economic dynamics in the malthusian era evidence from the 1609 spanish expulsion of the moriscos we investigate economic dynamics in the malthusian era using the 1609 expulsion of moriscos from spain sharp population declines in former morisco districts were accompanied by decreased output and increased per capita output while these short run results are consistent with standard malthusian predictions malthusian convergence was delayed up to 1786 in former morisco districts archival sources and historical accounts suggest extractive institutions and cultural differences may have contributed to delayed convergence in population and output per capita this historic episode provides an unusually rich setting to examine malthusian dynamics highlighting the potential for sustained differences in per capita output in the malthusian era

occupational choice and the process of development this paper models economic development as a process of institutional transformation by focusing on the interplay between agents occupational decisions and the distribution of wealth because of capital market imperfections poor agents choose working for a wage over self employment and wealthy agents become entrepreneurs who monitor workers only with sufficient inequality however will there be employment contracts otherwise there is either subsistence or self employment thus in static equilibrium the occupational structure depends on distribution since the latter is itself endogenous we demonstrate the robustness of this result by extending the model dynamically and studying examples in which initial wealth distributions have long run effects in one case the economy develops either widespread cottage industry self employment or factory production employment contracts depending on the initial distribution in the other example it develops into prosperity or stagnation

can we have growth when population is stagnant testing linear growth rate formulas of non scale endogenous growth models abstractwe sub divide scale invariant fully or semi endogenous growth models into six sub categories for formulas relating steady state growth rates of income per capita and the growth rate of the

the evolution of institutions in india and its relationship with economic growth this paper examines the evolution in a few public institutions over time in india it presents three types of evidence on institutional outcomes such as losses in power generation backlogs in disposal of court cases on perceptions based measures of governance some going back to the 1960s and finally on customs administration and whether it has been more effective at detecting evasion over time all the evidence suggests that institutional quality has not improved over time it then addresses the two way relationship between growth and institutions in terms of two apparent paradoxes the first is why growth has turned around so dramatically in india despite the relatively limited nature of reforms especially compared with other countries the second paradox is why despite nearly 30 years of rapid growth institutions have not improved the paper offers some explanations that might help explain these paradoxes

from malthusian stagnation to modern growth this paper investigates the historical evolution of the relationship among population growth technological change and standard of living the analysis focuses on two most important differences among the malthusian regime post malthusian regime and modern growth regime these were the behavior of income per capita and the relationship between the level of income per capita and the population growth rate the modern growth regime is characterized by steady growth in both income per capita and the level of technology in the malthusian regime technological progress and population growth was glacial by modern standards and income per capita was fairly constant in contrast to the modern growth regime the relationship between per capita income and population growth in the malthusian regime was positive post malthusian regime shared one characteristic with each of the two regimes in addition this paper developed and described an endogenous growth model consistent with the above mentioned transition process

de facto political power and institutional persistence much of the empirical work and the conceptual discussion of the impact of institutions on economic development either implicitly or explicitly assumes that institutions persist although acemoglu et al 2001 provide evidence that constraints on the executive persist many aspects of institutions change frequently less developed countries cycle between democracy and dictatorship and often change their constitutions relatedly while the current economic problems in latin america are often traced back to colonial times stanley l engerman and kenneth l sokoloff 1997 acemoglu et al 2002 the specific institutions that once underpinned the colonial economy such as the encomienda the mita or slavery vanished long ago these observations suggest that we need to develop a framework in which changes in certain dimensions of institutions are consistent with overall institutional persistence in this paper we make an attempt to highlight some important mechanisms for understanding simultaneous change and persistence in institutions institutional persistence in this context refers to the persistence of a cluster of economic institutions such as the extent of enforcement of property rights for a broad cross section of society acemoglu et al 2001 such lack of property rights enforcement may be driven by quite different specific institutions e g risk of expropriation entry barriers or economic systems such as serfdom or slavery in turn these different specific economic institutions may exist under different political institutions including dictatorships absolutist monarchies oligarchies and corrupt or even populist democracies given this rich array of possibilities a useful framework must specify which aspects of institutions can change which others have a tendency to persist in equilibrium and how the persistence of certain types of institutions could have lasting effects on economic outcomes in this paper we provide a simple model of the coexistence of change and persistence in institutions first we describe some existing approaches to the persistence of social arrangements as well as the essence of the mechanism we propose next we illustrate the key issues using the experience of the southern united states and last we provide a simple model that formalizes the main mechanism in the paper we conclude by discussing a complementary mechanism to the one presented in this paper

