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.     

Anthropometric evidence on economic growth, biological well-being and regional convergence in the Habsburg Monarchy, c. 1850–1910

We examine secular trends in biological well-being in the Habsburg Monarchy circa 1850–1910 on the basis of evidence on the physical stature of recruits disaggregated at the regional level. We find that heights stagnated generally among the 1850s birth cohorts. The secular increase in heights that lasted until the twenty-first century began among the 1860s birth cohorts. Men born in the more developed Czech and Austria areas were as tall as many populations in Western Europe, whereas the men born in the Polish/Ukrainian provinces were about as tall as the Mediterranean populations. There was a 3.3 cm gap between the heights of men living in the core versus periphery of the Monarchy, which reflects a substantial gap in biological living standards. We also consider spatial convergence of biological living standards. Heights did not converge across the different provinces of the Monarchy at all in the 1850s, diverged in the 1860s, and began to converge subsequently. Convergence was more rapid among those born in the 1880s than among the cohorts of the 1870s, even though the average rate of increase in heights was greater in the 1870s than in the 1880s. The convergence was limited to the peripheral regions (Polish/Ukrainian, Romanian, and Slovakian). No convergence was evident among the Austrian, Czech, Hungarian or Croatian areas. By the end of the period under consideration the gap between Austrian and Polish/Ukrainian heights was reduced to 1.5 cm. The evidence on heights is quite similar to the evidence on GDP growth insofar as it points to some positive elements but is by no means uniformly favorable. The Monarchy was not stagnating, or about to collapse on the eve of World War I on account of economic considerations as the Soviet Union did, but it was also not among the high-achievers of the era as the Scandinavian countries or Germany.

On the road to industrialization: nutritional status in Saxony, 1690–1850

Saxony was one of the pioneer regions in the German modern economic growth. We analyze the Saxon nutritional status to infer the effects of early industrialization on the population standard of living. We find that the nutritional status in the eighteenth century was relatively high and heights fluctuated mainly because of wars. From the 1770s the average nutritional status declined steadily, with the exception of the Napoleonic period, until the mid of the nineteenth century. The decline, particularly accentuated after 1815, is related to the high share of urbanization, the increase in the relative price of food, and the strong dependence on food imports.

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.

中国近代民族企业文化产生的背景分析

中国近代民族企业从19世纪70年代诞生时起,就受到外国资本和官僚资本的双重排挤和压迫,在夹缝中艰难发展。特别是20世纪20年代以后,由于市场竞争日益激烈,劳资矛盾更为突出,民族企业家们为求生存和发展,开始引进、宣传和实践外国科学管理思想,并且尝试把传统文化的精华与科学管理思想进行对接,从而促进了中国近代民族企业文化的产生。     

Private banks in early Michigan, 1837–1884

Using a comprehensive new data set on private (noncorporate) banks, we examine the business and business environment of private banking and exchange brokering in the state of Michigan from 1837 to the 1880s. The Michigan experience provides an example of the effect of widespread exchange brokers in an economy. We use econometric models to explain the determinants of the numbers of private banks in the state. We find that private banks were substitutes for locally issued state bank currency and were complements with adjacent states’ bank currency. With the demise of heterogeneous currencies, private banks transitioned their core business from exchange brokering to general banking. In both the antebellum and postbellum eras, private banks tended to exist when and where larger incorporated banks did not. Following the collapse of free banking in Michigan in the antebellum years, this was virtually the entire state. During the 1860s and 1870s, corporate banks used private banks as a root source to build on.     

The diminution of the physical stature of the English male population in the eighteenth century

We re-estimate the height of Englishmen using the sample originally collected by Roderick Floud. We merge the samples from the army and the Royal Marines by weighting the observations in order to reflect the proportions of servicemen in the two branches of the military. In addition to truncated regression, we use cubic spline functions in order to estimate the trend in the physical stature of Englishmen. The results indicate that a very rapid decline in height of c. 1.6 cm per decade accompanied the onset of the industrial and demographic revolutions, implying that the nutritional status of the population deteriorated considerably as it throughout the European Continent.     

Demand-side inertia factors and their benefits for innovativeness

Inertia reflects a firm’s inability to change or innovate and may be fostered by many sources. Though researchers have focused on internal inertia factors, we examine inertia factors within a firm’s customer base: switching costs, customer preference stability, and network externalities. New products at 279 firms are examined to assess the role of these demand-side inertia factors in determining innovativeness and, ultimately, financial performance. The inertia factors are hypothesized to have differential innovativeness effects for early and late entrants. Overall, demand-side factors affect innovativeness positively, contrasting with firm-based factors (e.g., routines or assets), which typically inhibit innovativeness. Consumer preference stability is the only factor negatively related to innovativeness, though only for early entrants. Network externalities and switching costs increase innovativeness (particularly for early entrants). Demand-side inertia factors are critical determinants of innovativeness and may now be placed within the previously internally focused set of factors engendering early mover advantage.     

Wage and employment determination in volatile times: Sweden 1913–1939

The paper studies wage and employment determination in the Swedish business sector from the mid-1910s to the late 1930s. This period includes the boom and bust cycle of the early 1920s as well as the Great Depression of the early 1930s. The events of the early 1920s are particularly intriguing, involving inflation running at an annual rate of 30 percent followed by a period of sharp deflation where nominal wages and prices fell by 30 percent and unemployment increased from 5 to 30 percent. We examine whether relatively standard wage and employment equations can account for the volatile economic development during the interwar years. By and large, the answer is a qualified yes. Industry wages were responsive to industry-specific firm performance, suggesting a significant role for “insider forces” in wage determination. Unemployment had a strong downward impact on wages. There is evidence that reductions in working time added to wage pressure; yet, estimates of labor demand equations suggest that cuts in working time may have slightly increased employment as firms substituted workers for hours per worker.     

