A heterogeneous expectations model is provided, where private agents facing policy ignorance have to learn about the underlying fundamentals via a signal extraction problem. The model is estimated on a U.S. data set using Bayesian approach. The empirical results imply that the improvement in...

This book explores new frontiers in the research of economic growth and industrial reconstruction, analyzing economic growth and transitions in industrial structure in East Asia with a variety of data. First, the effects of demographic change on trade openness is analyzed empirically using the...

Nomadic conquests have helped to shape world history, yet we know little about why they occurred. Using climate and dynastic data from historical China since 221 BCE, this study finds that the likelihood of nomadic conquest increased with less rainfall proxied by drought disasters, which drove...

The size of nations matters, but the literature on the subject is long on theory and short on direct econometric testing. Using a unique time series data set spanning the past two millennia, we study the process of unification and division in historical China. The empirical results are...