what drives corporate social performance the role of nation level institutions based on whitley s national business systems nbs institutional framework we theorize about and empirically investigate the impact of nation level institutions on firms corporate social performance csp using a sample of firms from 42 countries spanning seven years we construct an annual composite csp index for each firm based on social and environmental metrics we find that the political system followed by the labor and education system and the cultural system are the most important nbs categories of institutions that impact csp interestingly the financial system appears to have a relatively less significant impact we discuss implications for research practice and policymaking

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

control and performance of international joint ventures control is a critical concept for successful management and performance of international joint ventures ijvs this paper reviews and synthesizes prior studies addressing the conceptualization and operationalization of control within ijvs as well as the ijv control performance relationship the paper also presents a new conceptualization of ijv control as well as a conceptual frame work for studying control of ijvs

urbanization mortality and fertility in malthusian england the modern world is the product of two momen tous changes the industrial revolution of 1800 which brought sustained efficiency advances in economies and the demographic transition of 1900 which channeled those efficiency advances mainly into increased income per capita instead of increases in population how these revolutions were connected has been a persistent unsolved puzzle in the history of growth the demographic transition was achieved without any improve ment in contraceptive technologies from those of 1800 and earlier it was a possibility for all preindustrial societies why did it occur only after the industrial revolution the key component of the malthusian econ

responding to public disclosure of corporate social irresponsibility in host countries information control and ownership control we extend the internalization literature by theorizing on how public disclosure of corporate social irresponsibility csi can damage reputation based firm specific advantages of multinational companies mncs and how foreign subsidiary governance can subsequently be used as strategic responses specifically we distinguish between two foreign subsidiary governance mechanisms information control and ownership control that the prior literature has often assumed operate in parallel and posit that they function in divergent directions in this context furthermore we explain how two host country characteristics press freedom and regulatory quality amplify the need for mncs to utilize different governance mechanisms as responses to csi disclosure

two stage residual inclusion estimation addressing endogeneity in health econometric modeling the paper focuses on two estimation methods that have been widely used to address endogeneity in empirical research in health economics and health services research two stage predictor substitution 2sps and two stage residual inclusion 2sri 2sps is the rote extension to nonlinear models of the popular linear two stage least squares estimator the 2sri estimator is similar except that in the second stage regression the endogenous variables are not replaced by first stage predictors instead first stage residuals are included as additional regressors in a generic parametric framework we show that 2sri is consistent and 2sps is not results from a simulation study and an illustrative example also recommend against 2sps and favor 2sri our findings are important given that there are many prominent examples of the application of inconsistent 2sps in the recent literature this study can be used as a guide by future researchers in health economics who are confronted with endogeneity in their empirical work

farewell to confucianism the modernizing effect of dismantling china s imperial examination system abstract this study uses 1899 1908 prefecture level panel data to assess how the likelihood of passing the civil service examination affected modernization before and after the examination system s abolition because higher quotas were assigned to prefectures with an agricultural tax of over 150 000 piculs we use a regression discontinuity design to generate an instrument that resolves potential endogeneity and ensures robust results we find that following abolition prefectures with higher quotas of successful candidates tended to establish more modern firms and send more students for overseas study in japan a subsequent analysis using an individual dataset further shows that the skill level of these overseas students increased after abolition especially in regions with higher per capita quotas this finding implies that the examination system led to substantial misallocation of talents

estimating the peace dividend the impact of violence on house prices in northern ireland this article exploits data on the pattern of violence across regions and over time to estimate the impact of the peace process in northern ireland on house prices after establishing a negative correlation between killings and house prices we estimate the parameters of a markov switching model with conflict and peace as latent states we use the model to estimate the size of the peace dividend as captured in house price changes jel d74 r23 r31 conflict in ireland has a long history even after the republic of ireland was created as an independent state in 1920 the status of the mainly protestant north remained contested from the late 1960s a violent conflict flared up which claimed around 3 500 lives only more than two decades later from 1993 onwards emerged a peace process which while initially fragile culminated in a cessation of violence and a return to devolved government by 2007 the conflict was a major source of social and economic dislocation but as peace took hold this has begun to be repaired this paper assesses the impact of peace by using variation in violence within northern ireland to study one important economic aspect of the peace process and the dividend that it brought to residents of northern ireland the impact on house prices houses are assets whose prices reflect the present and future expected attrac tiveness of living in an area even during the height of the conflict in northern ireland violence was not uniform for example belfast the capital city of the province of northern ireland was particularly hard hit looking for economic consequences of the peace process we would therefore expect benefits to be concentrated among areas where violence was most prevalent we exploit within region variability in violence and house prices over time having such variation is rare in studies of the economic consequences of conflict our specific measure of violence is conflict related deaths these have been well documented by sutton 1994 and the conflict archive on the

