Quantifying the relative importance of export industries in a small open economy during the great depression of the 1930s: an input–output approach

This paper provides a quantification of the relative importance of export industries in a small open economy using new data provided by input–output tables describing the Finnish economy in 1928. The Finnish analysis of the Great Depression of the 1930s has been particularly focused on the importance of foreign trade. Despite the lack of quantified evidence, it is commonly accepted that the export industries had a major role in the economic development. The basic input–output framework is extended into a production–consumption model to produce a more elaborate model that provides a quantification of changes in final demand of some key industries in the economy. Results suggest that even though the role of export industries was dominant, domestic market industries and private consumption also had a significant role in the depression.

The competition and coexistence of mutual and commercial banks in New England, 1870–1914

Scholars have studied the US banking systems of the late nineteenth century, but the presence and influence of mutual savings banks has largely gone unexamined. A new annual database of New England banks shows that mutual savings banks had a significant presence in the postbellum banking system. Mutual savings banks accounted for about 75 % of the region’s total bank deposits and largely avoided financial panics. The banks seemed to have complemented rather than competed with national banks. Mutual savings bank growth was correlated with agriculture and urbanization, whereas national bank growth was correlated with manufacturing. Mutual savings banks also channeled significant funds to national banks through the interbank network.     

Educational and income inequality in Europe,ca. 1870–2000

In this paper, we revisit the relationship between educational and income inequalities in a historical perspective, using a newly developed annual dataset of average years of education in Europe. Theoretically one would expect a reduction in educational inequality should, given the positive correlation between education level and income, initially increase and then, at a later stage, reduce income inequality. Testing for such a Kuznets-type relationship between educational and income inequalities yields an unexpected result: we find the expected inverse U-curve before the 1950s, but the relationship changes into a normal U-curve afterward. We explain this observation by a change in the trend of skill premium during the second half of the twentieth century due to an increased relative demand for skills, which contradicts the usual assumption of decreasing returns to education. Due to lack of appropriate wage data, we cannot directly capture this effect. Yet, once we use an instrumental variable estimation method to filter out the effect of the omitted skill premium, the expected inverse U-curve also appears for the latter decades of the twentieth century.     

One size that didn’t fit all? Electoral franchise,fiscal capacity and the rise of mass schooling across Italy’s provinces, 1870–1911

Italy’s regions experienced different rates of human capital accumulation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although southern regions were very disadvantaged when the unification of the country took place in 1861, they caught up at a very slow pace—and a remarkable regional divide in education persisted until the interwar period. While previous hypotheses have focused on the role played by fiscal capacity, this paper sheds new light on the effect that enfranchisement had on the growth of schooling. The presence of large regional disparities in local electoral franchise is confirmed by the data; however, the relationship between voting rights, the intensity of local direct taxation and municipal fiscal capacity is weak at best. Furthermore, if the impact of these factors is analysed separately through a number of econometric models, fiscal capacity stands out as the most significant determinant of education across Italy’s provinces. Against recent hypotheses, these results show that the different distribution of political voice within Italy’s municipalities did not determine the persistence of regional inequalities in schooling in the long run: it was Italy’s national education system, together with remarkable and pre-existent regional disparities, that slowed down the development of human capital in rural and southern regions, with immense costs in terms of future prospects for economic growth and human development.     

Convergence (and divergence) in the biological standard of living in the USA, 1820–1900

Standard economic indicators suggest that the USA experienced long-run economic growth throughout the nineteenth century. However, biological indicators, including human stature, offer a different picture, rising early in the century, falling (on average) mid-century, and rising again at the end of the century. This pattern varied across geographical regions. Using a unique data set, consisting of mean adult stature by state, we test for convergence in stature among states in the nineteenth century. We find that during the period of declining mean stature (1820–1870), heights actually diverged. Later in the century (1870–1890) we find a type of “negative” convergence indicating that stature among states tended to converge to a new, lower steady state. Only towards the end of the century (1880–1900) do we find classic convergence behavior. We argue that the diversity of economic experiences across regions, including urbanization, industrialization, and transportation improvements, explain this pattern of divergence and then convergence.