instruments randomization and learning about development there is currently much debate about the effectiveness of foreign aid and about what kind of projects can engender economic development there is skepticism about the ability of econometric analysis to resolve these issues or of development agencies to learn from their own experience in response there is increasing use in development economics of randomized controlled trials rcts to accumulate credible knowledge of what works without overreliance on questionable theory or statistical methods when rcts are not possible the proponents of these methods advocate quasirandomization through instrumental variable iv techniques or natural experiments i argue that many of these applications are unlikely to recover quantities that are useful for policy or understanding two key issues are the misunderstanding of exogeneity and the handling of heterogeneity i illustrate from the literature on aid and growth actual randomization faces similar problems as does quasi randomization notwithstanding rhetoric to the contrary i argue that experiments have no special ability to produce more credible knowledge than other methods and that actual experiments are frequently subject to practical problems that undermine any claims to statistical or epistemic superiority i illustrate using prominent experiments in development and elsewhere as with iv methods rct based evaluation of projects without guidance from an understanding of underlying mechanisms is unlikely to lead to scientific progress in the understanding of economic development i welcome recent trends in development experimentation away from the evaluation of projects and toward the evaluation of theoretical mechanisms jel c21 f35 o19

retirement effects on health in europe what are the health impacts of retirement as talk of raising retirement ages in pensions and social security schemes continues around the world it is important to know both the costs and benefits for the individual as well as the governments budgets in this paper we use the survey of health ageing and retirement in europe share dataset to address this question in a multi country setting we use country specific early and full retirement ages as instruments for retirement behavior these statutory retirement ages clearly induce retirement but are not related to an individual s health exploiting the discontinuities in retirement behavior across countries we find significant evidence that retirement has a health preserving effect on overall general health our estimates indicate that retirement leads to a 35 percent decrease in the probability of reporting to be in fair bad or very bad health and an almost one standard deviation improvement in the health index while the self reported health seems to be a temporary impact the health index indicates there are long lasting health differences

historical frontiers and the rise of inequality the case of the frontier of granada the authors acknowledge financial support from the spanish ministry of science and technology grant eco2009 13357 the spanish ministry of economics and competitiveness grant eco2012 35430 and the andalusian council of innovation and science excellence project sej 4546

subjective health assessments and active labor market participation of older men evidence from a semiparametric binary choice model with nonadditive correlated individual specific effects we use panel data from the us health and retirement study 1992 2002 to estimate the effect of self assessed health limitations on active labor market participation of men around retirement age self assessments of health and functioning typically introduce an endogeneity bias when studying the effects of health on labor market participation this results from justification bias reflecting an individual s tendency to provide answers which justify his labor market activity and individual specific heterogeneity in providing subjective evaluations we address both concerns we propose a semiparametric binary choice procedure which incorporates potentially nonadditive correlated individual specific effects our estimation strategy identifies and estimates the average partial effects of health and functioning on labor market participation the results indicate that poor health and functioning play a major role in the labor market exit decisions of older men

retirement effect on health status and health behaviors in urban china abstract this paper analyzes the causal impact of retirement in china on body mass index bmi and weight which are a good gauge of the risk for some diseases many middle income developing countries are aging very rapidly and may have to adjust the retirement age to have financially feasible government budgets it is important to know and understand any plausible health consequences of raising the retirement age in developing countries and which sub populations within these countries may be most affected by using 2011 2013 and 2015 waves of the china health and retirement longitudinal study charls our identification strategy uses variation in china s mandatory retirement age with a fuzzy discontinuity design to examine an exogenous shock to retirement behavior our study finds that retirement will increase weight and bmi among men this effect is much larger for men with low education the channel may be that men with low education drink more and take less vigorous exercises after they get retired retirement does not affect weight and bmi for women these effects are robust with different definitions of retirement narrow retirement bandwidth for samples as well as dropping samples with rural hukou

failure to launch the role of land inequality in transition delays recent work in the growth literature has provided various explanations for transition delays and the great divergence this paper provides empirical support for one theory of transition delays initial land inequality our analysis is designed to elucidate the channels via which land inequality can affect long run economic performance using a new historical data set for land inequality frankema 2009 we employ duration analysis to investigate whether higher levels of land inequality lead to longer delays in the extension of primary schooling we then investigate whether such delays affect long run economic performance via their effect on contemporaneous schooling our findings suggest that land inequality is a key determinant of delays in schooling and that such delays have a significant negative impact on long run output

