Numeracy of Africans,Asians, and Europeans during the early modern period: new evidence from Cape Colony court registers

The lack of accurate measures of human capital formation often constrains investigations into the long‐run determinants of growth and comparative economic development, especially in the developing world. Using the reported ages of criminals in the Court of Justice records in the Cape Archives, this article documents for the first time numeracy levels and trends for inhabitants of the Cape Colony born between the late seventeenth and early nineteenth century: the native Khoesan, European settlers, and imported slaves from other African regions and Asia. This variety of origins allows us to compare contemporaneous levels of early modern development across three continents. By isolating those slaves born at the Cape, we also provide a glimpse into the dynamics of human capital transfer in a colonial setting. The Colony's relatively high level of human capital overall had implications for what was later to be the richest country on African soil, but the very unequal attainment of numeracy also foreshadowed extreme income inequality.     

Economically relevant human capital or multi-purpose consumption good? Book ownership in pre-modern Württemberg

We investigate books as an indicator of human capital using extraordinary, individual-level data on book ownership and signature literacy for a population of German women and men between 1610 and 1900. Although book ownership was very high from an early date, it was associated with signature literacy, gender, urbanization, and wealth in ways inconsistent with its having registered economically relevant human capital. The books people owned were overwhelmingly religious, as elsewhere in pre-modern Europe. People consumed books for multifarious purposes, many of them non-economic. In this pre-modern economy, books were not a good indicator of economically relevant human capital for the population at large, which creates doubt about their use for this purpose more generally.     

An historical wealth assessment – measuring the Swedish national wealth for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

This article provides historical account of wealth accumulation and composition in Sweden during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A detailed account on capital formation during the industrialisation process shows that produced capital grew faster than natural capital from the 1850s. Natural capital was changing from a predominance of forest towards crop land as the main asset in the early twentieth century. Produced capital was largely bounded in the agriculture sector up till the second half of the nineteenth century. Heavy investments in the infrastructure sector and later in the manufacturing section changed the produced capital structure and thereby lowered transport costs and return of investment in manufacturing and services; providing incentives for accumulating the stock of produced capital and enhance consumption and living standard. The return on capital was dispersed from the outset of the period but has converged over time.     

Saving puzzles and saving policies in the United States

In the past two decades the widely reported personal savingrate in the United States has dropped from double digits tobelow zero. First, we attempt to account for the decline inthe National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) saving rate.The macroeconomic literature suggests that 40-50 per cent ofthe drop since 1988 can be attributed to households spendingstock-market capital gains. Another 30 per cent is accountingtransfers from personal saving into government and corporatesaving because of the way pensions and capital gains taxes aretreated in the NIPA. Second, while NIPA saving measures arewell suited to measuring the supply of new funds for investmentand capital accumulation, it is not clear that they should bethe target of government saving policies. Finally, we emphasizethat the NIPA saving rate is not useful in judging whether householdsare preparing for retirement or other contingencies. Many householdshave accumulated significant wealth, primarily through retirementsaving vehicles and capital gains, even as the saving rate slid.There remains a segment of the population who save little andwhose behaviour appears untouched either by the stock-marketboom or the slide in personal saving. We explore reasons andpolicy options for their puzzling low saving rate.     

Unlocking housing equity in Japan

Much prior literature on asset patterns among the elderly has mostly overlooked housing wealth as a determinant of retiree wealth, particularly in the Japanese context. Yet releasing equity in housing may be a natural mechanism to boost consumption, reduce public pension liability, and mitigate the demand for long-term care facilities in Japan. Our study evaluates what might be needed to implement reverse mortgages (RMs) in this country. Policies could include exempting RMs from capital gains tax and transactions tax, along with mechanisms to make annuity income flows nontaxable, along with interest rate accruals for RMs. In addition, housing market reforms to enhance information flows would be needed, particularly regarding new and existing housing trades, which could permit the securitization of housing loans and lines of credit. Other improvements in capital markets could also help, including the establishment of reinsurance mechanisms to help lenders offer these reverse mortgages while having some protection against crossover risk. In the Japanese case, demand for RMs will be dampened by declining residential housing values as well as low interest rates and long life expectancies. Nevertheless, we conclude that RMs can be a good way to finance elderly consumption in Japan, particularly against the backdrop of governmental financial stringencies. J. Japanese Int. Economies 18 (4) (2004) 466–505.     

