Convergence and divergence of numeracy: the development of age heaping in Latin America from the seventeenth to the twentieth century1

This study makes the first systematic attempt to trace the long‐term development of Latin American numeracy, a phenomenon of great interest to economic historians in that it serves as an accurate gauge of human capital development. In order to approximate basic numeracy we use age‐heaping techniques. We find that Latin America was on a path of convergence with western Europe during the early eighteenth century. During the early nineteenth century, not only did numeracy development stagnate in some Latin American countries but differences among some of them actually increased. While numeracy rates in Argentina, Uruguay, and to a lesser extent Brazil, along with Europe, underwent a significant increase in the late nineteenth century, they declined in Mexico, Ecuador, and Colombia. By performing a regression analysis, we find that, even when we control for investment in education, mass immigration contributed to human capital formation.     

拉美的新型社会救助与对中国的启示

1990年代中后期,拉美各国纷纷改革了原有的社会救助制度并相继设置了许多新型的社会救助项目,新建立的社会救助以＂发展＂为价值理念,把救助资格与教育培训、医疗服务和个人就业等人力资本发展政策结合在一起,这类新型社会救助改变了过去社会救助制度在社会保障体系中残补、边缘的地位,显示了拉美社会保障制度关注重心与发展方向的转变。从拉美的新型社会救助中,中国可以获得有益的启示并找到进一步完善社会救助制度的相关思路。     

Second World War spending and local economic activity in US counties, 1939–58

Studies of the development of local economies often point to large‐scale Second World War military spending as a source of economic growth, even though spending declined sharply after demobilization. We examine the relationship between war spending per capita and the changes in economic activity in US counties between 1939 before the war and a period several years after the war. In the longer term counties receiving more war spending per capita during the war experienced greater population growth, but growth in per capita measures of economic activity showed little relationship with per capita war spending.     

部分拉美国家人均GDP5000美元时经济社会发展的特征及启示

继上海、北京、天津、浙江等省市后,今后一个阶段我国将有更多的省市跨越人均GDP 5000美元关口。发展经济学认为,一国人均GDP超过5000美元则经济呈加速成长。但部分拉美国家在人均GDP突破5000美元后,经济发展出现大幅振荡,长期原地踏步。笔者总结了部分拉美国家在人均GDP 5000美元左右的经济发展特征,分析了经济社会问题及产生原因,总结提出了我国人均GDP 5000美元后经济社会发展的几点启示。     

Latin American multinationals: A historical and theoretical approach*

Among the so‐called multinationals from the South, Latin American multinationals are outstanding for being pioneers. Their history goes even back to the end of the 19th century. In this article, we sketch a brief history of Latin American multinationals, but we concentrate on their development and growing importance since the 1980s within the context of economic reforms and globalization. We then apply a theoretical and typological perspective in order to characterize these multinational companies and to identify the elements that will condition their future behavior and development     

Energy and machines. Energy capital ratios in Europe and Latin America. 1875–1970

The relationship between energy and capital is one of the most important aspects of modern economic growth. Machines need energy to produce all the goods we enjoy; energy would be far less useful for humankind in absence of machines. However, the great majority of the economic models do not take into account the elasticities of substitution (or complementaries) between these two main variables. Actually, energy is absent in many growth models and discussions on diverging economic development paths. We approach this relevant issue from a new perspective: energy and capital relations during 100 years. We use the latest estimations of capital stock (machinery and equipment) and energy consumption for Latin America and compare them with those of Western Europe. The energy–capital ratio (how much energy is used per unit of capital) could be a predictor of economic growth, thus providing stylised facts about the timing and causes of the different modernisation patterns of these regions and showing us some answers on the long-run relationship between energy consumption and capital accumulation.     

Reforming Budgetary Institutions in Latin America: The Case for a National Fiscal Council

Latin America's economies have made tremendous improvements in recent years. Following the lost decade of the 1980s, economic growth has resumed. But the fruits of this progress remain to be consolidated. The political consensus supporting reform is fragile, and the economies of the region are still susceptible to destabilizing shocks, as recent events have underscored. Even well-devised economic policy strategies can be thrown off course by disturbances. This article proposes an institutional reform—a National Fiscal Council—designed to allow Latin American countries to break out of this vicious circle.     