land reforms poverty reduction and economic growth evidence from india recognition of the importance of institutions that provide security of property rights and relatively equal access to economic resources to a broad cross section of society has renewed interest in the potential of asset redistribution including land reforms empirical analysis of the impact of such policies is however scant and often contradictory this paper uses panel household data from india together with state level variation in the implementation of land reform to address some of the deficiencies of earlier studies the results suggest that land reform had a significant and positive impact on income growth and accumulation of human and physical capital the paper draws policy implications especially from the fact that the observed impact of land reform seems to have declined over time

social security and retirement an international comparison this article concerns the following items 1 decline in labour force participation 2 social security benefit accrual and the implicit tax on work 3 the importance of the early retirement age 4 the implicit tax on work and labour force participation etc

retirement intergenerational time transfers and fertility abstract retired parents might invest time in their adult children by providing childcare such intergenerational time transfers can have important implications for family decisions this paper estimates the effects of parental retirement on the fertility of their adult children we use representative panel data from germany to link observations on parents and their adult children we exploit eligibility ages for early retirement for identification in a regression discontinuity and pension reforms in a difference in differences design the results suggest that parents retirement positively influences the fertility of their adult children which is mainly driven by an increase in the likelihood of having a second birth however while parental retirement affects the timing of the fertility of their adult children it does not affect the children s total fertility

income distribution and macroeconomics this paper analyzes the role of wealth distribution in macroeconomics through investment in human capital it is shown that in the presence of credit markets imperfections and indivisibilities in investment in human capital the initial distribution of wealth affects aggregate output and investment both in the short and in the long run as there are multiple steady states this paper therefore provides an additional explanation for the persistent differences in per capita output across countries furthermore the paper shows that cross country differences in macroeconomic adjustment to aggregate shocks can be attributed among other factors to differences in wealth and income distribution across countries

unemployment wage bargaining and capital labour substitution many economists believe that capital accumulation technical progress and labour force expansion have no lasting effect on unemployment this view rests on the empirically doubtful assumption that the elasticity of substitution between labour and capital is equal to unity i e production is cobb douglas using a simple model based on the work of layard nickell and jackman this paper demonstrates that with a lower elasticity of substitution the equilibrium unemployment rate is affected by all of the above factors it considers briefly how capital accumulation may be endogenised and what long run implications this has for unemployment copyright 1999 by oxford university press

the weight of history on european cultural integration a gravity approach cultural integration is a european obsession given the growing evidence on the role of culture as a determinant of economic development this issue is of importance to economists some literature hypothesizes that the variation of the relative strengths of cultural assimilation and differentiation gave rise to different patterns of economic development quamrul ashraf and oded galor 2007 while other literature emphasizes the importance of specific cultural traits for institutional and economic development among those social trust has received particular attention recently the literature has looked into the historical origins of social trust relating contemporary cross regional differences in trust to historical events such as the free city states experiences in northern italy guido tabellini 2008 luigi guiso paola sapienza and luigi zingales 2008 or the slave trades in africa nathan nunn and leonard wantchekon forthcoming going even further back in history ruben durante 2010 links current regional differences in trust to climatic variability since the year 1500 while such evidence on the longterm persistence of cultural traits is intriguing little remains understood concerning the rate at which cultural values change under the influence of such historical events cultural persistence and cultural heterogeneity are the two sides of the same coin historians have hypothesized that one reason behind the complexity of european integration may be the fact that europe as opposed to china or north america has never experienced a single unifying historical experience wim blockmans 2006 the model in this paper estimates the contribution to cultural integration or its counter

the political economy of the maoist conflict in india an empirical analysis we study the maoist naxalite conflict in india by constructing a comprehensive district level database combining conflict data from four different terrorism databases to socioeconomic and geography data from myriad sources using data on 360 districts for three time periods we find that land inequality and lower incomes are important factors behind the conflict exploiting the micro structure of the data we show that growth of incomes of scheduled tribes significantly decreases the intensity of the conflict finally we show that historical property rights institutions from colonial times that go back centuries affect present day conflict outcomes