Housing wealth changes and entrepreneurship: Evidence from urban China

This paper studies the impact of household-level housing wealth changes on entrepreneurship in urban China. Exploiting the 2011–2015 China Household Finance Survey, we control for lagged proxies for wealth, city-by-year fixed effects, and other household attributes and directly estimate the magnitude of homeowner's response to housing capital gains net of home maintenance and upgrading expenditures. We also instrument for housing wealth changes with structural breaks in city housing price trend. We find that a 10,000 RMB increase in housing wealth increases the propensity of a household becoming a business owner by about 0.7 percentage points in IV estimation. In addition, we provide new evidence for underlying channels that housing capital gains alleviate household credit constraints, reduce risk aversion and increase awareness of financial information.     

Losing the future: Household wealth from urban housing demolition and children's human capital in China

Some literature observes the negative but not very significant effect of household wealth growth on children's educational outcomes. This surprising finding is not easily reconciled with the traditional explanation that relaxed economic constraints caused by wealth growth can promote human capital accumulation. This paper proposes an alternative explanation for the causal relationship between wealth growth and human capital, which could be negative: individuals tend to reduce human capital investment following the decline in their labor supply induced by wealth growth, given that investing in human capital is mainly for employment competitiveness. This explanation is supported by evidence from the case of urban housing demolition in China, in which affected households could obtain substantial wealth growth by considerable demolition compensation thanks to the real estate boom in China. Specifically, using two nationally representative datasets, we find that Chinese households that have experienced demolition relatively have more wealth, less labor supply, lower propensity to accumulate children's human capital, and consequently, have children with lower educational achievement. These results suggest that China's economy may be losing its momentum because of the decline in labor supply and human capital accumulation brought about by the ongoing large-scale urban housing demolition.     

The long shadows of war in China: Battle shocks in early life and health/wealth accumulation

This paper investigates the long-term effects of the 2nd Sino-Japanese war (1937–1945) and the later Chinese Civil War (1946–1950) on health and wealth outcomes of 45+ elder individuals in China. We find that exposure to the battle shock significantly reduces later adult health outcome such as lung function. Moreover, the later wealth accumulation is also affected negatively. According to our conservative estimates, exposure to battle shock(s) would reduce the lung capability by approximately 5% compared to the population mean and the wealth level by approximately 21% compared to the non-shocked groups. Exploiting the exogenous imposition of wealth equality during the 1950–1978 communism experiment in China, we argue it is the health accumulation channel which inherited the negative battle shocks rather than the wealth accumulation channel. We investigate quantitatively which health-model ingredients can replicate the lifecycle health/wealth dynamics of such early life shocks.     

Does the Domestic Value Added Induced by China＇s Exports Really Belong to China？

Since 2001, the exports of foreign‐invested enterprises (FIEs) have accounted for more than 50 percent of China's total exports. As foreign capital occupies a high proportion of the total capital of FIEs, most FIEs' capital gains are foreign factor income. Although these gains are calculated as a part of China's GDP, they do not belong to China's national income. To determine the real contribution of exports to China's welfare, the present paper analyses the impact of exports on China's national income using a non‐competitive input–output model capturing processing trade. The results show that every US$1000 of China's exports generates US$506.8 of national income. The real contribution of exports to China's welfare is much smaller than what we expected. This suggests that China should endeavor to improve the gains from international markets or find another engine to maintain its economic growth.     

Informal settlement upgrading,assets and poverty alleviation: Evidence from longitudinal research in South Africa

This paper investigates the relationship between housing as an asset and the accumulation of other assets. Using data from a longitudinal research project stretching over nearly 25 years, we have found that besides actual income, there have also been improvements in self-perceived wealth ranking, asset holding, housing size, infrastructure access and human capital. Not all households have however benefited or been found to be better off. We have found that those households who had settled in Freedom Square after 1994 were indeed better off than the earlier settlers. Asset building is a slow process, one driven by stability (accessing urban land and secure tenure), finding an address, accessing education and finding work or remaining employed (though not necessarily in this particular sequence). Contrary to what the Department of Human Settlements suggests, we have found little evidence that informal settlement dwellers build assets by means of the secondary housing market.     

