Demographic trends in late-slavery Jamaica, 1817–32

Early nineteenth-century demographic trends on sugar estates in Jamaica, the most important British Caribbean colony, are examined through the 1817–32 public slave registers. We seek evidence regarding the background to the island's 1831–2 popular insurrection, the immediate cause of the London parliament's vote in 1833 to abolish colonial slavery. Some historians argue that the revolt occurred as ‘political’ effect from a sudden upsurge of metropolitan anti-slavery activism in 1830–1. They believe the uprising broke out despite improvement in enslaved people's material welfare, favoured by many slaveholders to secure population increase after the closure of the British transatlantic slave trade in 1808. Alternative ‘economic’ assessments judge that increasing workloads had been aggravating popular unrest before the revolt. Commercial pressures, and the imminent likelihood of emancipation, allegedly outweighed welfare concerns. The excess of slave deaths over births widened between 1817 and 1832. However, the registers show that demographic deficits resulted mainly from the ageing of the last Africa-born cohorts. Jamaica-born enslaved people became self-reproducing. There was no general pre-1831 regime deterioration. Most slaveholders sought to maintain their Jamaican assets for the long term through pro-natalist measures, and did not expect emancipation. The revolt's causes were thus more ‘political’ than ‘economic’.     

The changing distribution of earnings in Ireland, 1937 to 1968

Data from the Irish Census of Industrial Production are used to illuminate changes in the distribution of earnings from 1937 to 1968, an important period in Irish economic history, relevant to debates about globalization and inequality. Between the late 1930s and mid‐1950s there was a greater compression of earnings than in the US's ‘great compression’ of the same period. Sectoral data suggest that this occurred quite generally. The degree of integration with the British labour market is key, and the impact of out‐migration, wage controls during the Second World War, and industrial protection all merit in‐depth investigation.     

Asymmetric Regulation and Airport Dominance in International Aviation: Evidence from the London-New York Market

International airline markets have the rather unusual feature of partial deregulation with asymmetric regulatory constraints: Some carriers face entry restrictions different from others for a given route. Like domestic air travel, international travel also features hubs, where a single carrier may dominate a given airport. This article examines the effects of asymmetric regulation and airport dominance on airlines' fares in the London-New York market, a market uniquely suited for identifying the effects of both of these issues. Comparison data from the symmetrically regulated Frankfurt-New York and Paris-New York markets enable a difference-in-differences identification strategy. Regulatory restrictions are found to decrease an affected carrier's fares, whereas airport dominance increases a dominant airline's fares.     

Does poverty constrain migration in South Africa? Evidence,explanations and implications

There are indications that poor people may face obstacles to their rural–urban migration. This article pursues the question of whether this is the case in the South African context. It argues for the importance of longitudinal data, which are not available at present, to answer this question conclusively. Levels of education can be used as a proxy for income levels, and the article examines recently published multivariate data in this regard. However, using education as a proxy for income is problematic, because education has an independent effect on migration rates through its selection of those with the skill levels demanded by the labour market. The article develops an argument about the constraining effects of the costs of migration and the role of social networks in migration and ends by demonstrating how the costs of migration can solve a number of puzzles presented by empirical research on migration.     

The palaeoeconomic history of Aboriginal migration

Aboriginal migration from South East Asia is the beginning of Austrahan economic history. Prehistorians have tended to focus on means to sea travel rather than opportunity and motive to migrate. American and Australian measures of sea depth contours throw new light on possible migration paths and the conditions that might have prompted Aboriginal ancestors to move through island SE Asia to Australia. Interpretation of the data depends on a reconsideration of palaeodemography and the introduction of some economic and historical analysis. Several scenarios suggest possible conditions influencing trends and fluctuations in Aboriginal migration over the past 60,000 years.     

运输成本、土地价格与生产集聚区迁移

论文将差异化固定成本引入新经济地理学的中心一外围模型,建立了一个两地区、两部门模型,讨论了生产集聚区在不同固定成本地区之间的迁移,以此来解释和分析在城市的发展和建设中普遍存在的制造业生产向郊区迁移的过程。主要结论为：企业不会自发地向郊区迁移,即使因为郊区地价低廉发生了企业迁移,也仅是个别企业的逐利行为,而整个集聚区的迁移是不能发生的。政府干预是必要的,一是压低迁移目的地的土地价格,另外就是适时加强迁移目的地的基础设施建设,两种措施要循序渐进才能有效推动生产集聚区迁移。     

The decline and fall of the European film industry: sunk costs,market size,and market structure, 1890–19271

In the 1900s, the European film industry exported throughout the world, at times supplying half the US market. By 1920, however, European films had virtually disappeared from America, and had become marginal in Europe. Theory on sunk costs and market structure suggests that an escalation of sunk costs during a rapid US growth phase resulted in increased concentration; eight surviving companies dominated international film production and distribution forever after. European film companies, although overall profitable, could not take part, and after the war could not catch up. US, British, and French time series data for 1890–1930 support the theory.     