the political economy of public goods some evidence from india we are interested in how public goods get allocated by a centralized state we use data on public goods and social structure from parliamentary constituencies in rural india to understand the allocation of these goods over the 1970s and 1980s national policies and political agendas during this period emphasized universal access to basic amenities and financed a rapid expansion in rural infrastructure we find evidence of considerable equalization in many of these facilities reflecting perhaps the importance of these commitments among the historically disadvantaged social groups those that mobilized themselves politically gained relative to the others measures of social heterogeneity that have been emphasized in the recent empirical literature on public goods are relevant but not overwhelming in their importance

global land investments in the bio economy evidence and policy implications for countries dependent on agriculture the recent wave of investor interest in farmland could in principle help set in motion a virtuous cycle of economic growth and poverty reduction a large literature documenting failure of such investments documents the risks involved to appreciate associated opportunities and challenges we review past experience quantify country level potential for area expansion versus intensification and identify determinants of countries attractiveness for investors in the initial stages of the land rush the fact that weak land governance seems to increase rather than reduce land demand justifies an emphasis on improving institutions transparency and accountability while at the same time providing concrete suggestions for policy and research

the economics of labor coercion the majority of labor transactions throughout much of history and a significant fraction of such transactions in many developing countries today are coercive in the sense that force or the threat of force plays a central role in convincing workers to accept employment or its terms we propose a tractable principal agent model of coercion based on the idea that coercive activities by employers or guns affect the participation constraint of workers we show that coercion and effort are complements so that coercion increases effort but coercion always reduces utilitarian social welfare better outside options for workers reduce coercion because of the complementarity between coercion and effort workers with a better outside option exert lower effort in equilibrium and thus are coerced less greater demand for labor increases coercion because it increases equilibrium effort we investigate the interaction between outside options market prices and other economic variables by embedding the coercive principal agent relationship in a general equilibrium setup and studying when and how labor scarcity encourages coercion general market equilibrium interactions working through the price of output lead to a positive relationship between labor scarcity and coercion along the lines of ideas suggested by domar while interactions those working through the outside option lead to a negative relationship similar to ideas advanced in neo malthusian historical analyses of the decline of feudalism in net a decline in available labor increases coercion in general equilibrium if and only if its direct partial equilibrium effect is to increase the price of output by more than it increases outside options our model also suggests that markets in slaves make slaves worse off conditional on enslavement and that coercion is more viable in industries that do not require relationship specific investment by workers

fdi policies in china and india evidence from firm surveys this paper builds on the idea that economic reforms in china were designed to attract foreign direct investment fdi while the opposite happened in india we empirically examine how these different reform approaches affect foreign invested enterprises fie and domestic firms perceptions about the host country s business environment using world bank survey data we find that fies in india perceive more obstacles to business operations and development relative to domestic firms especially on issues related to government regulations and legal institutions on the contrary fies in china find government officials more helpful in promoting business development and perceive legal and financial constraints similar to their domestic counterparts these differences in perceptions between firm ownership types are consistent with the underlying diverging approaches of fdi policies adopted by the two largest developing nations

history institutions and economic performance the legacy of colonial land tenure systems in india we analyze the colonial land revenue institutions set up by the british in india and show that differences in historical property rights institutions lead to sustained differences in economic outcomes areas in which proprietary rights in land were historically given to landlords have significantly lower agricultural investments and productivity in the post independence period than areas in which these rights were given to the cultivators these areas also have significantly lower investments in health and education these differences are not driven by omitted variables or endogeneity problems they probably arise because differences in historical institutions lead to very different policy choices

public goods institutions human capital and growth evidence from german history what are the origins and consequences of the state as a provider of public goods we study public goods provision established through new laws in german cities during the 1500s cities that adopted the laws subsequently began to differentially produce and attract human capital and to grow faster legal change occurred where ideological competition introduced by the protestant reformation interacted with local politics we study plagues that shifted local politics in a narrow period as sources of exogenous variation in public goods institutions and find support for a causal interpretation of the relationship between legal change human capital and growth

