Differences in body mass indices for males imprisoned in the 19th century American South

A limited but increasing amount of research is being done on historical body mass index values. This paper uses 19th century Tennessee State Penitentiary records to demonstrate that Southern BMI values were in the normal range. There is little evidence of a Southern mulatto BMI advantage. Farmer BMIs were consistently heavier than non-farmers. Southern black BMIs remained constant throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries; however, white BMIs declined during the early 20th century.     

Social externalities of women empowerment: Evidence from suffrage movements of late nineteenth and early twentieth century United States

Previous literature suggests that empowering women is associated with children's improved outcomes. However, little is known about its effects on children's later-life crime and incarceration. We argue that women empowerment through suffrage law changes during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the US generated incentives for women to invest in their children's human capital. The accumulated human capital then has the potential to reduce future incarceration of children. We use full-count censuses 1920–1930, implement a difference-in-difference framework, and empirically show that childhood exposure to suffrage laws is associated with considerable reductions in incarceration. The effects appear to be primarily driven by decreases in male and Black incarceration. The balancing tests rule out the concern that the effects are driven by demographic compositional changes or endogenous changes in other state-level characteristics. Furthermore, an event-study analysis rejects the concern that the effects are driven by preexisting trends in incarceration among exposed cohorts. The findings of this research note offer informative implications for overlooked externalities of women empowerment in a historical setting.     

Revisiting structural change and market integration in late 19th century American capital markets

This article draws on a variety of time series tools to more deeply explore issues surrounding the emergence of a national capital market in the late 19th century. Our focus is on the timing of the emergence of a national capital market. Rather than relying on the absolute narrowing of regional interest rate differentials, which is a common approach in this literature, we use Gregory and Hansen cointegration tests, which allow us not only to test for cointegrating relations in the interest rate series but to identify unknown structural change dates as a byproduct. We also use dynamic conditional correlations to determine the dates at which regional interest rate correlations began increasing. Our results suggest that structural changes are centred around the year 1900, which is consistent with Sylla's argument that the lowering of capital requirements by the Gold Standard Act of 1900 increased bank entry and competition and facilitated regional capital market convergence.     

Time-bound concepts in the catholic social teaching of the 19th and early 20th centuries

This essay has both a general and a specific purpose. Its general purpose is to pose the question: Can neoclassical economics be social economics? Its answer to this general question is: Yes, but only if it abandons its methodological soul; that is, by abandoning methodological individualism, positivism, and ahistoricism, and expressly and systematically adopting a methodological perspective which is holistic, normative, and historical. Its specific purpose is to identify and examine the major elements in the economics of one leading figure in the historical development of neoclassical economics who self-consciously attempted to combine, to paraphrase Schumpeter, a neoclassical head with a social economics heart: Alfred Marshall.     

Free trade and European economic development in the 19th century

This article is an attempt to analyse empirically the effects of the free trade period which began around 1860 on three then “less developed” countries: France, Germany and Italy, and on the “developed” country: Great Britain.     

Efficient government size: France in the 20th century

The benefits and costs of government suggest an efficient government size. We investigate efficient government size by analyzing the relation between public spending and real GDP for France in the period 1896–2008. The results show a co-integration nonlinear relationship. Our time-series data on France represents one of the longest periods studied in literature. Our empirical findings suggest that efficient government size measured by public spending was reached when public spending was around 30% of GDP. Conclusions point to particularities of countries that suggest efficient government size is specific to different countries.     

Intergenerational Wealth Mobility in France, 19th and 20th Century

This paper examines intergenerational wealth mobility between fathers and children in France between 1848 and 1960. Considering wealth mobility in the long run requires taking into account not only positional mobility (that is, how families move within a given distribution of wealth), but also structural mobility induced by changes in the distribution of wealth. Such changes are related to two structural phenomena: in the nineteenth century, the rising number of individuals leaving no estate at death and, after World War I, the decline in the number of the very rich who could live off their wealth. The paper studies the movements between these groups and estimates the intergenerational elasticity of wealth, taking into account the persistence at the bottom and at the top.     

Territorial state capacity and elite violence from the 6th to the 19th century

We present new evidence for elite violence using regicide, the killing of kings, and investigate the role of the state in European violence between the 6th and 19th centuries. First, regicide is critically assessed as a proxy for interpersonal elite violence. Second, we propose ‘territorial state capacity’ as a measure of states being able to keep or even expand their territories. We find a negative correlation between the changes in territorial state capacity and the changes in elite violence. This could be interpreted in two ways, either that growing territorial state capacity enabled human society to reduce violence, or that a higher regicide rate resulted in lower territorial state capacity. Another possibility would be a bidirectional mechanism that resulted in a co-evolution of the two variables.     

Growth in global materials use, GDP and population during the 20th century

The growing industrial metabolism is a major driver of global environmental change. We present an assessment of the global use of materials since the beginning of the 20th century based on the conceptual and methodological principles of material flow accounting (MFA). On the grounds of published statistical data, data compilations and estimation procedures for material flows not covered by international statistical sources, we compiled a quantitative estimate of annual global extraction of biomass, fossil energy carriers, metal ores, industrial minerals and construction minerals for the period 1900 to 2005. This period covers important phases of global industrialisation and economic growth. The paper analyses the observed changes in the overall size and composition of global material flows in relation to the global economy, population growth and primary energy consumption. We show that during the last century, global materials use increased 8-fold. Humanity currently uses almost 60 billion tons (Gt) of materials per year. In particular, the period after WWII was characterized by rapid physical growth, driven by both population and economic growth. Within this period there was a shift from the dominance of renewable biomass towards mineral materials. Materials use increased at a slower pace than the global economy, but faster than world population. As a consequence, material intensity (i.e. the amount of materials required per unit of GDP) declined, while materials use per capita doubled from 4.6 to 10.3 t/cap/yr. The main material groups show different trajectories. While biomass use hardly keeps up with population growth, the mineral fractions grow at a rapid pace. We show that increases in material productivity are mostly due to the slow growth of biomass use, while they are much less pronounced for the mineral fractions. So far there is no evidence that growth of global materials use is slowing down or might eventually decline and our results indicate that an increase in material productivity is a general feature of economic development.     