the rise of europe atlantic trade institutional change and economic growth the rise of western europe after 1500 is due largely to growth in countries with access to the atlantic ocean and with substantial trade with the new world africa and asia via the atlantic this trade and the associatedcolonialism affected europe not only directly but also indirectly by inducing institutional change where initial political institutions those established before 1500 placed significant checks on the monarchy the growth of atlantic trade strengthened merchant groups by constraining the power of the monarchy and helped merchants obtain changes in institutions to protect property rights these changes were central to subsequent economic growth

gifts of mars warfare and europe s early rise to riches abstract western europe surged ahead of the rest of the world long before technological growth became rapid europe in 1500 already had incomes twice as high on a per capita basis as africa and one third greater than most of asia in this essay we explain how europe s tumultuous politics and deadly penchant for warfare translated into a sustained advantage in per capita incomes we argue that europe s rise to riches was driven by the nature of its politics after 1350 it was a highly fragmented continent characterized by constant warfare and major religious strife no other continent in recorded history fought so frequently for such long periods killing such a high proportion of its population when it comes to destroying human life the atomic bomb and machine guns may be highly efficient but nothing rivaled the impact of early modern europe s armies spreading hunger and disease war therefore helped europe s precocious rise to riches because the survivors had more land per head available for cultiva

population technology and fragmentation the european miracle revisited abstract the effects of political fragmentation on long run development seem to have changed over the course of human history technological leaders used to be empires but the industrial revolution started in the fragmented europe this paper sets up a model to help us think about this puzzle there are two sets of mechanisms at play a standard scale effect which benefits unified regions since technology is a non rivalrous good and several competition effects both negative like wasteful armies and positive incentives to invest in new technologies we apply the model to analyze the preindustrial divergence between china and europe

medieval universities legal institutions and the commercial revolution we present new data documenting medieval europe s commercial revolution using information on the establishment of markets in germany we use these data to test whether medieval universities played a causal role in expanding economic activity examining the foundation of germany s first universities after 1386 following the papal schism we find that the trend rate of market establishment breaks upward in 1386 and that this break is greatest where the distance to a university shrank most there is no differential pre 1386 trend associated with the reduction in distance to a university and there is no break in trend in 1386 where university proximity did not change these results are robust to estimating a variety of specifications that address concerns about the endogeneity of university location universities provided training in newly rediscovered roman and canon law students with legal training served in positions that reduced the uncertainty of trade in the middle ages we argue that training in the law and the consequent development of legal and administrative institutions was an important channel linking universities and greater economic activity in medieval germany

malthusian dynamism and the rise of europe make war not love this paper argues that malthusian regimes are capable of sustained changes in per capita incomes shifting mortality and fertility schedules can lead to different steady state income levels with long periods of growth during the transition europe checked the downward pressure on wages through late marriage which reduced fertility and a mortality regime that combined high death rates with high incomes we argue that both emerged as a result of the black death

investor perceptions of financial misconduct the heterogeneous contamination of bystander firms we suggest that when one firm reveals financial misconduct others in the industry suffer lower valuations but do so heterogeneously to understand this heterogeneity we conceptualize such contamination as a generalization instantiation process investors generalize the culpability to the industry category and perceive the instantiation of generalized culpability within the industry bystander firms this theoretical separation allows us to hypothesize the factors that affect the degree to which both of these elements of the contamination process occurs specifically we predict that characteristics of the misconduct firm or event factors that lend to investors familiarity with the misconduct firms or that prompt attributions of blame for the misconduct affect the potency of the generalization of culpability to the industry while characteristics of the industry bystander firms investors familiarity with such firms or factors that lend to investors perceptions that they have strong governance affect the firms vulnerability to being perceived as instantiating the generalized culpability we tested our hypotheses on a sample of 725 firms across 84 financial misconduct events and the results of our event analyses broadly support our predictions our study thus has implications for future research on the social view of financial markets organizational misconduct and corporate governance