colonialism and modern income islands as natural experiments abstract using a new database of islands throughout the atlantic pacific and indian oceans we find a robust positive relationship between the number of years spent as a european colony and current gdp per capita we argue that the nature of discovery and colonization of islands provides random variation in the length and type of colonial experience we instrument for length of colonization using variation in prevailing wind patterns we argue that wind speed and direction had a significant effect on historical colonial rule but do not have a direct effect on gdp today the data also suggest that years as a colony after 1700 are more beneficial than earlier years we also find a discernable pecking order among the colonial powers with years under u s british french and dutch rule having more beneficial effects than spanish or portuguese rule our finding of a strong connection between modern income and years of colonization is conditional on being colonized at all since each of the islands in our da

the empire is dead long live the empire long run persistence of trust and corruption in the bureaucracy we hypothesise that the habsburg empire with its well respected administration increased citizens trust in local public services in several eastern european countries communities on both sides of the long gone habsburg border have shared common formal institutions for a century now we use a border specification and a two dimensional geographic regression discontinuity design to identify from individuals living within a restricted band around the former border we find that historical habsburg affiliation increases current trust and reduces corruption in courts and police falsification tests of spuriously moved borders geographic and pre existing differences and interpersonal trust corroborate a genuine habsburg effect

reshaping institutions evidence on aid impacts using a pre analysis plan this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled reshaping institutions evidence on aid impacts using a pre analysis plan conducted between 2005 and 2009 in sierra leone the study observed the impact of pre analysis plan pap on local institutions by imposing participation requirements for marginalized groups including women and test for learning by doing effects in sierra leone on the individual and village level requiring women and young adults to take on leadership positions participate in project meetings and sign off on project finances does not have any persistent effect on their participation in local decision making or attitudes regarding leadership ability the project successfully established village organizations and tools to manage the project the distributions of the project s benefits were equitable and leakage was minimal there was a significant positive impact on the stock and quality of local public infrastructure however there are no detectible changes in the ability to raise funds for local public goods decision making process or social norms and attitudes funding for the study derived from the gobifo project the institutional reform and capacity building project ircbp the world bank development impact evaluation dime the horace w goldsmith foundation the international growth center 3ie and the national bureau of economic research nber african successes project

the economic effects of the protestant reformation testing the weber hypothesis in the german lands following max weber many theories have hypothesized that protestantism should have favored economic development with its religious heterogeneity the holy roman empire presents an ideal testing ground for this hypothesis using population figures of 272 cities in the years 1300 1900 i find no effects of protestantism on economic growth the finding is precisely estimated robust to the inclusion of various controls and does not depend on data selection or small sample size denominational differences in fertility behavior and literacy are unlikely to be major confounding factors protestantism has no effect when interacted with other likely determinants of economic development instrumental variables estimates considering the potential endogeneity of religious choice are similar to the ols results

income concentration in british india 1885 1946 we use a novel income tax data set to present evidence on the evolution of income concentration in the last 60 years of colonial rule in india these data allow us to study the evolution of income concentration at the country level as well as the location of top income earners across provinces we identify three key facts 1 the evolution of income concentration in british india was nonlinear following a u shape 2 the majority of top income earners were non europeans and 3 the geographical location of top income earners changed over time with the province of bombay gaining in importance in the early xxth century we provide an interpretation of these results in the light of the economic and political changes in british india over the period

history lessons institutions factor endowments and paths of development in the new world the explanations offered for the contrasting records of long run growth and development among the societies of north and south america most often focus on institutions the traditional explanations for the sources of these differences in institutions typically highlight the significance of national heritage or religion we in contrast argue that a hemispheric perspective across the wide range of colonies established in the new world by the europeans suggests that although there were many influences factor endowments or initial conditions had profound and enduring effects on the long run paths of institutional and economic development followed by the respective economies

investor protection and corporate governance recent research has documented large differences among countries in ownership concentration in publicly traded firms in the breadth and depth of capital markets in dividend policies and in the access of firms to external finance a common element to the explanations of these differences is how well investors both shareholders and creditors are protected by law from expropriation by the managers and controlling shareholders of firms we describe the differences in laws and the effectiveness of their enforcement across countries discuss the possible origins of these differences summarize their consequences and assess potential strategies of corporate governance reform we argue that the legal approach is a more fruitful way to understand corporate governance and its reform than the conventional distinction between bank centered and market centered financial systems

the consequences of persistent inequality on social capital a municipal level analysis of blood donation data this paper advances the hypothesis that persistent inequality affects cultural traits and undermines social capital we use blood donation data at the local level in southern spain to document that indeed persistent inequality as measured by land inequality negatively affects blood donation which indicates that it harms social capital this evidence sheds new light into the debates on the consequences of inequality and the determinants of culture