The moderating role of institutional networking in the customer orientation–trust/commitment–performance causal chain in China

This study uncovers the ignored role of institutional environment for marketing strategy and customer relationship management. Hypothesis tests in a sample of Chinese firms find support that channel networking strengthens the customer orientation–customer trust/commitment–firm performance (CTP) causal chain. In addition, the results show that government networking moderates this chain in a non-linear fashion. The CTP linkages are most salient when the firm develops a moderate level, rather than a high or low level of networking ties with government agencies.

The effect of investment in children’s education on fertility in 1816 Prussia

The interaction between investment in children’s education and parental fertility is crucial in recent theories of the transition from Malthusian stagnation to modern economic growth. This paper contributes to the literature on the child quantity–quality trade-off with new county-level evidence for Prussia in 1816, several decades before the demographic transition. We find a significant negative causal effect of education on fertility, which is robust to accounting for spatial autocorrelation. The causal effect of education is identified through exogenous variation in enrollment rates due to differences in landownership inequality. A comparison with estimates for 1849 suggests that the preference for quality relative to quantity might have increased during the first half of the nineteenth century.     

The stability of money demand in the long-run: Italy 1861–2011

Money demand stability is a crucial issue for monetary policy efficacy, and it is particularly endangered when substantial changes occur in the monetary system. By implementing the ARDL technique, this study intends to estimate the impact of money demand determinants in Italy over a long period (1861–2011) and to investigate the stability of the estimated relations. We show that instability cannot be excluded when a standard money demand function is estimated, irrespectively of the use of M1 or M2. Then, we argue that the reason for possible instability resides in the omission of relevant variables, as we show that a fully stable demand for narrow money (M1) can be obtained from an augmented money demand function involving real exchange rate and its volatility as additional explanatory variables. These results also allow us to argue that narrower monetary aggregates should be employed in order to obtain a stable estimated relation.     

A contribution to the analysis of historical economic fluctuations (1870–2010): filtering,spurious cycles,and unobserved component modeling

Time series filtering methods such as the Hodrick–Prescott (HP) filter, with a consensual choice of the smoothing parameter, eliminate the possibility of identifying long swing cycles (e.g., Kondratieff type) or, alternatively, may distort periodicities that are in fact present in the data, giving rise, for example, to spurious Kuznets-type cycles. In this paper, we propose filtering Maddison’s time series for the period 1870–2010 for a selection of developed countries using a less restrictive filtering technique that does not impose but instead estimates the cutoff frequency. In particular, we use unobserved component models that optimally estimate the smoothing parameter. Using this methodology, we identify cycles of periods, primarily in the range of 4–7 years (Juglar-type cycles), and a number of patterns of cyclical convergence. We analyze the historical processes underlying this last empirical finding: Peacetime periods, monetary arrangements, trade and investment flows, and industrial boosts are confluent forces driving the economic dynamism. After 1950, we observe a common business cycle factor that groups all economies, which is consistent with the consolidation of the so-called second globalization.     

Colonial adventures in tropical agriculture: new estimates of returns to investment in the Netherlands Indies, 1919–1938

How profitable were foreign investments in plantation agriculture in the Netherlands Indies during the late colonial era? We use a new dataset of monthly quoted stock prices and dividends of international companies at the Brussels stock exchange to estimate the returns to investment in tropical agriculture (1919–1938). We adopt the Dimson–March–Staunton method to compute real geometric annual average rates of return and assess our estimates in an international comparative perspective. We find that returns to colonial FDI in the Netherlands Indies during 1919–1928 were impressive (14.3 %), being almost 3 percentage points higher than the world average. In the following decade 1929–1938 fortunes reversed, with a rate of return of ?2.8 % compared to a world average of 2.2 %. Over the entire period the returns to colonial FDI (5.4 % in 1919–1938) were about a factor 2.5 higher than returns to investment in the Dutch domestic economy (2.1 % in 1920–1939). We argue that these returns should be interpreted in a colonial context of systematic labour repression, but that they may also partly reflect a higher risk-premium of investments in colonial commodities.     