Homo Economicus Goes to War: Methodological Individualism,Rational Choice and the Political Economy of War

Neoclassical economic theories of violent conflict have proliferated in recent years and, with their application to contemporary wars, have influenced donors and policy makers. This paper reviews the intellectual foundations and empirical substance of such theories and offers a critique drawing on a political economy perspective. There are strong grounds for arguing that orthodox economic theories of war are reductionist, speculative, and misleading. Theories that are driven by methodological individualism are compelled somehow to model “the social” as it affects contemporary war––for example, by appeal to indices of ethno-linguistic fragmentation––but do so in ways that fail to capture reality and its variations.     

Modernization and dependency revisited: U.S. direct investment,development, and polity in Latin America, 1950–1998*

Since World War II, the modernization model has been the mainstream paradigm for economic development. Modernization assumes that foreign capital is a necessary catalyst for transforming societies from traditional to modem. Challenges to the modernization paradigm culminated in dependency theory. Dependency theorists point to detrimental effects of foreign capital and domination (e.g., income inequality, authoritarianism, and inappropriate consumption). Despite the charge by many scholars that this debate has subsided, basic but important questions remain to be answered. This paper assesses the role of U.S. direct investment (USDI) on the major economies of Latin America over time (1950–1998). Using Vector Autoregression, we look at the long‐term political relationships between USDI, economic development, and the degree of authoritarianism in the host country's government. We treat these variables as endogenous as both dependency and modernization hypothesize relationships among them. We find that there are only weak long‐term relationships between polity, development, and USDI. These results fully support neither the modernization nor the dependency model.     

The rise and decline of European parliaments, 1188–17891

This article quantifies the activities of medieval and early modern parliaments. It traces the long‐term evolution of this European institution, and offers a first pass at analysing its impact on long‐term economic development. Starting in Spain in the twelfth century, parliaments gradually spread over the Latin west between 1200 and 1500. In the early modern period, parliaments declined in influence in southern and central Europe and further gained in importance in the Netherlands and Britain, resulting in an institutional ‘Little Divergence’ between 1500 and 1800. We discuss the background of this phenomenon in detail. Moreover, by analysing the effects of parliamentary activity on city growth we find that these differences in institutional development help to explain the economic divergence between north‐western and southern and central Europe.     

A critique of planning concepts and methodology in Nigeria

Conclusion This evaluation of the concepts and methodology of planning and plan implementation in Nigeria has been motivated by an abiding commitment to effective planned development. The analysis maintains that in order to achieve this urgent goal, the current bourgeois intellectual tradition of planning in Nigeria which is so deeply steeped in imported Keynesian economics must be transcended. This requires the substitution of a social for current technical approach to planning and the shift of emphasis from elitism, financial planning, and dominant private enterprise which define the essential character of contemporary neocolonial capitalist planning to mass participation in comprehensive socialist planning with material balances. This demand is predicated on the empirical experience of 14 years of the anarchy of planned capitalist development whose unmitigated disaster demonstrates that neocolonial capitalism and its handmaiden of neocolonial capitalist planning are doomed.     

Fixed‐price contracts,learning, and outsourcing: explaining the continuous growth of output and labour productivity in the German aircraft industry during the Second World War1

In this article it is claimed that, at least in the aircraft industry, the development of German armament production and productivity was much more continuous than Wagenführ's armament index and both the Blitzkrieg thesis and the inefficiency thesis suggest. In order to prove this new thesis of continuity, we show on the basis of firm‐level data, firstly, that investment in production capacities had already started before the war and was especially high in the early phase of the war, and secondly, that the regulatory setting of aircraft production management was rather constant and was not dramatically changed after 1941. In addition, we demonstrate that the driving forces of productivity growth were primarily learning‐by‐doing and outsourcing, the latter being generally neglected by economic historians.     

论日本的区域经济政策及其特色

战后，日本为适应经济社会发展的要求，实施了一系列区域经济政策，主要包括地区振兴与开发政策、区域产业布局政策、缩小地区差距政策及促进落后地区发展政策。日本在实施区域经济政策中，中央和地方政府高度重视，进行统一规划协调指导，给予财政金融支持，加强基础设施推动和法律法规保障，形成了具有鲜明特色的日本区域经济政策．     

The New Deal at war: alphabet agencies’ expenditure patterns, 1940-1945

While a multitude of New Deal “relief, recovery, and reform” agencies were created in response to the 1930s economic shock, many of these same agencies were subsumed by the Federal Works Agency and played key national defense roles during the 1940s. We examine the wartime expenditure patterns of these agencies, as well as spending on war supply contracts and war-related industrial facilities, to determine whether Depression-era economic goals were addressed during the Second World War. We find that some specific aspects of the New Deal economic agenda were carried out during the war. Furthermore, wartime spending by the alphabet agencies was significantly correlated with the expenditure patterns of those agencies during the 1930s, suggesting that the transition from economic to military objectives may not have been as pointed as the Roosevelt Administration often asserted.     