the gift of the dying the tragedy of aids and the welfare of future african generations this paper simulates the impact of the aids epidemic on future living standards in south africa i emphasize two competing effects on the one hand the epidemic is likely to have a detrimental impact on the human capital accumulation of orphaned children on the other hand widespread community infection lowers fertility both directly through a reduction in the willingness to engage in unprotected sexual activity and indirectly by increasing the scarcity of labor and the value of a woman s time i find that even with the most pessimistic assumptions concerning reductions in educational attainment the fertility effect dominates the aids epidemic on net enhances the future per capita consumption possibilities of the south african economy

explaining the swollen middle why most transactions are a mix of market and hierarchy why are firms sometimes more efficient than markets at organizing transactions why are most transactions arrayed neither at the pure market nor at the pure hierarchy end of the continuum but rather in the swollen middle incorporating features of both market and hierarchy why don t firms make greater use of price incentives this paper addresses these three questions by developing a model of the choice of institution one key building block is the distinction between organizing methods hierarchy and the price system and institutions firms and markets hierarchy and the price system are two distinct methods for organizing transactions each with particular costs and benefits markets and firms are institutions which use one or both of these methods although markets predominantly use prices and firms rely principally on hierarchy there is not a one to one correspondence between prices and markets or between hierarchy and firms indeed the paper argues that it is generally more efficient to use a mix of both methods than to specialize in either the paper focuses on the enforcement properties of prices and hierarchy hierarchy controls individuals directly by constraining their behavior by imposing behavior constraints while prices do it indirectly by measuring their outputs through price constraints under hierarchy individuals receive a salary to do as told while self employed individuals governed by the price system are rewarded on the basis of their output each system has its own biases using prices maximizes effort minimizes shirking but incites individuals to inflate the price and or reduce the quality of their output it encourages cheating relying on hierarchy results in the opposite bias under hierarchy individuals are not paid in function of their output but instead are rewarded for following directives they have thus strong incentives to minimize effort to shirk unless properly supervised but being paid a fixed sum to follow orders they have few incentives to cheat hence the price system experiences low shirking but potentially high cheating costs while hierarchy faces low cheating but high shirking costs organizing costs are the sum of shirking and cheating costs any given transaction will be organized by the mix of price and hierarchy i e by the mix of price and behavior constraints that minimizes organizing costs a transaction will be organized within a firm if the reduction in cheating costs achieved by replacing price constraints by behavior constraints exceeds the resulting increase in shirking costs and by the market in the opposite case the paper shows that cheating and shirking costs increase more than proportionately as one concentrates in either pure price or behavior constraints hence using a mix of both methods generally minimizes the sum of cheating and shirking costs this explains why most transactions exhibit features of both markets and hierarchy the paper shows clearly the tradeoff involved between price and behavior constraints it explains the costs and benefits of using two types of price incentives in firms piecework and profit centers and predicts when they will be used

the impact of managerial networking intensity and market based strategies on firm growth during institutional upheaval a study of small and medium sized enterprises in a transition economy varying institutional environments provide the foundation for a great deal of international business research yet relatively little empirical work has examined the determinants of small and medium sized enterprise sme growth during institutional upheaval although the importance of sme development for economic transition and growth is widely acknowledged our paper addresses this gap in the literature by examining how the competitive strategies of smes evolve during institutional transitions and assessing the implications for firm growth using data collected from 135 smes in 1993 and 200 smes in 2001 we find that managerial networking intensity i e developing and maintaining relationships that may be used for business purposes declines markedly over time whereas the importance of market based strategies increases managerial networking intensity is strongly associated with firm growth early in the institutional transition process but not later market based strategies are not associated with firm growth in either time period drawing on convergent insights from multiple theoretical perspectives we argue that changes in strategy are concurrently driven by socially constructed norms that legitimize new ways of competing and delegitimize old ones and by knowledge acquisition and learning which provide managers with a more diverse set of tools with which to exercise their strategic choices

