A Cliometric Counterfactual: What If There Had Been Neither Fogel Nor
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Reception Hosted by the Cliometric Society: Saturday, January 5Th, 5:30-7:30 Pm Coronodo Room and Terrace Westin Gaslamp Quarter
The Newsletter of The Cliometric Society Winter 2013 Vol 27 No. 2 Economic History Association Annual Meeting 2012 By Shawn Michael Adrian, Steve Bannister, Fan Fei, Mary Eschelbach Hansen, Roy Mill, and Marlous van Waijenburg The 72nd annual meeting of the Economic History transport costs in international trade. Association convened from September 21-23, 2012, at the Sheraton Wall Centre Hotel in Vancouver. EHA Adrian Leonard (Cambridge) presented the final President Jeremy Atack, the program committee paper of the session—with perfect English diction. (Robert Margo, Ran Abramitzky, Leah Boustan, His early exploration of “The Pricing Revolution and Eugene White) and the local arrangements in Marine Insurance” uses new data to explain how committee (Angela Redish, David Jacks, Mauricio London companies became the leading insurers of Drelichman, Morten Jerven, and Catherine maritime trade in the 17th century. Discussant Eric Douglas) provided an outstanding weekend of lovely Hilt (Wellesley) encouraged Leonard to focus on accommodations and stimulating sessions. This article asymmetries of information (moral hazard and adverse summarizes the sessions at which original papers were selection) in the complex insurance market. presented. The theme of Session 2 was “Cities in Economic Session 1 covered the historical evolution of trade History.” Jim Sidola (UC-Irvine) presented “Razing and transport costs. Brandon Dupont (Western San Francisco: The 1906 Disaster and the Legacy Washington Univ.), Drew Keeling (Univ. of Zurich), of Urban Land Use” to an almost full room. The and Thomas Weiss (Univ. of Kansas) kicked off disastrous “experiment” allows Sidola to study the conference with a paper on tourism history. This whether land developers are hampered by prior early look at “Passenger Fares for Ocean Travel from development by comparing residential density in non- 1826 to 1916” focused on the relationship between affected areas to density in destroyed areas. -
Publishing and Promotion in Economics: the Curse of the Top Five
Publishing and Promotion in Economics: The Curse of the Top Five James J. Heckman 2017 AEA Annual Meeting Chicago, IL January 7th, 2017 Heckman Curse of the Top Five Top 5 Influential, But Far From Sole Source of Influence or Outlet for Creativity Heckman Curse of the Top Five Table 1: Ranking of 2, 5 and 10 Year Impact Factors as of 2015 Rank 2 Years 5 Years 10 Years 1. JEL JEL JEL 2. QJE QJE QJE 3. JOF JOF JOF 4. JEP JEP JPE 5. ReStud JPE JEP 6. ECMA AEJae ECMA 7. AEJae ECMA AER 8. AER AER ReStud 9. JPE ReStud JOLE 10. JOLE AEJma EJ 11. AEJep AEJep JHR 12. AEJma EJ JOE 13. JME JOLE JME 14. EJ JHR HE 15. HE JME RED 16. JHR HE EER 17. JOE JOE - 18. AEJmi AEJmi - 19. RED RED - 20. EER EER - Note: Definition of abbreviated names: JEL - Journal of Economic Literature, JOF - Journal of Finance, JEP - Journal of Economic Perspectives, AEJae-American Economic Journal Applied Economics, AER - American Economic Review, JOLE-Journal of Labor Economics, AEJep-American Economic Journal Economic Policy, AEJma-American Economic Journal Macroeconomics, JME-Journal of Monetary Economics, EJ-Economic Journal, HE-Health Economics, JHR-Journal of Human Resources, JOE-Journal of Econometrics, AEJmi-American Economic Journal Microeconomics, RED-Review of Economic Dynamics, EER-European Economic Review; Source: Journal Citation Reports (Thomson Reuters, 2016). Heckman Curse of the Top Five Figure 1: Articles Published in Last 10 years by RePEc's T10 Authors (Last 10 Years Ranking) (a) T10 Authors (Unadjusted) (b) T10 Authors (Adjusted) Prop. -
Uncertainty and Hyperinflation: European Inflation Dynamics After World War I
FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF SAN FRANCISCO WORKING PAPER SERIES Uncertainty and Hyperinflation: European Inflation Dynamics after World War I Jose A. Lopez Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Kris James Mitchener Santa Clara University CAGE, CEPR, CES-ifo & NBER June 2018 Working Paper 2018-06 https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/working-papers/2018/06/ Suggested citation: Lopez, Jose A., Kris James Mitchener. 2018. “Uncertainty and Hyperinflation: European Inflation Dynamics after World War I,” Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Working Paper 2018-06. https://doi.org/10.24148/wp2018-06 The views in this paper are solely the responsibility of the authors and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco or the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Uncertainty and Hyperinflation: European Inflation Dynamics after World War I Jose A. Lopez Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Kris James Mitchener Santa Clara University CAGE, CEPR, CES-ifo & NBER* May 9, 2018 ABSTRACT. Fiscal deficits, elevated debt-to-GDP ratios, and high inflation rates suggest hyperinflation could have potentially emerged in many European countries after World War I. We demonstrate that economic policy uncertainty was instrumental in pushing a subset of European countries into hyperinflation shortly after the end of the war. Germany, Austria, Poland, and Hungary (GAPH) suffered from frequent uncertainty shocks – and correspondingly high levels of uncertainty – caused by protracted political negotiations over reparations payments, the apportionment of the Austro-Hungarian debt, and border disputes. In contrast, other European countries exhibited lower levels of measured uncertainty between 1919 and 1925, allowing them more capacity with which to implement credible commitments to their fiscal and monetary policies. -