Human capital formation in the long run: evidence from average years of schooling in England, 1300–1900

In this paper, I quantify average years of education present in the English population between 1307 and 1900. The estimates are based on extensive source material on literacy rates, number of primary and secondary schools and enrolment figures. An additional distinction is made on the basis of gender and of level of schooling. The trends in the data are indicative of significant increases in the level of educational attainment during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This remarkable growth in schooling was followed by a strong decline in average years of education after ca. 1720. Whilst one in seven boys entered secondary schooling at the end of seventeenth century, this had decreased to one in thirty by the 1880s. Overall, the trends in the data suggest that education was beneficial to pre-industrial economic growth, but this was not sustained following the initial stage of the industrialisation process.     

Human capital,knowledge and economic development: evidence from the British Industrial Revolution, 1750–1930

Endogenous growth models raise fundamental questions about the nature of human creativity, and the sorts of resources, skills, and knowledge inputs that shift the frontier of technology and production possibilities. Many argue that the experience of early British industrialization supports the thesis that economic advances depend on specialized scientific training, the acquisition of costly human capital, and the role of elites. This paper examines the contributions of different types of knowledge to industrialization, by assessing the backgrounds, education and inventive activity of major contributors to technological advances in Britain during the crucial period between 1750 and 1930. The results indicate that scientists, engineers or technicians were not well-represented among the cadre of important British inventors, and their contributions remained unspecialized until very late in the nineteenth century. The informal institution of apprenticeship and learning on the job provided effective means to enable productivity and innovation. For developing countries today, the implications are that costly investments in specialized human capital resources might be less important than incentives for creativity, flexibility, and the ability to make incremental adjustments that can transform existing technologies into inventions and innovations that are appropriate for prevailing domestic conditions.     

When good conflict gets better and bad conflict becomes worse: the role of social capital in the conflict–innovation relationship

This research investigates the moderating effect of social capital on the conflict–innovation relationship and poses the argument that social interaction amplifies the beneficial effect of task conflict and the harmful effect of relationship conflict, whereas trust suppresses these effects. Analyses of a sample of 232 Canadian-based firms demonstrate that at higher levels of social interaction, the positive relationship between task conflict and innovation is stronger, and so is the negative relationship between relationship conflict and innovation. Furthermore, at higher levels of trust, the positive relationship between task conflict and innovation weakens. This study adds to the emerging contingency perspective pertaining to the study of conflict and provides a more nuanced view of the beneficial role of intra-organizational social capital for innovation.     

Institutions and opportunism in buyer–supplier exchanges: the moderated mediating effects of contractual and relational governance

The marketing channel literature has paid limited attention to institutional environments that constrain buyer–supplier exchanges, though such institutions are fundamental determinants of transaction costs, and thus of the occurrence of opportunism in the buyer–supplier dyads. Drawing on transaction cost economics and institutional theory, this study uncovers the critical influence of formal and informal institutions (i.e., legal effectiveness and networking expenditure) on the use of governance in deterring opportunism, as well as the moderating role of government support on the efficacy of governance mechanism. The findings from a buyer–supplier dyadic survey and 2 secondary datasets reveal that legal effectiveness mitigates opportunism through increased use of both contractual and relational governance; in contrast, networking expenditure reduces opportunism through relational governance, yet increases opportunism via lowering contractual governance. In addition, contractual governance is more efficient in constraining opportunism when government support is high, whereas relational governance deters opportunism more when government support is low. These findings offer important implications for academic research and managerial practice.     

Historic Nodes in the Chinization of Marxist Economic Thought——An Analysis of the First Half of the 20th Century

20世纪上半期,中国革命的伟大实践,马克思主义研究的日益深入,为马克思主义经济思想中国化提供了丰富的营养.中国的先进分子运用马克思主义,论证了中国经济的性质,剖析了中国半封建半殖民地经济形态的基本规律,构建了新民主主义经济思想的框架,形成了马克思主义经济思想中国化发展的三大“节点”,对马克思主义经济思想的发展,以及20世纪下半期中国经济的改造产生了深远影响.     

