New evidence on the historical growth of government in Europe: The role of labor costs

We document a robust positive correlation between the size of government and the labor share of income in data from European countries covering the period 1869–1975. Following Facchini et al. (2017), we interpret this correlation as evidence that labor costs drive public spending. The long-term increase in the labor share observed over this period explains half of the overall growth of central government. The relationship holds when the labor share is instrumented with movements in technological change at the frontier. When decomposing public spending, transfers, not intensive in labor, are the only component not associated with the labor share.     

Enhanced Special Drawing Rights: How China Could Contribute to a Reformed International Monetary Architecture

Since the end of the Bretton Woods era, the world has operated on a de facto system of free‐floating exchange rates, with the US dollar as the dominant international currency. The system, characterized by large pro‐cyclical capital flows and chronic imbalances, is inherently unstable, and has contributed to repeated crises, recessions and geopolitical tensions. One potentially “least‐difficult” line of reform would be to allow the evolution of a multi‐currency system, underpinned by an expanded role for Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). Attempts to promote wider use of the SDR have foundered on the liquidity premium. However, for Chinese corporations and institutions, at present restricted in their capital account activities, the SDR liquidity premium would appear less daunting. The Chinese authorities could provide policy encouragement for the use of SDRs by their institutions. This initiative, supported by China's Special Administrative Region Hong Kong, would kick‐start an international SDR ecosystem, and encourage even broader use of SDRs, to the benefit of international monetary stability.     

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.     

Incorporation and Company Formation in Australasia, 1790–1860

Nearly 260 companies were founded in and for the Australasian colonies between 1790 and 1860. A quantitative survey suggests that the patterns of incorporation mainly reflected ‘functionalist’ economic factors rather than ‘autonomous’ legal conditions, though the changing nature of company law did influence the various forms that incorporation took. In some sectors, outside factors and even historical accidents also pushed patterns of incorporation along distinct lines. The result was a tradition of adapting legal powers of incorporation to local needs which persisted beyond the introduction of modern company acts to the region in the 1860s and therefore shaped the subsequent evolution of the company in Australia and New Zealand.     

Voting with your feet: Political competition and internal migration in the United States

Do people “vote with their feet” in response to a lack of political competition? Since political competition is associated with higher growth and welfare, with the free movement of labour, we argue that it should also encourage inward migration. We test this hypothesis by using data from the US and find a strong positive relation between political competition and net migration. This result is robust to alternative specifications, alternative samples and addressing endogeneity using the Voting Rights Act to instrument for political competition. The effect is economically large, specifically, we find that an increase in political competition in the order of magnitude observed in US Southern states during the post-war period leads to an increase in net migration by between 27 and 44 individuals per 1000 population.     

Staying dry on Spanish wine: The rejection of the 1905 Spanish-Italian trade agreement

After a long debate on wine import tariffs, the Italian Parliament rejected the Spanish-Italian trade agreement on 17 December 1905. This decision left Spain and Italy without a bilateral trade treaty for an entire decade. In the literature, broader political issues and local interests are alternatively indicated as the main drivers of the rejection. Based on a new database which collects economic and political variables (including MPs personal features) and using a probit model, this paper provides a quantitative analysis of the vote. Results show that constituency interests had a role in determining the result of the vote on the trade treaty. Moreover, constituency interests were also important for the “vote switchers”, i.e. those MPs that supported the overall government policy stance in the first round, but opposed the Spanish-Italian trade agreement in the second.     

India's Economic Reforms: Achievements and Next Steps

This paper reviews the impact of India's reforms since 1991 on the performance of the Indian economy. It shows that the reforms definitely achieved a significant acceleration in growth and they also succeeded in reducing poverty. However, they have been less successful in generating good quality jobs. There was progress in providing better access to education, health services ,and clean drinking water and sanitation, but less than was hoped. The area where performance has been most disappointing is environmental sustainability. The paper concludes by identifying some of the critical policy challenges in the years ahead.     

Creative destruction and firm-specific performance heterogeneity

Traditional U.S. industries with higher firm-specific stock return and fundamentals performance heterogeneity use information technology (IT) more intensively and post faster productivity growth in the late 20th century. We argue that this mechanically reflects a wave of Schumpeter's creative destruction disrupting a wide swath of industries, with successful IT adopters unpredictably undermining established firms. This validates endogenous growth theory models of creative destruction and suggests intensified creative destruction as explaining findings associating greater firm-specific performance variation with higher per capita GDPs, economy growth rates, accounting standards, financial system development, and property right protection.     

The Effect of Regulatory Harmonization on Cross‐Border Labor Migration: Evidence from the Accounting Profession

The paper examines whether international regulatory harmonization increases cross‐border labor migration. To study this question, we analyze European Union initiatives that harmonized accounting and auditing standards. Regulatory harmonization should reduce economic mobility barriers, essentially making it easier for accounting professionals to move across countries. Our research design compares the cross‐border migration of accounting professionals relative to tightly matched other professionals before and after regulatory harmonization. We find that international labor migration in the accounting profession increases significantly relative to other professions. We provide evidence that this effect is due to harmonization, rather than increases in the demand for accounting services during the implementation of the rule changes. The findings illustrate that diversity in rules constitutes an economic barrier to cross‐border labor mobility and, more specifically, that accounting harmonization can have a meaningful effect on cross‐border migration.