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作者:University College Dublin
摘要:England's post-Reformation demographic regime has been characterized as low pressure. Yet the evidence hitherto for the presence of a preventive check, defined as the short-run response of marriage and births to variations in living standards, is rather weak. New evidence in this article strengthens the case for the preventive check in both medieval and early modern England. We invoke manorial data to argue the case for a preventive check on marriages in the Middle Ages. Our analysis of the po...
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作者:Trinity College Dublin
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作者:University of Oxford; University of Oxford; Bocconi University; Bocconi University; University of Oxford
摘要:This article introduces the Americas in the Great Divergence debate by measuring real wages in various North and South American cities between colonization and independence, and comparing them to Europe and Asia. We find that for much of the period, North America was the most prosperous region of the world, while Latin America was much poorer. We then discuss a series of hypotheses that can explain these results, including migration, the demography of the American Indian populations, and the v...
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作者:European University Institute
摘要:The extension of social insurance during the twentieth century did not translate into homogeneous pension provision. Using a new database, this article analyzes the evolution of pensions in the long run for a sample of welfare states. The convergence in old age benefits as a share of earnings is only found for all earnings levels between 1970 and 1990. The results also underline the role as determinants of pension policy of both domestic and external factors. In line with previous literature, ...
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作者:Colorado College; University System of Georgia; University of Georgia
摘要:We examine the economic consequences of an 1886 reform in Massachusetts that mandated the weekly payment of wages. We derive conditions on key elasticities of labor supply that determine the qualitative effects of the reform on workers' effective wages and utility. We match census and administrative data on workers in a Lowell textile mill for a period encompassing the switch from monthly to weekly payment. Empirical estimates of a labor supply equation imply that the reform increased workers'...
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作者:University of Bath; Umea University
摘要:Mutual and stock insurers have coexisted and competed against each other in insurance markets for centuries. In this article, we examine the risk management strategies and underwriting profitability of the different organizational forms in Sweden's property fire insurance market between 1903 and 1939. We demonstrate that stock insurers acted as intermediaries between policyholders and reinsurers to operate effectively in the potentially high-risk segments of the fire insurance market. In contr...
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作者:University of California System; University of California Berkeley
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作者:University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
摘要:Motion pictures constituted a revolutionary new technology that transformed entertainment-a rival, labor-intensive service-into a non-rival commodity. Combining growth accounting with a new output concept shows productivity growth in entertainment surpassed that in any manufacturing industry between 1900 and 1938. Productivity growth in personal services was not stagnant by definition, as current understanding has it, but instead was unparalleled in some cases. Motion pictures' contribution to...
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作者:University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
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作者:Tulane University