The share of children employed in English cotton factories fell significantly before the introduction of effective child labor legislation in the early 1830s. The early factories employed predominantly children because adults without factory experience were relatively unproductive factory...

Die Determinanten von Überleben oder Sterben, von Expansion oder Kontraktion von Unternehmen sind ein wichtiges Forschungsgebiet der Wirtschaftswissenschaften. Zwar bietet die mikroökonomische Theorie eine Reihe von fundierten Verhaltenshypothesen, z.B. die der Betriebseinstellung, wenn das...

This study is the first to explore long-run trends of numeracy for the 1820-1949 period in 165 countries, and its contribution to growth. Estimates of the long-run numeracy development of most countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, America, and Europe are presented, using age-heaping...

This paper exploits an exogenous shift in the trade policy in India to study the impact of industrialization on son preference. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that households are more likely to have a male child in regions with higher trade openness relative to regions with...

Did breakthroughs in core processes during the Industrial Revolution tend to generate further innovations in downstream technologies? Here a theoretical model examines the effect of a political shock on a non-innovating society in which there is high potential willingness to cooperate. The...