COMMENTS ON FACTOR PRICES AND INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN LESS INDUSTRIALISED ECONOMIES, 1870–1939: REFOCUSING ON THE FRONTIER

A great deal of the current research into nineteenth- and twentieth-century globalisation has been focused through a neoclassical trade theory lens. Applying the Stopler-Samuelson paradigm from Heckscher-Ohlin trade theory, the result is an approach that sees price convergence as pivotal in defining, identifying, and measuring globalisation. This focus, however, obscures the implications of frontier incorporation and other insights achieved by viewing nineteenth-century globalisation as a mechanism whereby peripheral economies were incorporated into the core of organised economic activity. A frontier-centred perspective also reintroduces the role of economic institutions as a crucial element of economic growth and development.     

Luther and the Girls: Religious Denomination and the Female Education Gap in Nineteenth‐century Prussia*

Martin Luther urged each town to have a girls' school so that girls would learn to read the Gospel, thereby evoking a surge of building girls' schools in Protestant areas. Using county‐ and town‐level data from the first Prussian census of 1816, we show that a larger share of Protestants decreased the gender gap in basic education. This result holds when using only the exogenous variation in Protestantism due to a county's or town's distance to Wittenberg, the birthplace of the Reformation. Similar results are found for the gender gap in literacy among the adult population in 1871.     

COLONIALISM AND LONG‐RUN GROWTH IN AUSTRALIA: AN EXAMINATION OF INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE IN VICTORIA'S WATER SECTOR DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Institutional change in water rights in the nineteenth century Australian colony of Victoria raised institutional efficiency, which contributed to long‐run economic growth. High‐quality human capital and the extension of voting rights (franchise) were crucial for efficient institutional change in the water sector. Quality human capital (literacy) appeared to increase the rural population's awareness of the economic impact of the existing structure of water rights that may have constrained growth in the agricultural sector and reduced investment incentives. Extension of the franchise allowed the rural population to exert political pressure for enactment of change in water rights, which resulted in efficiency‐enhancing policies and efficient institutions. The findings show these two factors were more important than Victoria's British colonial heritage in determining whether growth‐enhancing institutional change took place.     

100 YEARS OF TARIFF PROTECTION IN AUSTRALIA

This paper presents time series of tariff rates in Australia from the time of Federation. As a preliminary to the construction of economy-wide series, it constructs series for three broadly representative goods throughout the 100 years: passenger motor vehicles, blankets, and beer. It then constructs two economy-wide series, one for all imports and another for dutiable imports only. It discusses the main events relating to turning points in the series and concludes with some applications.     

A Note on the Labor Market Effects of Remittances in Latin American and Caribbean Countries: Do Thresholds Exist?

The labor market effects of remittances have long been examined in the empirical literature. To date, the results have been mixed: some authors observe a negative association between remittances and unemployment while others report that remittances increase unemployment. This study empirically examines the impact of remittances on unemployment using macroeconomic data for a sample of 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries. Specifically, the study tests whether there is a nonlinear relationship between the variables. Results suggest that when the remittance‐to‐GDP ratio is low, remittances have a positive and significant impact on unemployment. However, as they increase, remittances are negatively associated with unemployment. This suggests the possibility that estimations based on the assumption of a linear relationship between remittances and labor may mask the true relationship between the variables.     

Do island states have better institutions?

Since the end of World War II, the number of countries in the world has increased dramatically. Many of these newly independent countries are small both in terms of population and geography, and several are islands. The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of island status and country size on institutional quality, and to determine if these institutional effects can explain the relatively strong economic performance of islands and small countries. I distinguish between political institutions (Democracy) and economic institutions (Rule of Law). One of the main findings of this paper is that the relationship between island status and institutional quality is significantly positive, and that these results are robust to the inclusion of a number of control variables. Further, I find that country size is negatively related to institutional quality, which is in keeping with previous results. These results provide further support for the hypothesis that institutions account for these countries’ relatively better economic performance.     

Globalization, industrialization and urbanization in Pre-World War II Southeast Asia

This article uses new data to analyze the impact on Southeast Asian urbanization of globalization and industrialization in the world economy's core countries between the 1870s and World War II. Dramatic falls in transport costs and free trade, enforced, if necessary, by colonial rule, combined to open vast frontier areas throughout Southeast Asia to global commerce and create a handful of large urban centres. These cities, through linking Southeast Asian primary commodity exporters to world markets, grew predominantly as part of the global economy. Our econometric analysis shows that measures of globalization — in particular industrial production in the world core and international transport costs — are much better predictors of the size of Southeast Asia's main cities than domestic factors such as total population, GDP per capita, land area or government expenditure.     

Banking integration in ASEAN-6: An empirical investigation

Banking integration is widely considered as the last stepping stone of economic integration, especially at the regional level. This paper aims to introduce extended measures of banking openness and the overall balanced degree of integration through capital flows. Using the quarterly data from the ASEAN-6 economies (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) from 1996Q4 to 2016Q4, the obtained empirical results reveal that: (i) the degree of banking openness, which measures the total inflows and outflows divided by the total banking assets of the given country, remains low and even slightly decreases, despite the increasing cross-border banking and greater economic links among ASEAN-6; (ii) the overall degree of balance, which calculates the balance and the diversification of outward and inward integration, fluctuates over time but reaches the well-balanced level. Furthermore, the research highlights main drivers of the banking integration in this region, such as regulatory quality, bank size and the global credit risk. These findings have important policy implications for banking stability and integration in ASEAN-6.     

Does fiscal policy influence monetary policy? The case of Spain, 1874-1935

The Spanish peseta never formally belonged to the gold club, neither the classical nor the exchange-rate gold standards. It has been traditionally argued that the reason was the predominance of deficits in the Spanish budget from 1874 to 1935. The financing needs of the Treasury led to money creation and, consequently, to sacrificing the gold commitment and a fixed exchange rate. Applying a stationary VAR (Vector AutoRegressive) model, this paper estimates the dynamic link between budget and money and tests whether Spanish fiscal policy actually influenced monetary policy. The results confirm the dominance of fiscal policy for the period and, therefore, provide empirical support to the idea that the problems of the Treasury were behind Spain’s renouncement of gold.