人口红利贡献被高估了吗?——基于人力资本积累视角的研究

人口红利下降被认为是新常态下中国面临的重大挑战,然而劳动投入不仅包含劳动数量,还包含劳动质量,分别对应于人口红利与人力资本。由于在测量上忽视了高速城市化对人力资本积累的积极影响,在机制上忽视了人口红利和人力资本分布趋同的叠加影响,容易造成人口红利贡献高估且人口资本贡献低估。文章从人口迁移视角出发,参考拉姆齐无限期界模型建立人力资本积累方程,将城市化对人力资本积累的积极作用纳入分析,得出转换效应、迁移效应和共振效应,阐明人口红利和人力资本空间分布趋同的微观机制,得到检验人口红利和人力资本对经济增长贡献的一致性框架。以2013-2016年272个样本城市进行计量检验:固定效应回归分析和内生性检验表明人口红利和人力资本的增长弹性排序不确定,中介效应检验表明人力资本的增长贡献超过人口红利,分组检验进一步证实人力资本贡献超过人口红利,且存在相互叠加共同影响城市经济增长的共振效应。结论表明,若充分考虑城市化对人力资本的积极影响,则人口红利的贡献确实被高估,而人力资本的贡献被低估。由此得出政策建议,应持续推进城市化高质量发展,加速人力资本积累,构筑劳动质量替代劳动数量的机制,以更好地应对新常态下人口...     

A theory of the pre-modern British aristocracy

Between c. 1550 –c. 1880, a small group of individuals ruled England and oversaw her transformation from a small country to the British Empire—and in the process they became exceedingly wealthy. Known as aristocrats, their unusual lifestyles were the antithesis of modern secular values. Today aristocrats are often viewed as a hindrance to pre-modern growth and development because they appeared to operate so inefficiently. This paper argues that the aristocrats efficiently provided the valuable service of “trustworthy servant”, by investing their wealth in hostage capital. This theory explains terms of entry and exit out of the aristocracy, the strict family settlement, their education patterns, extravagant lifestyle, and their ultimate voluntary retreat from power.     

Male–female wage differentials in Japan

This paper empirically analyzes the gender wage gap in Japan using a new data set KHPS2004 which contains a wealth of information on the work history of individuals. KHPS2004 enables us to estimate wage functions without overstating individual’s human capital accumulation by work experience especially for females. Neuman-Oaxaca decomposition method is employed to analyze why the gender wage gap appears to exist in Japan. Main reasons as follows. First, full-time work experience and seniority which affect significantly wages is shorter for females than for males. Second, there are significant differences in evaluation of full-time experience between males and females.     

Immigration and the path dependence of education: the case of German‐speakers in São Paulo,Brazil (1840–1920)

This article studies the path dependence of human capital accumulation in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. It focuses on the impacts of German‐speaking immigrants on education through three channels: their share of the population in the nineteenth century, their on‐the‐job skills, and the schools they founded. Using a new dataset based on almanacs from 1873 and 1888, these effects are evaluated for the nineteenth, early twentieth, and early twenty‐first centuries. The article shows that the institutionalized demand for education of these immigrants, reflected by the establishment of schools, was their main contribution to the accumulation of human capital. The effect of German schools on educational levels required a period to mature and dissipated over time. Nevertheless, its influence was substantial at the beginning of the twentieth century, affecting enrolment levels in private and state schools, a result that suggests the existence of spillover and contagion effects. Moreover, current indicators for stocks and flows of human capital in São Paulo are strongly associated with their historical levels. At the same time, this path dependence is conditional on the type of school: while a positive persistence is found for the private system throughout the twentieth century, convergence occurred in state schools.     

On the Structure,Dynamics, and Use of the Asset Share in the National Wealth

In this article, the share of assets in the national wealth is taken as the object of analysis and forecast. The dynamics, structure and use of the basic elements of Russia’s productive assets—natural capital (energy inputs), human capital, and active fixed assets—are analyzed. It is shown that the natural capital will inevitably be replaced by human capital in combination with the asset share in fixed capital, and that the economy in the coming transition period (2018–2030) will necessarily transform to an innovative growth model.The annual balances of changes in the components of the assets in the national wealth for 2012–2016 are developed. The impact of the crisis is estimated. Some promising directions for using the accumulated human capital together with the asset share in fixed capital for a transition from a resource-based to an innovation model of Russia’s development are considered and substantiated.     

