Seminars

Economic History

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Upcoming events

• Wednesday 6 December 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  VALENCIA CAICEDO Felipe (Vancouver SE) : Bourbons reforms and State capacity in the Spanish empire

  Abstract

  We study state modernization and its fiscal and political consequences in the Spanish empire in the Americas in the 18th century. We focus on the intendancy system, which introduced a new corps of provincial governors to address misgovernance by local colonial officers. Our empirical strategy leverages the staggered implementation of this reform across the empire, extending from present-day USA to Argentina. Using administrative data from the royal treasuries, we show that the intendancy system led to a sizable increase in Crown revenue, driven by a strengthening of state presence far from the traditional centers of power and the disruption of local elite capture. The reform also caused a reduction in the incidence of rebellions by indigenous peoples, who were harshly exploited under the status quo. However, the intendancy system also heightened tensions with the local creole elites, as reflected by naming patterns, and plausibly contributed to the nascent independence movement.

• Wednesday 6 December 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  *

• Wednesday 13 December 2023 09:30-17:00

  R2.01

  F.SIMIAND ATELIER (PSE et EHESS) : Les empires français dans leurs dimensions économiques (18e-20e siècle)”

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 20 December 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  WOKER Madeline (IEA Zurich) : The tax haven that wasn’t: imperial statecraft, capital, and the politics of corporate taxation in the French colonial empire, 1920s-1950s.

  Abstract

  What is a tax haven? What does it take to make or break one? And what role have states played in this process? Historians have so far focused on the Anglo-American world or blatant cases like Switzerland. Instead, this story will take us to the French colonial empire where, by the end of the 1920s, a growing number of colonial firms were transferring their headquarters from the metropole to the colonies with the aim of evading taxation on investment capital income. These transfers threatened to transform French colonies into tax havens. Why was this averted and why didn’t the French empire generate tax havens when the British empire did? This article explores the links between empire, decolonisation, and the expansion of tax havens via an unusual route: that of the politics of tax planning in the French colonial empire and shows that French colonial tax havens could have materialised on a large scale at two critical junctures: first in the interwar period and then in the aftermath of the Second World War. It argues that they eventually did not come into being because successive administrations within the French Ministry of Finance did not let it happen. Broader structural determinants – the relative weakness of the French metropolitan fiscal state in the interwar period and the unwillingness to let international capital dictate French development strategies in the late colonial period - crucially influenced the positions taken by the Ministry of Finance. Post-war dreams of restored grandeur made French authorities much more reluctant to outsource development and let go of state prerogatives. By exploring an unrealised possibility, this article makes a broader intervention in the nascent historiography of tax havens and highlights the role of state power in their (un)making.

• Wednesday 10 January 2024 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  MONTALBO Adrien (ESSEX) : *

• Wednesday 10 January 2024 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  MONTALBO Adrien (ESSEX) : *

• Wednesday 17 January 2024 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  SGARD Jérôme (Sciences Po) : Imperial Politics, Open Markets and Private Ordering: The Global Grain Trade (1875-1914

• Wednesday 17 January 2024 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  SGARD Jérôme (Sciences Po) : Imperial Politics, Open Markets and Private Ordering: The Global Grain Trade (1875-1914).

• Wednesday 24 January 2024 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  ALFANI Guido (Bocconi University ) : *

• Wednesday 24 January 2024 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  ALFANI Guido (Bocconi University ) : *

• Wednesday 7 February 2024 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  CHILDRESS Stéphanie (UT AUSTIN) : Carbon Memories: Energy Cultures the Green Transition

• Wednesday 28 February 2024 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  IANDOLO Alessandro (UCL) : "Arrested Development: The Soviet Union in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali, 1955-1968."

• Wednesday 6 March 2024 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  GARCIA Sébastian (PSE) : *

• Wednesday 13 March 2024 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  KERSTING Felix (Humboldt University Berlin) : Industrialization, returns, inequality (Co-authors: Thilo Albers and Timo Stieglitz)

• Wednesday 20 March 2024 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  HONG Sehyun (PSE) : *

• Wednesday 27 March 2024 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  GAUTIER Stéphane (PSE) : Late height growth and adult maturity from historical quasi-exhaustive panel data

• Wednesday 3 April 2024 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  TANG John (Utrecht) : “The age of epidemics: acute infectious disease and economic development in historical perspective”

• Wednesday 24 April 2024 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  BRAMOULLE YANN Kaveh (U. Connecticut) : *

• Wednesday 15 May 2024 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  LAMOUROUX Christian (EHESS) : "Histoire économique et données en miettes: comment écrire l'histoire économique de la Chine des Song"

• Wednesday 22 May 2024 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  JUHASZ Reka : *

• Wednesday 5 June 2024 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  SALEH Mohamed (LSE) : *

• Wednesday 19 June 2024 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  KOEHLER-DERRICK Gabriel : "Colonial Service and Bureaucratic Responsiveness in the French Third Republic”

Archives

• Wednesday 29 November 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  VIPOND Hilary (LSE) : Technological Unemployment in Victorian Britain

  Abstract

  There is no quantitative record of jobs lost to, and generated by, creative destruction as industries mechanized in Great Britain over the 19th century. Such a record would enable a long run view of the impact of occupational decline, adding a dimension to debates on the future of work. I create a new, sub-industry, level of occupation for England between 1851-1911, using text recorded in individual level English census observations, as digitized by the Integrated Census Microdata project (ICeM). I focus on the impact of mechanization on the bootmaking industry, and assign 1.3 million English bootmakers to the sub-industry ”tasks” they performed. I show that technological unemployment obscured at an industry level analysis is revealed at the task level. In bootmaking, the occupational structure was transformed as the industry mechanized. Approximately 152 000 jobs disappeared as skills became obsolete, and another 144 000 jobs, demanding new skills, were generated. The new jobs went almost entirely to young bootmakers, and incumbents were not able to transition into the new employment opportunities.

• Wednesday 22 November 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  DUCOING Cristian (LUND) : Assessing long run Sustainable Development: Evidence from Global Genuine Savings 1850 - 2020 (With Eoin McLaughlin and Les Oxley)

  Abstract

  Long-run economic development has focused on income, but it has overlooked the role of wealth in future well-being. We addressed this shortcoming using a novel database that links historical trends estimated by McLaughin et al. (2022) with more recent developments. In a provocative paper, Sullivan & Hickel (2023) take a critical position on economic growth and development in the last 400 years, basing their findings on a correlation between capitalism and poverty. We challenge these assumptions from a perspective based on the role of savings and investment in economic progress. Declining trends in savings, especially when we include the depreciation of our natural assets in our accounting, are a major concern for the future.

• Wednesday 15 November 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  NOBLE Aurelius (LSE) : The Persistence of Aristocratic Wealth: Institutional Measures, Family Measures and Social Mobility, 1858-1907

  Abstract

  This article examines persistence in the wealth of title-holders in England and Wales between 1858 and 1907. While the historical narrative is that this elite was unable to weather the shocks of globalisation, industrialisation, and democratisation, I find that this group was highly persistent. This paper makes a number of methodological contributions, by linking the population of individual wealth-holders with genealogical data on the population of title-holders. This allows me to distinguish between two measures of title-holder wealth, which I term the family measure and the institutional measure, and to measure title-holder specific social mobility. The family measure tracks the wealth of the families that constituted this elite at the beginning of the period, whereas the institutional measure also includes new entrants. This method shows that persistence was stronger when considering new entrants (institutional measure) than just the initial families (family measure). The apparent decline of British title-holders (Cannadine, 1990) was predominantly about changes to the composition, rather than a decline in wealth. Title-holding families were subject to a different, lower, social mobility regime, where they declined towards a higher level than the population mean. The results indicate a social, rather than economic, mechanism for persistence. The paper illuminates the long-run trajectory of a social elites, and their relation to social, economic and institutional forces. Estimating these different measures is made possible by the construction of a new individual level dataset, containing the population of English and Welsh wealth-holders (2.2m), combined with genealogical information on the population of title-holders (1.4k deaths, 4.5k living), and individual data on the population of deaths (26.1m).

• Wednesday 8 November 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  SCHIFANO Sonia (Bocconi) : The distribution of land in Luxembourg (1766–1872): Family-level wealth persistence in the midst of institutional change

  Sonia Schifano (Bocconi University) and Antoine Paccoud (LISER, LSE)

  Abstract

  The paper analyses family-level wealth inequality and social mobility in Dudelange (Luxembourg) between 1766 and 1872. This period saw the end of feudal social relations with the integration of Luxembourg into the French revolutionary regime. The study utilizes archival data and five generations of descendants to connect the declarants of the Maria-Theresa land survey of 1766 with their descendants in the land registries of 1842 and 1872. Links between individuals are made from vertical parent-children-grandchildren relationships, however these relationships are not constant. To account for this variability, the number of ancestors available for each declarant and the generational descendant-ancestor distance that separates each declarant from his or her ancestors were considered in the social mobility analysis. The inequality analysis reveals a decline in the Gini coefficient for land ownership between 1766 and 1842, indicative of the dissolution of the feudal system. This reduction becomes less pronounced upon excluding property-less declarants from the 1766 dataset (note that in 1842 and 1872, these individuals are already excluded due to the nature of the data source). The disparity in the Gini coefficient between 1766 and 1842 lastly disappear when non-residents in Dudelange are removed from the analysis. Owing to data constraints, the social mobility analysis is also based on declarants that are residents of Dudelange and shows a high persistence of land among closer generations throughout the period. This persistence discloses that family-level transmission mechanisms limit social mobility and strongly advantage those with ancestors owning property wealth, even when there are significant changes in the organization of property relations.

• Wednesday 25 October 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  BARBOT Michela (IDHE.S-ENS Paris Saclay) : L’estimation des biens, un dispositif d’enforcement contractuel ? Les cas français et italien en perspective comparée (XVIIe -début XIXe siècle)

  Abstract

  La présente recherche porte sur le rôle de l’estimation en tant que moyen de réduction des incertitudes qui menacent la stabilité et l’exécution des contrats comportant la fixation d’un prix. Cette problématique est analysée à partir d’une comparaison entre la France et l’Italie (XVIIe-début du XIXe siècle), réalisée en mobilisant des règlements, des ouvrages juridiques, des manuels d’estimation, ainsi qu’une série d’expertises immobilières rédigées à Milan et à Paris. Cette comparaison révèle l’existence de deux différentes modalités institutionnelles de faire face aux incertitudes qui pèsent sur les prix et les contrats. Alors qu’en Italie la voie choisie consiste à faire de l’estimation une véritable procédure juridique et à encourager ouvertement le recours à un estimateur, en France le problème de la garantie des accords contractuels est davantage résolu par l’adoption d’une série de normes qui interviennent, en amont, sur le contrôle et la certification de la qualité des biens échangés. Cette divergence est confirmée également par l’analyse des expertises à Milan et à Paris, qui montre que les fonctions attribuées à l’estimation dépendent aussi de manière déterminante de la structure de la propriété, des modes de sa transmission et des formes de son imposition fiscale.

• Wednesday 18 October 2023 12:00-13:00

  R1.09

  GOBBI Paula (Université Libre de Bruxelles) : Revolutionary Transition: Inheritance Change and Fertility Decline

  Joint with Victor Gay and Marc Goñi

  Abstract

  We test Le Play’s (1884) hypothesis that the French Revolution contributedto France’s early fertility decline. In 1793, a series of inheritance reformsabolished local inheritance practices, imposing equal partition of assetsamong all children. We develop a theoretical framework that predictsa decline in fertility following these reforms because of indivisibility con-straints in parents’ assets. We test this hypothesis by combining a newlycreated map of pre-Revolution local inheritance practices together withdemographic data from the Henry database and from crowdsourced ge-neaologies in Geni.com. We provide difference-in-differences and regression-discontinuity estimates based on comparing cohorts of fertile age and co-horts too old to be fertile in 1793 between municipalities where the reformsaltered and did not alter existing inheritance practices. We find that the1793 inheritance reforms reduced completed fertility by half to one child,closed the pre-reform fertility gap between different inheritance regions, andsharply accelerated France’s early fertility transition

• Wednesday 11 October 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  CASTILLO GARCÍA César (The New School for Social Research & PSE) : How Was Neoliberal Hegemony Constructed? Policy Networks and Free-Market Institutions in Peru (1930-1990)

  César Castillo-García (The New School for Social Research & PSE) with Luan Sánchez-Pérez (Universidad del Pacífico)

  Abstract

  This paper analyzes the existent bonds between Peruvian experts and the transnational neoliberal network of the Walter Lippmann Colloquium/Mont Pèlerin Society during 1930-1990. We rely upon qualitative sources (member directories, institutional affiliations, board memberships) to construct a non-exhaustive database of 388 actors belonging to 295 relevant institutions for the period under study. Then, we apply social network analysis techniques to explore and visualize the nexus between personalities and organizations that pushed the free-market agenda and reacted to profit cycles in Peru during different historical periods that we call waves of neoliberalization. Our results demonstrate an increase in the participation of domestic actors in the Peruvian neoliberal network. Hence, six Peruvian intellectuals played the role of brokers transmitting the neoliberal discourse among different institutional settings: Pedro Beltrán, Rómulo Ferrero, Jacobo Rey Elmore, Roberto Abusada, and Mario Vargas Llosa. Likewise, this paper shows the organizational structure transmitting free-market ideas in Peru was heterogeneous and included government agencies, business associations, high-ed institutions, the press, and the Catholic Church. These findings demonstrate that organized actions of intellectuals, technocrats, and politicians have made neoliberal legacies prevail in the Peruvian public sphere during the second half of 20th century.

• Wednesday 4 October 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  CASTILLO-GARCIA César (The New School for Social Research & PSE) : Well-being and inequality in Spain during the seventeenth century: the bull of Crusade

• Wednesday 4 October 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  ALVAREZ-NOGAL Carlos (Carlos III) : Well-being and inequality in Spain during the seventeenth century: the bull of Crusade.

  Abstract

  Spain experienced economic decline from the 1570s to 1650, recovering gradually thereafter and only reaching its early 1570s per capita income in the 1820s. How did economic decline impact on people’s perception of well-being and inequality? An unexplored source, the bulls of the Crusade can offer some answers to that question. The bull was an alms that, after 1574, was annually collected by the Spanish Monarchy in its territories giving some material and spiritual benefits to the population. An inexpensive but fixed price alms was massively bought by those aged 12 and above. The number of bulls sold relative to the relevant population provides a measure of spiritual comfort and, hence, of subjective well-being. A subjective inequality measure, the ratio of the eight reales bulls sold, intended for wealthy and high social status people, to the two reales bulls sold, intended for the common people, is also estimated. After collecting data from 1574 to 1700, the results suggest that subjective well-being deteriorated during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century improving during its last third, while subjective inequality increased from 1600-1640 to fall in the third quarter of the century.

• Wednesday 27 September 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  WARLOUZET Laurent (Sorbonne) : Europe contre Europe. Entre liberté, solidarité et puissance

  Abstract

  Dans son ouvrage paru récemment (Cnrs éditions, 2022), Laurent Warlouzet propose une interprétation de l'histoire des politiques économiques menées en commun par les Européens articulée autour d'une interaction entre les logiques libérales (et néolibérales), solidaires (socio-environnementale) et de puissance (politique industrielle, protectionnisme). Portant sur une longue période, de 1945 à 2022, l'ouvrage s'appuie sur des archives collectées dans huit pays européens.

• Wednesday 20 September 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  SCHNEIDER Sabine (LSE) : 'International Finance, Bilateral Cooperation and the World Silver Crisis, 1871–1892'

  Abstract

  Imperial Germany’s monetary union in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War (1870/71) necessitated the liquidation of vast quantities of German silver stocks on world markets. Between 1871 and 1879, the German Chancellery engaged an international network of banks and refiners to acquire gold-backed assets in return for selling its silver in Europe and in South and East Asia. This paper reconstructs the Chancellery’s network of financial agents and presents the most comprehensive picture yet of the transcontinental bullion flows that underpinned Germany’s monetary reforms. Based on a wealth of banking and government records, the paper yields a more nuanced understanding of the geographic outlets and strategy of Germany’s bullion trade and its impact on the global silver glut that set in from 1872. The ensuing macroeconomic disruption that accompanied Germany’s demonetization gave rise to both prolonged uncertainty in bullion markets and growing diplomatic tensions across Europe.

• Wednesday 13 September 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1-09

  JABKO Nicolas : the waxing of technocratic neoliberalism

  Abstract

  The United States in the 1980s saw the emergence of technocratic neoliberalism. Assertive central bankers adopted monetarist policies that were increasingly popular in the economics profession, while a new breed of politicians embraced neoliberal ideology. Based on an analysis of FOMC transcripts as well as secondary sources, this paper argues that the leadership of the US Federal Reserve was crucial in shaping not only a new monetary regime, but also the broader assemblage of technocratic neoliberalism. The Fed supported an agenda of disinflation, fiscal conservatism, and free markets that would outlive the Fed’s commitment to it.

• Wednesday 6 September 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  BACH Maria (Lausanne) : Emancipatory National Accounting

  Abstract

  Separated by thousands of kilometres of land and sea, two economists produced national income estimates in the late 1860s. An Indian economist, Dadabhai Naoroji, calculated India’s first ever national income estimate for years 1867-8 and 1870-71. A North American economist, Ezra Seaman, worked out one of the first estimates for national income and domestic product for 1866 and 1869. Although on different continents, with different circumstances, both Naoroji and Seaman argued that if they could measure the size of their economies, they could understand their progress. This statement seems evident today when economic measurements like the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are printed in widespread media and publications daily. The practise of measuring our economy, however, had only just began in the 1800s. Others argue that it started much later in the 1930s-40s when the international standards for national accounting were established. While there is growing literature exploring the links between accounting and imperial processes, there is much less on how economists from what we call the Global South today have counted their own economies. Shifting the focus to economists from the Global South, rather than colonisers, offers room for new perspectives on what national accounting did for the Global South. Studies that examine the imperial practises of counting their foreign territories have uncovered how national accounting was yet another tool to govern, control and suppress the populations of the Global South. My study shows the contrary: natives of the Global South used national accounting as an emancipatory tool. Studying instances of national accounting in the Global South can give us further insight into how and why measuring happens, and how it reflects and shapes our reality. Examining the North American case alongside the Indian case could reveal new insights. India was only starting its nationalist movement in the early 1870s. North America had been independent for almost hundred years. The comparison could then identify differences of doing national accounting in a free versus a colonised country.

• Wednesday 5 July 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  GIORCELLI Michela (UCLA) : “The Effects of Managerial Education on Manager’s Career Outcomes”

• Wednesday 21 June 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1-09

  MITCHENER Kris ((Leavey School of Business)) : How do Financial Crises Redistribute Risk?

  Kris J. Mitchener, Angela Vossmeyer

  Abstract

  We examine how financial crises redistribute risk, employing novel empirical methods and micro data from the largest financial crisis of the 20th century – the Great Depression. Using balance-sheet and systemic risk measures at the bank level, we build an econometric model with incidental truncation that jointly considers bank survival, the type of bank closure (consolidations, absorption, and failures), and changes to bank risk. Despite roughly 9,000 bank closures, risk did not leave the financial system; instead, it increased. We show that risk was redistributed to banks that were healthier prior to the financial crisis. A key mechanism driving the redistribution of risk was bank acquisition. Each acquisition increases the balance-sheet and systemic risk of the acquiring bank by 25%. Our findings suggest that financial crises do not quickly purge risk from the system, and that merger policies commonly used to deal with troubled financial institutions during crises have important implications for systemic risk

• Wednesday 14 June 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  GONZÁLEZ PALOMARES David (Université de Oviedo) : *

• Wednesday 14 June 2023 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.15, Campus Jourdan

  RODRIGUES Lisbeth (Université de Lisbonne) : A Holy Alliance: Distributional Effects of Debt Service in Portugal, 1560-18001

  Leonor Freire Costa, Paulo B. Brito

  Abstract

  This paper examines the distributional effects of public debt in Portugal from 1560 to 1800. The timeframe encompasses the transition of two distinct administrative structures from a fragmented to a centralized tax system. Whether fragmented or centralized, the tax administration established the parameters for the interaction between the monarch and bondholders in the execution of fiscal or debt contracts. The financial contract that supported this interaction placed the burden of annual interest collection on the bondholder, which was directly linked to the location of the fiscal district assigned for that payment. This paper raises the question of whether these two models yielded different distributional effects - potentially associated with the downward trend in interest rates - and whether they facilitated the coalition between the sovereign borrower and particular creditors

• Wednesday 7 June 2023 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  GINALSKI Stéphanie (Université de Lausanne) : «Kunstkapital » : la Société des beaux-arts de Zurich et ses réseaux financiers durant l’entre-deux-guerres.

  Abstract

  En 2021, l’arrivée de la "collection Bührle" au Kunsthaus de Zurich fait l’objet de vives polémiques largement relayées dans les médias, aussi bien en Suisse qu’à l’étranger. Les critiques portent notamment sur l’origine controversée de certaines œuvres acquises par le fabriquant d’armes et collectionneur Emil Georg Bührle, les fortes connexions entre élites artistiques, politiques et financières zurichoises, ou encore l’importance des subventions publiques engagées par la ville. Cette présentation propose de replacer ces débats dans une histoire plus longue des acteurs et des réseaux qui firent du Kunsthaus et de la société des beaux-arts de Zurich, la Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft, des institutions de premier plan en Suisse et en Europe. Il s’agira de montrer comment, durant l’entre-deux-guerres déjà, les élites financières se sont emparées de cette société pour faire de l’art un véritable « capital, » dans un contexte marqué à la fois par le « take-off » du marché de l’art et de la place financière suisses.

• Wednesday 24 May 2023 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  RASTER Tom (PSE) : Breaking the ice: The persistent effect of export pioneers on trade relationships

  Abstract

  Trade theory holds that export pioneers - creators of new trade links - can substantially alter trade flows and lead exporters to discover their comparative advantage. I offer a first causal test of this theory, drawing on millions of captain voyages between the Baltic and North Sea between 1500 and 1855. For identification, I rely on drastic year-to-year variation in sea ice, which exogenously re-routes captains to towns they or their peers had not visited previously. I find that once (quasi-randomly) exposed to a new port, captains and their townspeople are very likely to return to this town and that trade flows and even the export mix are lastingly altered. This finding highlights the importance of pioneers and policies, such as export promotion, that foster them.

• Wednesday 17 May 2023 12:00-13:30

  SalleR1.09, Campus Jourdan

  JURSA Michael (University of Vienna) : Growth, Prosperity and Inequality in a Pre-Modern Complex Agrarian Economy: the Case of Babylonia in the Age of Empires (6th Cent. BCE)"

  Abstract

  This paper presents quantitative and qualitative economic data from Ancient Babylonia in the Iron Age, arguing that it is possible to describe macro-economic trends that led to economic growth, greater (median) prosperity and, concomittantly, to greater inequality. This is possibly the earliest test case for studying the nexus between these phenomena based on statistically (more or less) sound reasoning.

