"Economics and history both strive to understand causation: economics using instrumental variables econometrics and history by weighing the plausibility of alternative narratives. Instrumental variables can lose value with repeated use because of an econometric tragedy of the commons bias: each...

Economics and history both strive to understand causation: economics using instrumental variables econometrics and history by weighing the plausibility of alternative narratives. Instrumental variables can lose value with repeated use because of an econometric tragedy of the commons bias: each...

A panel of corporate ownership data, stretching back to 1902, shows that the Canadian corporate sector began the century with a predominance of large pyramidal corporate groups controlled by wealthy families or individuals. By mid-century, widely held firms predominated. But, from the 1970s on,...

Japan, an isolated, backward country in the 1860s, industrialized rapidly to become a major industrial power by the 1930s. South Korea, among the world's poorest countries in the 1960s, joined the ranks of First World economies in little over a single generation. China now seems poised to follow...

Rosenstein-Rodan (1943) and others posit that rapid development requires a 'big push' -- the coordinated rapid growth of diverse complementary industries, and suggests a role for government in providing such coordination. We argue that Japan's zaibatsu, or pyramidal business groups, provided...

Economics and history both strive to understand causation: economics using instrumental variables econometrics and history by weighing the plausibility of alternative narratives. Instrumental variables can lose value with repeated use because of an econometric tragedy of the commons bias: each...

A panel of corporate ownership data, stretching back to 1902, shows that the Canadian corporate sector began the century with a predominance of large pyramidal corporate groups controlled by wealthy families or individuals. By mid-century, widely held firms predominated. But, from the 1970s on,...