The Narrow and Broad Arguments for Free Trade Author(S): Paul R
American Economic Association The Narrow and Broad Arguments for Free Trade Author(s): Paul R. Krugman Source: The American Economic Review, Vol. 83, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the Hundred and Fifth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (May, 1993), pp. 362-366 Published by: American Economic Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2117691 Accessed: 02/12/2010 04:57 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aea. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. American Economic Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The American Economic Review. -
DISTRIBUTION, WEALTH and DEMAND REGIMES in HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE USA, UK, France and Germany, 1855-2010
FMM WORKING PAPER No. 14 · January, 2018 · Hans-Böckler-Stiftung DISTRIBUTION, WEALTH AND DEMAND REGIMES IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE USA, UK, France and Germany, 1855-2010 Engelbert Stockhammer*, Joel Rabinovich**, Niall Reddy*** ABSTRACT Most empirical macroeconomic research limited to the period since World War II. This paper analyses the effects of changes in income distribution and in private wealth on consumption and investment covering a period from as early as 1855 until 2010 for the UK, France, Ger- many and USA, based on the dataset of Piketty and Zucman (2014). We contribute to the post-Keynesian debate on the nature of demand regimes, mainstream analyses of wealth effects and the financialisation debate. We find that overall domestic demand has been wage-led in the USA, UK and Germany. Total investment responds positively to higher wage shares, which is driven by residential investment. For corporate investment alone, we find a negative relation. Wealth effects are found to be positive and significant for consumption in the USA and UK, but weaker in France and Germany. Investment is negatively affected by private wealth in the USA and the UK, but positively in France and Germany. * Kingston University London & FMM Fellow. ** Université Paris 13. *** New York University. Distribution, wealth and demand regimes in historical perspective. USA, UK, France and Germany, 1855-2010 Engelbert Stockhammer*, Joel Rabinovich** and Niall Reddy*** * Kingston University London, ** Université Paris 13, *** New York University Version 1.04 Oct 2017 Abstract Most empirical macroeconomic research limited to the period since World War II. This paper analyses the effects of changes in income distribution and in private wealth on consumption and investment covering a period from as early as 1855 until 2010 for the UK, France, Germany and USA, based on the dataset of Piketty and Zucman (2014). -
Robert Fogel Interview
RF Winter 07v43-sig3-INT 2/28/07 11:13 AM Page 44 INTERVIEW Robert Fogel In the early 1960s, few economic historians engaged RF: I understand that your initial academic interests in rigorous quantitative work. Robert Fogel and the were in the physical sciences. How did you become “Cliometric Revolution” he led changed that. Fogel interested in economics, especially economic history? began to use large and often unique datasets to test Fogel: I became interested in the physical sciences while some long-held conclusions — work that produced attending Stuyvesant High School, which was exceptional in some surprising and controversial results. For that area. I learned a lot of physics, a lot of chemistry. I had instance, it was long believed that the railroads had excellent courses in calculus. So that opened the world of fundamentally changed the American economy. science to me. I was most interested in physical chemistry and thought I would major in that in college, but my father said Fogel asked what the economy would have looked that it wasn’t very practical and persuaded me to go into like in their absence and argued that, while important, electrical engineering. I found a lot of those classes boring the effect of rail service had been greatly overstated. because they covered material I already had in high school, so it wasn’t very interesting and my attention started to drift elsewhere. In 1945 and 1946, there was a lot of talk about Fogel then turned to one of the biggest issues in all whether we were re-entering the Great Depression and the of American history — antebellum slavery. -
Gary Becker and the Art of Economics by Aloysius Siow, Professor of Economics, University of Toronto May 24, 2014