Trade,debt, and the Cuban economy

Like many other Latin American countries, Cuba pursued a strategy of “debt-led growth” in the mid-1970s and sustained large balance of payments deficits with the West. Though external balance was restored by 1979, Cuba faced a severe liquidity crisis in 1982 when short-term loans were suddenly withdrawn. This paper is a study of Cuba's seemingly exceptional ability to decrease its foreign debt after 1980, meet interest payments on time, and maintain an overall program of growth with equity. A combination of implicit Soviet trade subsidies, and Cuba's socialist polity and political-economic control, have apparently mitigated the constraints of the “world capitalist system,” and fostered an alternative program to the current austerity measures of most of Latin America.     

经济增长、模型再造与中国经济增长方式的转变

经济增长理论是社会经济发展的一种理论反映,源于斯密和李嘉图为代表的古典经济学派,是二战后在发达国家广泛流行的经济理论,大体经历了三个发展阶段.现代经济增长理论及模型的建立强调科学技术进步、人力资本积累对经济增长的促进作用.但是,发达国家经济学家自身存在的认识论缺陷使其不可能科学完整的建立经济增长理论及模型,因此必须遵循马克思的方法论从理论为实际的反映入手建立科学模型,并以此指导中国社会经济技术实践,特别是经济增长方式的转变实践.     

The Link between Institutional and Economic Integration: Insights for Latin America from the European Experience

The European experience illustrates that institutional integration interacts with economic integration at the regional level. In this paper we ask how economic and institutional integration are linked and whether there is a causal link between the two. We present an original indicator of institutional integration and study how it developed vis-à-vis diverse measures of economic integration. In particular, we ask what insights can be drawn from the European process of regional integration, which started in the 1950s, for regional integration in Latin America today. We find that Latin America is currently less economically integrated not only than the European Union today, but for certain economic variables even than the European Union in the 1960s. A VAR analysis illustrates that the link between institutional and economic integration has worked both ways throughout the European experience. There is also evidence that stronger institutional integration has indeed led to deeper economic integration.     

1927-1949年国民政府经济建设外债研究

本文分阶段研究国民政府1927-1949年经济建设外债的债务规模、债权国以及经济建设外债用途的变化和特点.经济建设外债规模并没有因抗战的爆发而骤减.经济建设外债债权国趋向集中,从战前老牌资本主义国家转向战时反法西斯主要同盟国再到战后以美国为主.因中国在世界反法西斯战争中的特殊地位,战时经济建设外债借款和还款方式相比战前...     

经济全球化、反经济全球化与中国经济发展

经济全球化与反经济全球化是两种性质不同的全球化运动。我们在论证经济全球化对中国经济社会发展的影响和作用后,试图从具有中国特色的国情出发,努力探讨出一些能说明反全球化在中国没有市场的原因。研究结论表明,中国需要经济全球化和反经济全球化两种声音,以便于对经济全球化有一个更清醒地认识,为政府制定完善的决策提供更广泛的意见。恐惧或抗拒经济全球化是没有出路的,正确的选择是主动参与经济全球化进程,积极融入经济全球化潮流,在加快发展中改善或转变自身的边缘地位,努力扩大中国在对外政策领域的制度话语权和政治影响力。     

From growth studies to microhistory: Finnish economic and social history in the 1990s and early 2000s

Abstract

Economic and social history was already being practised in Finland before the Second World War, although it became established as an independent academic discipline only after the war. The terms social history or economic history were not used then; what we now recognise for instance as social history was then called “cultural history” or “history of the culture”. This approach was often characterised the collective approach to distinguish it from the individualistic approach of more historicist study. Nearly all economics research was historical before the 1950s, and practically all professors of economics were actually historians by training and had defended their dissertations in history, usually after having studied some economic problem of the past. But our discipline has also other roots. In Finnish universities the discipline called social policy, usually included in faculties of social science, has always had strong ties with social history.