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CHERRY Discussion Paper Series CHERRY DP 13/1 CHERRY Discussion Paper Series CHERRY DP 13/1 The emergence of a European region: Business cycles in South-East Europe from political independence to World War II By Matthias Morys Martin Ivanov The emergence of a European region: Business cycles in South-East Europe from political independence to World War II Matthias Morys Martin Ivanov Department of Economics Institute of History University of York Bulgarian Academy of Sciences October, 2013 Abstract Relying on dynamic factor business cycle indices for five South-East European countries (Austria(-Hungary), Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Serbia/Yugoslavia), we document steadily increasing synchronisation as part of a pan-European business cycle before 1913 and the emergence of a regional business cycle (including and radiating from Germany) in the interwar period. These dynamics were largely driven by trade, involving initially England, France and Germany but increasingly centred on Germany. Our results also show that the Balkan countries travelled a long way from an economic backwater of Europe in the 1870s to a much more integrated part of the European economy six decades later. Keywords: South-East European business cycle, national historical accounts, common dynamic factor analysis JEL classification: N13, N14, C43, E32 _____________________________ Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the EHA, EHES, EHS, IEHA and WEAI meetings and to the 5th Conference of the South-East European Monetary History Network as well as to seminars and workshops in Belgrade, Cologne, Groningen, Leuven, Lund, Münster, Oxford, Strassbourg, Tübingen and York. We are grateful to the participants for their spirited discussion and helpful suggestions. We owe a special thanks to the following people in helping us collect the data and/or sharing their data with us: Rumen Avramov, Olga Christodoulaki, Giovanni Federico, Georgios Kostelenos, Georgios Mitrofanis, Max-Stephan Schulze, Coskun Tuncer, Jeff Williamson, all members of the data collection task force of the South-East European Monetary History Network (SEEMHN), and in particular Alina Blejan, Brandusa Costache, Ljiljana Durdevic, Dragana Gnjatovic, Sofia Lazaretou and Thomas Scheiber. We are grateful to Mario Jovanovic, Rainer Metz and Martin Übele for discussion on the econometrics of this paper. The usual disclaimer applies. Financial support from the British Academy is gratefully acknowledged. - 2 - 1. Introduction South-Eastern Europe has largely remained terra incognita for new economic history. While quantitative economic history has made important contributions for Central and Eastern Europe in recent years – even if most of the research remains confined either to the large countries of Russia and Poland (as exemplified by the work of Andrei Markevich and Nikolaus Wolf) or to relatively advanced economies such as Czechoslovakia (Klein&Broadberry 2011) – , little comparable work is available for the Balkan countries. The only exception to this is arguably Greece, where the country’s Western allegiance during the Cold War allowed the US-inspired cliometric revolution to shape economic history research to a certain extent, as evidenced by the work of Sofia Lazaretou, Olga Christodoulaki and George Kostelenos. There is a considerable amount of qualitative economic history research on South-Eastern Europe (SEE in the following), but this body of literature is mostly confined to individual countries (Lampe 1986 for Bulgaria; Mazower 1991 for Greece; Lupu 1968, Chirot 1976, Turnock 1986 and Hitchins 1994 for Romania; Singleton 1876 and Singleton&Carter 1982 for Yugoslavia). The historiographical traditions in the region, which go back to the late 19th century and are to a considerable extent rooted in the political needs of the nascent Balkan nation states to portray their political, economic and cultural development as unique, apparently acted as an obstacle to cross-country research the way it became fashionable in Western academia after World War II, though there are some notable exceptions (Lampe&Jackson 1982, Palairet 1997). Our paper, therefore, breaks new ground along two dimensions. First, it introduces the powerful concepts of new economic history to SEE. Second, it attempts to overcome the tradition of country-specific historiographies by treating the Balkan peninsula as one unit; or, to be more precise, it asks, from the perspective of business cycle research, whether the Balkans should be seen as an economic region in the sense of exhibiting a self-contained or “regional” business cycle. At the same time, our work also seeks to contribute to a recent shift in business cycle research. For a long time, it was conventional wisdom that past levels of cross-country synchronisation had been very low. For the period 