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.     

压路机碾压荷载在施工期对路基拼接变形影响的数值分析

以合肥铁路枢纽改造工程为研究对象,路基拼接中应用的不同压路机碾压荷载为研究目标,通过FLAC软件就不同路基高度下应用不同压路机荷载对既有线列车安全运营和路基稳定性的影响进行了数值模拟计算。结果表明,同一路基高度,不同压路机荷载作用下,坡脚A点和新、老路基搭接处B点的垂直变形增量随压路机荷载的增大而增大;相同压路机荷载下随着路基高度的增加,老路基面、坡脚点以及新老路基搭接处的垂直方向变形与路基高度不成线性关系,采用6 m高度的路基更为合理,有利于线路列车运行的安全性和路基整体的稳定性。     

American education in the age of mass migrations 1870–1930

This paper derives original series of average years of schooling in the United States 1870–1930, which take into account the impact of mass migrations on the US educational level. We reconstruct the foreign-born US population by age and by country of origin, while combining data on the flow of migrants by country and the age pyramids of migrants by country. Then, we use original data on educational attainment in the nineteenth century presented in Morrisson and Murtin (J Human Cap, in press) in order to estimate the educational level of US immigrants by age and by country. As a result, our series are consistent with the first national estimates of average schooling in 1940. We show that mass migrations have had a significant but modest impact on the US average educational attainment. However, the educational gap between US natives and immigrants was large and increased with the second immigration wave, a phenomenon that most likely fostered the implementation of restrictive immigration rules in the 1920s.     

“我们”的精神向度与一代人的命运之书——评周庆荣的散文诗集《我们》

周庆荣以他的散文诗《我们》找到了一位有良知的诗人与这个时代的契合关系。他的散文诗,是作用于人的精神使人的理想境界得到提升的＂大诗歌＂,是对＂我们＂这一代人所置身的生存境界与生存价值进行审视与思考之后赋写的命运之书,真实深刻地表现了＂我们＂这一代人（即＂二十世纪六十年代生人＂）思想与性格的丰富性与复杂性,体现了散文诗对＂我们＂的内心世界、＂我们＂的心灵沟通、＂我们＂的情感秩序、＂我们＂的精神品格的某种确认。     

Human capital and economic growth: Sweden 1870–2000

This paper presents newly constructed series on human capital in Sweden 1870–2000. The estimates are based on enrolment in different forms of education, stretching as far back as 1812, and the size and age distribution of the population within age range 15–65 years. The secular accumulation of human capital has closely matched the long-term trend in aggregate productivity and both grew at a rate of 2.4% annually. Our estimates differ significantly from the data attributed to Sweden in the international short-cut estimates of human capital for the period since 1960. The basic question addressed is about causality: whether human capital causes economic growth or if causality goes in the other direction. We address this problem with modified Granger-causality tests. According to our results, changes in the stock of human capital have in a systematic way preceded changes in aggregate productivity up to the structural crisis in the 1970s. This allows us to conclude that human capital has been a causal factor in Swedish economic growth since the industrialisation. However, after 1975, the growth of human capital has not been able to match the demands of the third industrial revolution. The time series of human capital stocks as well as average years of schooling for Sweden, 1870–2000, are available at: .     

论明朝的书法艺术

明朝书法在不同时期呈现出不同的趋势和审美取向,它前期的平庸,中期的进步,后期的勃发,它由衰而 盛,在明末风云际会的时代背景里取得令人“尴尬”的辉煌。     

The response of vital rates to harvest fluctuations in pre-industrial Sweden

This study examines whether there was a Malthusian equilibrium mechanism in Sweden in the pre-industrial period. A unique data set on harvests, deaths, marriages and births going back to 1630 is used to calculate cumulative elasticities of vital rates with respect to harvest. While earlier studies have mostly focused on the impact of real wage, this study uses the calorie content of per capita harvests as an indicator of living standards. It finds that there indeed was a response of vital rates to harvest fluctuations, but there were important structural breaks. While positive checks attenuated after 1720, preventive checks were strengthened. After 1870 preventive checks disappeared, and possibly also positive checks. The results are robust to different models and trend specifications, with one crucial difference: while the distributed lag model shows that positive checks were significant up to 1920, the SVAR model shows that positive checks disappeared after 1870.     

数字技术背景下对当前定格动画创作的思考

定格动画作为动画艺术的一个分支曾经风靡国内外的动画市场,然而在数字技术的冲击之下,传统定格动画却面临着尴尬的创作境地。从定格动画的起源、新中国定格动画创作的兴起为起点,分析优秀定格动画作品的同时,总结定格动画创作的成功与没落的原因。以当今数字技术的特点为创作背景,探讨在定格动画创作的前期、中期及后期编辑中融入数字技术,将数字与传统手工制作相结合,让这一传统动画表现形式在当下重新焕发光芒。     

Human capital formation from occupations: the ‘deskilling hypothesis’ revisited

We use HISCLASS to code the occupational titles of over 30,000 English male workers according to the skill content of their work. We then track the evolution of the sampled working skills across three centuries of English history, from 1550 to 1850. We observe a modest rise in the share of ‘high-quality workmen’ deemed necessary by Mokyr and others to facilitate the Industrial Revolution, including machine erectors and operators. But we also find remarkable growth in the share of unskilled workers, rising from 20 % in the late sixteenth century to nearly 40 % in the early nineteenth century, caused mainly by falling shares of semi-skilled, blue-collar workers. Close inspection of the occupational structures within the main sectors of production suggests that deskilling occurred in agriculture and industry alike, prompted by land concentration in agriculture and workshop-to-factory changes in industry.