Health, human capital, and African-American migration before 1910

Using both IPUMS and the Colored Troops Sample of the Civil War Union Army Data, I estimate the effects of literacy and health on the migration propensities of African-Americans from 1870 to 1910. I find that literacy and health shocks were strong predictors of migration and the stock of health was not. There were differential selection propensities based on slave status—former slaves were less likely to migrate given a specific health shock than free blacks. Counterfactuals suggest that as much as 35% of the difference in the mobility patterns of former slaves and free blacks is explained by differences in their human capital, and more than 20% of that difference is due to health alone. Overall, the selection effect of literacy on migration is reduced by one-tenth to one-third once health is controlled for. The low levels of human capital accumulation and rates of mobility for African-Americans after the Civil War are partly explained by the poor health status of slaves and their immediate descendants.     

Cyclical and structural influences on Irish unemployment

In the course of the 1990s the Irish unemployment rate movedfrom near the top to close to the bottom of the EU league table.This paper identifies the cyclical and structural factors thathave contributed to the transformation of the Irish labour market.A steady gain in competitiveness facilitated rapid growth inoutput and employment. The links between Irish and British unemploymentrates have weakened as rapid economic growth has reduced Irishunemployment to historically low levels. The role of structuralchanges, including the relative generosity of the social welfaresystem and the wage bargaining process, are discussed.     

Urbanization and mortality in Britain,c. 1800–50

In the long-running debate over standards of living during the industrial revolution, pessimists have identified deteriorating health conditions in towns as undermining the positive effects of rising real incomes on the ‘biological standard of living’. This article reviews long-run historical relationships between urbanization and epidemiological trends in England, and then addresses the specific question: did mortality rise especially in rapidly growing industrial and manufacturing towns in the period c. 1830–50? Using comparative data for British, European, and American cities and selected rural populations, this study finds good evidence for widespread increases in mortality in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. However, this phenomenon was not confined to ‘new’ or industrial towns. Instead, mortality rose in the 1830s especially among young children (aged one to four years) in a wide range of populations and environments. This pattern of heightened mortality extended between c. 1830 and c. 1870, and coincided with a well-established rise and decline in scarlet fever virulence and mortality. The evidence presented here therefore supports claims that mortality worsened for young children in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, but also indicates that this phenomenon was more geographically ubiquitous, less severe, and less chronologically concentrated than previously argued.     

Land costs,government intervention,and migration of firms: The case of China

By using unique firm relocation data in China, we first document the relocation behavior of Chinese firms and show that less government intervention (relative to market forces) can improve economic efficiency by facilitating industrial relocation which saves on costs. Ever since China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, investments have poured into the coastal region, which in turn, have almost tripled land costs in the major coastal cities. We exploit this land cost shock in the early 2000s to identify its effect on the relocation behavior of firms. Specifically, we instrument land price growth with the access of a city to foreign markets (approximated by distance to Shanghai), and then estimate the differential impact of land costs on firms regarding land reliance. Our major findings are as follows: (1) the migration rate of Chinese firms in China is on average 3.2%, (2) Rising land costs drive firms to migrate, and firms that use more land-intensive technology are more compelled to migrate, and (3) in regions where the local government intervention is stronger (the market is less developed), the relocation decision of Chinese firms is distorted in the sense that firms are less likely to relocate despite surging land prices due to government intervention.     

Promoting or preventing labor migration? Revisiting the role of language

Large migration inflows increase the linguistic and cultural diversity of the place of destination, which facilitates the universal interchange of ideas and contributes to economic growth. However, the impact of language on migration is under-researched in developing countries. In this paper, we address this question in the context of China based on micro-level data and find a robust inverted U-shaped relationship between the probability of migration and the dialect distance between one's place of origin and the destination. Our identification strategy carefully addressed the selection bias and investigated different channels through which language affects the decision to migrate through imposing communication barriers, establishing social identity, and enhancing the exchange of skills. The results suggest that migration costs are mainly due to the difficulties of social integration, and the communication costs are small because of the wide use of standard Putonghua in China. In contrast, the benefits of migration increase when individuals move to a more linguistically distant place.     