rural reforms and agricultural growth in china this paper employs province level panel data to assess the contributions of decollectivization price adjustments and other reforms to china s agricultural growth in the reform period decollectivization is found to improve total factor productivity and to account for about half of the output growth during 1978 84 the adjustment in state procurement prices also contributed positively to output growth its impact came mainly from the responses in input use the effect of other market related reforms on productivity and output growth was very small reasons for slowdown in agricultural growth after 1984 are also analyzed copyright 1992 by american economic association

the retirement consumption puzzle evidence from a regression discontinuity approach in this paper we investigate the size of the consumption drop at retirement in italy we use micro data on food and total non durable household spending covering the period 1993 2004 and evaluate the change in consumption that accompanies retirement by exploiting the exogenous variability in pension eligibility to correct for the endogenous nature of the retirement decision we take a regression discontinuity design approach and make the identifying assumption that consumption would be the same around the threshold for pension eligibility if individuals would not retire we check in our data that a non negligible fraction of individuals retire as soon as they become eligible and estimate at 9 8 the part of the non durable consumption drop that is associated with retirement induced by eligibility we show that such fall is not driven by liquidity problems for the less well off in the population and can be accounted for by drops in goods that are work related expenses or leisure substitutes however we also show that retirement induces a significant drop in the number of grown children living with their parents and this can account for most of the retirement consumption drop

the role of economic theory in modelling the long run this argues for a closer link between the modelling of the long run relations in applied economics and the intertemporal equilibrium notion from economic theory this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

landownership concentration and the expansion of education we study the relationship between large landownership concentration and the expansion of mass education in nineteenth century prussia cross sectional estimates show a negative association between landownership concentration and enrollment rates fixed effects panel estimates indicate that regions with an initially stronger landownership concentration exhibit increasing enrollment rates this relationship is not driven by differences in the supply of schooling we argue that the implementation of agricultural reforms including the stepwise abolition of serfdom is an important driver of the change in enrollment the results are consistent with the interpretation that emancipation from labor coercion increased the private demand for education

markets in china and europe on the eve of the industrial revolution prevailing views suggest the industrial revolution began in europe because markets had gradually become more efficient and by the 18th century the scope of economic activity was far larger than in other parts of the world this paper compares the actual performance of markets in europe and china two regions of the world that were relatively advanced in the pre industrial period but would start to industrialize about 150 years apart the analysis covers economies that account for about two fifths of the world s population in the mid 18th century and it considers some three centuries of data our findings suggest that relative levels of market function in china and europe were similar prior to the industrial revolution higher efficiency in europe is seen only in the nineteenth century when industrialization was already underway moreover these improvements occurred in a dramatic and sudden fashion further casting doubt on an evolutionary view of market development rather than being a key condition for subsequent growth gains in efficiency appeared simultaneously with the turning point of modern growth we discuss the implications of these findings for a number of explanations for long run growth and the industrial revolution

inequality does cause underdevelopment insights from a new instrument consistent with the provocative hypothesis of engerman and sokoloff 1997 2000 this paper confirms with cross country data that agricultural endowments predict inequality and inequality predicts development the use of agricultural endowments specifically the abundance of land suitable for growing wheat relative to that suitable for growing sugarcane as an instrument for inequality is this paper s approach to problems of measurement and endogeneity of inequality the paper finds inequality also affects other development outcomes institutions and schooling which the literature has emphasized as mechanisms by which higher inequality lowers per capita income it tests the inequality hypothesis for development institutional quality and schooling against other recent hypotheses in the literature while finding some evidence consistent with other development fundamentals the paper finds high inequality to independently be a large and statistically significant barrier to prosperity good quality institutions and high schooling

collectivization and china s agricultural crisis in 1959 1961 the agricultural crisis in china in 1959 61 after the initial success of the collectivization movement resulted in 30 million extra deaths in this paper a game theory hypothesis proposes the main cause of this catastrophe i argue that because of the difficulty in supervising agricultural work the success of an agricultural collective depends on a self enforcing contract in which each one promises to discipline oneself a self enforcing contract however can be sustained only in a repeated game in the fall of 1958 the right to withdraw from a collective was deprived the nature of the collectivization was thus changed from a repeated game to a one time game as a result the self enforcing contract could not be sustained and agricultural productivity collapsed the empirical evidence is consistent with this hypothesis