The effect of interruptions and part-time work on women's wage rate: A test of the variable-intensity model

Summary In this article we investigated the effects of interruptions of labour market participation and part-time work on women's gross wage rates, using the variable-intensity model. Women who interrupt their labour market careers suffer not only from depreciation, which effects all workers. Every year they do not participate they also miss experience. Part-time work mitigates the depreciation of human capital compared to a situation of non-participation. The expectation that part-time work — as opposed to full-time work — leads in the long run to a lower wage rate is confirmed.     

人力资本积累对福建省经济发展影响的实证研究

文章利用有效劳动模型和人力资本外部性增长模型,研究了福建省人力资本积累对经济增长的贡献率,采用面板数据模型验证了人力资本对福建省三次产业的影响效应。实证研究表明：人力资本积累对福建省经济增长的边际贡献率高于物质资本的边际贡献率,对第一产业产生负向效应,对第二产业的正向效应高于第三产业。随后提出了通过人力资本积累促进福建省经济发展的若干对策建议。     

Regional Interest Rate Premia in the American Railroad Bond Market from 1876 to 1890

A pattern of higher interest rates in the South and West of the postbellum United States has been well established in the literature. Kenneth Snowden has examined their effects on home and farm mortgages (1987a). Lance Davis has tracked similar patterns in bank-financed projects (1965). This work complements that of Snowden and Davis by establishing that similar interest rate premia existed in the railroad bond market—the most institutionally mature capital market of the era. Hence a broad range of investment opportunities of the era were subject to capital market imperfections. In this paper I examine the offering yields of long-term, railroad bonds issued from 1876 to 1890. I use a risk-neutral model of a bond's value that incorporates both the likelihood and severity of default to solve for the interest rate premia paid by the South and West—0.97 and 1.02%, respectively.     

Public capital and small firm performance

Previous research on the role of public capital (infrastructure) in private production has emphasized potential complementarities between public and private capital at an aggregate level. Presumably such effects, if they exist, arise from benefits enjoyed by individual units of production. Because of the potential for them to be location-specific or capital constrained, it is conceivable that small businesses may benefit disproportionately from public capital. Tests using financial data for 871 small firms from 1992–96 indicate a positive and statistically significant elasticity between private labor productivity and the level of public capital in the area where the firms are located. Such a positive elasticity provides further evidence that public and private capital are complementary inputs into production and has important policy implications.This research has been supported through a grant from the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, the support for which the authors gratefully acknowledge.     

Does Fair Value Accounting Contribute to Systemic Risk in the Banking Industry?

I investigate whether fair value accounting can contribute to the banking industry's systemic risk. I focus on the adoption of Statement of Financial Accounting Standard No. 115 (SFAS No. 115), which required available‐for‐sale (AFS) securities to be recognized at fair value with unrealized gains and losses included in equity through accumulated other comprehensive income. SFAS No. 115 increased banks' regulatory risk because, at the time, calculation of regulatory capital closely conformed with GAAP equity. I find that systemic risk increased following the adoption of SFAS No. 115. Furthermore, following a subsequent regulatory amendment—which excluded unrealized gains and losses on AFS securities from regulatory capital but did not change their GAAP treatment—systemic risk decreased. Taken together, the evidence suggests that fair value accounting has the potential to increase systemic risk through the explicit inclusion of volatile fair value estimates in regulatory bank capital adequacy assessments. I do not, however, find evidence of fair value accounting impacting systemic risk in its information role; that is, by providing information to a bank's external stakeholders about its financial position and performance. I also show that higher fair value volatility of investment securities, lower bank capital, and larger AFS security holdings increase banks' marginal contribution to systemic risk. My findings should interest regulators and policymakers, as recent regulatory changes in light of Basel III recommendations require unrealized gains and losses on AFS securities to be included in regulatory capital for advanced approaches banks.