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

entertaining malthus bread circuses and economic growth we augment a simple malthusian model by allowing agents to consume something besides food whereas food in our case bread is both enjoyable and necessary for survival the other good circuses is pure entertainment it has absolutely no impact on survival but does enhance the quality of life with this very simple modification we show that whereas food supply may remain at subsistence technological change will have a great impact on the consumption of everything else most strikingly though the population remains bound by a malthusian constraint sustained improvements to living standards can no longer be ruled out we also argue that our model better fits the known historical facts the widely held belief that growth prior to the industrial revolution was flat is based largely on historical measures of food production although food supply throughout history may have been and for most individuals still is at or near subsistence levels technological advancements have brought greater convenience and comfort to wealthy and poor alike a possibility that malthus himself conceded in his later and often ignored work therefore our model not only describes historical growth patterns and demographic transitions better than traditional malthusian models but is also more in line with malthus later thinking jel classification numbers b10 i31 j1 n1 o30

how the west invented fertility restriction europeans restricted their fertility long before other parts of the world did so by raising the marriage age of women and ensuring that a substantial proportion remained celibate the european marriage pattern emp reduced childbirths by up to 40 we analyze the rise of this first socio economic institution in history that limited fertility through delayed marriage our model emphasizes changes in agricultural production following the black death the production of meat wool and dairy pastoral products increased while grain production declined women had a comparative advantage producing pastoral goods they often worked as servants in husbandry where they remained unmarried long after they had left the parental household in a malthusian world this translated into lower population pressure raising average wages by up to a quarter the black death thus set into motion a virtuous circle of higher wages and fertility decline that underpinned europe s high per capita incomes we demonstrate the importance of this effect in a calibration of our model

from malthus to modern growth can epidemics explain the three regimes we model demographic and economic long run development in a setting where mortality is endogenous and subject to epidemic shocks the model replicates the full transition from malthusian stagnation to modern growth consistent with the historical facts the economy also passes an intermediate post malthusian phase where growth rates of both population and per capita income increase simultaneously as mortality rates fall and become less volatile the escape from the malthusian trap is the result of a series of mild epidemic shocks making it inevitable at some stage but its timing random calibrations show that it can differ by thousands of generations absent differences in exogenous parameters

war and conflict in economics theories applications and recent trends we review the main economic models of war and conflict these models vary in details but their implications are qualitatively consistent highlighting key commonalities across a variety of conflict settings recent empirical literature employing both laboratory and field data in many cases confirms the basic implications of conflict theory however this literature also presents important challenges to the way economists traditionally model conflict we finish our review by suggesting ways to address these challenges

a note on the transnational solution and the transaction cost theory of multinational strategic management this article assesses the extent to which the results of bartlett and ghoshal s 1989 work can be incorporated in what has now become one of the core explanations of multinational strategic management i e the transaction cost based theory of international production we demonstrate that the transaction cost approach fully incorporates the empirical findings of bartlett and ghoshal s work to do so requires that we make a new distinction between location bound and non location bound firm specific advantages in addition three possible uses of country specific advantages by multinational enterprises need to be identified while the transnational solution as proposed by bartlett and ghoshal is not itself a new theory of multinational strategic management it is compatible with the transaction cost based model of multinational strategic management

the determinants of subsistence income in a malthusian world abstract this study constructs a simple two sector malthusian model with agriculture and industry and uses it to identify the determinants of income in a malthusian equilibrium we make standard assumptions about preferences and technologies but in contrast to existing studies we assume that children and other consumption goods are gross substitutes consistent with the conventional malthusian model the present theory shows that productivity growth in agriculture has no effect on equilibrium income more importantly we also show that equilibrium income varies not just with the death rate as has recently been demonstrated in the literature but also with the level of productivity in the industrial sector an empirical analysis using data for pre industrial england lends support to both hypotheses