1870-1913, for instance, several studies found virtual zero correlation even between the so-called core economies of - 3 - England, France and Germany (Backus&Kehoe 1992, Bordo&Helbling 2011, Artis et al. 2011). These results always sat oddly with our general understanding of the period which (often also referred to as the First Age of Globalisation) was characterised by highly integrated factor and product markets as well as a quasi-universal system of fixed exchange-rates in the form of the gold standard (Daudin&Morys&O’Rourke 2010); all factors potentially conducive to high levels of business cycle synchronisation. A solution to this so-called “business cycle paradox” has recently been proposed by a group of researchers centred on Albrecht Ritschl and Martin Übele. Based on the idea that historical GDP data are not suited for the analysis of cyclical activity, they derive business cycle indices based on dynamic factor methodology and show that cross-country synchronisation levels between the European core countries were high for the period 1870-1913 (Übele 2011). The aim of our paper, then, is to extend this new line of historical business cycle research into a peripheral region of Europe. None of the European regions is better suited for such a study than SEE: we have continuous data for five neighbouring countries (Austria(-Hungary), Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Serbia/Yugoslavia) since the mid-1870s and early 1880s. This compares favourably with potential competitors such as the four Nordic countries or Iberia (two countries), let alone Central and Eastern Europe where statehood of present-day countries materialised only after the break-up of the Habsburg and Romanov empires at the end of World War I. On the Balkan peninsula, the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the concomitant rise of Balkan nationalism resulted in early independence for Greece (1832), followed by Romania (1859) and Serbia at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. In the same year, Bulgaria obtained far-reaching autonomy within the Ottoman Empire, releasing the country into independence in all but name (Mazower 2001). In order to appreciate our choice of countries, a proper definition of “the Balkans” and “South-East Europe” seems in place. The Balkans are conventionally defined as the South-Eastern European part of continental Europe demarcated by the Danube, Sava and Kupa rivers to the North and the West (Todorova 2009). The Ottoman legacy (or even presence), the predominance of the Orthodox faith and the high levels of multi- ethnicity all created a sense that the Balkan peninsula was a region very different not only from Western Europe but also from Central and Eastern Europe. According to - 4 - this geographic definition, Bulgaria and Greece are certainly Balkan countries, but some clarifications are appropriate for Romania, Serbia/Yugoslavia and Austria(- Hungary). While most of the Romanian territory lies north of the Danube, the country is conventionally considered part of the Balkans, partly because of the Dobrudja region south of the Danube, but mainly because of the Ottoman legacy which it shares with the other Balkan countries but does not have in common with its other neighbours (Todorova 2009). As for Serbia, the country was fully located on the Balkan peninsula before World War I, but the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes – renamed as Yugoslavia in 1929 – involved parts that are not considered part of the Balkans (Slovenia, Vojvodina) or at least not in their entirety (Croatia north of the Sava river). As the Yugoslav data we rely on does not distinguish between different parts of the country, we decided to include Yugoslavia for the interwar period rather than leave it out completely. The greatest concern arguably relates to Austria-Hungary and interwar Austria. Austria-Hungary had a considerable footprint in the Balkan peninsula through Dalmatia (Austria), the Balkan parts of Croatia (Hungary) and Bosnia and Hercegovina (jointly administered since 1878); it also shared land borders with Serbia, Romania and the Ottoman Empire. Crucial in our context, our results show that understanding the business cycle dynamics of the other four countries is impossible without taking Austria-Hungary into account; which suggests including the dual monarchy irrespective of the country’s exact relationship to the Balkan peninsula. As for the interwar period, we include Austria for reasons of consistency with the earlier period, but it is worth emphasizing that our interpretation for the other four “genuine” Balkan countries remains unaffected if excluding Austria. We were left with no other choice than excluding the remaining three European provinces of the Ottoman Empire (1878-1912//13), Montenegro (1878- 1922) and Albania (since 1913) for
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