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In this chapter, I consider the benefits of viewing history through an evolutionary lens. In recent decades, a field of … to explain the history of human societies. I then turn to a discussion of how an evolutionary perspective provides …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013297184
We study the emergence of urban self-governance during the Commercial Revolution in the 12th- 13th century and show that municipal autonomy shaped national institutions over the subsequent centuries. We focus on England after the Norman Conquest of 1066 and build a novel comprehensive dataset of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012951352
This paper develops an analytical framework for studying colonial investment from the perspective of neoclassical political economy. The distinguishing feature of colonial investment in this model is that the metropolitan government restricts the amount of investment in the colony in order to...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013249366
In this paper we trace the evolution of the lender of last resort doctrine—and its implementation—from the nineteenth century through the panic of 2008. We find that typically the most influential economists “fight the last war”: formulating policy guidelines that would have dealt...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013030619
We discuss business cycles in ancient China. Data on Ancient China business cycles are sparse and incomplete and so our discussion is qualitative rather than quantitative. Essentially, ancient debates focused on two types of cycles: long run political or dynastic cycles of many decades, and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013013169
The history of the twentieth century can be summarized excessively briefly in five propositions: First, that the … history of the twentieth century was overwhelmingly economic history. Second, that the twentieth century saw the material … were the most brutal and barbaric in history. Fourth, that the twentieth century saw the relative economic gulf between …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013243369
What can macroeconomic history offer macroeconomic theorists and macroeconometricians? Macroeconomic history offers … `path dependence': ways in which the cumulative past, including the history of shocks and their effects, change the … structure of the economy. This essay reviews American macroeconomic history to illustrate its potential uses and draw out …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013310134
We study the link between fiscal austerity and Nazi electoral success. Voting data from a thousand districts and a hundred cities for four elections between 1930 and 1933 shows that areas more affected by austerity (spending cuts and tax increases) had relatively higher vote shares for the Nazi...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012941600
Scholars have attempted to explain geographic clustering in inventive activity by arguing that it is connected with clustering in production or new investment. They have offered three possible reasons for this link: because invention occurs as a result of learning by doing; because new...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013237558
There are some striking similarities between the pre 1914 gold standard and EMU today. Both arrangements are based on fixed exchange rates, monetary and fiscal orthodoxy. Each regime gave easy access by financially underdeveloped peripheral countries to capital from the core countries. But the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013080834