dynamics and stagnation in the malthusian epoch this paper examines the central hypothesis of the influential malthusian theory according to which improvements in the technological environment during the pre industrial era had generated only temporary gains in income per capita eventually leading to a larger but not significantly richer population exploiting exogenous sources of cross country variations in land productivity and the level of technological advancement the analysis demonstrates that in accordance with the theory technological superiority and higher land productivity had significant positive effects on population density but insignificant effects on the standard of living during the time period 1 1500 ce

make trade not war this paper analyses theoretically and empirically the relationship between military conflicts and trade we show that the conventional wisdom that trade promotes peace is only partially true even in a model where trade is economically beneficial military conflicts reduce trade and leaders are rational when war can occur because of the presence of asymmetric information the probability of escalation is lower for countries that trade more bilaterally because of the opportunity cost associated with the loss of trade gains however countries more open to global trade have a higher probability of war because multilateral trade openness decreases bilateral dependence to any given country and the cost of a bilateral conflict we test our predictions on a large data set of military conflicts on the 1950 2000 period using different strategies to solve the endogeneity issues including instrumental variables we find robust evidence for the contrasting effects of bilateral and multilateral trade openness for proximate countries we find that trade has had a surprisingly large effect on their probability of military conflict

state capacity and military conflict powerful centralized states controlling a large share of national income only begin to appear in europe after 1500 we build a model that explains their emergence in response to the increasing importance of money for military success when fiscal resources are not crucial for winning wars the threat of external conflict stifles state building as finance becomes critical internally cohesive states invest in state capacity while divided states rationally drop out of the competition causing divergence we emphasize the role of the military revolution a sequence of technological innovations that transformed armed conflict using data from 374 battles we investigate empirically both the importance of money for military success and patterns of state building in early modern europe the evidence is consistent with the predictions of our model

international experience and fdi location choices of chinese firms the moderating effects of home country government support and host country institutions we examine the extent to which chinese government support of foreign direct investment fdi projects and host country institutional environments interact with prior entry experience by chinese firms and how this interrelationship affects fdi undertaken by chinese firms we hypothesize that home country government support and well established host country institutions enhance organizational capabilities to take risks in fdi as such they reduce the need to accumulate experiential knowledge and capabilities relating to entering host countries based on prior entry experience in a particular country when undertaking follow up investment projects using a unique hand collected panel data set of chinese publicly listed firms during 2002 2009 we find that home government support and well developed host country institutions reduce the importance of prior entry experience and significantly increase the likelihood of fdi entry into a host country further from our subsample analyses we identify differences between entering developed and developing host countries in terms of the impact of home country government support and quality of host country institutions our findings help explain the puzzle concerning why emerging economy firms have rapidly internationalized in a short period of time and do not follow the pattern predicted by classical ib theories

the three horsemen of riches plague war and urbanization in early modern europe how did europe escape the iron law of wages we construct a simple malthusian model with two sectors and multiple steady states and use it to explain why european per capita incomes and urbanization rates increased during the period 1350 1700 productivity growth can only explain a small fraction of the rise in output per capita population dynamics changes of the birth and death schedules were far more important determinants of steady states we show how a major shock to population can trigger a transition to a new steady state with higher per capita income the black death was such a shock raising wages substantially because of engel s law demand for urban products increased and urban centers grew in size european cities were unhealthy and rising urbanization pushed up aggregate death rates this effect was reinforced by diseases spread through war financed by higher tax revenues in addition rising trade also spread diseases in this way higher wages themselves reduced population pressure we show in a calibration exercise that our model can account for the sustained rise in european urbanization as well as permanently higher per capita incomes in 1700 without technological change wars contributed importantly to the rise of europe even if they had negative short run effects we thus trace europe s precocious rise to economic riches to interactions of the plague shock with the belligerent political environment and the nature of cities

population technology and growth from malthusian stagnation to the demographic transition and beyond this paper develops a unied growth model that captures the historical evolution of population technology and output it encompasses theendogenous transitionbetween three regimes that have characterized economic development the economy evolves from amalthusianregime wheretechnologicalprogressis slow andpopulationgrowthprevents anysustainedriseinincomepercapita intoapost malthusianregime wheretechnological progress rises and population growth absorbs only part of output growth ultimately a demographic transition reverses the positive relationship between income and population growth andtheeconomyentersamoderngrowthregimewithreducedpopulationgrowth