• Tuesday 16 May 2023 14:00-17:00

  PSE-ENS Jourdan. 58 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris :Auditorium

  Atelier Simiand

  Abstract

  The two most influential books in economic history of the new millennium, Ken Pomeranz’ The Great Divergence, and Thomas Piketty Capital in the 21st century, offer two complementary views: the former puts the accent on areas, regions, eventually national differentiation over time, in terms of growth and despite initially quite similar structures and institutions. The latter insists on social inequalities within countries, which are then investigated in their historical and comparative perspective. For the first time, these two authors will be gathered in a round table; the aim is precisely to discuss the interplay between their perspectives, in both analytical and historical empirical terms. Did the great divergence modify social inequalities in the concerned, and other areas? And viceversa, how were social inequalities influenced by the great divergence? And, even more broadly, how do we investigate similar interplays over a longer span of time (in particular in the 20th century) and in other areas (for example Africa). Piketty’s latest book, A brief history of equality (2022) offers a first attempt to answer these (and other questions). This round table, part of the debates organized by the François Simiand Center of Economic and Social History at the Paris School of Economics and the EHESS, will start from this synthesis to discuss further integrations and developments.

• Wednesday 10 May 2023 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  DE LA VAISSIÈRE Etienne (EHESS) : Zones monétaires, États et grand commerce caravanier : soie, argent et fourrures dans l’Asie du Haut Moyen-Âge

  Abstract

  Depuis les travaux pionniers de Maurice Lombard à l'EHESS il y a 60 ans, les découvertes des corpus d’archives centre-asiatiques sont venues bouleverser nos connaissances sur le grand commerce caravanier, complétant et modifiant les riches conclusions qu’il avait tirées des seules sources arabes. Le grand commerce musulman et avant lui la « route de la soie » peuvent maintenant être traités dans une perspective qui permet d'aborder les ressorts économiques de ces échanges. Elle les place au point de rencontre de plusieurs zones monétaires, la soie chinoise, l’argent iranien et les fourrures du nord. Le commerce s’encastre et se désencastre. Il s’efface en partie, selon une périodisation précise, devant le tribut et l’action des Etats.

• Friday 21 April 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09

  *

• Wednesday 19 April 2023 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  RIDOLFI Leonardo (University of Siena) : The effect of mechanisation on wages and employment: Evidence from the historical diffusion of steam-power

  Leonardo Ridolfi (University of Siena), Carla Salvo (Sapienza University of Rome), and Jacob Weisdorf (Sapienza University of Rome and CEPR) Abstract

  Abstract

  Is mechanisation labour-displacing? We use the industrial censuses from 19th-century France to examine the effect on wages and employment of one of the greatest waves of mechanisation in history: the diffusion of steam-power. We find that the rates of growth of employment and wages were considerably higher in steam-adopting industries than in non-steam-adopting ones, both in the shorter and longer run. This finding disputes the widespread belief that industrial modernisation entailed technical unemployment and falling labour-compensation. As old and new technologies often coexist even in the same production unit, our analysis also exploits the interface between the traditional (i.e. wind, water and animal) motive-powers and the new (steam-powered) ones. Our observed effect of steam-power on wages and employment varied extensively depending on how steam-technology conjoined the traditional motive-powers

• Wednesday 12 April 2023 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  DYKSTRA Maura (Caltech) : Enforcement, Agency, and Accounting Cycles: The Institutional Context of the Late Imperial Chinese Business

  Abstract

  This paper will review some of the accounting practices of Qing dynasty firms as they created particular conditions for long-distance trade. Relying mostly on a sample of litigation pertaining to debts and obligations from the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century archive of the municipality of Chongqing, it argues that the distinct but synchronous accounting cycles of Chinese firms were particularly suited to the enforcement context of Qing markets.

• Wednesday 5 April 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  LOPEZ CERMENO Alexandra (Lund University) : The Long run unexpected consequences of the arsenal of democracy

  Abstract

  This paper aims to evaluate why some public investment programmes thrive in promoting regional economic growth while others fail. We use the largest government procurement programme in the history of the US as a natural experiment. Our database consists of 13,531 individual observations of geocoded data by industry and good of US federal investments during WWII. We split the analysis into developed industrial counties (industrial clusters, high, medium, and low tech) and less industrialized counties (agricultural) and measure the impact of the investments using differences in differences analysis combined with propensity score matching. Our main result is that Federal investments were successful depending on the previous comparative advantage of the counties that obtained the public funds. Therefore, we find no significant effect on less industrialized counties but a significant one on the manufacturing and service sectors of industrial counties. We also show that returns of the war investments depended both on their nature and location (and their interaction) according to technology type. We observe a significantly larger effect of those investments where their relative technology intensity corresponds with the comparative advantage of their location. The higher returns corresponded to high-tech investments in counties already specialized in that type of manufacturing production. These results have some important implications for the design of regional and industrial policies

• Wednesday 29 March 2023 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  MAGGOR Noam (IEA Paris) : Freights and Rates: Railroad Regulation as American Industrial Policy

  Abstract

  This paper examines the controversy over railroad freight rate regulation in the late nineteenth century United States. Did state railroad commissions have the right to dictate shipping rates to the railroad industry - the biggest and most strategically important economic sector in this period - and, if yes, what would be the consequences? It shows that advocates of rate regulation, who mostly hailed from the American periphery, envisioned government control over prices as a form of developmental industrial policy. They sought to avoid American dependence on resource extraction and protect producers on the western frontier. They were remarkably successful, with important implications for the economic geography of the U.S., patterns of regional inequality, and nature of American institutions

• Wednesday 22 March 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  BECK KNUDSEN Anne Sofie (University of Copenhagen) : Those Who Stayed: Selection and Cultural Change in the Age of Mass Migration

  Abstract

  This paper studies the cultural determinants and consequences of mass emigration from Scandinavia to North America in the 19th century. I test the hypothesis that people with collectivist traits tended to stay rather than emigrate because they faced higher costs of leaving familiar social networks behind. Exploiting near-complete data on 1.5 million emigrants and 10 million stayers in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, I find that children who grew up in households that practiced stronger collectivist norms were less likely to emigrate later in life. I proceed to document that this type of selective emigration generated lasting change in migrant-sending locations. Locations that experienced larger outflows of particularly selected individuals are thus more collectivist today

• Wednesday 15 March 2023 12:00-13:30

  Annulé

  SCHNEIDER Sabine (Oxford University) : International Finance, Bilateral Cooperation and the World Silver Crisis, 1871-1879

  Abstract

  Imperial Germany’s monetary union in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War (1870/71) necessitated the liquidation of vast quantities of German silver stocks on world markets. Between 1871 and 1879, the German Chancellery engaged an international network of banks and refiners to acquire gold-backed assets in return for selling its silver in Europe and in South and East Asia. This paper reconstructs the Chancellery’s network of financial agents and presents the most comprehensive picture yet of the transcontinental bullion flows that underpinned Germany’s monetary reforms. Based on a wealth of banking and government records, the paper yields a more nuanced understanding of the geographic outlets and strategy of Germany’s bullion trade and its impact on the global silver glut that set in from 1872. The ensuing macroeconomic disruption that accompanied Germany’s demonetization gave rise to both prolonged uncertainty in bullion markets and growing diplomatic tensions across Europe.

• Wednesday 8 March 2023 13:30-16:30

  Salle R2.01,Campus Jourdan

  Atelier François Simiand: Autour du livre de Denis Cogneau Un empire bon marché: Histoire et économie politique de la colonisation française, XIXe-XXe siècle (Seuil, 2023)

  Abstract

  Intervenants : Frederick Cooper (historien New York University) Christelle Dumas (économiste, Université de Fribourg) Nadji Safir (sociologue, Université d'Alger) David Todd (historien, Sciences Po)

• Wednesday 15 February 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  BEIGELMAN Marie (Université de Barcelonne) : Intergenerational Impact of Labor Coercion

  Abstract

  This paper studies the intergenerational impact of labour coercion in the French West Indies. I investigate how conditions in which slave ancestors were exploited affected descendants’ health, family structure, and criminal behaviour over more than five generations. To do so, I undertake a massive digitation effort of handwritten administrative records (census, civil records, convicts’ registries) on slaves and descendants, using surnames as a quasi-perfect identifier of an individual’s ancestor. Using information on slave mortality in the decades preceding abolition, I document sizable difference in labour coercion intensity depending on the crop produced: sugar or coffee. These differences are partly driven by a plausibly exogenous shock on sugarcane prices prior to the abolition of slavery. I build on this finding to construct a surname-level measure of labour coercion intensity with two levels of variation: at the county of enslavement level, depending on past sugarcane production intensity; at the ancestor level, whether she experienced slave trade. The second on-going part of this project investigates the intergenerational impact of labour coercion intensity on child mortality, family structure, and criminal behaviour at different points in time: in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery (1852-1856), thirty years afterwards, a century later.

• Wednesday 8 February 2023 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  ARNOUX Mathieu (EHESS/CRH) : Un monde sans ressources. Albin Michel Editeur

  Abstract

  Le réchauffement climatique et la transition écologique ont placé la notion de « ressources » au centre de nos préoccupations. Or son histoire, plus ancienne qu’il n’y paraît, est une problématique majeure de la construction des sociétés. Dès le Moyen Âge, les Européens eurent le souci de nourrir les affamés, vêtir les indigents, loger les sans-abris, autant de besoins concrets auxquels tâchèrent de répondre l’Église et les pouvoirs politiques, en s’efforçant de construire un mode de vie durable. Explorant les liens tissés au cœur de la grande croissance médiévale entre besoin et développement, sobriété et consommation, Mathieu Arnoux souligne à la fois les réussites et les impasses d’un système économique construit presque exclusivement sur l’exploitation de ressources renouvelables, au risque de mettre en crise le régime féodal?; ce dont témoignent aussi bien une célèbre œuvre de fiction, le Roman de Renart, que les statuts de grandes communautés monastiques, comme l’ordre de Cîteaux. À l’heure où l’épuisement des ressources pose la question de la survie des modes contemporains de développement et d’existence, nous pouvons tirer profit des leçons, étonnamment modernes et ingénieuses, du Moyen Âge chrétien.

• Wednesday 1 February 2023 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  GIPOULOUX François (CNRS / EHESS) : Le capital introuvable - Dynamique et contraintes des réseaux marchands chinois, XVIe-XIXe siècle

  Abstract

  Cette présentation réexamine la question de la divergence entre Europe et Chine en revenant sur le rôle joué les grands réseaux régionaux de marchands chinois. Du XVIe au XIXe siècle, trois groupes de marchands du Fujian, de Huizhou et du Shanxi, ont joué un rôle prépondérant dans l’essor de l’économie marchande en Chine. Cerner les ressorts de leur dynamisme, mais aussi les contraintes dans lesquelles ils sont enserrés, implique d’exploiter une documentation hétérogène et fragmentée concernant leurs pratiques commerciales, les modalités de leur association, leur comptabilité, leur stratégie d’investissement. Si la Chine des Ming et des Qing voit la multiplication de riches négociants, l’entrepreneur de type capitaliste, au sens que Weber lui donnait, semble absent du paysage économique et social. Trois grandes questions structureront l’exposé: 1. Une révolution commerciale se produit à deux reprises dans l’histoire longue de la Chine, sous les Song, au XIIe siècle, et à la fin des Ming au milieu du XVIe siècle. Pourquoi n’a-t-elle pu porter de fruits? Quels sont les facteurs qui ont inhibé sa transformation en une révolution industrielle, comme celle qu’a connue l’Europe, ou même une révolution industrieuse, qui a caractérisé le Japon de l’ère Tokugawa? 2. Comment s’est constitué cet écosystème particulier, fait de dispositions intangibles, qui a sous-tendu, du XVIe au XIXe siècle, l’extraordinaire essor de l’économie marchande en Chine? Mais explique-t-il aussi son échec et en particulier l’impossible transmutation de l’épargne en capital ? Pourquoi l’accumulation du capital est-elle apparue aussi problématique en Chine ? C’est là que se dévoile le rôle joué par des facteurs habituellement situés hors du champ de l’analyse économique stricto sensu : le poids économique du clan et des lignages, l’environnement juridique voire religieux des pratiques affaires, la prégnance des injonctions morales codifiées en orthodoxie. 3. Le marchand opère dans un univers complexe où se côtoient intermédiaires avides de commissions, contrebandiers, pirates, gentry locale et fonctionnaires corrompus. Il importe alors de décrypter le décalage entre le discours officiel et la pratique, à travers le parcours de trois personnages centraux dans la conduite des affaires en Chine — le bailleur de fonds, l’intermédiaire, et l’entrepreneur commercial — ainsi que les relations ambigües qu’ils entretiennent avec la bureaucratie impériale.

• Wednesday 25 January 2023 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  VIALLET - THEVENIN Scott : l'émergence d'un espace élitaire impérial et ses conséquences sur l'empire colonial français ; 1885 - 1939

  Abstract

  Cette présentation prend pour objet l’espace impérial, défini par les circulations de groupes élitaires au sein de l’empire colonial français. Les parcours des élites impériales participent de la structuration de l’Empire. Cette recherche s'attache à décrire les processus qui participent de l’émergence de cet espace, le structurent et lui confèrent une certaine spécificité. Il s'appuie sur une analyse des carrières et origines sociales des principaux groupes dirigeants de l'empire colonial français (gouverneurs coloniaux, inspecteurs des colonies, généraux, hommes d’affaires et parlementaires), à partir d'une base de données historique ad hoc de 1300 individus. Nous montrons que l’espace impérial apparaît par déformation de l’espace élitaire métropolitain, et couplage progressif de groupes professionnels avec des espaces géographiques. Autrement dit, l’espace impérial élitaire émerge dans un double mouvement, synchronique, de dissociation des élites métropolitaines et d’interconnexions entre groupes élitaires impériaux ainsi que de mise en relation entre les groupes élitaires impériaux et les territoires colonisés. Leur professionnalisation et partant, l’émergence de l’espace impérial sont alimentés – en sus de logiques organisationnelles - par les opportunités de carrières que les individus trouvent dans les colonies et leur reconversion difficile dans l’espace métropolitain.

• Wednesday 18 January 2023 12:00-13:30

  R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  JUIF Dacil (Université Carlos III Madrid) : The impact of copper mining activities on education in Zambia from a long-term perspective (1920 to 2000)

  with Laura Maravall-Buckwalter

  Abstract

  The cross-country “resource curse” literature links dependence on minerals to worsening socio-economic outcomes, including education. We assess the local impact of large-scale mining activities on schooling in Zambia, a copper-dependent economy, since 1920. We use census data from IPUMS International and study how education differs across regions during the period 1920-2000. Our preliminary results show that proximity to mines raises the average years of schooling by up to around 30 percent in the 1940s. Contrary to what previous African economic history literature has claimed, early mission location has no effect on the comparative development of education within Zambia. The mechanisms explored include income and wealth, urbanization, comparatively skill-intensive job opportunities, and a better supply of schooling by state and mine companies.

• Wednesday 11 January 2023 09:00-17:00

  Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan

  Atelier Simiand n°4

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 14 December 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan

  KOEHLER-DERRICK Gabriel : Land Redistribution, Inequality, and Crisis: Evidence from Colonial Ireland

  Abstract

  We study the long-run consequences of land redistribution for political inequality and economic development. Between 1652-9, approximately a third of Ireland’s land was redistributed from Irish Catholic elites to English Protestants under the Cromwellian Settlement. While seminal accounts argue that Ireland’s subsequent economic problems, culminating in the Great Famine of 1845-9, can ultimately be traced back to this event, the connection has never been empirically tested. We combine an unusually rich set of granular data sources with several quasi-experimental research designs to show that local-level variation in land redistribution predicts the severity of the famine two centuries later. To make sense of this persistence, we (1) demonstrate that patterns of land ownership remained fixed following the Settlement; (2) show that political representation shifted away from localities where Catholics represented a greater share of the population; (3) establish that increased political and economic inequality reduced the provision of welfare to the Catholic poor, which ultimately worsened the impact of the Famine.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 7 December 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.01 Campus Jourdan

  VONYO Tamas : War and Socialism: Economic Backwardness in Eastern Europe

  Abstract

  The monograph project builds on the author’s extensive research on economic growth in Central and Eastern Europe under state socialism. Relative backwardness had long been understood as a potential source of growth from Marx, through mid-twentieth century structural economics, to neoclassical growth theory. To economic historians, the canonical references are Gerschenkron on late industrialization and Abramovitz on conditional convergence. In these theoretical frameworks, the postwar economic performance of Eastern Europe was interpreted as a growth failure. Socialism was successful in mobilizing resources for growth but used them inefficiently. Early growth accounts confirmed this view, which echoed institutionalist interpretations favored by comparative economists in Eastern Europe. New growth models, by contrast, highlight the role of endogenous innovation and skill-biased technical change. Human capital is broadly seen as the main source of long run growth. Our standard view on comparative development in Europe since WWII requires revision, both considering recently revised Eastern European growth accounts and new tenets in growth theory. The core argument of the book is that the disproportionately large negative impact of the world wars, with long exposure to warfare, unprecedented population shocks and political disintegration, permanently dislocated the economies of Eastern Europe. Colossal loss of human capital thwarted innovation, reduced returns on new investment, and delayed both postwar reconstruction and structural modernization. The main negative effect of the Cold War was neither trade diversion nor the burden defense spending but instead administrative barriers of access to western technology. Socialist economic progress was stalled in the 1980s not by systemic failure but by the oil shocks and sovereign debt crises in their aftermath. Growth came to a standstill not because of a productivity failure but because of the failure to sustain capital high levels of investment. Post-socialist development could not achieve convergence either despite liberal reforms or reintegration into western markets. Disintegration (often in violent form) and depopulation returned to Eastern Europe after 1990, limiting growth in much the same fashion as they had done half a century earlier.

• Wednesday 30 November 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.01 Campus Jourdan

  PALMA Nuno (University of Manchester ) : American treasure and the decline of Spain

  Abstract

  Spain was one of the world’s richest countries and a first-rank European power around 1500. Two centuries later it was a backwater. In this paper, we study the long-run impact of the influx of silver from the New World since 1500 for the economic development of Spain. Compared with a synthetic counterfactual, the price level in Spain increased by up to 200% more by the mid-seventeenth century. Spain’s GDP per capita outperformed other European nations for around a century: by 1600, it was close to 40% higher than in its counterfactual. However, this effect was reversed in the following 150 years: by 1750, GDP per capita was 40% lower than it would have been if Spain had not been the first-wave receiver of the American treasure.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 23 November 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.01 Campus Jourdan

  SCHWANK Hanna (University of Bonn) : Disruptive Effects of Natural Disasters: The 1906 San Francisco Fire

  Abstract

  Natural disasters are growing in frequency globally. Understanding how vulnerable populations respond to these disasters is essential for effective policy response. This paper explores the short- and long-run consequences of the 1906 San Francisco Fire, one of the largest urban fires in American history. Using linked Census records, I follow residents of San Francisco and their children from 1900 to 1940. Historical records suggest that exogenous factors such as wind and the availability of water determined where the fire stopped. I implement a spatial regression discontinuity design across the boundary of the razed area to identify the effect of the fire on those who lost their home to it. I find that in the short run, the fire displaced affected residents, forced them into lower paying occupations and out of entrepreneurship. Experiencing the disaster disrupted children’s school attendance and led to an average loss of six months of education. While most effects attenuated over time, the negative effect on business ownership persists even in 1940, 34 years after the fire. Therefore, my findings reject the hope for a “reversal of fortune” for the victims, in contrast to what is found for more recent natural disasters such as hurricane.

• Wednesday 16 November 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan

  TRAVESIO Emiliano (Universidad Carlos III ) : Freedom in labour: ‘free wombs’ and slave emancipation in postcolonial Uruguay

  Abstract

  Slavery casts a long shadow on economic and social inequality in the Americas. To understand its legacy we must consider how it came to an end in the 19th century as well as the extent of slave labour itself in the colonial and early national periods. The ‘freedom of wombs’ enshrined in Uruguay’s independence program (1825) and first constitution (1830) was emblematic of the slavery policy of Latin American creole elites during the so-called ‘lost decades’ after colonial rule. Under these free-womb laws, slaves’ children were declared free at birth, but existing slaves remained enslaved and slavery still legitimate. Slave emancipation in this context has rarely been quantitatively studied because of the source lacunae caused by poor state capacity and decades of political unrest. I rely on a new dataset constructed from manuscript population listings from 1834-36 to describe and analyse how Black people (Africans and their immediate descendants) laboured for freedom in Uruguay. I find that the free-wombs legislation was not universally applied and had a small direct impact, reaching only 8% of free Black people, most of whom became free because they paid for their emancipation or because they were born to free parents. Moreover, numeracy rates were higher for free Afro-Uruguayans than for slaves, even if deep-rooted racial gaps in human capital remained large. Using a probit model to control for the effects of age, place of birth, gender, and other covariates, I argue that Black people living in the countryside and in areas of small-scale farming were more likely to be free. Only a minority of Afro-descended people achieved freedom for themselves and their families in early-independent Uruguay. They did so through their own labour—both in the sense of working and giving birth—in an institutional context which was at best indifferent to their destiny.

• Wednesday 9 November 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.01 Campus Jourdan

  GIEROK Victoria (Oxford University) : Taxation, Credit and Public Expenditure in Urban Germany, 1400-1800

  Abstract

  How did urban revenues and expenditure evolve in pre-industrial Germany? Trends in public wealth are crucial to understanding economic growth, public goods provision and inequality. This paper presents first trends in urban revenues and expenditure from 1350 to 1800. It is based on a novel city-level dataset comprising 22 cities. City selection is shown to be representative of the urban Empire at large. The data reveal the following trends: German cities financed themselves mostly through taxation and to a lesser extent through credit. While income from wealth taxes declined until 1550, income from consumption taxes and credit made up the shortfall. Together, this likely led to an increase in inequality. From 1550, this trend reversed and wealth taxes provided for a large share of income during and after the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). Prior to the war, cities spent most of their revenues on construction and debt servicing. Construction was focused on administrative buildings. After the war, military expenses and debt servicing dominated city expenditure.

• Wednesday 2 November 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.01 Campus Jourdan

  BOBERG-FAZLIC Nina (University of Southern Denmark.) : Taking it outside: Danish-American religious conflict and the integration of Danish migrants

  with Jeanet Bentzen, Paul Sharp, Christian Skovsgaard, and Christian Vedel

  Abstract

  The integration of immigrants into the society of the host country is a question of substantial importance for both research and policy. Religion is often seen as a barrier in this context. This paper contributes to the debate by studying Danish migrants emigrating to the U.S. during the age of mass migration, who are generally described as having integrated exceptionally rapidly. While Denmark is usually conceived as a very homogeneous country, during this time period a religious conflict pitted Grundtvigians against the evangelical ‘Inner Mission’ movement; a conflict which played out even more strongly within the Danish communities in the U.S. than in Denmark. We use this unique historical setting to investigate the role of religion, and especially of religious conflict, for the integration and economic success of migrants. Grundtvigian communities focused on preserving Danish culture and tradition, whereas Inner Mission communities argued for assimilation into American society. We investigate whether followers of one congregation integrated faster than those of the other and whether areas with rival churches experienced more or less integration. We are thereby able to draw conclusions on the role of religious institutions for integration and demonstrate that they need not be a barrier.

