“Rulers ruled by women”: an economic analysis of the rise and fall of women’s rights in ancient Sparta

Until modern times, most women possessed relatively few formal rights. The women of ancient Sparta were a striking exception. Although they could not vote, Spartan women reportedly owned 40 percent of Sparta’s agricultural land, and enjoyed other rights that were equally extraordinary. We offer a simple economic explanation for the Spartan anomaly. The defining moment for Sparta was its conquest of a neighboring land and people, which fundamentally changed the marginal products of Spartan men’s and Spartan women’s labor. To exploit the potential gains from a reallocation of labor—specifically, to provide the appropriate incentives and the proper human capital formation—men granted women property (and other) rights. Consistent with our explanation for the rise of women’s rights, when Sparta lost the conquered land several centuries later, the rights for women disappeared. Two conclusions emerge that may help explain why women’s rights have been so rare for most of history. First, in contrast to the historical norm, the optimal (from the men’s perspective) division of labor among Spartans involved women in work that was not easily monitored by men. Second, the rights held by Spartan women may have been part of an unstable equilibrium, which contained the seeds of its own destruction. For helpful comments, we thank Yoram Barzel, Paul Cartledge, Beth Davenport, Dino Falaschetti, Nancy Folbre, Barbara Hanssen, Ron Johnson, Lea Kosnik, Francine Lafontaine, Dean Lueck, Sarah Pomeroy, Mark Ramseyer, Randy Rucker, Wendy Stock, Chris Stoddard, Werner Troesken, Doug Young, and seminar participants at Colby College, George Mason University, Montana State University, the Property and Environment Research Center, the University of Virginia, Wabash College, the 2006 meetings of the Economic History Association, and the 2007 meetings of the American Economic Association.     

The Location of US States' Overseas Offices

Forty US states operated an overseas office in 2002. Treating overseas offices as sales offices, the model assumes offices facilitate exports by reducing the transaction cost of selling abroad. From theory, states operate an office if aggregate savings outweigh operating costs. Exploiting the differences in where states locate offices in the data, and controlling for aggregate characteristics, the paper estimates the impact of exports on the probability of an office existing. In addition, the average state savings from an office is 0.04–0.10% of exports, with a cut‐off threshold of US$850 million.     

Local Confidence——Global Opportunities

Confidence in your own profes- sional judgement; that＇s one goal all internationally-minded business executives need to embrace.Far too often, management teams spend a great deal of time and energy looking for “outside solutions”, or transplanting foreign business models into their strategic plans （which may or not be suitable for the context）. Instead, sometimes the ‘best practice＇ might be the one closest at hand; one＇s own orofessional iudgement.     

Products and Productivity*

When firms make decisions about which product to manufacture at a more disaggregated level than observed in the data, measured firm productivity reflects both characteristics of the firm and attributes of the products that are non‐randomly chosen by the firm. This paper develops a model of industry equilibrium in which firms endogenously sort across products and characterizes the resulting bias in measured firm and aggregate productivity. Calibrating the model's parameters, we show that endogenous product selection can have quantitatively important effects on measured firm and aggregate productivity and their response to changes in parameter values.     

Uncovering uncovered interest parity during the classical gold standard era, 1888–1905

This paper examines the uncovered interest parity hypothesis using the dollar-sterling exchange rate during the gold standard era. This period is interesting because the exchange rate was seasonal, because transactions costs were high, and because occasions when uncovered interest rate speculation did not occur can be identified. The paper shows UIP speculation frequently did not occur, that speculation was most active in response to expected exchange rate changes not interest differentials when it did occur, and that profitability varied systematically with interest rate differentials. The estimated UIP equations are substantially improved by distinguishing occasions when sterling was borrowed not lent.     

Knowledge acquisition strategies of small and medium‐sized enterprises during institutional transition: Evidence from Hungary and Ukraine

Drawing on data from Hungary and Ukraine, this study explores how small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in transition economies acquire the managerial, marketing, and technological knowledge they need to compete in increasingly competitive local and global markets. Although Hungary and Ukraine are at different stages of transition and levels of economic and institutional development, the patterns we observed were remarkably similar, suggesting that shared institutional legacies shape management practice in important ways. Managerial knowledge was perceived as the most difficult to acquire, with technological knowledge being the easiest. Both managerial and marketing knowledge were perceived as critically important for success, although the priority may differ depending on stage of SME development. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

SIR WALDRON SMITHERS AND THE LONG WALK TO FINCHLEY

The television drama ‘Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley’ has Sir Waldron Smithers strongly objecting to Thatcher's selection as a Conservative candidate prior to the 1950 General Election. It is more likely that Smithers would have found her a kindred ideological spirit: both shared an anti‐socialist commitment and admiration for Hayek's ‘The Road to Serfdom’.     

Raising salary or redistributing it: A panel analysis of Major League Baseball

Using data in Major League Baseball (MLB), this article conducts Panel Granger Causality tests for teams' salary structures and corresponding performance. The results show that a reliable way to enhance performance is to compress salaries rather than to enlarge the payroll.     

The Lead–Lag Relationship Between Stock Indices and Stock Index Futures Contracts: Further Australian Evidence

This article examines the lead-lag relationship in returns on stock index futures and the underlying stock index for the Australian market between 1992 and 1997. On average across the sample period, futures returns lead index returns by twenty to twenty-five minutes and there is some evidence of feedback from the equities market to the futures market. Analysis conducted on a year-by-year basis suggests that the extent to which the futures market leads the equities market has decreased over time and the relationship between the two markets has generally strengthened. This is consistent with an increase in the level of integration between the markets. The results suggest that prior research that compares lead-lag relationships across international markets and time periods in drawing inferences on the effects of market structure needs to be interpreted with caution.