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作者：Renmin University of China
摘要：This paper studies the relationship between military conflicts and state-building in pre-imperial China. I develop an incomplete contract model to examine rulers' and local administrators' incentives in conflict. Defensive wars drive decentralization: landowning local administrators have more to gain from a successful defense and are therefore more committed to it. Offensive wars drive centralization: the landowning ruler has personnel control over the non-landowning local administrator and ca...
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作者：New York University; New York University Abu Dhabi; Chulalongkorn University
摘要：How do external threats to state sovereignty benefit local development? In this paper, we look at Thailand's railroad projects in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries as an example of a state's strategic response to colonial encroachment. By transporting government officials and establishing a permanent administrative presence, the railways served to ensure Thailand's sovereignty over peripheral regions and bring them under direct governance. These regions, long considered economi...
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作者：Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); University of Texas System; University of Texas Austin
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作者：Vanderbilt University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：I study native-born white men's internal migration in the United States over all possible 10- and 20-year periods between 1850 and 1940. Inter-county migration rates-after implementing a new method to correct for errors in linkage-were stable over time. Migrant selection on the basis of occupational status was neutral or slightly negative and also largely stable. But the orientation of internal migration changed over time, declining in distance and increasingly driving urbanization. In the 193...
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作者：Trinity College Dublin
摘要：This paper examines the international role of sterling during the Bretton Woods era and argues that it was not a competitor to the U.S. dollar. I construct a novel dataset to measure the reserve role of sterling in Europe and sterling area countries. The postwar reserve role of sterling was limited to the sterling area and was artificial as this area was built as a captive market. I document how British authorities imposed exchange controls, commercial threats, and economic sanctions on sterli...
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作者：Brandeis University
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作者：Universite PSL; Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS)
摘要：I reconstruct the historical performance of individual portfolios owned by Parisian investors during the French Belle-Epoque, which was characterized by a massive concentration of wealth. Using the value of inherited bequests as a proxy for ex ante wealth, I show that wealthier investors not only exhibited greater betas and thus benefited from the bull market, but also captured positive alphas, which translated into greater Sharpe ratios. Their performance was enhanced by diversification tilte...
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作者：Stanford University; Chapman University System; Chapman University
摘要：This paper highlights the importance of endogenous changes in the foundations of legitimacy for political regimes. It focuses on the central role of legitimacy changes in the rise of constitutional monarchy in England. It first defines legitimacy and briefly elaborates a theoretical framework enabling a historical study of this unobservable variable. It proceeds to substantiate that the low-legitimacy, post- Reformation Tudor monarchs promoted Parliament to enhance their legitimacy, thereby ch...
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作者：Columbia University
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作者：Paris School of Economics
摘要：New data covering 23 countries reveal that banking crises of the Great Depression coincided with a sharp international increase in deposits at savings institutions and life insurance. Deposits fled from commercial banks to alternative forms of savings. This fueled a credit crunch since other institutions did not replace bank lending. While asset prices fell, savings held in savings institutions and life insurance companies increased as a share of GDP and in real terms. These findings provide n...