• Wednesday 26 October 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.01 Campus Jourdan

  RYCKBOSCH Wouter (Université de Bruxelles) : Inequality in the streets. Using witness depositions to study social and economic change in 18th and 19th-century urban Belgium

  Abstract

  Between 1750 and 1850 cities in Belgium went through a period of profound and comprehensive transition. Industrial mechanisation, urban growth, migration, and political revolution brought an end to the ‘ancien régime’: the society of orders was abolished and replaced by one of the most unequal class-based countries in 19th-century Europe. Although the emergence of a property- and class-based society is widely regarded as one of the most fundamental changes in history, its causes and effects in many cases remain up for debate and revision. By looking at subtle changes in social interactions in everyday life in the modernising city, this contribution aims to contribute to a better understanding of the reconfiguration of the inequality regime in 18th- and 19th-century Belgium. Historians have long argued that everyday life and social relations, such as time-use and labour activities, were impacted by the ascent of industrial mechanisation (Thompson; Glennie & Thrift; Voth). However, in recent years the opposite argument has also been formulated: that the rise of capitalism stimulated property- and class-based social distinctions in daily life prior to, and ultimately leading up to, the French Revolution (Roche; Sewell). The current paper aims to test such hypotheses by examining how everyday patterns of labour, leisure, urban space, and time converged or diverged for different social groups between 1700 and 1900. In order to do so I will use a new dataset of digitised witness depositions from criminal court cases from the town of Bruges to extract and trace patterns over the course of this period.

• Wednesday 19 October 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan

  GONZALEZ FELIPE (Queen Mary University) : Policies in Turbulent Times: Historical Evidence from Salvador Allende's Milk Program

  joint work with Mounu Prem

  Abstract

  Democracies weaken when policies are implemented poorly and fail to sustain or increase government support. We study the link between policy and politics in the context of a country-wide milk program aiming to improve children's health during Salvador Allende's government (1970-1973) in Chile. Using historical data, we show that milk distribution increased markedly during Allende's tenure and followed beneficiaries closely without being distorted by political considerations. Moreover, we show that this public health policy was successful in building political support for Allende's coalition at times when democracy was at risk. We conclude that well-implemented policies can strengthen governments even in turbulent times.

• Wednesday 12 October 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.13, Campus Jourdan

  BENVENISTE Stéphane (INED-AMSE) : Political and Business Dynasties in France: a Social Gradient in Returns to Elite Education

  Abstract

  Dynasties constitute a visible sign of intergenerational persistence and raise questions on the legitimacy of the ruling elite. Among graduates of prestigious higher education institutions, this paper quantifies occupational following in the French political and business elites. I link nominative data on 103,309 graduates from 12 French Grandes Écoles born between 1931 and 1975 to their professional careers between 1958 and 2019 as politicians with national-level mandates or as board members of French firms. Identifying familial lineage though shared surnames, I find that children of political and business leaders had higher chances than their graduate peers to embrace careers in the elite, emphasizing a social gradient in returns to elite education. Political dynasties were particularly sizeable, although progressively declining. These dynasties also affect the composition of the French elite. Indeed, dynastical board members are less frequently graduates from top institutions than first-generation directors, and members of the elite manage to propel their offspring much younger to top business and political positions.

• Wednesday 5 October 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan

  MOHR Cathrin (University of Bonn ) : Who makes it in an Autocracy? Networks and Political Careers in the GDR

  Leonie Bielefeld

  Abstract

  We study the link between networks and political careers in former autocratic East Germany. Using detailed CV data on potential politicians and information about the official state hierarchy, we track and quantify career trajectories within the regime over time. Becoming connected to leading politicians can harm high-profile careers, while it has a positive effect on low-profile careers. We exploit exogenous networks that were formed through joint imprisonment during the Nazi Era. An extensive analysis of potential mechanisms suggests that the negative effect of being linked to the party leadership on individuals' probability to be part of the ruling elite is the result of anti-factionalism.

• Wednesday 28 September 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.01 Campus Jourdan

  ROSENTHAL Jean-Laurent (Caltech) : Do Entrepreneurs Want Control? A Historical and Theoretical Exploration

  Joint with Naomi Lamoreaux (Yale and Michigan)

  Abstract

  There are a number of accounts in US business history of entrepreneurs who secured financial backing for startups only to find that their investors were more intent on profiting from the initial discovery than in funding ongoing innovation. The entrepreneurs we tend to know about quit those ventures, often forfeiting their intellectual property as a consequence, and found backing to start additional ventures that were very successful. In the late nineteenth century US entrepreneurs could do little about this problem of conservative investors. The only way they could secure control over their startups was to own more than fifty percent of the equity. But in Great Britain or on the European continent, it was possible to separate income rights from control rights, and entrepreneurs could lock in control at the time the enterprise was formed. The purpose of this paper is to explore the circumstances under which they would want to take this step using a simple two-period model in which entrepreneurs get a benefit from innovating that is not captured by the firm or its investors. This additional benefit means that there are projects the entrepreneur would want to take on in the second period that would impose losses on the investor. Knowing this, the investor would require an additional payment upfront if the entrepreneur wanted to lock in control. The model suggests that entrepreneurs can only bear this cost in circumstances where the opportunity cost of capital is low and/or the externality is high. That is, having permissive legal rules is only sometimes useful.

• Wednesday 21 September 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan

  MA Debin (University of Oxford) : Ideology and Economic Change: the Contrasting Paths to the Modern Economy in late 19th century China and Japan

  with Jared Rubin

  Abstract

  This paper revisits the old thesis of the contrasting paths of modernization between Japan and China. It develops a new analytical framework regarding the role of ideology and ideological change—Meiji Japan’s decisive turn towards the West pitted against Qing China’s lethargic response to the Western imperialism—as the key driver behind these contrasting paths. Our model and historical narrative highlights the contrast between Tokugawa Japan’s feudal decentralized political regime and Qing China’s centralized bureaucratic system as key determinants behind the differential patterns of ideological realignment. Meanwhile, we argue that the 1894-95 Japanese naval victory over China could not be justified under the prevailing Imperial Chinese ideology and thus served as the catalyst for China’s subsequent ideological transformation, which occurred via borrowing Japan’s successful Meiji reforms of both institutions and ideology. Our new analytical framework developed closely from a comparative historical narrative sheds new insights on the role of ideology and ideological change – as distinguished from culture and institutions - to our understanding of political and economic change.

• Wednesday 14 September 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan

  TERKI-MIGNOT Auriane (University of Cambridge) : Occupational structure and patterns of women's work in France, 1792-1901

  Abstract

  This paper will introduce a project aiming to establish patterns of women’s work over the period of French industrialisation. It will propose a methodology to identify case studies and extract useable data on women’s work from population listings and censuses, from the Revolutionary period to the early twentieth-century. The paper will end with preliminary estimates of female and male labour force participation rates and sectoral distribution drawn from two case studies in the Seine-Maritime and the Eure-et-Loir. Overall, the paper will aim to show that data on women’s work is crucial to our understanding of the chronology, mechanisms, and nature of French industrialisation and that, in the French case, such data can be successfully retrieved.

• Wednesday 29 June 2022 09:30-18:30

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  Atelier SIMIAND

• Wednesday 22 June 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.15, Campus Jourdan

  GARCIA CORNEJO Sebastian (PSE) : Evidence of financial premium on colonial capital investment during the French second colonial empire?

  Abstract

  This project explores financial data from the DFIH database, studying a sample of colonial firms listed in the Paris stock exchange. Despite the difficulties of identifying and quantifying a colonial premium, data exhibits patterns consistent with historical and macroeconomic cycles, allowing to draw some general conclusions about the relationship between private capital and colonialism during the French 'second' Colonial Empire (1830-1962).

• Wednesday 15 June 2022 12:00-13:30

  On line

  RUDERMAN Anne (LSE) : Cross-Cultural Trade and the Slave Ship the Bonne Société: Baskets of Goods, Diverse Sellers, and Time Pressure on the African Coast.

  Abstract

  The French slave ship the Bonne Société traded bundles of goods in exchange for slaves in the port of Loango in the late eighteenth century. This paper presents detailed evidence from the ship’s trading log that decomposes the goods in the bundle and, uniquely, identifies the European and African merchants who sold captives to the boat. We examine the cross-cultural trade documented by this dataset and show that total prices increased throughout the trade, since the ship faced time pressure as soon as the first captive was aboard, and that the captain increased the price of the bundle by adding more goods and especially by adding high-price goods. We also show that sellers participated both as one-shot traders and as repeat traders, selling the ship captives at multiple points in the trade, and that sellers with honorifics indicating status positions did not appear to earn greater prices as observed in the trading log. The market we observe was neither purely based on barter nor based on goods as substitutes for currency. Our results thus add a nuanced picture of how a trade that destroyed the lives of millions of people worked “on the ground.”

• Wednesday 8 June 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  SIMSON Rebecca (University of Oxford) : Elite persistence in Sierra Leone: what can names tell us?

  with Yannick Dupraz and Henry Musa Kpaka

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 1 June 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  LEWIS Mary (Harvard University) : Restoration Commerce: France and Haiti during the Bourbon Restoration

  Abstract

  In 1825, some twenty-one years after Haiti (hitherto Saint-Domingue) had defeated France in the Haitian Revolution, Charles X formally recognized the independence of Haiti in exchange for a punishing indemnity to former landowners, originally set at 150 million French francs. Obscured in the important story of punitive debt, however, is what French officials hoped to gain from the new relationship besides a sense of recompense for former colonists. It is true that the 1825 agreement was conceived, at least in part, as a way of finally putting the claims of former planters to rest by compensating them for their lost land, and in some indirect way, for their emancipated slaves. But it was also a commercial treaty predicated on a future of trade between France and its former colony that would be both voluminous and lucrative. Aimed at creating a “most-favored” trading status for France by reducing Haitian customs duties by half for the former metropole, the 1825 recognition of Haitian independence thus was not only about settling past claims. It was always also about an imagined future where Haitian agricultural products would still be central to French commerce. This paper demonstrates the extent to which the economies of many French ports counted on trade with Haiti as a means to restore commerce and rebuild transatlantic trade following the Haitian Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. These interests in turn pushed the French crown to formally recognize the independence of Haiti.

• Wednesday 25 May 2022 14:00-15:30

  On Line

  JUHASZ Reka : Technology Adoption and Productivity Growth:Evidence from Industrialization in France

  Mara P. Squicciarini (Bocconi and CEPR), Nico Voigtländer (UCLA, NBER, and CEPR)

  Abstract

  New technologies tend to be adopted slowly and – even after being adopted – take time to be reflected in higher aggregate productivity. One prominent explanation for these patterns is the need to reorganize production, which often goes hand-in-hand with major technological breakthroughs. We study a unique setting that allows us to examine the empirical relevance of this explanation: the adoption of mechanized cotton spinning during the First Industrial Revolution in France. The new technology required reorganizing production by moving workers from their homes to the newly-formed factories. Using a novel hand-collected plant-level dataset from French archival sources, we show that productivity growth in mechanized cotton spinning was driven by the disappearance of plants in the lower tail – in contrast to other sectors that did not need to reorganize when new technologies were introduced. We provide evidence that this was driven by the need to learn about optimal ways of organizing production. This process of ‘trial and error’ led to initially low and widely dispersed productivity, and – in the subsequent decades – to high productivity growth as knowledge diffused through the economy and new entrants adopted improved methods of organizing production.

• Wednesday 18 May 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  MESPLE-SOMPS Sandrine (IRD, Paris-Dauphine-PSL University, CNRS, LEDa, DIAL.) : Decolonization of state capacity? Public revenue and expenditure from colonial times to present, evidence from former French colonies

  Cogneau Denis, PSE, IRD & EHESS -Dupraz Yannick, Aix-Marseille University, CNRS, AMSE- Knebelmann Justine, J-PAL, MIT

  Abstract

  The ability of a government to raise taxes and the strategies deployed to do so are a core feature of state capacity. For this reason, the history of taxation is narrowly intertwined with that of state-building. Surprisingly, the capacity of states to provide public services is hardly ever considered an important dimension of state building. We question to what extent the dismantlement of the French empire in Africa that occurred between 1956 and 1962 through decolonization was a major overhaul of the state's identity and practices. Over a few months' time the legitimacy to raise tax revenue shifts from metropolitan France to newly formed independent governments that became autonomous in defining budgetary orientations. Little is known about how this in-depth political transition affected the level and composition of fiscal revenue and public expenditure, notably because of the scarcity of information on the public finances of African countries between independence and the 1980s. In this paper, we reconstruct the fiscal trajectories of eighteen former French colonies in Africa spanning years 1900-2018, linking colonial and post-colonial decades with an unprecedented level of detail on the composition of tax revenue. We also produce indicators on budgetary policies. We find that very few countries achieved significant progress in fiscal capacity between the end of the colonial period and today, if we set aside income drawn from mineral resources. This is not explained by a lasting collapse of fiscal capacity at the time of independence. On the other hand, at the time of independence, we observe new budgetary orientations, particularly a reinforcement of public spending in education. The structural adjustment programmes clearly stopped this dynamic. The orientations towards more education spending required by the objectives of sustainable development only allow for catching up with the levels already reached at the end of the 1970s.

• Wednesday 11 May 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  CONDORELLI Stefano (Université de Berne) : Une histoire sociale vs une histoire institutionnelle de la Révolution financière : l'importance de l'expérimentation financière (17e-18e siècle)

• Wednesday 13 April 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  LYONS Ronan (Trinity College Dublin) : Shock of the Union – New stylised facts of Ireland’s exports, 1785-1822

  with Dan Bogart (UC Irvine), Hannah Mead Kling (Belmont Abbey) and Patrick Walsh (TCD)

  Abstract

  The impact of trade openness on local economic outcomes remains a central topic of interest in economic research and policy debate. Historical episodes of integration and disintegration can offer valuable insights on these questions. In 1801, Ireland and Britain entered a full economic and political union, yet the consequences of this on Ireland’s economic development in the early 19th century remain poorly understood. In this paper, we assemble for the first time detailed data on the volume of Ireland’s key exports, at the port-partner-commodity level, for the period 1785-1822. When combined with newly assembled price series, they yield estimates of trade growth – by sector, region and partner – before and after Union. We document new stylised facts of Ireland’s trade during this period, including rapid growth in exports of tillage, to Britain and from a range of secondary ports. These highlight an intensification of trade significantly faster than population and economic growth and underscore the paradox of Dublin’s decline in the first decades of the 19th century.

• Wednesday 6 April 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  VALEONTI Sofia (MSE) : The Money War: An Interpretation of Democracy, Depreciation, and Taxes in the U.S. Civil War

  with Ariel Ron (Southern Methodist University)

  Abstract

  Both sides in the U.S. Civil War financed military spending by issuing new fiat currencies. The Union “greenback” underwent moderate inflation (by wartime standards), but the Confederate “grayback” suffered hyperinflation. Existing explanations for these price movements typically treat only one of the two cases and adopt either a quantity-theory or rational-expectations approach. We compare Union and Confederate policies directly and highlight the importance of taxation for assuring the value of inconvertible money. Combining monetary and fiscal history literatures, we find that tax policies were determined by long-term development of democratic governing institutions. Higher levels of democracy in the North, as compared to the slaveholding South, meant greater tax policy legitimacy and administrative competence. The Union drew on this legacy to back its money effectively, while the Confederacy failed to do so. We contribute to the theory of chartalist money by drawing attention to the political determinants of effective fiscal policy.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 30 March 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  BENGTSSON Erik (Lund University) : Incomes and Income Inequality in Stockholm, 1870–1970: Evidence from Micro Data

  with Jakob Molinder (Uppsala)

  Abstract

  This paper builds on a new dataset of 36,630 randomly sampled Stockholm residents from the population register, which was also the income tax list, with information about people’s incomes of various types, age, and household composition, in the years 1870, 1880, 1900, 1920, 1940 and 1950. We use this dataset, along with a Statistics Sweden random sample of 67,733 Stockholm residents from 1970, to calculate the growth and distribution of incomes in Stockholm over a hundred years. The Gini coefficient for adults with incomes fell from about 60 in 1870 to about 50 in 1900, then increased again to almost 60 in 1920. There was a large equalization to 1940, with a Gini coefficient of slightly above 46, and further equalization to slightly above 40 in 1950 and just below 40 in 1970. The share of total income accruing to the top decile was quite stable 1870–1920 (while the top one percent’s share grew 1900–1920) and fell steeply afterwards. Women constitute the lion’s share of the bottom half of income earners. Domestic service was very low paid and the single most common occupation in the city but decreased as share of working-class jobs from 45 percent in 1870 to 10 percent in 1950. Using birthplace information in the 1940 and 1950 data, we also show that domestic migrants could improve their income significantly by moving to Stockholm. We also study inequality on the household level. The (long-run decreasing) trend is very similar on the household level compared to the individual level, but while inequality was slightly higher on the household level in 1870 and 1880, it was more equal than individual-level inequality in 1950.

• Wednesday 23 March 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan

  DAUDIN Guillaume (Université Paris Dauphine) : Not “easy to win”: The British war on French trade, 1744-1815

  Abstract

  International trade is one of the main issues at stake in the rivalry between powers. The British war on French trade from the War of Austrian Succession to the fall of Napoleon gives us a lesson on how to win it when outright destruction is not an option. We suggest a measure of the achievements of a war on French trade. We present the policies implemented by Britain to wage it: establishment of naval supremacy, overseas territorial capture, predation on French ships and extension of this predation to neutral carriers. We show that long term success implied a durable change in the structure of French trade. Finally, we compute that, compared to loses inflicted on the French economy, waging this war on trade was a costly endeavor.

• Wednesday 16 March 2022 14:00-15:30

  On Line 14h -15h 30

  STELZNER Mark (Connecticut College) : The Productivity Growth of Enslaved Workers in Antebellum America.

  with Sven BECKERT

  Abstract

  ***

• Wednesday 9 March 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  HUBERMAN Michael (U.Montreal) : All Politics is Local: The Social Housing Experiment of Red Vienna, 1923-1933

  Abstract

  The moderating effects of World War I on wealth and income inequality varied across belligerents. In Austria the state embraced austerity measures to restrain hyperinflation and respect commitments to the League of Nations. To fill the void, the Social Democratic Workers’ Party turned to its political stronghold in Vienna to advance its agenda of social spending and progressive taxation. In this paper, we cast attention on social housing, Red Vienna’s signature program. Applying an electoral-cycle model, we find that the construction of new buildings increased the party’s share of votes in municipal elections. The program mobilized the support of young families in search of affordable and quality housing. It also attracted the backing of the middle classes and elites, despite the higher tax burden imposed on them. The physical attributes of the new buildings and related investments, such as in schools, hospitals, and city infrastructure, benefited all Viennese.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 2 March 2022 14:00-15:30

  On line

  WANG Yuhua (Harvard University) : The Rise and Fall of Imperial China

  Abstract

  China was once the world’s leading superpower for almost two millennia, falling behind only in the last two centuries and now rising to dominance again. What factors led to imperial China’s decline? Yuhua Wang will discuss his new book The Rise and Fall of Imperial China, which offers a systematic look at the Chinese state from the seventh century through to the twentieth.

• Wednesday 23 February 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  GRENIER Jean-Yves (EHESS) : Le juste prix

  Abstract

  Le séminaire abordera la question du juste prix en s’interrogeant sur la possibilité de s’accorder sur une définition et, éventuellement, de lui donner un contenu opérationnel. Cette interrogation aura un contenu historique, l’accent étant mis sur une longue période moderne, entre XIIIe et XVIIIe siècle. Il s’agira de comprendre comment la question longtemps incontournable du juste prix a été résolue – ou plutôt comment on a tenté de la résoudre ou de l’éviter – à différents moments de l’histoire.

• Wednesday 16 February 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan

  BARREYRE NICOLAS (EHESS) : Quand la dette est patriotique. Politique et dette publique aux États-Unis pendant et après la guerre de Sécession.

  Abstract

  La guerre de Sécession a été le premier conflit que les États-Unis, depuis leur indépendance, ont massivement financé par emprunts auprès de leur propre population. Ce recours aux souscriptions publiques, nouveau à cet échelle, et la taille même de la dette publique fédérale ainsi amassée ont eu des conséquences politiques majeures pendant le conflit et dans l'après-guerre. Le travail présenté aujourd'hui explore ces conséquences, aussi bien en termes de politiques économiques que dans la transformation plus générale des rapports entre les Américains et l’État, et examine pourquoi cette expérience d' "emprunts populaires", comme ils étaient alors appelés, tourne rapidement court - si bien que son succès, et ses leçons, auront été largement oubliés au moment des grands emprunts publics de la Première Guerre mondiale.

• Wednesday 9 February 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan

  ORAIN Arnaud (Université Paris 8) : Vincent de Gournay, négociant de Cadix et homme d’État : auxiliaire ou fossoyeur de la politique colbertiste au 18e siècle ?

  Abstract

  Grâce à une enquête au long cours et à l’exploitation de nouveaux documents d’archives relatifs à Jacques Vincent de Gournay (1712-1759), négociant de Cadix issu de Saint-Malo, intendant du commerce (1751) et principal animateur d’un cercle de réflexion économique dans la France des années 1750, nous proposons avec Loïc Charles une biographie intellectuelle du personnage qui éclaire d’un nouveau jour les modifications de la politique économique française au 18e siècle. Tandis que la concurrence commerciale anglaise s’accentue dans l’Amérique espagnole et plus généralement sur toutes les mers du globe, Vincent de Gournay tente de repenser la façon dont l’État pourrait désormais se mettre au service du commerce – et non l’inverse, comme le voulait Colbert, qui se méfiait tant des marchands –, les grands négociants devant être appelés aux plus hautes fonctions publiques. Par-delà la dichotomie peu opérante entre « mercantilisme » et « libéralisme », nous tentons de montrer combien l’apprentissage du négoce international à Cadix a conduit Vincent de Gournay vers une pensée originale qui devait à la fois subvertir les institutions issues du colbertisme (Bureau du commerce), tout en poursuivant des buts de balance des pouvoirs qui n’étaient pas si différents de ceux du ministre de Louis XIV.

• Wednesday 2 February 2022 12:00-13:30

  On line

  SHIZUME Masato (Waseda University) : The Japanese Economy During the Great Depression: The Emergence of Macroeconomic Policy in A Small and Open Economy, 1931-1936.