Gary Becker and the Art of Economics by Aloysius Siow, Professor of Economics, University of Toronto May 24, 2014. Gary Becker, an American economist, died on May 3, 2014, at the age of 83. His major contribution was the systematic application of economics to the analysis of social issues. He used economics to study discrimination, criminal behavior, human capital, marriage, fertility and other social issues. Becker won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1992. He also won the John Bates Clark medal, awarded to the best American economist under 40, in 1967; and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor award by the US president to a civilian, in 2007. Becker's father, Louis William Becker, migrated from Montreal to the United States at age sixteen and moved several times before settling down in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. Becker's mother was Anna Siskind. He was born in Pottsville in 1930. At age five, Gary and his family moved to Brooklyn. He graduated from James Madison High School and went to Princeton University for college. He did his PhD at the University of Chicago where he met Milton Friedman who would have an enormous influence on his intellectual development. After he obtained his PhD, Becker spent a few years as an assistant professor at the University of Chicago and then moved to Columbia University. In 1970, Becker returned to the University of Chicago where he remained as a professor until his death. While impressive, a list of what he wrote on does not explain why he is so intellectually influential. His mentor, Friedman, always said that "There is no such thing as a free lunch" and applied it widely in market environments. -
Capabilities, Human Flourishing and the Health Gap Amartya Sen
Capabilities, Human Flourishing and the Health Gap Amartya Sen Lecture HDCA Conference Tokyo 2016 Amartya Sen’s insights have been important to my work in at least four ways: providing intellectual justification for my empirical findings that health can be an “outcome” of social and economic processes; providing insight into the debate on relative or absolute inequality; emphasising the central place of freedoms or agency in human well-being; and alerting me to the importance of the question of “inequality of what”. This last is shameful to admit for someone, me, who had been pursuing research on inequalities in health for two decades before I met Sen in person and in his writings. Could I really be obsessed with health inequalities without recognising that there was more than one way to think about inequality? In this Amartya Sen lecture, I will start by sketching briefly how these seminal ideas of Sen influence what I do. More accurately, I should say how Sen’s ideas influence how I think about what I do. For, as just stated, I had been doing it for some time before I encountered Sen’s fundamental contributions – I am a doctor and medical scientist, after all. In particular, my research on health inequalities has focussed on the social gradient in health, its generalisability, how to understand its causes and what to do about it. I have pursued this research since 1976 when I began work on the first Whitehall study(1), and to think about health inequalities more generally (2). Although I had not used the term, “social determinants of health” until later(3), my research on health inequalities fitted that description, along with the research on health of migrants.(4, 5) I will then illustrate the approach in more detail, drawing on my book, The Health Gap. -
On the Mechanics of Economic Development*
Journal of Monetary Economics 22 (1988) 3-42. North-Holland ON THE MECHANICS OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT* Robert E. LUCAS, Jr. University of Chicago, Chicago, 1L 60637, USA Received August 1987, final version received February 1988 This paper considers the prospects for constructing a neoclassical theory of growth and interna tional trade that is consistent with some of the main features of economic development. Three models are considered and compared to evidence: a model emphasizing physical capital accumula tion and technological change, a model emphasizing human capital accumulation through school ing. and a model emphasizing specialized human capital accumulation through learning-by-doing. 1. Introduction By the problem of economic development I mean simply the problem of accounting for the observed pattern, across countries and across time, in levels and rates of growth of per capita income. This may seem too narrow a definition, and perhaps it is, but thinking about income patterns will neces sarily involve us in thinking about many other aspects of societies too. so I would suggest that we withhold judgment on the scope of this definition until we have a clearer idea of where it leads us. The main features of levels and rates of growth of national incomes are well enough known to all of us, but I want to begin with a few numbers, so as to set a quantitative tone and to keep us from getting mired in the wrong kind of details. Unless I say otherwise, all figures are from the World Bank's World Development Report of 1983. The diversity across countries in measured per capita income levels is literally too great to be believed. -