longevity and lifetime labor supply evidence and implications conventional wisdom suggests that increased life expectancy had a key role in causing a rise in investment in human capital i incorporate the retirement decision into a version of ben porath s 1967 model and find that a necessary condition for this causal relationship to hold is that increased life expectancy will also increase lifetime labor supply i then show that this condition does not hold for american men born between 1840 and 1970 and for the american population born between 1890 and 1970 the data suggest similar patterns in western europe i end by discussing the implications of my findings for the debate on the fundamental causes of long run growth

the demand for food and calories we investigate nutrition and expenditure in rural maharashtra in india we estimate that the elasticity of calorie consumption with respect to total expenditure is 0 3 0 5 a range that is in accord with conventional wisdom the elasticity declines only slowly with levels of living and is far from the value of zero suggested by a recent revisionist literature in these indian data the calories necessary for a day s activity cost less than 5 percent of the daily wage which makes it implausible that income is constrained by nutrition rather than the other way around

understanding per capita income growth in preindustrial europe in a malthusian environment per capita incomes are stagnant meaning they cannot exhibit sustained growth however they can still display volatility and persistence when hit by shocks this article simulates a malthusian model with realistic life cycle structure and stochastic and accelerating growth in land productivity we find that differences across simulated economies are quantitatively similar to those found in recently compiled data over gdp per capita for several european countries before 1800 this speaks to the relevance of the malthusian model for understanding preindustrial development in europe contrasting with contentions to the contrary in some of the existing literature

how relevant is malthus for economic development today the malthusian model of population and economic growth has two key components first there is a positive effect of the standard of living on the growth rate of population resulting either from a purely biological effect of consumption on birth and death rates or a behavioral response on the part of potential parents to their economic circumstances second because of the existence of some fixed resource such as land there is a negative feedback from the size of population to the standard of living these two components generate a number of predictions specifically in the absence of technological change or expansion in the stock of the fixed resource population will be stable around a constant level second without changes in the function generating population growth technological improvements or increases in the stock of resources will eventually result in more people but not a higher standard of living as a description of population income interactions the malthusian model had a long period of success covering most of human history in most of the world until the beginning of the industrial revolution in this paper we ask whether the model has any relevance to the world today for the first part of the model the positive causality running from income to population growth the answer is clearly no for reasons that have not fully been determined countries that get richer now see falling rather than rising rates of population growth regarding the second part of the model whether higher population lowers the standard of living some further clarification is required before we can even pursue this issue first it important to differentiate among the different channels through which population affects economic outcomes we will characterize as non malthusian those channels that work through the growth rate or demographic structure of the population these include the effect of population growth in diluting capital per worker the effect of the population age structure itself a function of fertility on the ratio of working age adults to dependents the association of lower fertility with higher human capital investment via a quality quantity mechanism and the effect of lower fertility in freeing up female labor for output production we reserve the term malthusian for channels having to do with the size of the population such as the congestion of fixed resources this channel was the one malthus thought about and it is also the only one that pins down the level of population in steady state which matches historical experience thus in our typology it is perfectly possible for reductions in population growth to raise income per capita even though the malthusian channel is irrelevant a second issue to be clarified is at what geographic scale we are looking it is possible that in a world with trade a high level of population in a single country will not lower that country s income relative to others but that a world with more people will be worse off because of congestion of productive resources or the environment we do not pursue that possibility here instead we ask whether there are countries or subnational regions in the world where the local version of malthusianism hold true the likeliest place to look for malthusian effects is among poor countries for several reasons first poor countries have had and are continuing to have the largest increases in population the population of africa is expected to multiply by a factor of 9 8 between 1950 and 2050 in india during the century of most rapid population growth 1920 2020 population is expected to multiply by a factor of 5 5 by contrast in europe over the period 1800 1900 roughly the century of fastest population growth population increased by a factor of 2 2 if the initial population in these regions represented some equilibrium in the relation between population and resources given available technology the more rapid population growth is more likely to result in a disequilibrium in this relationship second poor countries are least able to use trade as a means of avoiding resource constraints finally as discussed further below poor countries empirically have much higher shares of natural resource rents in national income than do rich countries the idea that poor countries might suffer negative economic effects from overpopulation has a long pedigree however in recent decades the malthusian perspective has fallen out of favor among development economists who have stressed the substitutability of technology capital and labor for fixed factors as well as the productive benefits of density per se or of the technological and institutional changes induced by population pressure see allen c kelley 2001 we take as an operative test of the malthusian channel the answer to the question if a country had fewer people but was otherwise unchanged in terms institutions human and physical capital per capita productivity terms of trade etc would it be significantly better off in per capita terms