  Abstract

  In this book, I revisit the achievements of Takahashi Korekiyo, a finance minister of Japan whose innovative macroeconomic policy brought Japan out of the global Great Depression in the 1930s. To this end, I review the Japanese economy in this period with data and chronology, explore the origins, intentions, and the consequences of Takahashi’s policy with econometric and archival analyses, and discuss lessons from this policy that can be applied today.

• Wednesday 26 January 2022 13:00-18:00

  Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan

  Atelier SIMIAND

• Wednesday 19 January 2022 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan

  ARNOUX Mathieu (EHESS/CRH) : Croissance économique, crédit et rentes en grains (Normandie, XIIIe-XIVe siècle)

  Abstract

  Le long mouvement de croissance démographique, agraire et économique qui transforma l’Europe entre Xe et XIVe siècle pose de multiples question à l’historien de l’économie. L’une d’entre elles porte sur la rareté de la monnaie métallique et sur l’origine et la nature des capitaux qui permirent l’investissement dans la transformation des campagnes et dans la croissance des villes. Les sources normandes des XIIIe et XIVe siècle montrent que ce problème trouva, en partie, sa solution par un usage monétaire des récoltes, qui permit la mise en place au XIIIe siècle d’un marché du crédit par échanges de rentes payée en grain, froment et orge essentiellement. L’intervention illustrera le fonctionnement de ces marchés, assis sur les marchés céréaliers locaux et l’importance des rentes en céréales pour le financement des institutions d’assistances, essentielles dans ces société. Arnoux, M. (2021). Credit and investment between town and countryside: The market in grain annuities in Normandy (thirteenth-fourteenth centuries). Continuity and Change, 36(2), 149-176. doi:10.1017/S0268416021000126

• Wednesday 12 January 2022 16:00-17:30

  On line

  ARCHIBONG Belinda (Barnard College, Columbia University) : Prison Labor: The Price of Prisons and the Lasting Effects of Incarceration

  Nonso Obikili (Center For Global Development)

  Abstract

  Institutions of justice, like prisons, can be used to serve economic and other extrajudicial interests, with lasting deleterious effects. We study the effects on incarceration when prisoners are used primarily as a source of labor using evidence from British colonial Nigeria. We digitized sixty-five years of archival records on prisons from 1920 to 1995 and provide new estimates on the value of prison labor and the effects of labor demand shocks on incarceration. We find that prison labor was economically valuable to the colonial regime, making up a significant share of colonial public works expenditure. Positive economic shocks increased incarceration rates over the colonial period. This result is reversed in the postcolonial period, where prison labor is not a notable feature of state public finance. We document a significant reduction in contemporary trust in legal institutions, like police, in areas with high historic exposure to colonial imprisonment. The resulting reduction in trust is specific to legal institutions today.

• Wednesday 5 January 2022 12:00-13:30

  On line

  LACROIX Jean (Université Paris-Saclay) : Nationalism losing its Religion: Evidence from the Papal condemnation of the Action Française

  ***

  Abstract

  How do anti-democratic organizations react to elites' opposition? This paper assesses the influence of Pope Pius XI on the development of the Action Française in interwar France to tackle this question. In 1926, the Pope condemned the Action Française (AF). As a consequence, Catholics had to choose between a potential involvement in the Action Française and accessing Catholic sacraments. We use various difference-in-differences and IV estimates to assess how the Action Française reacted to the condemnation. First, in the immediate aftermath of the condemnation, the Action Française re-organized : the number of its branches increased. Second, the Papal condemnation shaped the geography of this reaction: relatively less branches were created in highly-religious areas whereas relatively more branches were created in places were the episcopate sanctioned members of the Action Française the most. Third, additional results on voting, political violence and workers' movements suggest that the Action Française radicalized to cope with its loss of influence among its historical supporters.

• Wednesday 15 December 2021 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.21, Campus Jourdan

  HURET Romain (EHESS/CENA) : The "drones" of society? Never-married men and women, inequality and capitalism in the United States (XXth century)

• Wednesday 8 December 2021 12:00-13:30

  Settlers and norms

• Wednesday 8 December 2021 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.20, Campus Jourdan

  HADDAD Joanne (ULB) : Settlers and norms

  Abstract

  The distinctive traits of early settlers at initial stages of institutional development may be crucial for cultural formation. In 1973, the cultural geographer Wilbur Zelinsky postulated this in his doctrine of ``first effective settlement''. There is however little empirical evidence supporting the role of early settlers in shaping culture over the long run. This paper tests this hypothesis by relating early settlers' culture to within state variation in gender norms in the United States. I capture settlers' culture using past female labor force participation, women's suffrage and financial rights at their place of origin. I document the distinctive characteristics of settlers' populations and provide suggestive evidence in support of the spatial (across locations) and vertical (over time) transmission of gender norms. My results show that women's labor supply is higher, in both the short and long run, in U.S. counties that historically hosted a larger settler population originating from places with favorable gender attitudes. My findings shed new light on the importance of immigrants’ characteristics and their countries/states of origin for cultural formation in hosting societies.

• Wednesday 1 December 2021 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

  FLEISCHMANN Sandra (University of Oxford) : The Role of formal and informal Institutions in Illegitimacy development in south-western Germany

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 24 November 2021 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.13, Campus Jourdan

  WRONSKI Marcin (SGH Warsaw School of Economics ) : Wealth inequality in interwar Poland

  Abstract

  In 1923 Poland introduced an extraordinary wealth tax. We use internal statistics of the Ministry of Treasury to estimate wealth inequality in interwar Poland. This data source has not been used previously by researchers. There are no estimates of wealth inequality in interwar Poland available in the literature. According to our estimates, the top 0.01% of the wealth distribution controlled 14.8% of total private wealth. The wealth share of the top 1% stood at 37.5%. The top decile owned 60.7% of total private wealth. Wealth inequality varied strongly across regions. A comparison of the wealth inequality in Poland with wealth inequality in other European countries in the interwar period yields a diverse picture. The wealth share of the top 0.01% was highest in Europe, the wealth share of the top 1% was in the middle of the European ranking, the wealth share of the top 10% was almost the lowest in Europe. The small elite of super-rich (0.01%) was very wealthy in comparison with the European peers, but the wealth share of the rest of the top decile was relatively low.

• Wednesday 17 November 2021 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.21, Campus Jourdan

  BAULUZ Luis (Université de Bonn) : Historical trends in intergenerational wealth inequality in the US and France

  with Timothy Meyer

  Abstract

  This paper studies the wealth accumulation of different cohorts in the U.S. and France since 1950 and 1970, respectively. We provide a set of new stylized facts that shows a stark divergence between the wealth holdings of old and young adults since the 1980s, most strongly in the U.S. Using microdata for the U.S., we explore the reasons for this divergence by decomposing wealth accumulation into three components: saving, capital gains, and inheritances. While saving was the single most important component of wealth accumulation for cohorts born at the beginning of the 20th century, capital gains have started to play a much more prominent role for more recent generations. Our findings indicate that positive capital gains in recent decades are the main driver of the rising wealth differences between young and old adults. We also document stark changes in the life-cycle saving profile of old and new cohorts. Out of their lifetime incomes, different cohorts saved approximately the same, but older cohorts saved less at middle ages and more when old. Growing dissaving by old adults in recent years explains most of the decline in the US household saving rate since the 1980s."

• Wednesday 10 November 2021 12:00-13:30

  Salle R1.14, Campus Jourdan

  HAY Mark (Erasmus University Rotterdam) : Napoleon, Amsterdam, and the Reconstruction of the European Financial Economy, 1803-1818

  Abstract

  Despite being the wealthiest state in Europe, eighteenth France stands out from the common flow of European history for lacking the financial, fiscal and monetary infrastructure to mobilise the resources needed to pursue her geopolitical ambitions. It was not until the strains of military occupation and the heavy indemnities imposed on her after the second defeat of Napoleon that France developed the infrastructure needed to mobilise the resources to finance her international obligations. The speed of the development of post-Waterloo French financial, fiscal, and monetary regime continues to puzzle historians. Two explanations have been put forward. First, London financiers, most notably Baring and Rothschild, are seen as laying the foundation of the French financial-fiscal system through structuring the first major loan floatations in France, setting the example for French financiers to emulate. The second explanation sees the origins in what Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur refers to as La coulisse – the grassroots informal capital network that emerged after the bursting of the Mississippi Bubble in 1719-1720. Both explanations hold true, but they fail to account for how French grassroots financial networks and international high finance linked up. This paper argues that the missing link is to be found in Amsterdam. Amsterdam is often overlooked in the history of French public finance, but in fact it was the epicentre of the French financial system in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era. After the British severed Dutch commercial routes, the Amsterdam mercantile and financial elite searched desperately for new markets. They were quick to find a new role as bankers to Napoleon, employing their financial and commercial networks to remit plundered wealth, war subsidies and indemnities from across Europe to Paris. In doing so, they not only drew French capitalist closer into their European networks, they also infused the French system with the one element it lacked in order to consolidate, trust. This paper examines the Dutch roots of the post-1815 capital market through the financial transaction that can be understood as the starting point for the convergence of Amsterdam financial interest and Napoleonic geopolitical ambitions, the sale of the Louisiana Territory. Bio: Mark read history in Amsterdam, Paris and Oxford. His doctoral research at King’s College London explored Dutch financial diplomacy in 1780-1815. Currently, Mark is Assistant Professor in History at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is writing up a monograph for Palgrave on the financing of the sale and purchase of the Louisiana Territory. His broader research explores Napoleon war financing and the consequences thereof for the financial economies of Europe.

• Wednesday 3 November 2021 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan

  BELOT Quentin (Cresppa) : Restructuration financière et financiarisation précoce : la création de la holding PSA en 1965

  Abstract

  L'approche classique de la financiarisation des entreprises dans la littérature considère que ce phénomène se développe en parallèle de la dissolution de l'entreprise chandlerienne et à la victoire de la valeur actionnariale au sein des organisations. Cette contribution démontre, au contraire, que les conditions organisationnelles de la financiarisation en France émergent au cours de la période fordiste et sont motivées par des enjeux industriels. Nous soutenons qu'une financiarisation interne est un élément déterminant dans l'établissement des grandes entreprises chandleriennes. En nous appuyant sur les archives de PSA et sur des entretiens avec d'anciens hauts managers financiers, nous mettons en lumière la restructuration financière décisive de cette entreprise en 1965. Cet article étudie les défis auxquels PSA a été confronté dans les années 1960 afin d'expliquer pourquoi les activités de l'entreprise ont été placées sous l'autorité d'un système de holdings. Cet évènement constitue un mouvement crucial vers la financiarisation de l'organisation dans son ensemble

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 27 October 2021 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan

  O SULLIVAN Mary (Université de Genève) : Power & profit: copper mines & steam engines in late 18th century Cornwall

  Abstract

  There is a long-standing tendency in economic history, exemplified recently in Robert Allen’s The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective, to analyse the economics of machine adoption based on a calculus of cost-saving. No one has proven more articulate in challenging this approach than Eric Hobsbawm, who cautioned us against the assumption that a capitalist economy has any inherent tendency to cost-saving or technological innovation, emphasising that “[i]t has a bias only towards profit”. He suggested the potential of a history of profit to understand the motivations for introducing machines and the consequences of their adoption. This article grapples with Hobsbawm’s “profit puzzle” to understand the implications of the adoption and use of the Boulton & Watt (B&W) steam engine for capitalists and workers in Cornish copper mines between 1777 and 1791. It shows that the engine’s economic implications for the people who invested in, and worked, the Cornish copper mines were conditioned by a complex and evolving relationship between profit and power: steam power, which was crucial to the mining of copper and the costs of its production; imperial power, which was important given fluctuating demand for copper from different parts of the British Empire; and market power since control over price setting on the British copper market had decisive implications for Cornish mining profits. An analysis of the relationship between power and profit helps explain the enthusiasm for the B&W engine in Cornwall and the subsequent hostility that Cornish miners and mining adventurers displayed towards Matthew Boulton and James Watt. More generally, it suggests the potential of studying the economic and social history of new machines through the lens of profit to understand the motivations for introducing machines and the consequences of their adoption.

• Wednesday 20 October 2021 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.21, Campus Jourdan

  MANAC'H Laurine (Université Paris 1 - Panthéon Sorbonne) : L'arbitrage des litiges entre associés dans les territoires hispaniques : institutionnalisation, pratiques et territorialité du droit commercial (Catalogne, Rio de la Plata, 1812-1840)

  Abstract

  Le développement de l’arbitrage commercial en Espagne et dans la province de Buenos Aires au cours des premières décennies du XIXe siècle constitue une transformation majeure de la régulation des entreprises. En Espagne, il se manifeste par le maintien, dans la législation, de l’arbitrage forcé pour les litiges entre associés, et par l’instauration de juridictions de conciliation qui participent de cette consolidation de l’arbitrage commercial. Tandis que Buenos Aires fut le lieu d'expériences et de projets avortés. L’examen des transformations institutionnelles, des pratiques et des acteurs de l’arbitrage entre associés au début du XIXe siècle permet non seulement de participer à l’historicisation de l’arbitrage des litiges commerciaux surtout étudié pour la fin du XXe siècle, mais aussi d’approfondir l’analyse de la construction des États, et de la façon dont les territoires hispaniques ont fait l’expérience du libéralisme. Un tel sujet permettra de présenter un panorama des sources possibles pour l’étude de l’arbitrage commercial dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle.

• Wednesday 13 October 2021 12:00-14:00

  Salle R1.14,Campus Jourdan

  SGARD Jérôme (Sciences Po) : La Crise de la Dette des Années 1980: une histoire orale

• Wednesday 6 October 2021 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.21, Campus Jourdan

  RO'EE LEVY Jonathan (Tel Aviv University - Eitan Berglas School of Economics) : The Volcker Shock and a New Age of American Capitalism

  Abstract

  This presentation is drawn from Ages of American Capitalism: A History of the United States (2021). In US economic history, the Volcker interest rate shock of 1979-1982 is commonly cited for ending a decade-long period of price inflation. Here, the Volcker shock is placed at the center of a broader transformation of American and global capitalism that gave rise to a new political economy of asset price appreciation, and a new “age” of American capitalism: the Age of Chaos.

• Wednesday 29 September 2021 10:00-17:30

  Salle R1.13, Campus Jourdan

  Journée doctorale du Centre Simiand

• Wednesday 30 June 2021 12:30-14:00

  Via Zoom

  GELDERBLOM Oscar (Université d Utrecht) : Coping with Financial fragility: the case of the Dutch Great Depression

  with Tim van der Valk

  Abstract

  We analyze the financial behavior of Dutch households during the Great Depression with household level data on income and expenditure from two contemporary surveys, one a representative sample of 598 households outside the country's four major cities, the other a sample of 700 households whose breadwinner had been unemployed for at least six months. We find that five years into the Great Depression most Dutch households still managed to cope financially. Their incomes were high enough to reduce consumption without immediately falling into poverty. Households also benefited from previously created financial buffers and low levels of household debt. Only households facing long-term unemployment were fully dependent on the redistribution of income by local and central governments to make ends meet.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 23 June 2021 12:30-14:00

  Via Zoom

  BHARTI Nitin (PSE) : Human Capital Accumulation in China and India: 1900-2020

  with Li Yang

  Abstract

  Abstract: In this paper we study the evolution of modern education in China and India and compare several quantitative and qualitative educational outcomes in the last 100-120 years. The interesting patterns we highlight are: China’s bottom-up approach versus India’s top-down approach, China's broad-based vocational education whereas poorly developed vocational education system of India, China producing more engineering graduates versus India producing more humanities graduates. We conjecture that engineering and vocational graduates helped China in developing the manufacturing sector, whereas elitist education of India created a niche economic sector like IT. Further we show a high skill premium for higher education in India compared to China is fuelling more income inequality in India.

• Wednesday 16 June 2021 15:00-16:30

  Via Zoom

  TRIVELLATO Francesca (IAS Princeton) : 1751 and Thereabout: A Quantitative and Comparative Approach to Notarial Records

  LEMERCIER Claire (CNRS)

  Abstract

  This article asks a simple question that nevertheless has broad implications for historians of pre-modern Continental Europe: What did notaries do? It answers it by applying descriptive statistics, principal component analysis, and clustering techniques to the typological distribution of deeds preserved in the notarial collections of six French and Italian cities – Paris, Toulouse, Mende, Turin, Florence, and Livorno – for the year 1751, as well as smaller sets of data for other dates and locations. The results of this analysis are surprising. In spite of a high degree of consistency in the notarial terminology (a trait that facilitated our comparisons), the notarial culture of each city varied greatly. Variations within a single state were sometimes greater than those across state borders. Both supply and demand of notarial services differed from city to city. Overall, our conclusions are as important as the methodology that we adopt to reach them. Our aim is to offer a replicable analysis that puts quantitative methods in the service not only of the study of a source (notarial records) that is widespread across late medieval and early modern continental Europe and its overseas empires, but also of a renewed comparative history that does not shy away from the heterogeneity of primary sources.

• Wednesday 9 June 2021 12:30-14:00

  Via Zoom / semi-présentiel

  TODD DAVID (Kings College de Londres) : Empire informel et capitalisme français au XIXe siècle

  Abstract

  En quoi consistait l’impérialisme informel français et quel a été son impact sur le développement économique de la France au XIXe siècle ? Cette communication examine les instruments commerciaux, financiers et légaux de domination employés par la France au-delà de son domaine colonial formel : la marchandisation du goût français pour séduire les élites étrangères, la manipulation des exportations de capitaux pour créer des États clients, et les avantages matériels que retiraient certains agents français de la juridiction extraterritoriale exercée par la France, notamment en Amérique Latine, au Moyen-Orient et dans certaines parties de l’Asie. Les profits générés par ces distorsions ont pu égaler ou même dépasser ceux de la colonisation formelle. La prise en compte de cet impérialisme informel permet également de réévaluer le rôle des relations économiques impériales dans la reconfiguration du capitalisme français entre la fin de l’épisode napoléonien et l’avènement de l’empire colonial de la Troisième République.

• Wednesday 2 June 2021 12:30-14:00

  Via Zoom

  ASSOUAD Lydia (PSE) : Charismatic Leaders and Nation-Building: Ataturk's Role in the Formation of Turkish Identity

  Abstract

  Can leaders shape identity and legitimize new social orders? I address this question by studying the role of Mustafa Kemal "Atatu?rk", the founder of modern Turkey, in spreading a new national identity. Using a generalized difference-in-differences design, which exploits time and geographic variation in Kemal’s visits to districts, I test whether exposure to a charismatic leader affects citizens’ take-up of the new Turkish identity. I find that people living in visited districts are more likely to embrace the common identity, as proxied by the adoption of first names in "Pure Turkish", the new language introduced by the state. I show that Kemal was more efficient in rallying people, compared to I?smet I?no?nu?, his Prime Minister, suggesting that he had an idiosyncratic effect. Results are mostly driven by places where he met with local elites, where he made a speech and that had nationalistic clubs in the Ottoman Era. Visits also predict the future opening of new nationalistic associations "the People's House" ("Halk Evleri") as well as their resources. Overall, the findings are consistent with the Weberian view that charismatic authority can legitimize new social orders.

• Wednesday 26 May 2021 12:30-14:00

  Via Zoom

  MARAZYAN Karine (UP1) : La dynamique des litiges arbitrés par les Tribunaux Indigènes. Une exploration pour le Sénégal entre 1906-1922

  Abstract

  En 1903, l’administration coloniale française réforme le fonctionnement de la justice en AOF et acte, entre autres décisions, l’ouverture de « Tribunaux Indigènes » (TI). Ces tribunaux, présidés par des personnalités locales de statut indigène, sont habilités à juger selon la coutume toutes affaires opposant des personnes de statut indigène (hormis les crimes). La consignation des litiges arbitrés par les TI du Sénégal dans des registres conservés aux Archives Nationales du Sénégal donne une occasion unique de documenter le volume et les caractéristiques des différends portés devant les TI par la population locale, ainsi que les décisions des juges, en interaction avec les modifications de l’environnement économique, social et politique du Sénégal. Pour cette présentation : à partir des séries de litiges reconstituées pour 43 TI entre 1906 et 1922, nous discuterons de quelques faits stylisés relatifs aux litiges portés devant les TI : leurs motifs, leur répartition géographique, et leur dynamique sur la période considérée. Dans un second temps, nous tenterons de mieux comprendre les variations de court terme observées. Un choc négatif de revenu peut causer une hausse des litiges portés devant les TI notamment parce que des engagements pris sont plus difficiles à respecter. Nous évaluerons ainsi le rôle de chocs de revenu agricole, approximés par des chocs de pluviométrie, dans la prévalence des litiges portés devant les TI.

• Wednesday 19 May 2021 12:30-14:00

  Via zoom

  GRAFE Regina (Institut universitaire européen de Florence) : How to analyse long run institutional diversity? Some lessons from the early modern Atlantic

• Wednesday 12 May 2021 12:30-14:00

  Via zoom

  GOURGUES Guillaume (Triangle, université Lyon 2) : L’affaire Lip et l’économie politique du chômage

  Abstract

  Si l'affaire Lip, désignant le conflit de l'usine horlogère de Besançon entre 1973 et 1977, est largement considérée comme un moment clé de l'histoire des mouvements sociaux, elle a été nettement moins étudiée sous l'angle des politiques macro-économiques et de l'intervention de l'Etat. Pourtant, en occupant leur usine et en luttant par la grève productive, les ouvriers bisontins ont bel et bien posé un problème public de grande envergure : celui des licenciements économiques et de leur régulation par la puissance publique, dans la période charnière des années 1970. En revenant sur notre travail archivistique (qui se prolonge) autour de la lutte ouvrière, de la reprise et de la liquidation de l'usine nous proposerons de revenir sur ce que Lip permet de comprendre de la séquence de fixation de l'ordre économique contemporain. Nous procèderons, pour ce faire, en trois temps. Premièrement, nous expliquerons en quoi la lutte et la victoire des ouvriers de Lip s'apparentent à une contestation experte de la raison économique des licenciements. Deuxièmement, nous reviendrons sur les réactions du patronat et de la haute administration face à ce combat économique mêlant syndicats, experts économiques et fractions du patronat. Troisièmement, nous tirerons des enseignements plus généraux sur la manière dont la seconde liquidation de l'entreprise Lip, en 1976, incarne une posture néolibérale qui se fige au sein de l'Etat, et circule jusqu'à aujourd'hui.