Transatlantic wage gaps and the migration decision: Europe–Canada in the 1920s

As has been seen in other contexts, workers in similar occupations earned much higher wages in Canada than Europe during the 1920s. This observation and related aspects of immigration are addressed with a life-cycle model of the migration decision. The characteristics of immigrants from five European countries: Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden, are explored in a way that sheds light not just on those population flows but on the process of immigration generally. We draw on passenger manifests from immigrant ships for information on the individual migrants. Simulations, based partly on the these manifests, reveal that the costs of migration, borrowing constraints, concern for status, and country-specific taste preferences account for key immigrant characteristics, and help explain the large wage differentials that persisted despite Canada’s relatively open immigration policy.     

Reassessing the bank–industry relationship in Italy, 1913–1936: a counterfactual analysis

Until the banking reform in 1936, banks and industrial companies in Italy were strongly intertwined (both in terms of ownership and interlocking directorates). Using Imita.db—a large dataset containing data on over 300,000 directors of Italian joint-stock companies—this paper analyzes what would have happened to the Italian corporate network in the years 1913, 1921, 1927 and 1936 if the German-type universal banks and their directors would have not been there. Our test shows that new centers of the system would have emerged (financial, electricity, and phone companies), confirming the interconnected nature of the Italian capitalism. We also analyze two industries (textiles and iron and steel) characterized by different labor-to-capital intensities to check for sectoral differences. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that local banks were important in funding both industries.     

Health, market integration, and the urban height penalty in the US, 1847–1894

This study analyzes trends and determinants of the height of men born in the 100 largest American urban areas during the second half of the nineteenth century and compares them with heights of the rural population. In this sample of 21,704 US Army recruits, there is an urban height penalty of up to 0.58 in. (1.5 cm). An increment in urban population of 100,000 is associated with a height decrease of about 0.31 in. (0.8 cm). Urban heights declined after 1855 followed by stagnation until the early 1890s, whereas rural heights stagnated from the late 1840s until 1885. Urban recruits from the northeast were 0.46 in. (1.2 cm) shorter than urban Midwestern recruits. There is some evidence of a height convergence between large and small cities toward the end of the century and of an inverted U-shaped relationship between height and city size. Urban heights were positively correlated with the extent of the railroad network, the real wage rate in the manufacturing sector, and high socioeconomic status, while they were negatively correlated with the death rate, and the percentage of the city’s population employed in manufacturing.     

Explaining UK wage inequality in the past globalisation period, 1880–1913

The current era of globalisation has witnessed a rising premium paid to skilled workers resulting in increasing wage inequality in most OECD countries. This pattern differs from that observed during the past globalisation period (1880–1913), in which wage inequality decreased in most of the Old World countries. The present debate over wage inequality focuses on the implications of globalisation, technological change, the role of labour market institutions and education. Similar factors were at work in the past globalisation process. In order to disentangle the main factors that contribute to wage inequality, we calibrate a general equilibrium model for the UK economy in the past globalisation period. The results show that a trade shock and a skilled-biased technology shock increased wage inequality. However, education and emigration had a more significant impact and led to a decrease in wage inequality.     

The antecedents and consequences of manufacturer–distributor cooperation: an empirical test in the U.S. and Japan

We develop a conceptual model for studying the antecedents and consequences of achieved and optimal levels of manufacturer–distributor (M–D) cooperation. We hypothesized that levels of market turbulence, competitive intensity, and the manufacturing firm’s strategic type (i.e., prospector, analyzer, or defender) affected the optimal level of M–D cooperation. We also hypothesized that the level of under- and overachieving the optimal levels of cooperation negatively affects firm performance. The conceptual model is tested using empirical data collected from 295 manufacturing firms in the U.S. and validated using data collected from 104 distributors in the U.S. We also collect data from 255 Japanese manufacturing firms and 98 Japanese distributors. The empirical results support the model’s hypotheses with only one unexpected finding: in the Japanese sample, overachieving the optimal level of cooperation has a greater negative effect on performance than underachieving. We conclude by discussing theoretical and managerial implications.