was weber wrong a human capital theory of protestant economic history max weber attributed the higher economic prosperity of protestant regions to a protestant work ethic we provide an alternative theory protestant economies prospered because instruction in reading the bible generated the human capital crucial to economic prosperity we test the theory using county level data from late nineteenth century prussia exploiting the initial concentric dispersion of the reformation to use distance to wittenberg as an instrument for protestantism we find that protestantism indeed led to higher economic prosperity but also to better education our results are consistent with protestants higher literacy accounting for most of the gap in economic prosperity

clientelism in indian villages abstract we study the operation of local governments panchayats in rural maharashtra india using a survey that we designed for this end elections are freely contested fairly tallied highly p

land distribution and international agricultural productivity the unequal distribution of agricultural land is often cited as a source of inefficiency in agriculture previous cross country studies of agricultural productivity differences though have not considered land inequality this article addresses this issue by using cross country data on inequality in operational holdings of agricultural land from deininger and squire 1998 in an estimation of an agricultural production function the gini coefficient for land holdings is found to have a significant negative relationship with productivity this is consistent with the existence of heterogeneity in productivity by farm size within countries a one standard deviation drop in the gini coefficient implies an increase in productivity of 8 5

does postponing minimum retirement age improve healthy behaviors before retirement evidence from middle aged italian workers abstract by increasing the residual working horizon of employed individuals pension reforms that rise minimum retirement age can affect individual investment in health promoting behaviors before retirement using the expected increase in minimum retirement age induced by a 2004 italian pension reform and a difference in differences research design we show that middle aged italian males affected by the reform reacted to the longer working horizon by increasing regular exercise with positive consequences for obesity and self reported satisfaction with health

economic history and modern india redefining the link this paper argues that to restore the link between economic history and modern india a different narrative of indian economic history is needed an exclusive focus on colonialism as the driver of india s economic history misses those continuities that arise from economic structure or local conditions in fact market oriented british imperial policies did initiate a process of economic growth based on the production of goods intensive in labor and natural resources however productive capacity per worker was constrained by low rates of private and public investment in infrastructure excessively low rates of schooling social inequalities based on caste and gender and a delayed demographic transition to lower birthrates and the resultant heavy demographic burden placed on physical capital and natural resources

good bad and ugly colonial activities do they matter for economic development levels of development vary widely within countries in the americas we argue that part of this variation has its roots in the colonial era when colonizers engaged in different economic activities in different regions of a country we present evidence consistent with the view that bad activities those that depended heavily on labor exploitation led to lower economic development today than good activities those that did not rely on labor exploitation our results also suggest that differences in political representation but not in income inequality or human capital could be the intermediating factor between colonial activities and current development

diffusing knowledge while spreading god s message protestantism and economic prosperity in china 1840 1920 we provide an account of how protestantism promoted economic prosperity in china a country in which protestant missionaries penetrated far and wide during 1840 1920 but only a tiny fraction of the population had converted to christianity by exploiting the spatial variation in the missionaries retreat due to the boxer uprising to identify the diusion of protestantism we

robust endogenous growth abstract this paper studies a generalization of the schumpeterian models with endogenous market structure that allows the overall production structure to be more than linear in the growth driving factor and yet generates endogenous growth defined as steady state constant exponential growth of income per capita this version of modern growth theory therefore is robust in the sense that its key result obtains for a thick set of parameter values instead of as often claimed for a set of measure zero the paper moreover pays close attention to transitional dynamics showing not only the existence but also the global stability of the endogenous growth steady state

non separable time preferences novelty consumption and body weight theory and evidence from the east german transition to capitalism abstract this paper develops a dynamic model to illustrate how diet and body weight change when novel food products become available to consumers we propose a microfounded test to empirically discriminate between habit and taste formation in intertemporal preferences moreover we show that novelty consumption and endogenous preferences can explain the persistent correlation between economic development and obesity by empirically studying the german reunification we find that east germans consumed more novel western food and gained more weight than west germans when a larger variety of food products became readily accessible after the fall of the wall the observed consumption patterns suggest that food consumption features habit formation