• Wednesday 5 May 2021 12:30-14:00

  Via Zoom

  BENGTSSON Erik (Lund University) : The Declining Salience of the Wage Bargaining Round in Sweden since the1960s: Distribution, Hegemony, and Political Economy

  Abstract

  The hypothesis and starting point of the paper is that in a society where the more or less centralized bargaining round between unions and employers is a major event every or every second year, as it was in Sweden from the 1950s to the 1980s, the social nature of the distribution of income is constantly highlighted. Demands from the one side are put against demands from the other side, representatives make statements in support of their case. There is a public argumentation, regularly occurring, on who should get what. Employees and employers both contribute to output, and both deserve a share of the pie. In contrast, in a society where the bargaining round is a non-event, income distribution is depoliticized. As Wolfgang Streeck has pointed out in Gekaufte Zeit, an asymmetry appears: the demands of capital appear as impersonal “demands for the functioning of the system as a whole”, while the demands of workers appear as disturbances in the system. The paper studies the media coverage of wage bargaining rounds in Sweden in the 1960s and 2000s, focusing on the leading (liberal) daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Comparing the coverage of the 1962 and 1964 wage rounds and the 2004, 2007 and 2010 wage rounds, the difference is clear in that the unions and employers in the 1960s are depicted as masters of their universe, while in the 2000s they are depicted as functionaries who should (must) follow the lead of the central bank and the commercial banks. Thus even if the Swedish wage bargaining system in some ways is quite similar in the 2000s compared to the 1960s – union density is about the same, and coordination of wage bargaining similar if a bit more decentralized – the functioning and outcomes of the bargaining system is very different in the 2000s compared to the 1960s. I discuss the implications for class identification, political cleavages, and inequality.

• Wednesday 21 April 2021 12:30-14:00

  Via Zoom

  FLORES ZENDEJAS Juan (Université de Genève) : Dans le cadre du FRESH Meeting , présentatin de leur ouvrage : Sovereign Debt Diplomacies: Rethinking sovereign debt from colonial empires to hegemony

  with Pierre Penet

• Wednesday 21 April 2021 09:30-16:30

  On Line

  GRANDI Elisa (PSE) : Virtual Paris FRESH meeting 2021 (Frontier Research in Economic and Social History): International Political Economy and International Economic Relations

  BONHOURE Emilie (PSE)

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 14 April 2021 16:00-17:30

  via Zoom

  PLATT BOUSTAN Leah (Princeton University) : Automation before robots: Machine tools and the US labor market

  with Jiwon Choi (Princeton), David Clingingsmith (Case Western)

  Abstract

  Successive innovations in manufacturing have enabled machines to perform an increasing number of tasks formerly performed by workers. We investigate how the diffusion of one of the most important of these innovations – numerically controlled (NC) machine tools – affected the skill mix of metal manufacturing industries from 1973 and 2009. NC was originally invented in the United States in the late 1950s, but its widespread diffusion in the 1970s was driven by cost-reducing innovations in Japan and Germany. The timing of diffusion varied by type of tool: for example, lathes shifted to NC early and mechanical presses did so later. We construct a measure of NC diffusion using detailed information on the mix of machine tool types used in seven metal industries and the NC share of each tool types by leading exporters. We find that exposure to our NC diffusion measure led to the polarization of skills and job tasks, with greater relative demand for high school dropouts and college graduates. The unionized sector had more muted responses. Affected workers responded by going back to two- and four-year colleges

• Wednesday 7 April 2021 12:30-14:00

  via Zoom

  WOKER Madeline (IEA Zurich) : Empire of inequality: the politics of taxation in the French colonial empire, 1900-1950s

  Abstract

  I will present an outline of my current book project, Empire of inequality: the politics of taxation in the French colonial empire, 1900-1950s, which provides a comparative and connected political history of taxation in the French colonial empire during the first half of the twentieth century. Based on multilingual research conducted in 11 archival repositories in France, Vietnam and Algeria, the book examines the ways in which colonial tax regimes were debated, resisted, reformed, and transformed. To do so, it draws upon the archives of the French metropolitan state, various French colonial states in Southeast Asia, North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, the writings of colonial theorists, the publications of imperial watchdog organisations, literary production as well as settler, reformist, and anticolonial press outlets. Using the lens of colonial taxpayers and imperial policymakers as they navigated the material and moral consequences of colonial fiscal segregation, the book seeks to offer both an unprecedented dynamic study of imperial fiscal hierarchies from 1900 to the 1950s and a new analysis of anti-colonial resistance as tax resistance.

• Wednesday 31 March 2021 12:30-14:00

  via Zoom

  KAMBAYASHI Ryo (Université Hitotsubashi) : Consequence of Hometown Regiment: Gender Imbalance and Industrial Structure in the Post-war Japan

  with Kentaro Asai (PSE)

  Abstract

  War sometimes made a huge gender imbalance in certain cohort and in certain areas. While such gender imbalance may have moved the trajectory of economic development, the controversy is still inconclusive, because the market economy has a strong restoring force. We intend to contribute to this literature by introducing the Japanese experience during the second world war. Japan lost more than 2 million soldiers eternally between 1938 and 1945. In addition, since the Japan Imperial Army organized its main force as hometown regiment, the loss of young male is concentrated in certain cohort of certain geographical areas. By exploiting the variation of changes in gender balance cohort-by-prefecture, we examined the loss of young male may affect the post-war industrial structure. What we found so far is that the reduction of gender ratio may have led to slower industrialization, though it is only to a limited degree in terms of quantity.

• Wednesday 24 March 2021 12:30-14:00

  Via Zoom

  PASSALACQUA Arnaud (Lab'URBA/LIED ) : Innovation et transports urbains : l'impossible défi ? Quelques réflexions à partir du cas parisien depuis le XIXe siècle

  Abstract

  L'agglomération parisienne est en train de se doter d'une rocade de métro, le Grand Paris Express, présentée comme novatrice et porteuse de grandes ambitions : report modal depuis l'automobile, réduction de la ségrégation socio-spatiale, meilleure connexion des lieux-clés de son fonctionnement économique et de ses structures de recherche, rénovation du visage de Paris dans le monde, etc. Le regard de l'histoire incite pourtant à interroger ces objectifs nombreux à l'aune de ce qu'ont pu apporter les projets antérieurs. L'histoire des transports est en effet un cimetière d'innovations, peuplé de multiples projets fantômes, inaboutis ou mis en échec. Ceux qui fonctionnent ont-ils d'ailleurs répondu aux objectifs qui ont présidé au choix de les réaliser ? La communication proposée à ce séminaire discutera donc de ce que peut signifier l'idée d'innovation dans l'histoire des transports urbains, à partir du cas de l'agglomération parisienne. Elle croisera des considérations sur les temporalités des projets, les imaginaires sociaux associés aux systèmes de transport, le désenchantement de l'exploitation quotidienne de systèmes pensés comme des solutions de papier idéales... Ce faisant, elle interrogera la capacité des politiques publiques à organiser les mobilités urbaines dans la ville industrielle depuis le XIXe siècle.

• Wednesday 10 March 2021 12:30-14:00

  Via Zoom

  MAITTE Corine : Autour du livre de Corine Maitte et Didier Terrier, Les Rythmes du labeur. Enquête sur le temps de travail en Europe occidentale, XIVe-XIXe siècles, Paris, La Dispute

  TERRIER Didier

  Abstract

  Le fil rouge de notre réflexion sur les Rythmes du labeur est constitué par une interrogation en forme d’évidence : comment peut-on parler d’une formidable augmentation du temps de travail dans les usines lors des débuts du processus d’industrialisation, puis de sa baisse lente et continue à l’issu du tournant des années 1840-1850 si l’on ignore tout, ou presque, des durées du travail antérieures et cela, en contournant l’intensité de l’effort productif ? Notre présentation insistera sur trois aspects de notre travail. Le premier concerne la méthode : saisir l’ampleur des possibles au plus près des individus, car l’intelligence de la diversité des situations exige une connaissance la plus fine possible de la manière dont le temps de travail de chacun est compté. Le second est l’analyse, si possible à hauteur d’homme, des différentes temporalités du travail, de la journée à l’année ; c’est de leur entrelacement que résulte en longue durée l’extrême bigarrure des emplois du temps. Le troisième porte sur le lien entre la durée et l’intensification du labeur car les tentatives pour lier temps, quantités de travail et formes de rémunérations sont mises en œuvre très tôt et cheminent dans la pratique tout autant que dans la théorie. Durée et contenu du travail sont inséparables.

• Wednesday 3 March 2021 12:30-14:00

  Via Zoom

  DELALANDE Nicolas (Sciences Po) : Un monde de dettes publiques: une histoire politique

  BARREYRE NICOLAS (EHESS)

  Abstract

  Les dettes publiques ont été une caractéristique essentielle de la construction des États modernes, un moteur de l’histoire du capitalisme, et un enjeu géopolitique puissant. Des crises révolutionnaires aux empires, dans l’essor puis la chute de l’ordre mondial d’après-guerre, la question des dettes publiques n’a ainsi jamais été du seul ressort des cercles économiques. Adoptant une perspective politique et historique, attentif à ses dimensions globales, ce livre propose des clés pour comprendre la centralité, toujours aujourd’hui, des dettes publiques, et pourquoi il est nécessaire de les prendre comme une question politique qui nécessite des réponses tout aussi politiques. La tendance souvent exprimée de nos jours de considérer la dette publique comme une source de fragilité ou d’inefficacité économique, en effet, manque le fait essentiel que, depuis le dix-huitième siècle, les dettes publiques ont souvent été des leviers pour les États pour affermir leur souveraineté et construire leurs institutions, notamment mais pas seulement en temps de guerre. Il est frappant de constater que certaines solutions utilisées dans le passé pour répondre à des crises de dettes publiques sont aujourd’hui tenues hors de toute considération – symptôme des changements des rapports de force entre créanciers, contribuables, retraités et salariés depuis quarante ans. Reconnectant l’histoire du capitalisme et l’histoire de la démocratie, cette histoire politique globale des dettes publiques est une contribution à ce débat.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 24 February 2021 12:30-14:00

  Via Zoom

  DE VICQ Amaury (PSE) : Exploring Modern Bank Penetration: Evidence from the Early 20th-Century Netherlands

  Abstract

  We analyze the estates of top Dutch wealth owners who died in 1921 for patterns in their financial behaviour to find that banks played a very marginal role. Payments for goods and services were either paid in cash or settled periodically with suppliers. Lending and borrowing was overwhelmingly done using peer-to-peer or notarized contracts, bank deposits and loans coming a distant third. Banks only possessed a clear competitive edge in savings accounts for small surpluses or current accounts for business people. Distance to the nearest bank office did not matter for these people, but wealthy urbanites were more inclined to use commercial banks than their counterparts living in small municipalities or in the countryside.

• Wednesday 17 February 2021 12:30-14:00

  via Zoom

  TSIACHTSIRAS Georgios (Univ. Barcelona School of Economics ) : Transportation Networks and the Rise of the Knowledge Economy in 19th Century France

  Abstract

  This paper exploits an episode of French history to study the relationship between the roll-out of railroads and the rise of the knowledge economy. Two substantial changes occurred during the second half of 19th century in France: the development of an extended rail network and the establishment of a new patent legislation. I take advantage of the exogenous variation in railway access arising from a time variant instrument, to document that access to rail network increases the innovation activity at the canton level. I explore three underlying mechanisms behind the main results. First, I introduce a market access framework to study how the reduction in transportation costs, due to expansion of rail and water canal network, affects the patent activity of a canton. Second, I combine the reduction in transportation costs with inventors’ data to study how potential interactions among inventors residing in different cantons shape the diffusion of knowledge within the mainland of France. Third, using text analysis techniques, I am able for the first time, to determine the class of each patent application in the historical database of INPI and to explore how connectivity with the global city of Paris is associated with the diffusion of novel technologies.

• Wednesday 10 February 2021 12:30-14:00

  via Zoom

  LEPETIT Michel (LIED) : Politique monétaire non conventionnelle et pétrole non conventionnel 2000-2019

  Abstract

  Au début des années 2000, la hausse du prix du pétrole brut qui de 10 USD le baril en 1999 atteint 140 USD à mi-2008 peut être interprétée comme la survenance du fameux pic mondial de production de pétrole brut. Si le pic du pétrole brut « conventionnel » advient bien à cette époque, le paysage énergétique planétaire est ensuite révolutionné par le « miracle » du pétrole de schiste aux Etats-Unis. La crise de 2008 a conduit la Fed, dans le cadre de son mandat, à mettre en œuvre une politique monétaire « non conventionnelle » (Quantitative easing) qui visait à stimuler l’activité économique, par une relance indifférenciée et massive de l’investissement. Au regard de la longue histoire de l’investissement dans le secteur pétrolier, il est possible d’estimer que la politique monétaire américaine a eu un impact disproportionné sur l’industrie du pétrole de schiste, avec un CAPEX cumulé de 750 Mrds USD pour 2009-2019 ; et par conséquent sur la production mondiale de pétrole brut. On est donc enclin à penser que la politique monétaire de la Fed a pu être – involontairement et paradoxalement- à la fois non neutre, et désinflationniste.

• Wednesday 3 February 2021 12:30-14:00

  Via Zoom

  GALVEZ-BEHAR Gabriel (Université de Lille) : La valeur de la science : l’appropriation de l’activité scientifique au temps du capitalisme industriel

  Abstract

  À qui appartiennent les profits économiques suscités par les avancées de la science ? Cette question, qui est au cœur des débats actuels sur la marchandisation des savoirs ou sur la valorisation de la recherche, trouve sa réponse dans le temps long. Dès le XIXe siècle, la contribution des savants au processus d'industrialisation entretient le lien entre science et capitalisme. Les résultats de la recherche créant de la valeur économique se pose alors la question du partage des bénéfices et du rapport que peuvent entretenir le milieu de la science et celui de l’industrie. On reviendra sur l’émergence et l’essor de la propriété scientifique, concept opératoire, proche mais distinct de la propriété intellectuelle, grâce auquel les savants et les institutions scientifiques tentent de contrôler les fruits de leurs découvertes. À travers une analyse comparative centrée sur la France, la Grande-Bretagne et les États-Unis, on analysera les évolutions de la fin du XIXe siècle à la veille de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, avant d'évoquer l’impact sur l’organisation de la recherche aujourd’hui.

• Wednesday 13 January 2021 12:30-14:00

  Via Zoom

  LEROUXEL Francois (Univ. Paris-Sorbonne) : Le changement dans les économies antiques

  ZURBACH Julien (ENS)

  Abstract

  Le changement dans les économies anciennes, rassemble des contributions issues de plusieurs années de travail en groupe. Historiens, archéologues et environnementalistes ont travaillé ensemble sur quelques produits essentiels aux économies antiques. Ils ouvrent un nouveau type de dialogue interdisciplinaire, permettant de dépasser des oppositions anciennes (entre primitivistes et modernistes, partisans de la stagnation et de la croissance).

• Wednesday 16 December 2020 12:30-14:00

  via ZOOM

  BREDA Thomas (PSE) : Do unions have egalitarian wage policies for their own employees? Evidence from the US 1959-2016

  SANTINI Paolo

  Abstract

  While labor unions bargain for more equality among their members and in the general society, little is known about their own compensation practices. Using administrative earnings data on U.S. labor unions over the period 1959-2016, we show that unions do “as they preach”. They pay wages that are on average 30% higher than in comparable U.S. private firms, but much more equally distributed: Gini coefficients are 20% smaller among unions and the share of total earnings accruing to the top 1% of wage earners is twice smaller. We show, moreover, that inequality has remained roughly stable in the past 60 years, contrary to what happened in the rest of the economy. We argue that such a low level of inequality, especially at the top, is puzzling because union leaders do have some margin to set their own pay due to the absence of a strong control mechanism on the pay-setting in such non-profit organizations. We confront two possible explanations to explain our findings: On one hand, unions are constrained to pay low salaries by market forces, on the other hand, union are unwilling to pay higher salaries to their leaders because of ideology and reputation concerns. We test these two alternative explanations in several ways landing strong support for the second view. In addition to helping understand the pay practices in the labor movement and the non-profit sector in general, these findings shed new light on how pay norms and ideology can affect real pay, even in a declining sector where firms have strong incentives to perform well in order to survive.

• Wednesday 9 December 2020 12:30-14:00

  via ZOOM

  GABBUTI Giacomo (Oxford) : Inheritance and Ideology in Italy, c. 1870-1925

  Abstract

  In this talk, I will discuss the reality and ‘ideology’ (in the sense of Piketty 2020) of inheritance in Italy between unification and fascism. First, drawing from a joint ongoing work with Salvatore Morelli, I will present new estimates of wealth inequality from 1870 to the outbreak of World War I – the so-called ‘Liberal Italy’, when the country experienced a relatively ‘benevolent’ industrial take-off within the broader first globalisation. An abrupt interruption in the series is represented not only by the war, but by the abolition of inheritance tax operated by Mussolini’s government in the summer 1923. The second part of the talk will deal with the historical reconstruction of the so-far largely neglected ‘adventures’ of inheritance tax in post-WWI Italy – from the sharp increases in rates in 1919-20, to the ignited debate over Rignano’s proposals, as well as the reaction by professional and banking associations, leading to its abrupt abolition in 1923 by Mussolini’s government.

• Wednesday 2 December 2020 12:30-14:00

  Via Zoom

  LEROUXEL Francois (Univ. Paris-Sorbonne) : Le changement dans les économies antiques

  ZURBACH Julien (ENS)

  Abstract

  Le changement dans les économies anciennes, rassemble des contributions issues de plusieurs années de travail en groupe. Historiens, archéologues et environnementalistes ont travaillé ensemble sur quelques produits essentiels aux économies antiques. Ils ouvrent un nouveau type de dialogue interdisciplinaire, permettant de dépasser des oppositions anciennes (entre primitivistes et modernistes, partisans de la stagnation et de la croissance).

• Wednesday 18 November 2020 12:30-14:00

  via ZOOM

  DUPRAZ Yannick (University College Dublin) : Geographical representativeness of the executive and regional favoritism in France, 1800-2019

  Abstract

  How do political cleavages based on geographical considerations give way to political cleavages based on economic and social consideration? A large literature in economics and political science considers how governments can be captured by different interest groups. In Western democracies, these interest groups are typically defined by their economic characteristics (political cleavages are economic). In developing countries these interest groups are typically defined geographically or in ethnic terms (political cleavages are geographical). Recent papers study government ethnic composition and regional favoritism (when a leader favors their region of birth in the provision of public goods) in the contemporaneous period, but there is no systematic evidence on the prevalence of geographical cleavages and regional favoritism in European history. To fill in the gap, I collected biographical data on all government members of several European countries between 1800 and 2019. This presentation will show preliminary results for France, attempting to answer two questions: 1/ how did the geographical representativeness of the executive evolve in France in the last two centuries, 2/ is there evidence of widespread regional favoritism?

• Wednesday 4 November 2020 12:30-14:00

  On Line

  GREGG Amanda ( Middlebury College) : Financing Industrialization in Russia and Germany

  Caroline Fohlin from Emory University

  Abstract

  A large literature debates what system best promotes the accumulation and allocation of capital, especially in countries that industrialized relatively late and where capital market imperfections may be especially severe. Russia and Germany serve as the classic cases to argue that developing economies may successfully employ unusual strategies to promote industrialization, for example an outsized role for banks or state intervention. Law and finance analysis, moreover, attributes financial system differences to variation in legal system design. Such assertions, however, have relied largely on anecdotal evidence, country-level aggregates, or small collections of firms. New research into Germany and Russia has reshaped thinking about these two cases individually, but we still lack rigorous comparative analysis. We therefore present new evidence directly comparing Russian and German corporate performance and financial strategies based on firm-level microdata from Russian and German sources around turn of the twentieth century and compare key stipulations of corporate law and their implementation. Contrary to the standard “economic backwardness” and “law and finance” literatures we argue that corporations in both countries used similar strategies to finance operations and expansion but that tight entry restrictions fundamentally distorted patterns of corporate governance and finance in Russia.

• Wednesday 21 October 2020 12:30-14:00

  Zoom

  CADOREL Jean-Laurent : An International Monetary Explanation of the 1929 Crash of the New York Stock Exchange

  Abstract

  The crash of the New York Stock Exchange in October 1929 was a liquidity crisis caused by the sudden removal of brokers’ loans. Based on high-frequency data, this paper documents how the Bank of England’s unexpected September discount rate rise attracted short-term international capital flows. The rate rise had such exceptional effects because it caused a reallocation of gold reserves, attracting gold from the Americas to Europe, threatening some Latin American countries’ participation in the gold standard, thereby depreciating the value of their debts in New York, and reducing bondholders’ willingness to lend.

• Wednesday 14 October 2020 12:30-14:00

  VIA ZOOM

  GAYON Vincent (IRISSO- Univ. Dauphine) : L’organisation internationale de l’économie dans les années 1970-1980. Une sociologie politique

  Abstract

  Que savons-nous du fonctionnement pratique des organisations économiques internationales? Evoluent-elles dans un éther au-dessus des populations et des États? Sont-elles aussi influentes qu’on le prétend? Répondre à ces questions suppose de mener l’enquête sociologique dans ces espaces feutrés, réputés pour leur confidentialité, leur hermétisme, leur conformisme autant que pour l’anonymat de leur personnel et leur distance à l’égard des formes institutionnalisées de démocratie représentative et sociale. La réflexion s’ancrera sur l’OCDE et son projet de Welfare Society (1973-1985) qui ambitionnait de devenir le « nouveau rapport Beveridge », en intégrant le social et l’économique, voire l’écologique, et d’étendre ainsi le « Welfare State ». Ce projet a été enfoui par le « tournant néolibéral » et sa focalisation sur la « crise » de l’Etat social.

• Wednesday 7 October 2020 12:00-13:30

  Salle R2.21 Campus Jourdan, 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  SAINT-RAYMOND Léa (IHMC - ENS) : « La Bourse de l’art et du bric-à-brac » : une histoire économique des ventes aux enchères publiques parisiennes (1830-1939)

  Abstract

  En 1906, un article anonyme, intitulé « Sous le marteau du commissaire-priseur », désigna l’hôtel Drouot comme « la Bourse de l’art et du bric-à-brac ». Cette expression résume, à elle seule, la double conception de cet hôtel des ventes aux enchères publiques parisiennes, considéré à la fois comme un bazar et comme un temple de la spéculation. Néanmoins, la comparaison avec le marché financier est loin d’être évidente. Raymonde Moulin écrivait, en 1967, que « l’assimilation entre l’hôtel Drouot et la Bourse n’est pas légitime, bien que largement répandue ». Le but de cette présentation est d’apporter un nouvel éclairage sur l’histoire des ventes aux enchères publiques à partir des archives des commissaires-priseurs parisiens. Celles-ci rendent possible l’analyse des différents segments – des tableaux, dessins et sculptures, en passant par les estampes, les objets d’art, les monnaies ou encore les bonsaïs et les silex – mais elles donnent également accès à des données plus macroéconomiques, permettant de mesurer la sensibilité du marché de l’art avec le marché financier.

• Wednesday 30 September 2020 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2.21,Campus Jourdan - 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  PASQUINI Béline (UP1) : Dealing with extreme data scarcity: The challenge of measuring economic growth in ancient times. The case of Gaul between the 1st c. BC and the 7th c. AD.

