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作者:New York University; New York University Abu Dhabi
摘要:This paper investigates whether high borrowing costs deterred investment in sanitation infrastructure in late nineteenth-century Britain. Town Councils had to borrow to fund investment, with considerable variation in interest rates across towns and over time. Panel regressions, using annual data from more than 800 town councils, indicate that higher interest rates were associated with lower levels of infrastructure investment between 1887 and 1903. Instrumental variable regressions show that f...
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作者:University of Melbourne
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作者:University of Konstanz; IZA Institute Labor Economics; Humboldt University of Berlin
摘要:This paper documents the persistence of Southern slave owners in political power after the American Civil War. Using data from Texas, we show that former slave owners made up more than half of all state legislators until the late 1890s. Legislators with slave-owning backgrounds were more likely to be Democrats and voted more conservatively even conditional on party membership. A county's propensity to elect former slave owners was positively correlated with cotton production, but negatively wi...
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作者:Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Chicago
摘要:An economic downturn coincided with the start of the epidemic but the recession was short and moderate, compared with that of 1920/21. Cross-sectional high-frequency data indicate that the epidemic affected the labor supply sharply but briefly with no ensuing spill-overs; most of the recession, brief as it was, was due to the end of the war. I analyze weekly city-level mortality data and economic indicators with time series methods and structural estimation of an economic-epidemiological model...
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作者:University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; University of Oxford
摘要:This article provides an overview of wealth inequality in Germany during 1300-1850, introducing a novel database. We document four alternating phases of inequality decline and growth. The Black Death (1347-1352) led to inequality decline, until about 1450. Thereafter, inequality rose steadily. The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) and the 1627-1629 plague triggered a second phase of inequality reduction. This distinguishes Germany from other European areas where inequality grew monotonically. Ineq...
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作者:University of Rome Tor Vergata
摘要:In 1942 more than 110,000 persons of Japanese origin living on the U.S. West Coast were forcibly sent away to ten internment camps for one to three years. This paper studies how internees' careers were affected in the long run. Combining Census data, camp records, and survey data, I develop a predictor of a person's internment status based on Census observables. Using a difference-in-differences framework, I find that internment had long-run positive effects on earnings. The evidence is consis...
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作者:Yale University; University of Murcia; Auburn University System; Auburn University
摘要:We use data from marriage records in Murcia, Spain, in the eighteenth century to study the role of women in social mobility in the pre-modern era. Our measure of social standing is identification as a don or dona, an honorific denoting high, though not necessarily noble, status. We show that this measure, which is acquired over the lifecycle, shows gendered transmission patterns. In particular, same-sex transmission is stronger than opposite-sex, for both sons and daughters. The relative trans...
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作者:University of Valencia; Universite de Montreal
摘要:We study the effects of domestic conflict and external shocks on Spanish trade policy in the interwar period. Our account mobilizes a new granular dataset on exports and imports, and good-country level information on tariffs, trade agreements, and quotas. Into the Depression, the mainstay of policy was the tariff. The establishment of the Second Republic in 1931 was a turning point in policymaking. The new regime initiated bilateral trade negotiations. The Republic's dilemma was to find countr...
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作者:Wageningen University & Research; Utrecht University
摘要:We investigate the demographic effects of forced labor under an extractive colonial regime: the Cultivation System in nineteenth-century Java. Our panel analyses show that labor demands are strongly positively associated with mortality rates, likely resulting from malnourishment and unhygienic conditions on plantations and the spread of infectious diseases. An instrumental variable approach, using international market prices for coffee and sugar for predicting labor demands, addresses potentia...
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作者:University of California System; University of California Berkeley