Preferences Over Inflation and Unemployment: Evidence from Surveys of Happiness Author(S): Rafael Di Tella, Robert J
American Economic Association Preferences over Inflation and Unemployment: Evidence from Surveys of Happiness Author(s): Rafael Di Tella, Robert J. MacCulloch and Andrew J. Oswald Source: The American Economic Review, Vol. 91, No. 1 (Mar., 2001), pp. 335-341 Published by: American Economic Association Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2677914 Accessed: 25-11-2019 16:54 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms American Economic Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The American Economic Review This content downloaded from 206.253.207.235 on Mon, 25 Nov 2019 16:54:42 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Preferences over Inflation and Unemployment: Evidence from Surveys of Happiness By RAFAEL Di TELLA, ROBERT J. MACCULLOCH, AND ANDREW J. OSWALD* Modem macroeconomics textbooks rest upon see that standard characterizations of the policy the assumption of a social welfare function de- maker's objective function put more weight on fined on inflation, ir, and unemployment, U.1 the costs of inflation than is suggested by our However, no formal evidence for the existence understanding of the effects of inflation; in do- of such a function has been presented in the ing so, they probably reflect political realities literature.2 Although an optimal policy rule can- and the heavy political costs of high inflation" not be chosen unless the parameters of the pre- (Blanchard and Fischer, 1989 pp. -
Simon Kuznets [Ideological Profiles of the Economics Laureates] Daniel B
Simon Kuznets [Ideological Profiles of the Economics Laureates] Daniel B. Klein, Ryan Daza, and Hannah Mead Econ Journal Watch 10(3), September 2013: 411-413 Abstract Simon Kuznets is among the 71 individuals who were awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel between 1969 and 2012. This ideological profile is part of the project called “The Ideological Migration of the Economics Laureates,” which fills the September 2013 issue of Econ Journal Watch. Keywords Classical liberalism, economists, Nobel Prize in economics, ideology, ideological migration, intellectual biography. JEL classification A11, A13, B2, B3 Link to this document http://econjwatch.org/file_download/738/KuznetsIPEL.pdf IDEOLOGICAL PROFILES OF THE ECONOMICS LAUREATES Simon Kuznets by Daniel B. Klein, Ryan Daza, and Hannah Mead Simon Kuznets (1901–1985) was born in Russia. In 1922, Kuznets emigrated with his family to the United States. He earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1926 and started working at the National Bureau of Economic Research the following year. Between 1930 and 1971, Kuznets taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University, and then Harvard University (Kuznets 1992a/1971). His ideological views do not seem to have changed significantly during his adult life. Kuznets won the Nobel Prize in Economic Science for “for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development.” In a speech at the award ceremony, Bertil Ohlin praised Kuznets for having “consistently addressed himself to giving quantitative precision to economic magnitudes which seem [to] be relevant to an understanding of processes of social change. -
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Economics Working Paper Series
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Economics Working Paper Series The Rise and Fall of Economic History at MIT Peter Temin Working Paper 13-11 June 5, 2013 Rev: December 9, 2013 Room E52-251 50 Memorial Drive Cambridge, MA 02142 This paper can be downloaded without charge from the Social Science Research Network Paper Collection at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2274908 The Rise and Fall of Economic History at MIT Peter Temin MIT Abstract This paper recalls the unity of economics and history at MIT before the Second World War, and their divergence thereafter. Economic history at MIT reached its peak in the 1970s with three teachers of the subject to graduates and undergraduates alike. It declined until economic history vanished both from the faculty and the graduate program around 2010. The cost of this decline to current education and scholarship is suggested at the end of the narrative. Key words: economic history, MIT economics, Kindleberger, Domar, Costa, Acemoglu JEL codes: B250, N12 Author contact: [email protected] 1 The Rise and Fall of Economic History at MIT Peter Temin This paper tells the story of economic history at MIT during the twentieth century, even though roughly half the century precedes the formation of the MIT Economics Department. Economic history was central in the development of economics at the start of the century, but it lost its primary position rapidly after the Second World War, disappearing entirely a decade after the end of the twentieth century. I taught economic history to MIT graduate students in economics for 45 years during this long decline, and my account consequently contains an autobiographical bias.