prevailed in the countryside at harvest time, his concern that the wage bill would have exceeded the value of output in British economic growth, his refusal to consider the possibility that the working year was of variable length, and his assertion that output per acre must have been equalized across arable and pasture are all shown to be figments of his ‘Malthus delusion’.     

The impact of New Deal expenditures on mobility during the Great Depression

Using county-level data on federal New Deal expenditures on public works and relief and Agricultural Adjustment Administration payments to farmers, this paper empirically examines the New Deal’s impact on inter-county migration from 1930 to 1940. We construct a net-migration measure for each county as the difference between the Census’s reported population change from 1930 to 1940 and the natural increase in population (births minus infant deaths minus non-infant deaths) over the same period. Our empirical approach accounts for both the simultaneity between New Deal allocations and migration and the geographic spillovers that likely resulted when economic activity in one county may have affected the migration decisions of people in neighboring counties. We find that greater spending on relief and public works was associated with significant migration into counties where such money was allocated. The introduction of our modern farm programs under the aegis of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration appears to have contributed to a net out-migration that sped the transition of people out of farming.     

The effects of the Works Progress Administration's anti-malaria programs in Georgia 1932–1947

From 1900 to 1950, malaria rates declined rapidly in the southeast United States. At its peak, malaria infected over 30% of the population. Malaria declined over the period for several reasons: improvements in public infrastructure; development of new insecticides; improvements in agriculture that promoted drainage; increases in incomes; and changes in migration patterns. This paper focuses on public works constructed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the 1930s and subsequent interventions during the 1940s. To estimate the relationship between these malaria programs and malaria rates, I construct a panel of annual county level malaria rates in Georgia from 1932 to 1947. Between 1932 and 1940 the malaria rate in counties that received WPA malaria projects fell from 25.9 deaths per 100,000 to 5.3 deaths per 100,000. The empirical estimates suggest that WPA malaria projects led to 9.1 fewer deaths per 100,000 or roughly 44% of the observed decline in treated counties. Additional public works constructed by the MCWA during World War II, and the introduction of DDT after 1945 completely eliminated malaria in Georgia by 1947.     

Determinants of Economic Growth and Spread–backwash Effects in Western and Eastern China

This paper comparatively assesses the major contributors to economic growth and spread–backwash effects in Western and Eastern China over the period 2000–2007. The empirical findings indicate that economies in both regions increasingly agglomerated in large cities; the marginal products of domestic capital and labor in the western region were, respectively, two‐thirds and half of those in the eastern region; FDI was more productive than domestic capital. Spatial econometric analysis reveals that the central cities in Western China had mild spread effects on each other and backwash effects on the nearby rural counties and, in contrast, the central cities in the eastern region competed with each other and had backwash effects on nearby rural counties but spread effects on neighboring county‐level cities. The paper draws several policy implications in relation to the improvement of factor inputs and construction of growth centers in the western region.     

Did the communists contribute to China’s rural growth?

The communist revolution brought unprecedented changes to China. Yet there is no consensus on its role in the history of China’s modern economic growth. We investigate whether local communist party membership affected developmental outcomes from 1957–78 (the Maoist period) and 1978–85 (the reform period). Focusing on Sichuan, China’s most populous province, we use the Long March as an instrument to tease out causal effects. We find that counties with more communist members made larger strides in educational attainment, road construction, and agricultural mechanization during the Maoist period. However, these counties recorded faster output growth only after 1978. Our findings provide empirical support to field studies conducted by sociologists and historians who argue that the communists improved the organizational infrastructure in China’s countryside. Furthermore, we highlight the futility of solving collective action problems without heeding private incentives.     

The historiography of French economic growth in the nineteenth century

There has been a long-standing debate about French nineteenth-century economic growth. After 1945 the ‘retardation—stagnation’ thesis dominated. From the 1960s ‘revisionists’ painted a more optimistic view. Recently, ‘anti-revisionism’ has revived gloomy ideas. New research has been primarily responsible for changes of view. National income estimates, and later cliometric studies, bolstered the revisionist argument. Work on the ‘great depression’ stimulated anti-revisionism. Scholars have also been influenced by the economic and political state of France at the time they were writing and the debate has been somewhat politicized. The article ends by surveying the ‘moderate revisionism’ which now prevails.     

区域发展模式与城镇化关联:解析一个直辖市

结合区域发展规划演变及发展阶段,对重庆县域经济进行相应的组团规划,建立1997～2010年面板数据的个体固定效应模型并进行实证检验。结果显示,城镇化进程对区县"自个"发展的正面影响较小,对组团式发展影响较为突出,表明在城镇化进程中组团发展更能充分利用城镇化对经济增长的促进作用。重庆要更好地推动科学发展,除通过扩大开放引进经济发展的外生变量,还须把握城镇化进程中区域发展的战略制高点,适时进行组团式发展。     

江西省县域经济的综合评价与分析——基于主成分分析法

定量研究了江西省县域经济的综合绩效,建立了县域经济综合评价指标体系,以江西省80个县市为研究对象,运用主成分分析法,对江西省各县市的县域经济进行了综合评价,并得出了相关结论。     

Regional GDP in the UK, 1861–1911: new estimates

This article compares the Geary–Stark method for distributing known GDP totals across regions with a variation suggested by Crafts. Tests of the Geary–Stark method confirm that it generates accurate estimates of regional GDP. There are practical and conceptual problems with Crafts' extension, and it is not tested nor is it testable. New estimates of regional GDP for the period 1861 to 1911 contradict Crafts's suggestion of rising regional inequality. Purchasing power parity adjustments do not alter this trend. The new estimates confirm Ireland's post‐Famine catch‐up. The great bulk of Irish labour productivity growth can be accounted for by an upward shifting production function, though it can be argued that that portion of growth that represents catch‐up may be attributable to labour force decline.     

中部地区农村剩余劳动力转移与培训研究

在中部地区6个省份中,其农村发展面临的最大制约因素就是农村剩余劳动力的大量存在。改革开放以来已有大量的农村剩余劳动力通过各种途径转移出来,但目前农村剩余劳动力由于自身素质等方面原因导致其就业压力仍然很大,本文就如何提高农村剩余劳动力素质以增强其就业竞争力问题进行了分析。解决农村剩余劳动力的出路问题,是实现中部崛起所面临的一个极富挑战性的难题。     

Wealth data quality in the National Income Dynamics Study Wave 2

This paper examines the quality of data on household assets, liabilities and net worth in the South African National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) Wave 2. The NIDS is the first nationally representative survey on household wealth in South Africa. The cross-sectionally weighted data are found to be fit for use in terms of the univariate distributions of net worth, assets and liabilities, but population totals are probably underestimated due to the presence of missing wealth data in Phase 2 of Wave 2 that is not taken into account in the weights. When compared with national accounts estimates of household net worth, there is an apparent inversion of the estimated totals of financial assets versus non-financial assets. Further research is required into why this is so. We find that the NIDS wealth module is a suitable instrument for the analysis of household wealth.     

Substance Abuse Treatment and Motor Vehicle Fatalities

The danger of alcohol‐ and drug‐impaired driving implies that policies that reduce substance abuse can save lives. We study this issue in small U.S. counties where access to substance abuse treatment can be measured directly through the presence of treatment facilities. We find that placing an additional treatment clinic in a county reduces the number of alcohol‐related motor vehicle fatalities by 15%. An additional outpatient clinic, which specializes in treating the local population, reduces the overall number of alcohol‐related deaths by 26%. In the counties that we study, this reduction in alcohol‐related accidents saves 0.66 lives per county per year.