the condition of the working class in england 1209 2004 i use building workers wages for 1209 2004 and the skill premium to consider the causes and consequences of the industrial revolution real wages were trendless before 1800 as would be predicted for the malthusian era comparing wages with population however suggests that the break from the technological stagnation of the malthusian era came around 1640 long before the classic industrial revolution and even before the arrival of modern democracy in 1689 building wages also conflict with human capital interpretations of the industrial revolution as modeled by gary becker kevin murphy and robert tamura oded galor and david weil and robert lucas human capital accumulation began when the rewards for skills were unchanged and when fertility was increasing

estimating the long term impact of the great chinese famine 1959 61 on modern china summary this research analyzes the long term impact of the great chinese famine 1959 61 on the modern chinese economy and shows that areas in which famine was most severe have significantly lower per capita gdp today the great famine coincided with the chinese communist party s industrialization and agriculture modernization plan the great leap forward glf to remove omitted variable and endogeneity problems a unique relationship between the communist army s takeover of mainland china 1946 50 and the degree to which subnational leadership was willing to enforce glf policies to the detriment of rural citizens well being is exploited via instrumental variable iv estimation specifically areas liberated later had a higher density of zealous administrators by the start of the glf in 1958 and in turn experienced stricter enforcement of glf policies which resulted in greater famine severity as a result this research finds a relatively pronounced impact of politically triggered famine captured by the iv approach which strengthens the growing outlook that famine is a consequence of inadequate food entitlement as opposed to being simply food shortages

why europe a critique of institutionalist and culturalist economics abstract economists have recently started to discuss the roles of institutions and cultural beliefs in explaining the performance of civilizations this paper investigates two views institutionalist economics and culturalist economics with regard to the question of why europe rose economically a few centuries ago while other regions of the world lagged behind these two views share a common platform raised on two pillars first both regard institutions beliefs as extra economic as primordial entities that ultimately stand independent of economic performance second both regard economic performance as fully determined by institutions beliefs i e normative causality in the sense that institutions beliefs determine performance douglass north s 2005 analysis of economic performance for example is based on both pillars concerning the primordial pillar he attributes the mystery of the rise of europe to primordial beliefs viz christian dogma and english individualism concerning the normative pillar he presumes that such beliefs have almost one to one correspondence with economic performance this paper though maintains that the two pillars primordial analysis and normative causality are rather fragile advocates of the first pillar fail to recognize that institutions beliefs are endogenous advocates of the second pillar fail to recognize that institutions beliefs can give rise to diverse economic performances

problems and developments in the core theory of international business the established theory of international business is not without problems it is necessary to specify the key relationships between internalisation and market structure and between internalisation and competitive advantage more carefully this chapter attempts to clarify the former relationship by reference to the work of hymer and the latter by contrasting the nature of internalisation decisions with those building short run competitive advantage avenues of development of the theory include the integration of non traditional concepts and the reintegration of areas of research which have become divorced from core international business theory

malthus to solow a unified growth theory is developed that accounts for the roughly constant living standards displayed by world economies prior to 1800 as well as the growing living standards exhibited by modern industrial economies our theory also explains the industrial revolution which is the transition from an era when per capita incomes are stagnant to one with sustained growth the authors use a standard growth model with several technologies the first denoted the malthus technology requires land labor and reproducible capital as inputs the second denoted the solow technology does not require land the authors show that in the early stages of development only the malthus technology is used and due to population growth living standards are stagnant despite technological progress eventually technological progress causes the solow technology to become profitable and both technologies are employed at this point living standards improve since population growth has less influence on per capita income growth in the limit the economy behaves like a standard solow growth model excerpt