Birds of passage: Return migration,self-selection and immigration quotas

A key feature of migration in the late 19th and early 20th century is that many migrants returned to Europe after a few years in the United States. A common view is that most temporary migrants planned, upon entry, to eventually return home, yet there is little direct evidence to support this claim. I collect the first dataset on migrants' intentions to stay or return home from Ellis Island arrival records between 1917 and 1924. I find that fewer migrants planned to return home than actually did; many migrants, especially from Eastern and Southern Europe, left the United States unexpectedly. The high rate of unplanned returns implies that the first few years after arrival were more difficult than expected. However, this high rate of unexpected returns lowered after the 1920s migration quotas, suggesting improved outcomes for those lucky enough to enter.     

Search,migration, and social connections: Solving the migration puzzle to Beijing

We provide a plausible explanation for the phenomenon of migration to big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. This process can be observed particularly among students who migrate to these cities and prefer to look for their first jobs upon completion of their studies, instead of going back to their hometowns. Despite the slightly higher wages offered in big cities, it is unclear why recently graduated students feel attracted to remain in big cities, where the living costs are much higher and the job market is more competitive compared to small cities. We develop a search and matching model in which we consider that the social connections created by the agents during their studies are used as a tool to get jobs. We solve for the optimal investment in social connections, and for the level of social capital that makes agents indifferent between migrating and staying in their current locations. We use a computational model and show that for agents with a sufficiently large social network, the value of social capital is large enough to overcome the value of going back to their hometowns, where they would face lower competition and living expenses, but they would lack the advantages that a social network represents.     

流动成本与城市间劳动力配置效率

参照Tombe and Zhu（2019）并结合城市层面的数据可得性,文章先测度了2000-2015年期间272个城市的劳动力流动成本,然后将其引入Hsieh and Moretti（2019）的城市空间均衡模型,考察了流动成本的变化对城市间劳动力配置效率的影响。研究发现：第一,城市间劳动力配置效率的动态变化与流动成本紧密相关,表现为2000-2015年期间流动成本的整体水平先升后降,而劳动力配置效率则先降后升。第二,流动成本的存在降低了城市间劳动力配置改善的速度,表现为在不考虑和考虑流动成本的情形中,2000-2015年期间城市剩余工资离散程度分别下降28.21%和9.83%。第三,一线城市对经济增长的贡献率被低估,并且在考虑流动成本的情形中,其被低估的问题更加严重。     

Technological diffusion,migration and entrepreneurship in China

In the past decades, China has been experiencing a huge mass of internal migration with rapid economic development. Using the 2005 Census data, our paper empirically explores how migration experiences affect entrepreneurship heterogeneously. The “falling” migration experiences, from a relatively developed place to a developing place, could enhance the human capital accumulation of migrant workers and assist them to become entrepreneurs. Moreover, we find that migrant entrepreneurs are more likely to engage in the industry with a comparative advantage in their original residential places. That is, technology diffuses with migration.     

Trade, Institutions, and Credit

Within economics there has been a mounting interest in institutions. Virtually all the work to date on institutions has examined a single institution. The problem is that in many settings the performance of the institution under examination is affected by other, unexamined institutions. This paper examines the relationship between two types of private-order institutions that facilitated trade in a specific setting—Mexican California during the 1830s and 1840s. The surviving evidence suggests that a multilateral institution enabled merchants to extend credit to their retail customers, and a similar multilateral institution enabled the merchants to extend credit to one another. The relationship between these institutions makes them of particular interest. This relationship arose because local communities imposed costs on merchants that affected their trade with one another. The barriers to entry and exit posed by these costs, in turn, facilitated the operation and persistence of the institution that supported intermerchant trade. They also precluded other organizational forms such as the vertical integration of wholesalers.     

Was 19th century British growth steam-powered?: the climacteric revisited

This paper establishes that there are serious problems with the hypothesis that the Victorian climacteric was driven by the decline phase of steam as a General Purpose Technology. This is primarily because steam’s contribution to industrial output and labour productivity growth was stronger after 1870 than before and that the non-steam-intensive sectors exhibited an inverted U-shape in trend output growth through the 19th century, experiencing a marked slowdown between 1830 and the 1870s. Seeking to base an account of 19th century British growth primarily on the implications of steam is thus misconceived.