  Abstract

  Between the 1st century BC and the 7th century AD, Gaul went through tremendous social and economic transformations. Traditionally, most historians have followed Edward Gibbon in considering that the 2nd century AD was probably the most prosperous period of this long time span. But can we actually quantify this prosperity? Is it possible - given the very few written data we have - to reconstruct variations of economic growth? I suggest that some archaeological data, like trade flows, urbanisation, monatisation, or transport infrastructures can act as good proxies of growth. In this presentation, I will explain why and how we should use them to reconstruct ancient growth.

• Wednesday 23 September 2020 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09 Campus Jourdan, 48 bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  CHANCEL Lucas : Global carbon inequality in the long run

  Abstract

  Building on a newly assembled set of carbon and energy accounts based on historical records, input-output tables and distributional statistics, this presentation focuses on the long term carbon footprint of nations since 1800. Among rich countries, we observe a diversity of historical energy transition pathways and resulting carbon footprints, suggesting a strong role played by political economy vs. purely endowment and efficiency factors. Focusing on the global inequality of emissions over the past fifty years, estimates point to a high level of concentration of pollution among top global emitters and to the importance of emissions embodied in asset ownership, suggesting that climate policies focusing on carbon investors, not only carbon consumers, could be key to accelerate decarbonization.

• Wednesday 24 June 2020 14:00-15:30

  ZOOM

  MO Zhexun (PSE) : Labor for Fighting and Fighting for Labor: An Empirical Study of Interwar Military Conscription in French West Africa

  Denis Cogneau (PSE)

• Wednesday 17 June 2020 12:30-14:00

  SEANCE ANNULEE

  MARAZYAN Karine (U. Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne) : Marriage-related disputes arbitrated by Native Courts in colonial Senegal: prevalence and dynamic

  Abstract

  *

• Wednesday 10 June 2020 12:30-14:00

  SEANCE ANNULEE

  LEMERCIER Claire (CNRS) : 1751 and Thereabout: A Quantitative and Comparative Approach to Notarial Records

  Francesca Trivellato (Yale)

  Abstract

  *

• Wednesday 3 June 2020 12:30-14:00

  Salle R.1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  GALVEZ-BEHAR Gabriel (Université de Lille) : Patents at War: the US Alien Property Custodian and the German Patents during WWII SEANCE ANNULEE

• Wednesday 27 May 2020 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  BARTELS Charlotte (DIW Berlin) : The Long-Term Effects of Equal Sharing:Rvidence from Hitorical Inheritance Rules for Land : SEANCE ANNULEE

• Wednesday 20 May 2020 12:30-14:00

  FRESSOZ Jean-Baptiste (CRH/EHESS) : Une histoire des réflexivités environnementales

• Wednesday 20 May 2020 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan - 48 bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  HUBERMAN Michael (U.Montreal) : Politics is local: Social Housing in Red Vienna, 1923-1933 - Séance annulée

• Wednesday 13 May 2020 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  AMRITH Sunil (Harvard) : Séance annulée

• Wednesday 6 May 2020 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan, 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  BISHARA Fahad (University of Virginia) : Into the Bazaar: Indian Ocean Vernaculars in the Age of Global Capitalism - CANCELED

  Séance annulée

• Wednesday 29 April 2020 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  HANNAH Leslie : The Largest UK Manufacturing Employers of 1881:determinants of whether they listed and their choices among 26 UK Stock Exchanges CANCELED

• Wednesday 22 April 2020 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan - 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  BENGTSSON Erik (Lund University) : Séance annulée

• Wednesday 15 April 2020 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  VONYO Tamas : Séance annulée et reportée

• Wednesday 1 April 2020 12:30-14:00

  Salle R109. Campus Jourdan, 48 bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  FRESSOZ Jean-Baptiste (CRH/EHESS) : Additions énergétiques et de stocks de matières ANNULE ET REPORTE

  MOLTER MAGALHES Nelo (Ladyss - U. Paris Diderot)

• Wednesday 25 March 2020 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  SUSSMAN Nathan (Graduate Institute Geneva) : Séance annulée et reportée

• Wednesday 18 March 2020 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  SAINT-RAYMOND Léa (IHMC - ENS) : « La Bourse de l’art et du bric-à-brac » : une histoire économique des ventes aux enchères publiques parisiennes (1830-1939). ANNULE ET REPORTE

  Abstract

  En 1906, un article anonyme, intitulé « Sous le marteau du commissaire-priseur », désigna l’hôtel Drouot comme « la Bourse de l’art et du bric-à-brac ». Cette expression résume, à elle seule, la double conception de cet hôtel des ventes aux enchères publiques parisiennes, considéré à la fois comme un bazar et comme un temple de la spéculation. Néanmoins, la comparaison avec le marché financier est loin d’être évidente. Raymonde Moulin écrivait, en 1967, que « l’assimilation entre l’hôtel Drouot et la Bourse n’est pas légitime, bien que largement répandue ». Le but de cette présentation est d’apporter un nouvel éclairage sur l’histoire des ventes aux enchères publiques à partir des archives des commissaires-priseurs parisiens. Celles-ci rendent possible l’analyse des différents segments – des tableaux, dessins et sculptures, en passant par les estampes, les objets d’art, les monnaies ou encore les bonsaïs et les silex – mais elles donnent également accès à des données plus macroéconomiques, permettant de mesurer la sensibilité du marché de l’art avec le marché financier.

• Wednesday 11 March 2020 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  GRANDI Elisa (Paris School of Economics) : Governance and networks: French Firms listed and traded at the Paris Bourse (1880-1939)

• Wednesday 26 February 2020 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  BARSBAI Toman (University of Bristol) : Exit and Voice:Germany,1848-1933

  RAPOPORT Hillel

  Abstract

  Albert Hirschman hypothesized that more exit leads to less voice. We test this conjecture in the context of Germany. In the five years that followed the failed revolutions of 1848, more than one million Germans emigrated to the United States. We explore the political consequences of this exodus. We show that differently from earlier and later emigration waves -- which were economically rather than politically motivated – the intensity of emigration during the revolutionary period significantly affected political outcomes within Germany over the course of eighty years, culminating in the rise to power of the Nazi Party. Specifically, a one-standard deviation in emigration rates between 1848 and 1854 is associated with an increase in the share of votes for the Nazi Party between 0.1 to 0.3 standard deviations. We show that both the emigration of ordinary citizens and of prominent political leaders mattered, and that selective entry and exit of local newspapers on ideological grounds as well as the presence and composition of social clubs are likely mechanisms behind our results. Overall, our results suggest that the well-documented contribution of the Forty-eighters to democracy building in the US (Dipple and Helblich, 2018) came at the price of less democracy in Germany.

• Wednesday 19 February 2020 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  GRASLIN-THOME Laetitia (Université de Lorraine) : La mise en place d'une économie monétaire : l'exemple de la Babylonie au VIe siècle av.J.-C / Silver in VIth century Babylonia.

  Abstract

  Située sur le territoire de l'actuel Irak, la Mésopotamie présente un cas d'école particulièrement intéressant pour l'étude des phénomènes économiques sur le très long terme. Avec une histoire de près de trois millénaires, documentée par des milliers de textes illustrant la pratique quotidienne des habitants de la région, elle permet d'apprécier le fonctionnement d'une économie antique et ses transformations sur très longue période. Après avoir évoqué certains problèmes méthodologiques propres à l'histoire économique des mondes anciens, nous nous intéresserons plus particulièrement à l'une de ces évolutions, qui concerne l'utilisation de l'argent pesé dans les échanges. L'argent est utilisé dès le troisième millénaire pour évaluer la valeur des biens. Il est ensuite régulièrement utilisé, parfois en concurrence avec l'or, comme unité de compte et comme moyen de paiement. Mais son usage semble devenir plus systématique qu'auparavant au VIe siècle av. J.-C. Cet usage plus répandu s'accompagne de comportements nouveaux : attention nouvelle portée à la qualité de l'argent, développement de nouvelles activités économiques... Quelles sont les raisons et les conséquences de cette évolution ? Peut-on parler, pour l'économie babylonienne, d'économie monétaire, avant l'introduction de la monnaie frappée empruntée aux Grecs ? --------------------------------------------------------------- Located on the territory of present-day Iraq, ancient Mesopotamia is particularly well-documented compared to other civilizations of antiquity. Clay tablets written by ancient mesopotamians make it possible to study economic phenomena over the very long term. With a history spanning nearly three millennia, documented by thousands of texts illustrating the daily practices of the region's inhabitants, it is possible to describe an ancient economy and its changes over a very long period. After discussing specific methodological problems related to the economic history of ancient worlds, we will take a closer look at one of the change faced by mesopotamian economy : the increasing use of silver as a mean of exchange. Silver has been used since the third millennium as a measure of value. It is then regularly used, sometimes in competition with gold, as a unit of account and as a means of payment. But its use seems to become more systematic during the sixth century BC. At the same time, new economic behaviours are emerging : new attention to the quality of money, development of new economic activities... Which are the causes and consequences of this “monetarization” of economy ? Can we speak, for the Babylonian economy, of a monetary economy, before the introduction of coined money by the Greeks?

• Wednesday 22 January 2020 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09 Campus Jourdan, 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  KORCHMINA Elena (NYUAD) : Peer Pressure: The Puzzle of Tax Compliance in the Early Nineteenth-Century Russia

  Abstract

  How can developing countries successfully implement income taxes, which are generally desirable but costly to collect? This paper analyzes the income tax compliance of elites in a developing country with a low administrative capacity, drawing attention to the role of either voluntary or quasi-voluntary components of tax acquiescence. In 1812, the Russian government introduced the progressive income tax, with the highest tax rate of 10 per cent. After Britain, the Russian Empire became the second country to adopt this levy—under the threat of Napoleonic invasion. Unlike the widely known and deeply investigated British case, the history of the Russian income tax suffers from a lack of detailed research. I use a self-compiled unique dataset for estimating the level of tax compliance of the Russian noble elite at the individual level. The dataset is based on the self-reported tax returns of approximately 4,000 Russian aristocrats who had real estate in the Moscow region. Using narrative sources and crosschecking with official bank documents, I reveal not only that the Russian nobility declared reliable income information but also that the share of aristocratic evaders was relatively low (from 30 to 10 per cent). I argue that this surprisingly high level of tax compliance was achieved through a unique mechanism of tax collection involving the channels of social sanctioning and group identity, boosted by the national threat of Napoleonic invasion. This case could be considered as extremely important, insofar as the state could not achieve its fiscal aims due to coercive tools in the hands of bureaucracy but had to rely on consensus with elite.

• Wednesday 18 December 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  FOURIE Johan (Stellenbosch University) : Expropriation with partial compensation: slave emancipation and the longevity of slaveholders

• Wednesday 11 December 2019 12:30-14:00

  The session was canceled.

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan, 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  HUMPHRIES Jane (University of Oxford) : In search of the real cost of living: Primary sources and respectable living standards

  Abstract

  Cost-of-living indexes measure changes over time in the amount that consumers need to spend to reach a certain standard of living. Economists measure the cost of living according to the cost of a basket of commodities with individual price changes weighted by expenditure shares. Economic historians focus on the changing cost of a fixed basket of commodities (a Laspeyres index) taken to represent historical expenditure patterns. Robert Allen has offered two such baskets: 1. a ‘respectable’ standard of living basket based on budgets observed by eighteenth and nineteenth century social commentators; and 2. a ‘bare-bones’ subsistence basket based on caloric requirements for survival. There are theoretical and methodological problems associated with both baskets and the approach more generally. The paper explores a different approach. It surveys the historical record for England, 1270-1860, building a data set of over 2500 observations of what people actually paid to secure a ‘respectable’ standard of living. This approach circumvents several standard problems for example that a Laspeyres index emphasises items which might be out of date and ignores changes in tastes or lifestyle over the years, crucial when comparing costs over long periods of time or during ‘consumer revolutions’. It also enables the domestic labour used to transform baskets of commodities into standards of living to be included in the analysis. Trends in the alternative index can be compared with the evolution of the cost of the standard Allen basket and with women’s wages. While the empirical evidence is drawn from English sources, the issues and research strategy have general relevance.

• Wednesday 4 December 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  COGNEAU Denis (PSE) : Autour du livre de Thomas Piketty, Capital et idéologie

  GRENIER Jean-Yves (EHESS)

  HAUTCOEUR Pierre-Cyrille (EHESS/PSE)

  LEMERCIER Claire (CNRS)

  STANZIANI Alessandro (EHESS)

  VEG Sebastian (EHESS)

• Wednesday 27 November 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  CHAMBRU Cedric (Dept. of Economics, University of Zürich) : Do it Right! Leaders, Weather Shocks and Social Conflicts in Pre-Industrial France (1661-1789)

  Abstract

  I use spatial and temporal variation in temperature shocks to examine the effect of adverse weather conditions on the onset of social conflicts in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France. The paper’s contribution is threefold. First, I document the effect of temperature shocks on standards of living using cross-section and panel prices data. Second, I link high-resolution temperature data and a new database of 8,528 episodes of social conflicts in France between 1661 and 1789. I use a linear probability model with sub-regional and year fixed effects to establish a causal connection between temperature shocks and conflicts. A one standard deviation increase in temperature increased the probability of social conflicts by about 5.3 per cent. To the best of my knowledge, these results are the first to quantify the effect of temperature shocks on intergroup conflict in pre-industrial Europe. Finally, I investigate the role of local leaders- the intendants- in the mitigation of temperature shocks. I show that leaders with higher level of local experience were better able to cope with adverse weather conditions. I argue that years of local experience were a key determinant in the intendant's ability to administer efficiently his province. This interpretation is supported by historical evidence.

• Wednesday 20 November 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  ALSAN Marcella (HARVARD Kennedy School) : The Rise and Fall of the Know Nothing Party

  Greg Niemesh and Katherine Eriksson

  Abstract

  The Know-Nothing Party was the first major nativist political party in U.S. History. It swept to power in the 1850s on a staunchly anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic platform. In this paper, we discuss the postulated factors that played a role in the rise of the Know-Nothings -including three factors closely related to the influx of low-skill Irish immigrants: (1) labor market competition (2) fiscal burden on the state and (3) the enfranchisement and voting behavior of foreigners with competing allegiances. We also examine the role of structural change in the economy and the shift to factory production. Evidence suggests that, while both sets of factors played a role, labor market competition and industrialization were of particular importance. Our research contributes to scholarship on the politics of populism and deepens our understanding of what fuels cycles of anti-immigrant behavior.

• Wednesday 13 November 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  GARDNER Leigh (London School of Economics) : African institutions under colonial rule

  Jutta Bolt, Lund University and University of Groningen

  Abstract

  Colonial institutions in Africa are the subject of a substantial literature, but it neglects the local institutions which governed Africans in rural areas. This paper uses new data on local African governments, or “Native Authorities” in British Africa to present the first quantitative comparison of African institutions under indirect rule in the late colonial period. Using tax revenue as a measure of state capacity, the data show that the structure and capacity of Native Authorities varied between and within colonies, based not only on underlying economic inequalities but also on the relationships between African elites and colonial governments.

• Wednesday 6 November 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 BD Jourdan 75014 Paris

  MAGGOR Noam (IEA Paris) : The United States as a Developing Nation: The Political Origins of Modern Capitalism in America.

  Dr. Stefan Link (Dartmouth)

  Abstract

  It has recently been suggested that the economic departure of the United States after the Civil War marked a “Second Great Divergence.” Compared to the “First,” the rise of Britain during the Industrial Revolution, this Second Great Divergence us curiously little understood: because the U.S. remains the template for modernization narratives, its trajectory is often accepted as preordained than interrogated as an unlikely historical outcome. How in fact did the U.S. redefine its position in the world economy, transforming from a cotton-exporting slave republic to a hegemonic industrial giant? The most promising avenue of inquiry, we suggest, lies in asking how American political institutions configured what should properly be called an American Developmental State. Such a perspective opens up a broad comparative research agenda that provincializes the United States from the perspective of development experiences elsewhere.

• Wednesday 30 October 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09 Campus Jourdan, 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  MC CANTS Anne (MIT) : Polygamy, the Commodification of Women, and the Erosion of Trust

  Dan Seligson (MIT)

  Abstract

  Family systems shape social institutions, yet they are rarely considered in histories of economic development. In this paper, we show how market forces act through the dichotomy of polygamy and monogamy, mirroring them in a syndrome of social conventions such as age at marriage, bride price, sequestration, and discrimination and violence against women. We argue that this syndrome, which we call polygamos and which we quantify by two different methods, has demonstrable consequences for the development of economic and institutional well-being.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 23 October 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  POMPERMAIER Matteo (GRHis) : The ‘Handkerchief Economy’: Inns and Bastioni as Microcredit Institutions in Early Modern Venice (18th century).

  Abstract

  In early modern Venice, wine and money were intrinsically linked through the activity of the innkeepers and the bastioneri (the managers of the bastioni, warehouses where wine was sold), who offered their customers an innovative pawnbroking service. They assumed the double roles of suppliers of basic goods and creditors, thereby becoming central economic figures in Venice’s urban context – especially for the members of the poorest classes. One of the most innovative elements of this credit circuit lies in the way that interest on loans was collected: creditors benefited from the fact that one-third of the total value of the transaction was paid in wine. The low average value of the loans confirms that this service was mainly aimed at the lower classes of society, the main actors in what has been defined as ‘the handkerchief economy’. Those who benefited the most from this kind of credit arrangement were essentially poor – but not ‘too poor’ – people, who had only modest reserves of money, and were thus more vulnerable due to the paucity and irregularity of their income. This paper focuses on the pawnbroking activity of Venetian innkeepers and bastioneri, with a twofold main objective: (a) to describe his origins and mode of operation and (b) to highlight his social and economic impact on 18th century Venice.

• Wednesday 9 October 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.13, Campus Jourdan 48 bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  RIDOLFI Leonardo (University of Siena) : Six Centuries of Real Wages in France from Louis IX to Napoleon III: 1250–1860

  Abstract

  Evidence of an early modern “Little divergence” in real wages between northwestern Europe and the rest of the continent is mostly based on the comparative study of a sample of leading European cities. Focusing on France and England this study reassesses the debate from a country-level perspective. The findings challenge the notion of an early modern “Little divergence” showing no clear-cut trend of divergence until the second half of the eighteenth century. Results also suggest that the real wages of a significant share of the French male labor force were broadly on par with the levels prevailing in England before c.1750.

• Wednesday 2 October 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014

  HOFFMAN Philip (Caltech) : Dark Matter Credit, The development of peer-to-peer lending and banking in France. Princeton University Press, 2019

  POSTEL-VINAY Gilles (INRA, PSE)

  ROSENTHAL Jean-Laurent (Caltech)

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 25 September 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.13, Campus Jourdan 48 bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  CERRETANO Valerio (University of Glasgow) : Central banks, credit provision and industrial intervention: the cases of Britain, France and Italy, 1914-1980. A research agenda.

  Abstract

  Central banks have in the past been involved in the provision of long-term credit and have in some cases been important industrial players. The paper intends to establish a possible research agenda aimed at comparing the various European experiences, or the least those which have received most scholarly attention. Hence the choice of Britain, France and Italy, where sources can more easily be accessed and where central banks played an important role in what might be called industrial policy since at least the First World War. The perspective here is that of industrial history rather than that of financial or central banking history, although the history of central banks and central banking undeniably provides valuable help in the understanding of this phenomenon. What definition can we give to intervention, i.e. direct management of firms or indirect forms of financing? Can we distinguish different layers of intervention, i.e. the one devised along with the governments (treasuries) as a broader attempt at economic planning and the one carried out during periods of economic duress? Why have central banks become the chosen instrument of intervention during economic crises? Was intervention successful? These are some of the questions that the paper will be attempting. Research can take different turns and can be used in different ways. It can show that central banks were crucial actors in the industrialisation of the west, i.e. in the provision of long-term finance and in the selection of sectors to stimulate. But it could also be used as evidence that central banks should more actively be involved in industrial policy in developing countries (Epstein). These have become sensitive points in scholarly and public debate after 2008, but the question of the reverberations and possible uses of this type of research in contemporary debate falls, however, outside the scope of this paper.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 11 September 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.13, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  MITCH David (University of Maryland Baltimore County) : Fear and Envy as Motives for the Pursuit of Economic Growth: Do Ideological Frameworks Matter?

  Abstract

  The pursuit of economic growth has come to be taken for granted as a policy goal with the motive commonly presumed to be improvement of human welfare. However,a historical perspective points to ulterior motives such as military upheaval threats as motives for governments to pursue economic expansion. .In societies as diverse as Qin and Han dynasty China, early modern Europe, Meiji era Japan, the Soviet Union in the early Stalinist years, and post-war U.S. and OEEC Europe, the desire to provide resources to support military activity was a central motive in setting economic expansion as an important policy goal. Nevertheless, it can hardly be claimed that militarization has always been the dominant motive for the pursuit of economic expansion. In the cases both post-independence India and post-war South Korea, the pursuit of industrial self-sufficiency for security purposes was balanced by populist motives of poverty alleviation. The cases of India and South Korea as well as that of early modern Europe illustrate Jacob Viner’s claim of a long-run harmony between the pursuit of wealth and power as ultimate ends of national policy.While civil wars and domestic violence were endemic in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa during the twentieth century, the combination of a lack of interstate competition and of weak state legitimacy implied no attempt to pursue growth as a means of military mobilization. Instead growth as a policy goal was pursued in both regions from a perspective of backwardness and catch-up.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 26 June 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1-15 - Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan - 75014 Paris

  BARREYRE Nicolas (EHESS) : The New History of Capitalism: what contribution ? what impact ? A debate

  HILT Eric (Wellesley College)

• Wednesday 19 June 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.15 Campus Jourdan 48 Boulevard Jourdan 75014 Paris

  MORADI Alexander (University of Sussex) : The Economics of Missionary Expansion: Evidence from Africa and Implications for Development

  Remi Jedwab and Felix Meier zu Selhausen

  Abstract

  How did Christianity expand in sub-Saharan Africa to become the continent’s dominant religion? Using annual panel data on all Christian missions from 1751 to 1932 in Ghana, as well as cross-sectional data on missions for 43 sub-Saharan African countries in 1900 and 1924, we shed light on the spatial dynamics and determinants of this religious diffusion process. Missions expanded into healthier, safer, more accessible, and more developed areas, privileging these locations first. Results are confirmed for selected factors using various identification strategies. This pattern has implications for extensive literature using missions established during colonial times as a source of variation to study the long-term economic effects of religion, human capital and culture. Our results provide a less favorable account of the impact of Christian missions on modern African economic development. We also highlight the risks of omission and endogenous measurement error biases when using historical data and events for identification.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 12 June 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  HILT Eric (Wellesley College) : Financial Asset Ownership and Political Partisanship: Liberty Bonds and Republican Electoral Success in the 1920s

  Abstract

  We analyze the effects of ownership of liberty bonds, which were marketed to American households during World War I, on election outcomes in the 1920s. We find that counties with higher liberty bond ownership rates turned against the Democratic Party in the presidential elections of 1920 and 1924. This was a reaction to the depreciation of the bonds prior to the 1920 election (when the Democrats held the presidency), and the appreciation of the bonds in the early 1920s (under a Republican president), as the Fed raised and then subsequently lowered interest rates. Our results suggest the liberty bond campaigns had unintended political consequences and illustrate the potential for financial asset ownership to increase the sensitivity of ordinary households to economic policy decisions.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 5 June 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  ZALC Claire (CNRS/EHESS) : The Lubartworld project: methodological challenges of the reconstruction of 3000 persecution trajectories over the world 1920’s-1950’s.