On the relationship between body mass index and marital dissolution

The economic literature on body mass index (BMI) and marital dissolution uses simple correlations to suggest that it is the latter that alters the former. We argue here that the opposite is also possible because the higher the BMI, the lower the remarriage potential and the greater the demand for health care, which should decrease the probability of marital dissolution. We empirically explore the role of BMI on marital dissolution showing that those who are overweight are more likely to stay married. This is maintained when we examine causality by exploiting the exogeneity of the dates during which data are collected combined with BMI’s seasonality. Although BMI appears to stabilize marriage, this implies a reduction in the bargaining power of individuals with a high BMI in marriage, which, according to our findings, has a greater impact on White women.     

Tensions in co-evolutionary processes: Three Swedish seed organizations in the 20th century

This paper addresses the issue of which societal actors have the capability and willingness to finance and organize search processes, in order to introduce commercial innovations, over a longer time period. The long-term development of agriculture depends upon innovations within a variety of technologies, markets, organizational forms as well in the seeds themselves. This involves points of tensions between continuity and change as well as co-evolutionary processes organized around the innovation processes. This article explores the tensions between continuity and change, by focusing on three dimensions, namely: (1) regional location versus global interactions; (2) static specialization versus experimentation in knowledge and products; and (3) relative success versus failure. The historical development of three Swedish agricultural seed organizations, Hilleshög, Svalöf and Weibulls, during the 20th century, provides an empirical probe within which to address the more fundamental theoretical problems.     

Market access and occupational upgrading: evidence from the 19th century American transportation network

This article investigates the extent to which county-level market access affects workers’ occupational upgrading and industrial sorting by exploiting the substantial spatial variation and rapid expansion of the United States’ transportation network coverage from 1870 to 1880. First, I find that individuals who enjoyed greater market access in 1880 were more likely to work in higher-paying occupations. Importantly, this result holds across all sectors of employment, for younger and older workers, and for migrants and non-migrants, suggesting that any market size effects on occupational upgrading were not specific to any one group. I also provide results showing that workers were more likely to switch industries within agriculture, but are less likely to do so from manufacturing or services. Finally, I find some evidence of changes to sectoral reallocation, principally away from agriculture, being associated with higher market access. My findings suggest that the expansion of the transportation network in played an important role in determining the type of work Americans performed in the nineteenth century.     

Constitutional tariffs, incidental protection, and the Laffer relationship in the early United States

This article explores an early attempt to establish a constitutional constraint on tariffs utilizing the Laffer Curve relationship. In 1842 John Calhoun suggested that the curve’s revenue maximization apex could be used to differentiate between “Revenue” and “Protective” tariffs independently from the non-judiciable question of legislative motive. When admitted that a tax must actually be collected to remain constitutionally valid, the apex functions as a de facto upper tariff rate constraint. Despite subsequently falling in disfavor, Calhoun’s argument illustrates the importance of political economy on the constitutional level by recognizing conditions that induce policymakers to rationally raise tax rates at the expense.

Location and happiness in the United States

The effect of living in a less urban area on the probability of being happy is estimated. It is shown that less urban areas are associated with higher levels of happiness. Further, it is shown that respondents in the north region are less happy. Data from the National Opinion Research Center’s “General Social Survey” are used.     

19世纪初东南海商与海盗、水师的关系

19世纪初,即嘉庆前中期,是东南海盗的又一个黄金时代.这一时期,海盗、海商、水师是活跃在海面上的三个主要社会群体.他们之间的关系错综复杂,互为依存.海商的艰难处境反映了当时海洋社会的衰落.     

Openness and Poverty in the Postwar United States

Recent trade theory suggests that freer trade can be the primary cause of the observed rise of poverty in the United States. The short-run dynamic relationships between openness and poverty are examined using the concept of Granger causality. That the ultimate source of rising poverty since 1973 is trade liberalization of the US economy cannot be rejected. The result is convincing when two subsamples (pre- and post-1973) are reestimated. These findings are at odds with the conventional model in which freer trade raises productivity and hence reduces the poverty rate, but appear consistent with some models in which openness raises poverty.     

Income inequality and crime in the United States

This paper investigates the relationship between income inequality and crime. Results show that there is a strong and robust effect of relative income inequality on burglary. Effect on robbery is also strong and robust in most cases.     

Tax distortions in Sweden and the United States

We calculate the welfare costs of distortionary taxation (including inflation) in models calibrated for the United States and Sweden. The welfare costs are calculated using comparative steady state as well as dynamic analysis, where we take the costs of transition from the distorted to the optimal steady state into account. We also calculate the welfare costs of adding stochastic fluctuations. Our main finding is that the total welfare costs of the distortionary taxes including the distortionary effects of inflation are about five times higher in Sweden than in the United States. Meanwhile, stochastic fluctuations in policy turn out to have a relatively small impact on welfare.