revolt on the nile economic shocks religion and political power using centuries of nile flood data i document that during deviant nile floods egypt s highest ranking religious authority was less likely to be replaced and relative allocations to religious structures increased these findings are consistent with historical evidence that nile shocks increased this authority s political influence by raising the probability he could coordinate a revolt i find that the available data provide support for this interpretation and weigh against some of the most plausible alternatives for example i show that while nile shocks increased historical references to social unrest deviant floods did not increase a proxy for popular religiosity together the results suggest an increase in the political power of religious leaders during periods of economic downturn publication abstract

behavioural and material determinants of production relations in agriculture in this essay we develop a framework for analysing the major institutions governing the production and exchange of output and the primary factors of production in rural areas the analysis incorporates general considerations of risk and information constraints jointly with the principal material attributes of agriculture and of agricultural production factors the framework is used to analyse barriers to the existence of the major intertemporal and factor markets it is applied specifically to land scarce environments for which it provides an internally consistent explanation for many of the well documented institutional features of such settings in addition the analysis provides new implications for among other phenomena the inter relationships among ownership holdings operational scale family size and factor productivity for the scarcity of animal rental markets and use of animals as collateral for the renting out of land by small landowners and for the existence of plantations for certain crops

contracts hold up and exports textiles and opium in colonial india trade and export it is argued spur economic growth this paper studies the microeco nomics of exporting we build a heuristic model of transactions between exporters and producers and relate it to east india company operations in colonial bengal our model and the historical record stress two difficulties the exporter and its agents might not uphold payment agreements and producers might not honor sales contracts the model shows when procurement succeeds or fails highlighting the tension between these two hold up problems we analyze several cases including the east india company s cotton textile venture the famous opium monopoly and present day contract farming

time to burn calories the impact of retirement on physical activity among mature americans abstract physical activity is crucial for maintaining and improving health especially at advanced ages while retirement increases the amount of time available for physical activity there is only limited evidence regarding the causal effect of retirement on recommended levels of physical activity addressing this gap in the literature we use data from the u s health and retirement study to estimate the causal impact of retirement on meeting the federal government s 2008 physical activity guidelines for americans using official early and normal retirement ages as instruments for retirement our causal iv analyses suggest significant positive effects of retirement on meeting the guidelines these effects are robust with regard to the treatment of unobserved individual specific heterogeneity the measurement of guideline compliance the definition of retirement and respondents health insurance status we also show that the effects of retirement on physical activity are larger for persons with higher levels of education and wealth

factor substitution and factor augmenting technical progress in the united states a normalized supply side system approach abstract using a normalized ces function with factor augmenting technical progress we estimate a supply side system of the u s economy from 1953 to 1998 avoiding potential estimation biases that

empowerment and efficiency tenancy reform in west bengal the paper analyzes the effect of agricultural tenancy laws offering security of tenure to tenants and regulating the share of output that is paid as rent on farm productivity theoretically the net impact of tenancy reform is shown to be a combination of two effects a bargaining power effect and a security of tenure effect analysis of evidence on how contracts and productivity changed after a tenancy reform program was implemented in the indian state of west bengal in the late 1970s suggests that tenancy reform had a positive effect on agricultural productivity there

distributive politics and economic growth a crude distinction between economics and politics would be that economics is concerned with expanding the pie while politics is about distributing it in this paper we analyze the relationship between the two we focus on how an economy s initial configuration of resources shapes the political struggle for income and wealth distribution and how that in turn affects long run growth our main conclusion is that inequality is conducive to the adoption of growth retarding policies we derive this result from a simple political economy model of growth and present cross country evidence consistent with it the key feature of our model is that individuals differ in their relative factor endowments we distinguish between two types of factors an accumulated factor called capital and a nonaccumulated factor called labor growth is driven by the expansion of the capital stock which is in turn determined by individual saving decisions long run growth is endogenous as the aggregate production function is taken to be linearly homogeneous in capital and productive government services taken together the provision of government services is financed by a tax on capital because government services are productive a small tax on

retirement and home production a regression discontinuity approach existing studies show that individuals who retire replace some private consumption with home production but do not consider joint behavior of couples here we analyze the causal effect of retirement of each partner on hours of home production for both partners in a couple our identification strategy exploits the earliest age retirement laws in france enabling a fuzzy regression discontinuity approach we find that own retirement significantly increases own hours of home production and the effect is larger for men than for women moreover retirement of the female partner significantly reduces male hours of home production but not vice versa