  Abstract

  The paper will present the Lubartworld project which aims to reconstruct the trajectories of a group of Polish Jews from the 1920s to the early 1950s, comparing the life-histories of both those who remained and those who emigrated to different regions, and examining the connections between these two groups. By doing so, it will address some theoretical issues: the dynamics of social structures of a group of persecuted victims across time and place and the variability of discriminatory categorization in diverse national and political contexts. But it also addresses important methodological challenges linked to the application of the prosopographic method in a transnational way. What are the assets and difficulties of such quantitative approaches to persecution trajectories? This approach can explore the determining factors (social, gender-related, economic, political, family, and relational) in the trajectories of individuals. Who fled? When? To where? With whom? Who survived and who didn’t? What role did the socio-economic status, the gender, the size of the family, the degree of religiosity, or the political activity play in the diverse reactions to persecution? How is it possible to explain the migratory directions (internal or external) among the Lubartow Jews who fled? Who are those who migrated overseas and those who didn't? This paper aims to present the empirical means for reflecting on the effects interpersonal networks had on the behavior of the victims of persecution.

• Wednesday 29 May 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  PONTHIÈRE Grégory : Human lifetime entropy in a historical perspective (1750-2014)

  Abstract

  Abstract This paper uses Shannon's entropy index to the base 2 to quantify the risk relative to the age at death in terms of bits (i.e. the amount of information revealed by tossing a fair coin). We first provide a simple decomposition of Shannon's lifetime entropy index that allows us to an- alyze the determinants of lifetime entropy (in particular its relation with Wiener's entropy of the event death at a particular age conditional on survival to that age) and to study how the risk about the duration of life is resolved as the individual becomes older. Then, using data on 37 countries from the Human Mortality Database, we show that, over the last two centuries, (period) lifetime entropy at birth has exhibited, in all countries, an inverted U shape pattern with a maximum in the ?rst half of the 20th century (at 6 bits), and reaches, in the early 21st century, 5.6 bits for men and 5.5 bits for women. It is also shown that the entropy age profile shifted from a non-monotonic profile (in the 18th and 19th centuries) to a strictly decreasing profile (in the 20th and 21st centuries). Keywords: mortality risk, longevity, age at death, entropy, measure- ment.

• Wednesday 22 May 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  MC CARTIN Joseph A. (Georgetown University) : Bargaining with the Neo-Liberal State: Privatization, Taxation, Financialization, and Public-Sector Workers in the USA.

  Abstract

  This lecture will explain how the vibrant movement of U.S.public-sector unionism which emerged in the 1960s was increasingly tamed and marginalized by the early 21st century. It will describe how privatization, tax cuts, tax subsidies, and the growing influence of financial interests over the public sector undercut public-sector collective bargaining, which had been built on a foundation too narrow to respond to these developments. It will address how the erosion of public-sector worker bargaining power interacted with declining private-sector bargaining power and rising inequality. And it will conclude with thoughts on recent developments and the future.

• Wednesday 15 May 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  HUBERMAN Michael (U.Montreal) : Against the Grain: Spanish Trade Policy in the Interwar Years

  Concha Betrán, University of Valencia

  Abstract

  We study the effects of changes in Spanish trade policy on the margins of trade in the context of economic and political shocks external and internal to Spain in the interwar period. We have assembled a new granular data set on imports, as well as detailed product-level information on tariffs, trade agreements, quantitative controls, and other discriminatory practices. The establishment of the Republic in 1931, which gave voice to the emerging middle class, was a turning point in trade policy. The Republic abandoned policy principally designed to protect agriculture and cotton textiles for a less retaliatory and more accommodating stance that promoted bilateral exchanges of Spanish exports for foreign imports. This gave rise to large extensive margin. But Spain was hardpressed to find countries willing to exchange market access. In an unfavorable international environment, the Spanish case offers a cautionary tale of the perils of going against the grain.

• Wednesday 10 April 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09 Campus Jourdan 48 Boulevard Jourdan 75014 Paris

  KESZTENBAUM Lionel (PSE) : Wealth in the trenches. Social class and survival during the Great War - La richesse dans les tranchées. Origine sociale et probabilité de survie pendant la première guerre mondiale.

  Abstract

  We study a very unequal society faced with war on a massive scale, fought by a military organization relying on quantity more than quality and designed to be egalitarian. Within that framework, we aim at measuring the role of wealth and social status on mortality during the war by taking advantage of individual conscription data that allow us to follow the trajectories of soldiers who fought during the war. We show that socioeconomic background do make a difference for surviving the war but with opposite effects for rural and urban conscripts: in rural settings coming from a privileged (wealthy) background is a clear disadvantage while it’s the opposite in urban areas, as those coming from educated groups having the lowest mortality during the war. We discuss allocation mechanisms of soldiers in the army that might explain those results and show that there are reinforced when taking into account wounds.

• Wednesday 3 April 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  MOHR Cathrin (University of Bonn ) : Carrots and Sticks: Targeting the Opposition in an Autocratic Regime

  Abstract

  Autocratic regimes can use carrots or sticks to ensure that they are not overthrown by their opposition in the population. Carrots increase popularity of the regime, but also the incentives to show discontent. Sticks decrease the incentives to engage in opposition, but lower popularity.This paper looks at the joint allocation of resources and repression by considering the unique case of construction activity and military presence in the German Democratic Republic. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I ?nd that after an uprising in 1953 residential construction in municipalities that engaged in protests increased, compared to construction in municipalities without protests. Protest municipalities receive more military troops and are more likely to have hidden objects of the Secret Police. Construction especially increases after new military units are assigned to municipalities. This paper thus provides the ?rst empirical evidence that autocratic regimes do target their opposition with carrots and sticks, and that carrots are to some extent used as a means to alleviate the negative effect of sticks.

• Wednesday 27 March 2019 12:30-14:00

  The session was canceled.

  Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  CERRETANO Valerio (University of Glasgow) : *TBA

• Wednesday 20 March 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09 Campus Jourdan 48 Boulevard Jourdan 75014 Paris

  GAY Victor (TSE) : Shocking Culture: World War I and Attitudes toward Gender Role throughout a Century

  Abstract

  World War I in France induced many women to enter the labor force after the war, a shock to female labor that persisted over the long run. I rely on this historical shock to women's working behaviors to explore mechanisms that underlie the process of cultural change. I attempt to build a measure of attitudes that is consistent across time and space by using legislative behaviors of French deputies on gender-issues bills throughout the twentieth century. Preliminary results indicate that the war had enduring implications for attitudes toward gender roles across society.

• Wednesday 13 March 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  MONSON Andrew (New York University) : Constitutions, Credible Commitments, and Public Finance in Ancient Greece

  Abstract

  The ancient Greek city-states developed strikingly modern methods of taxation and public debt. The ability to tax property and trade effectively as well as borrow money gave democratic city-states advantages in interstate competition. Apart from the well-known case of Athens, the literary and epigraphical evidence suggests a convergence of political and fiscal institutions from the fourth to first centuries BC across the Greek world and beyond. This paper relates the high fiscal capacity in democratic Greek states to constitutional rules, enabling them to commit credibly to policies that benefited taxpayers and creditors, prevent arbitrary expropriation, and thereby increase compliance. The conclusions are strengthened by comparison with oligarchical and monarchical regimes that tried to implement similar fiscal institutions.

• Wednesday 6 March 2019 12:30-14:00

  R1.09 Campus Jourdan 48 Boulevard Jourdan 75014 Paris

  WOLF NIKOLAUS (Humboldt Universität) : Was Marx Right? Market Concentration, Income Inequality, and Voting in late 19th Century Germany

  Abstract

  The recent debate on the causes and consequences of income inequality shows striking similarities to the debate in many parts of Europe before 1914. Today and back then the focus was on the role of capital share and market concentration as a cause for rising inequality. In this study we analyze the drivers and consequences of income inequality exploiting a newly constructed regional panel based on detailed income tax statistics for the German Empire, 1874-1913. Our data features large variation in terms of inequality across 30 Prussian districts (Regierungsbezirke) and dynamic changes over time, within the common institutional framework of the German Empire. Both, capital share and inequality are strongly associated with rising market concentration. Further, inequality had a strong effect on political polarization. However, in seeming contrast to modern results but in line with simple models of political economy, income inequality in 19th century Germany was mainly linked to support for the political left, while the relationship with the political right is much weaker.

• Wednesday 27 February 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  WULFERS Alexander (University of Oxford) : The Marriage of Iron and Rye Reunited? The Shift towards Protectionism in the Weimar Republic and the Political Economy of German Trade Policy”

  Abstract

  The interwar period was a time of rising protectionism, especially in Germany where a brief period of reconciliation with its neighbours and a moderately liberal trade policy in the 1920s was succeeded by a radical shift to high tariffs and, ultimately, a struggle for autarky under National Socialism. This shift stands at the end of a long struggle between different interest groups, most notably the protectionist agricultural lobby and more export-oriented new industrial sectors like electronics and chemicals. This paper investigates to what extent the clash at the lobbyists’ level is also reflected in voting behaviour. I examine, based on detailed county-level data on the economic structure of German industry and agriculture, whether a right-wing shift in electoral result corresponds to a stronger radicalisation of some groups relative to the overall population, both between sectors and within the agricultural sector between livestock and grain farmers.

• Wednesday 20 February 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Boulevard Jourdan 75014 Paris

  ARNOUX Mathieu (EHESS/CRH) : Transitions énergétiques et systèmes renouvelables. Une approche de longue durée.

  Abstract

  La notion de transition énergétique s’est imposée en moins d’une décennie comme un thème fondamental en matière de politique et d’économie. Elle renvoie le plus souvent à la distinction, désormais familière elle aussi, entre énergies renouvelables et non renouvelables. Dans la littérature d’histoire économique, le processus de transition prend le plus souvent l'apparence d’une courbe de consommation per capita d’énergie finale, mesurée en quantité d’énergie. Ce mode de mesure, mis au point au début du XIXe siècle dans un contexte de mécanisation de l’industrie et de croissance de la consommation du charbon, ne permet pas de décrire adéquatement le fonctionnement et l’évolution des systèmes fondés sur les énergies renouvelables, caractéristiques des sociétés préindustrielles. L’intervention montrera qu’on peut analyser les systèmes renouvelables et apprécier leurs dimensions d'efficacité à partir d’une description qualitative en pas seulement quantitative des services énergétiques, par ailleurs plus satisfaisante d’un point de vue physique. Il s’agira en particulier de montrer comment, sans recourir, le plus souvent, aux stocks de combustibles fossiles, les usages mis en œuvre par les sociétés préindustrielles convertissent les flux d’énergie dérivant du rayonnement solaire, soit immédiatement, soit de façon différée en constituant des stocks d’énergie potentielle adaptées aux usages des consommateurs. La création et la gestion de ces potentiels, n’est pas seulement un problème technique, mais aussi institutionnel et économique. Une telle approche permet d’utiliser différemment les sources et instruments de l’histoire économique (comptabilités en particulier) et de l’histoire des techniques (processus d’innovation et matériaux critiques).

• Wednesday 13 February 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  CARRE Guillaume (EHESS) : Le fabuleux métal : l'argent japonais en Asie orientale (16e -17e siècles)

  Abstract

  Du 16e au 17e siècles, les mines d'argent de l'archipel japonais déversèrent sur l'Asie orientale des quantités énormes de métaux précieux, mais ce n'est qu'assez récemment que l'histoire économique en Occident a pris pleinement en compte ce paramètre dans ses réflexions sur la première mondialisation. Il est désormais avéré en effet que c'est avant tout cet argent japonais, et non celui du Pérou, qui a nourri l'expansion économique de la fin des Ming, et celle du commerce maritime dont les Européens, Portugais, puis Anglais et Hollandais, cherchèrent eux aussi à tirer profit. L'argent japonais constitua en réalité un facteur essentiel dans la déstabilisation des équilibres qui régissaient l'Extrême-Orient durant le 15e siècle, car son afflux massif et continu pendant près de 150 ans, en bouleversant les économies de la région, influa aussi sur la recomposition des formes de gouvernements de ses empires et royaumes, et sur le jeu des puissances qui se la partageaient. Dans cette séminaire, j'examinerai trois aspects de cet âge de l'argent japonais : tout d'abord sa monétisation au Japon, et la place de ce processus dans la construction du système politique du shogounat d'Edo ; ensuite le rôle que joua l'argent japonais dans l'essor du commerce maritime en Asie et la fin du système de contrôle des échanges internationaux patronné par la Chine ; enfin, je m'intéresserai à l'attitude des gouvernements de la Corée face aux importations d'argent, et à son commerce aux confins septentrionaux de la péninsule et de la Chine.

• Wednesday 6 February 2019 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  MAIFREDA Germano (U. of Milano) : Using the Past, Building Trust Ethnicity, the Risorgimento, and the Relationship Lending between the Weill-Schott Bankers and Prime Minister Francesco Crispi in Nineteenth-Century Italy

  Abstract

  This paper explores the relation between the Weill-Schott brothers’ private bank and Francesco Crispi (1818-1901), an architect of Italy’s unification in 1860 and one of the most important and controversial figures in modern Italian history. I mean to look into the modalities of building up, maintaining, and dissolving a fiduciary relationship which was, at once, private and professional; and illuminate some paths followed by the politician and his bankers in forming trustworthiness through a careful use of shared political experience (the Italian Risorgimento), Jewish 'ethnicity', and different layers of ‘familial' ties: biological, friendly, and Masonic.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 30 January 2019 10:00-12:00

  Salle R2.20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  MOORE Lyndon (U. of Melbourne) : Railroad Bailouts in the Great Depression.

  Toby Daglish (Victoria University of Wellington)

  Abstract

  U.S. railroads received loans from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation starting in Febru- ary 1932, at below-market rates, primarily to meet interest and principal repayments on their debt. Almost all loan requests were approved. The rst loan approval that a railroad received was associated with a 55 basis point increase in the credit spreads of its bonds, even after condi- tioning on observable determinants of credit risk. The benet of receiving a loan at concessional interest rates was outweighed by the negative signal that the rm was unable to access credit through regular channels. Subsequent RFC loans are weakly associated with lower credit spreads for the railroad's bonds. Speculative grade railroad bonds are the most aected by news of a government loan, those bonds' spreads increase by over 260 basis points, whereas investment grade bonds' spreads are little changed. 

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 19 December 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09 Campus Jourdan - 48 Boulevard Jourdan 75014 Paris

  DELALANDE Nicolas (Sciences Po) : La lutte et l'entraide. Les solidarités ouvrières face à la mondialisation du capital (1864-1914)

  Abstract

  La mondialisation du XIXe siècle a donné naissance à des formes inédites et multiples de solidarités internationales. Les ouvriers n’étaient pas les seuls à vouloir s’aider par-delà les frontières : les philanthropes, les missionnaires, les exilés politiques cherchaient aussi à établir des relations à longue distance pour porter secours à d’autres. Le projet internationaliste ouvrier, apparu au cours des années 1860, avait cependant de fortes spécificités. Il visait à rassembler les travailleurs, quels que soient leur pays, leur langue ou leur culture, pour les unir dans un même combat, tourné contre la mondialisation du capital et la domination des États bourgeois. Le but initial n’était pas de prendre le pouvoir ou de limiter les circulations, plutôt de proposer une solidarité internationale alternative. Ce projet s’inspirait d’une conception horizontale des liens économiques et sociaux, dans l’espoir que le partage et la circulation des richesses ouvrières puissent profiter à tous, plutôt que d’entretenir les concurrences et les rivalités. Le diagnostic posé par Marx et par les fondateurs de la Première Internationale était sans appel : sans solidarité universelle, les ouvriers seraient toujours les grands perdants de la mondialisation, participant, par leurs luttes sectorielles et leurs revendications particularistes, à leur propre asservissement.

• Wednesday 12 December 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  JO Yoon (TAMU) : The impact of the redistribution of Church land during the Revolution on 19th c. agricultural investments and output

  Abstract

  This study exploits the confiscation and auctioning off of Church property that occurred during the French Revolution to assess the role played by transaction costs in delaying the reallocation of property rights in the aftermath of fundamental institutional reform. French districts with a greater proportion of land redistributed during the Revolution experienced higher levels of agricultural productivity in 1841 and 1852 as well as more investment in irrigation and more efficient land use. We trace these increases in productivity to an increase in land inequality associated with the Revolutionary auction process. We also show how the benefits associated with the head-start given to districts with more Church land initially, and thus greater land redistribution by auction during the Revolution, dissipated over the course of the nineteenth century as other districts gradually overcame the transaction costs associated with reallocating the property rights associated with the feudal system.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 5 December 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  YAMAMOTO Koji (U. of Tokyo) : Taming Capitalism before its Triumph: A Case of Early Modern England

• Wednesday 28 November 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  SCHULARICK Moritz (Université de Bonn) : Income and Wealth Inequality in America, 1949-2016

  (with Moritz Kuhn and Ulrike Steins)

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 21 November 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  CONDORELLI Stefano (Université de Berne) : From Quincampoix to Ophir: a global history of the 1720 financial boom

  Abstract

  Scholars have long known that the Mississippi Bubble, the South Sea Bubble, and the Dutch “Windhandel” (1719-20) were connected and represented together the first international financial bubble (P.G.M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England, 1967; L. Neal, The rise of financial capitalism, 1990; etc.) However, no study had hitherto investigated the pan-European and global dimensions of the 1720 stock euphoria. Drawing on extensive archival research and a vast secondary literature, this presentation will highlight some key elements that seek to explain: a) why and how the stock euphoria became a pan-European phenomenon, spanning from Portugal to Russia and from Sicily to Sweden; b) why and how it came to have so many ramifications (some of them with far-reaching consequences) across the globe, from the Mississippi Valley to Africa, the Indian Ocean, China, and Oceania.

• Wednesday 14 November 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

  ACCOMINOTTI Olivier (LSE) : The Origination and Distribution of Money Market Instruments: Sterling Bills of Exchange During the First Globalization

  Abstract

  This paper presents a detailed analysis of how liquid money market instruments – sterling bills of exchange - were originated during the First Globalization. We rely on a unique dataset constructed from a previously unexploited archival source reporting systematic information on all bills rediscounted by the Bank of England in the year 1906. Using network analysis, we reconstruct the complete network of linkages between agents involved in the origination of London bills. Sterling bills always involved a “drawer” (a borrower in a foreign country), an “acceptor” (a London firm who guaranteed the bill’s payment), and a “discounter” (a lender). Our analysis reveals that acceptors/guarantors played a crucial role in solving the informational problem between lenders and borrowers. This ensured that risky private debts could be transformed into highly liquid monetary instruments, a function that was crucial to the position of London as the world’s leading international financial center.

• Wednesday 7 November 2018 12:30-14:00

  S. R1.13 Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan - 75014 Paris

  COGNEAU Denis (PSE) : Recherche sur le colonialisme français au Centre Simiand

  Abstract

  Je tenterai de présenter de manière concise plusieurs travaux de recherche sur différents aspects du colonialisme français, à la fois passés et en cours, qui constituent un puzzle inachevé, soulève des questions non résolues et justifient de nouveaux projets. Ces travaux concernent : (i) la structure des Etats coloniaux et leur évolution : capacité fiscale et dualisme ; (ii) les comparaisons avec les colonies britanniques en termes de fiscalité et de dépenses, de politiques d’éducations et de politiques salariales ; (iii) la capacité fiscale et le dualisme dans les anciennes colonies françaises depuis leur indépendance (expériences socialistes, boom des matières premières exportées, ajustement structurel) ; (iv) la mesure du « coût » de l’Empire ; (v) inégalité en situation coloniale, répartition de la charge fiscale, conscription militaire (et « impôt du sang »), et conditions de vie des populations assujetties ; (vi) la sélection et l’action des élites administratives coloniales : le cas des gouverneurs ; (vii) flux de capitaux privés et entreprises coloniales ; (viii) politiques du colonialisme, lobbies coloniaux.

• Wednesday 24 October 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.14, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  CARANTON Julien (Université de Grenoble) : Des ouvriers si imprévoyants ? La gestion des retraites au sein des associations mutualistes (Grenoble, seconde moitié du XIXe siècle)

  Abstract

  Au tournant des décennies 1840-1850, les élites libérales et saint-simoniennes françaises, inspirées par le modèle anglais des friendly societies, critiquent «l’empirisme» des mutualistes en matière de gestion des retraites ouvrières. Ces élites militent en faveur d’une organisation scientifique et rationnelle des sociétés de secours mutuels. Certaines de leurs prescriptions, ayant pour objectif de sensibiliser les mutualistes au coût de la prévoyance sociale, sont intégrées aux premiers textes venant réguler l’activité mutualiste (loi de 1850, décrets de 1852 et de 1856). À partir du cas grenoblois, cette communication souhaite présenter la manière dont les mutualistes ont intégré ces prescriptions afin de développer leur propre notion de coût de la prévoyance sociale.

• Wednesday 17 October 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  CHEN Natalie (Warwick) : Entitlement, Property, and Social Stratification in Agrarian China: A Nineteenth-century. Case from Northeast China

  Abstract

  In her recent book, State-Sponsored Inequality: The Banner System and Social Stratification in Northeast China (Stanford University, 2017), Shuang CHEN provides a comprehensive view on how state policies, market forces, and demographic processes interacted with one another to produce inequality under state domination in nineteenth century rural northeast China. The Qing state (1644-1911) settled and classified immigrants there into distinct categories, each associated with different land entitlements. The resulting patterns of wealth stratification and social hierarchy were then simultaneously challenged and reinforced by these settlers and their descendants. Eventually the tension built into the unequal land entitlements shaped the identities of immigrant groups, and this social hierarchy persisted even after the institution of unequal state entitlements was removed. Drawing on the China Multi-Generational Panel Dataset-Shuangcheng (CMGPD-SC), which contains 1,346,826 annual observations of 107,890 individuals living between 1866 and 1913 and 37,187 plot inventories, and a large number of court cases, official correspondence, and memorials, Shuang CHEN shows how government policies and market forces may be responsible for social differentiation and social stratification in general, but the socioeconomic processes of inequality in any given society are closely associated with specific political and social institutions. In a power-based society such as China, such political entitlements constitute one of the most important factors of wealth stratification and social grouping.

• Wednesday 10 October 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  VAN DER BEEK Karine (Ben-Gurion U.) : Wheels of Change: Skill biased natural resources and industrialization in eighteenth century England

  Abstract

  This paper uses an extensive cross-section of England's historical and geographical characteristics, to examine the role played by geography in determining regions' specialization, mechanization, and extent of textile production in the mid-eighteenth century. It shows that the location of English textile centers practically persisted in the same regions (i.e. the Cotswolds, East Anglia, the middle Pennines in Lancashire, and the West-Riding ) since the fourteenth century, in locations that had grinding mills in earlier periods. Our hypothesis is that the regions' resources determine its relative advantage. In the case of the textile sector, regions that had both the proximity of a rivers and a potential for high wheat yields had more watermills and mechanical workers who were required in order to construct and maintain them. Ceteris paribus, when textile fulling mills were introduced in the fourteenth century, they were more likely to be adopted in textile centers located in places with an existing relative advantage in watermill technology. To identify the effect of the existence of mechanical workers on the extent of textile productions we use the location of grinding mills in the 11th century (from Domesday Book) as an IV for mechanical workers during the first half of the 18th century and find a significant and positive effect. Our findings may imply that the availability of coal and the production of cotton textiles rather than woolens, cannot explain the adoption of steam and industrialization in the North-West by themselves, without taking into account the initial determinants for the initial development a textile center in this area.

• Wednesday 3 October 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  BENGTSSON Erik (Lund University) : Wealth and inequality in Sweden, c. 1650–1900

  Abstract

  Previous studies of wealth inequality in Sweden have used consistent measures back to 1873 (Roine and Waldenström), and less good data for one benchmark year in 1800 (Soltow). Roine and Waldenström’s important study built on tax data. Together with colleagues, I have created a database of 1200+ probate inventories for each of the years 1750, 1800, 1850 and 1900. The Swedish probate inventories are completely encompassing which makes it possible to study all kinds of wealth and more or less all social groups. We have so far produced a general study of inequality and its drivers 1750–1900, and separate papers on the nobility and the farmers. We are now pushing the studies further backwards by focusing on the cities. The presentation will be a synthetic one, presenting the data that we have used and the conclusions drawn and arguments made in several papers. To summarize, we show and argue that (a) Sweden was as unequal as Britain, France and the US in 1900 – we concede the point to Piketty (2014) that ‘Sweden was not the structurally egalitarian country that we sometimes imagine’ [paper 1]. (b) The Kuznets Curve is not a good explanation of the increase in Swedish inequality in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Instead, between-class, within-sector growth of inequality is more important [1, 3]. (c) The nobility was very wealthy indeed – 61 times more wealthy than the average in 1750, and 19 times more in 1900 [1, 2]. (d) Swedish cities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were extremely unequal, with top decile shares of wealth around 90 per cent [6]. (e) Equality only came late in Sweden; in a single-authored paper I dismiss explanations of twentieth century Social Democratic egalitarianism as continuations of any old peasant farmer-based equality, and argue that it was popular mobilization after 1870 which made Sweden the most egalitarian economy in the world [4]. The presentation will be based on the following papers: [1] “Wealth Inequality in Sweden, 1750–1900”. The Economic History Review, 2018, vol. 71 no. 3, pp. 772-794. Co-authored with with Anna Missiaia, Mats Olsson and Patrick Svensson. [2] “Aristocratic Wealth and Inequality in a Changing Society: Sweden, 1750–1900”. Forthcoming in the Scandinavian Journal of History. Co-authored with Anna Missiaia, Mats Olsson and Patrick Svensson. [3] “The Wealth of the Swedish Peasant Farmer Class, 1750–1900: Composition and Distribution”. Submitted to Rural History. Co-authored with Patrick Svensson. [4] “The Swedish Sonderweg in Question: Democratization and Inequality in Comparative Perspective, c. 1750–1920”. Forthcoming in Past & Present. [5] “Unequal Poverty and Equal Industrialization: Finnish Wealth, 1750–1900”. Forthcoming in Scandinavian Economic History Review. Co-authored with Anna Missiaia, Mats Olsson and Ilkka Nummela. [6] ”Wealth and Its Distribution in Swedish Cities 1650–1715”. Work in progress. Co-authored with Mats Olsson and Patrick Svensson.

• Wednesday 26 September 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1.13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  RIDOLFI Leonardo (University of Siena) : Six centuries of real wages in France from Louis IX to Napoleon III: 1250-1860

  Abstract

  A notable feature of the evolution of real wages in the pre-industrial period is their tendency to diverge in the North Sea Area from the rest of Europe by the early modern period. However, while this evidence lies its empirical foundations in the study of a large sample of leading European cities, the development of real wages from a broader national perspective is still largely unexplored. Using a newly constructed dataset, I take a step in this direction presenting new series of real wages for male agricultural laborers and construction workers in France from 1250 to 1860. I show that the overall picture is more complex than a “Little divergence thesis” would suggest since cross-national comparisons of real wages point to the coexistence of both divergence and convergence phases before the late eighteenth century. I also find that regional and sectoral differences are key to understand the evolution of real wages and I identify the major stages of this process.

• Wednesday 19 September 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  MONTIALOUX Claire (CREST) : Minimum Wages and Racial Inequality in the US (1938-1980)

  Ellora Derenoncourt (Harvard)

  Abstract

  Racial earnings gaps fell dramatically in the late 1960s. We study the contribution of the federal minimum wage to this decline. The 1966 Fair Labor Standards Act introduced high federal minimum wages to sectors that were previously uncovered and where black workers were overrepresented. We show that this reform increased wages for workers in newly covered industries and that the impact was twice as large for black workers as for white. We find no effect of the reform on employment. The 1966 extension of the minimum wage can explain 25% of the reduction in the racial wage gap in the United States as a whole in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Our findings shed new light on the impacts of labor standards on racial inequality.

• Wednesday 12 September 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  SAKALLI Seyhun Orcan (UNIL) : Mass Refugee Inflow and Long-run Prosperity: Lessons from the Greek Population Resettlement

  with Elie Murard

  Abstract

  This paper investigates the long-term consequences of mass refugee inflow on economic development by examining the effect of the first large-scale population resettlement in modern history. After the Greco-Turkish war of 1919-1922, 1.2 million Greek Orthodox were forcibly resettled from Turkey to Greece, increasing the Greek population by more than 20% within a few months. We build a novel geocoded dataset locating settlements of refugees across the universe of the more than four thousand Greek municipalities that existed in Greece in 1920. Exploiting the spatial variation in the resettlement location, we find that localities with more refugees in 1923 have today higher earnings, higher levels of household wealth, greater educational attainment, as well as larger financial and manufacturing sectors. These results holds when comparing spatially contiguous municipalities with identical geographical features and are not driven by pre-settlement differences in initial level of development across localities. The long-run beneficial effects appear to arise from agglomeration economies generated by the large increase in the workforce, as well as by new industrial know-hows brought by refugees, which fostered early industrialization and economic growth.

• Wednesday 4 July 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R6-60, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  NEAL Larry (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) : A case study of how modern finance emerged in the crucible of war, 1789-1815

• Wednesday 27 June 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  STANZIANI Alessandro (EHESS) : Labor on the fringes of Empires, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

• Wednesday 20 June 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  ROTHSCHILD Emma (Harvard) : An Endless History: Economic Life in Angoulême, 1713-1906

• Wednesday 13 June 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  O SULLIVAN Mary (Université de Genève) : No Capitalism Please, We’re Historians: The Elusive Rôle of Profit in the History of Economic Life

  Abstract

  If capitalism is to have a distinctive economic meaning, that meaning stems not from the mere existence of capital but from capital’s relationship to profit. That makes the study of the generation and appropriation and erosion of profit of crucial importance to an understanding of capitalism. However, historians of economic life – whether economic historians, the new historians of capitalism or business historians – are remarkably reluctant to grapple with the history of profit. One could illustrate the point using any major controversy in the history of capitalism but I will illustrate historians’ neglect of profits by drawing on the ongoing debate about capitalism and slavery. Then I will turn to an important exception to the rule by focussing on the substantial and heterogeneous literature on the history of accounting. That literature offers valuable guidance on the meaning and measurement of profit over time but that is not the same as a history of profit. Instead what we need are historical studies of the generation, erosion, appropriation and deployment of profits and I will draw on historical research on profit and capital in mercantile history to suggest that such studies can offer promising insights on the historical dynamics of capitalism.

• Wednesday 6 June 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  HURET Romain (EHESS/CENA) : Rethinking the Death Tax's Origins: States, Federalism and Inheritance Tax in the United States (1826-1929)

• Wednesday 30 May 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  PIKETTY Thomas (EHESS/PSE) : Inégalité et conflit politico-idéologique. France, Royaume-Uni, Etats-Unis 1948-2017

  Abstract

  Le séminaire sera donné en français et s'appuiera sur une recherche disponible en ligne à l'adresse http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/conflict

• Wednesday 23 May 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  SICSIC Michaël : L’apogée Pompidou: large firms and vocational training

  Abstract

  The general and broad view about the Trente Glorieuses hides quite different periods between 1946 and 1973. Up to the mid sixties the very quick growth in France was then seen as a catch up relative to its own trend before the thirties. Then the continuation along the same path came as a surprise. This paper is about this period from around 1965 to 1973. This short period (50 years ago) was new and different from the reconstruction because it was the beginning of a long process of reduction in work time, of reduction in wages inequality, while there was a renewed increase in industrial labor force. It was a time of concentration of large private firms with strong internal training within those firms, in a particularly favorable macro environment for France. The first section describes the impressive relative success of the French economy. The second section addresses the macro environment, with focuses on public finances more than on the 1969 devaluation, and the third section recall the evolving view of the best analysts from the mid sixties to the eighties about French growth. The fourth section deals with the concentration of firms which is not interpreted as the result of a dirigiste industrial policy but as private firms consolidating, helped by a legislative change in 1965 favorable to mergers and acquisitions. The fifth section attempts to shed some light on vocational continuing training.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 16 May 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1-07, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  FELICE Emmanuele : The Roots of a Dual Equilibrium: GDP, Productivity and Structural Change in the Italian Regions in the Long-run (1871-2011)

  Abstract

  The article presents updated estimates of GDP per capita, productivity and employment for Italy’s regions, at the NUTS II level and at current borders, for the whole economy and its three branches (agriculture, industry, services): they span 140 years in ten-year benchmarks (1871-2011). Sigma and beta convergence are tested for GDP per capita, productivity and employment-to-population. Four phases in the history of Italy’s regional inequality are identified, roughly coinciding with the different political eras of the country: mild divergence (the liberal age), strong divergence (the interwar years), general convergence (the golden age) and the “two-Italies” tale (1971-2011). In the first two phases we observe the formation of three macro-areas; in the last decades, we record convergence within the Centre-North and an increasing North/South polarization, with differences in employment becoming more important than those in productivity. This result is in line with a socio-institutional interpretation of the North/South divide.

• Wednesday 9 May 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  PALA Giovanni (Oxford) : Innovation encouragement in pre-unification Italy: the case of patents and industrial fairs, 1815-1860

  Abstract

  The importance of patents of invention in influencing the direction of innovation and economic choices is increasingly supported in the literature, both theoretically and empirically. Their role as an instrument to deepen our understanding of specific industrial or macroeconomic dynamics is similarly well-established. The use of this tool applied to the nineteenth century European peripheral economies has been limited though, and in the Italian case discontinuous in either time or geographic scope. In fact, there are major geographic areas that are completely unexplored for the years of the Risorgimento (1815-1861). My research fills this gap and provides a new dataset that for the first time compares patent trends in the three kingdoms of Lombardy-Venetia, Sardinia and the Two Sicilies. Additionally, it proposes a study of the legislation and institutional debate in the Italian states using new archival sources. Three results emerge from the study. Firstly, evidence of an increasing confidence and final expansion in the use of patents to protect the traditional Risorgimento’s sectors of innovation. Secondly, that this expansion was fueled in a conspicuous way by foreign capital and foreign innovations, chiefly of French origin. Thirdly, that this was in part understood and tolerated by the administration and establishment of the time as part of a set of policies for the encouragement of inventiveness and growth in the peninsula, which included industrial fairs. These results confirm some of the received wisdom on the period and reassess the Italian dependency from and openness to foreign countries by placing its incipit firmly in the first half of the century. The results are particularly relevant for the debate on the nature and benefits of patenting, their use as tools for the acquisition of other countries’ knowledge, and the creation of incentives for foreign investments inflows. Further study of French investments in peripheral economies is warranted.

• Wednesday 2 May 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  HUBERMAN Michael (U.Montreal) : Domestic Barriers to Internal and International Trade: New Evidence for Brazil, 1920-1940

• Wednesday 18 April 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  MITCHENER Kris ((Leavey School of Business)) : Swords into Bank Shares: Finance, Conflict and Political Reform in Meiji Japan

• Wednesday 11 April 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  WHITE Eugene (Rutgers University) : Censored Success: How to Prevent a Banking Panic, the Barings Crisis of 1890 Revisited

  Abstract

  Financial histories have treated the Barings Crisis of 1890 as a minor or pseudo-crisis, presenting no threat to the systems of payment or settlement and readily managed by following Bagehot’s LOLR rule. New evidence reveals that Barings Brothers, a SIFI, was a deeply insolvent institution. Just as its true condition was revealed and a full-scale panic was about to ignite, the Bank of England stepped in; but it did not respond as Bagehot recommended. While lending freely at a high rate on good collateral to other institutions, the Bank organized a pre-emptive lifeboat operation. Barings was split into a good bank that was recapitalized and a bad bank that had a prolonged but orderly liquidation supported by credit from the Bank. A financial crisis was thereby avoided, while steps were taken to mitigate the effects of moral hazard from this discretionary intervention. Contrary to the historical consensus for the pre-1914 era, central banks did not follow a strict Bagehot rule but exercised discretion when faced with the failure of a giant financial institution. Their success has led to a reading of history that has censored lessons in effective approaches to halting incipient crises.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 4 April 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  SOTURA Aurélie (BdF) : Spatial income inequalities in France: 1960-2014

  BONNET Celine (Toulouse School of Economics, INRAE)

  Abstract

  Abstract: Is there convergence between and within French départements? We shed new light on this question thanks to a new database on local distributions of income in France from 1960 to 2014. The main contribution of this paper is the creation of a database on French metropolitan départements income distribution, using around 4500 fiscal tabulations collected in the Archives of French Economic Ministry, a new demographic database by Bonnet(2018), and income distribution for France computed by Garbinti et al. (2016). With our database, we first show that, today, total inequality comes only from intra départements inequality (that is inequality within départements). This is the result of a beta-convergence that took place bewteen départments. Second, we do not find any impact of intra départements measures of inequality on départements income per capita growth.Third, we find that on the period 1960-2014, there has been a growing concentration of population, employment, and value added per départements, whereas income concentration has, if anything, stabilized. This comes partly from the relocation of retirees to non productive but attractive places.

• Wednesday 28 March 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  GRANDI Elisa (PSE) : Face-off in Bogota. Transnational networks and lending practices in World Bank early missions (Colombia 1949-1954)

• Wednesday 21 March 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  MONTALBO Adrien (ESSEX) : Economic resources and primary schooling in the early nineteenth-century France

  Abstract

  The Guizot Law of 1833 was the first step undertaken in France towards the organization of primary schooling at a national level, making it mandatory for municipalities more than 500 inhabitants to open a primary school for boys. To this date, primary schooling was mostly managed by municipal authorities who could freely decide to subsidise schools or to let them be entirely funded through schooling fees paid by families. A national survey was conducted in 1833 to determine the location of the existing primary schools. Exploiting the data coming from this survey at the arrondissements (departmental districts) and municipal levels, I investigate the economic determinants of primary schooling spreading in France before the Guizot Law. I first show that economic resources and population dispersion were key in explaining primary schools’ presence, municipal grants and higher enrolment rates. The percentage of municipalities with schools along with the percentage of teachers provided with an accommodation, a classroom, a fixed salary or an occupation by municipalities were indeed higher in wealthier districts. Then, I show that the pattern of this investment was also depending on the population deciles municipalities were belonging to. Finally, I investigate the link between municipal grants and enrolment rates. Local authorities acted to lower the level of fees in the schools they subsidised, which reduced the costs of education borne by families and contributed to increase enrolment rates. Primary schooling thus developed mostly in areas where it was economically valuable, through the concomitant action of municipalities and families, which divided the burden of education costs.

• Wednesday 14 March 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  SALISBURY Laura (York University) : Marrying for Money: Evidence from the First Wave of Married Women's Property Laws in the U.S.

  Abstract

  Marriage can substitute for formal business contracts, especially in environments that lack a well established system of contract or corporate law. In such settings, marriage can facilitate the efficient organization of labor and capital. In this paper, we explore the pooling of capital as an explicit motive for marriage. We measure the impact of a class of married women's property acts introduced in the American South during the 1840s on assortative matching in the marriage market. These laws did not grant married women autonomy over their separate estate; they merely shielded their property from seizure by their husbands' creditors. This had the dual effect of mitigating downside risk while restricting a husband's ability to borrow against his wife's property; it also preserved the bulk of the wife's assets as inheritance for the couple's children. Using a newly compiled database of linked marriage and census records, we show that these laws were associated with an overall increase in assortative mating, suggesting that the ability to pool capital importantly contributed to the gains from marriage. At the same time, there is considerable heterogeneity in the effect in different regions of the joint men's and women's wealth distribution. We provide an interpretation for these results.

• Wednesday 7 March 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  NELSON Scott (University of Georgia) : A Nitroglycerin Apocalypse

  Abstract

  This talk will explore the relationship between stabilized nitrates and states, from the formation of empires based on gunpowder in the fifteenth century to the role of nitroglycerin in destroying them after 1868. Topics will include new tunnels in the international network (Suez, Mt. Cenis, and the Appalachian mountains), how grain storage centers moved as transcontinental cables emerged, and suggest how stabilized nitroglycerin contributed to the international panic of 1873.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 21 February 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  VELDE François : Lottery Loans in the Eighteenth

• Wednesday 14 February 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  RUEDA Valeria (Oxford) : Political unification and geographic economic disparities in Italy 1861-71

  Brian A’Hearn

• Wednesday 7 February 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  GOVIN Yajna (PSE) : Income Inequality: The case of Overseas Departments of France- Long Run Trends and Comparisons

• Wednesday 24 January 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  SALEH Mohamed (LSE) : Socioeconomic Inequality across Religious Groups in the Middle East

  Abstract

  This book project plans to study various questions related to the long-standing socioeconomic inequality across religious groups in the Middle East. It draws on novel primary data sources including medieval papyri, historical population censuses, and tax registers, in order to document the socioeconomic advantage of non-Muslim minorities in the region and how it evolved over time and varied across groups and territories. It then examines how inter-religion socioeconomic inequality was impacted by European influence and state-led development since 1800. Finally, it explores the historical roots of this inequality and the role of Islamic taxation in its emergence, and how the Islamic tax system itself evolved in response to it. Overall, the planned manuscript is part of a larger project that attempts to write a new evidence-based economic history of the region that draws on the digitization of various primary unexplored data sources at local and European archives and that combines the quantitative approaches of the social sciences with the large historical literature. In doing so, it builds on earlier work of pioneering economic historians of the region, while attempting to go beyond the conceptual and methodological divisions that separate economic historians from historians as well as those that separate nationalist from colonial narratives.

• Wednesday 17 January 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  HILT Eric (Wellesley College) : Banks, Insider Connections, and Industrialization in New England: Evidence from the Panic of 1873.

  Abstract

  Using newly collected data from Massachusetts, this paper documents the extent of bank director representation non-financial firms’ boards, and investigates whether bank-affiliated companies fared better during the recession that followed the Panic of 1873. Around 59 percent of all non-financial corporations had at least one bank director on their boards. These firms survived the recession of the 1870s at higher rates, and among the surviving firms, those with bank affiliations saw their growth rates and credit ratings decline less than firms without bank affiliations. Consistent with banker-directors helping to resolve problems related to asymmetric information, these effects were strongest among younger firms, and those with lower shares of fixed assets on their balance sheets. In contrast, the presence of bank cashiers on firms’ boards, which created an association with a bank without significantly increasing the likelihood of a credit relationship, had no effect. These results imply that during New England’s industrialization, affiliations with commercial banks helped nonfinancial corporations survive economic downturns.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 10 January 2018 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  ADELMAN Jeremy (Princeton) : The Global Gilded Age: Integration, Inequality, and Fragility

  Abstract

  This is an initial draft of the second chapter of a book I am writing about debates about global interdependence from the nineteenth century to the present. This paper focuses on the period before 1914, the first “Great Convergence” – to show how integration created new wealth and opportunities – as well as new fissures and fragilities across societies. Interdependence locked societies together and drove them apart at the same time. Understanding those contradictory dynamics might help to illuminate our current tensions.

• Wednesday 13 December 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  MICHELMORE Molly (Washington and Lee University) : As a Taxpayer and a Citizen: The History of Tax Politics in the 20th Century United States

• Tuesday 5 December 2017 12:30-13:30

  Salle R2-01 , Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  TAYLOR Alan (University of California Davis) : The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870–2015

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 29 November 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  FERNIHOUGH Alan (Queen's University) : Less is More? The Child Quantity-Quality Trade-Off in Early 20th Century England and Wales

  Abstract

  Less is More? The Child Quantity-Quality Trade-Off in Early 20th Century England and Wales Whilst the child quantity-quality (QQ) model is theoretically well-established, the empirical literature offers only partial support. Motivated by the limited causal empirical evidence in both historic and contemporary societies, this study examines the relationship connecting fertility and child quality for individual families in England and Wales at the start of the 20th century. Using data from the 1911 census returns, I estimate whether reductions in family size reduce the probability of leaving school. To account for the endogenous nature of fertility decisions, I use the sex composition of the first two births in families with at least two children as an instrumental variable (IV) for family size. Overall, I find evidence in support of a child QQ effect, as children in the 13--15 age cohort born into smaller families were more likely remain in school. Whilst the IV results are very similar to the non-IV ones, one drawback is that the IV estimates are quite imprecise.

• Wednesday 22 November 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1-11, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  IRIGOIN Alejandra (London School Of Economics) : Standard Error: the problems for economic historians from (mis)taking Spanish American silver as commodity money, 1778?1820

  Abstract

  An important stream of recent scholarship on issues of global economic history has used silver grains to produce comparable estimates of living standards and market integration in the so called Great Divergence. Considering silver as commodity money they have standardised local prices and wages to the purchasing power of silver in each economy. However, as shown for the case of 1800s China and the US (Irigoin 2009, 2013), silver in the form of the Spanish American peso enjoyed a price in different markets which was relatively independent of its intrinsic value. In other words silver had also a monetary value.   Revisiting a high frequency series of the price of silver bullion and specie in Britain through the 18th and early 19th century, the paper first: estimates the premium – and its variation?  that specie had over bullion in the London market and secondly: discusses the implications of using of silver as commodity for comparative purposes.  Thirdly and more importantly it also qualifies established interpretations on the economic development of Latin America in the aftermath of its independence from Spain.  

• Wednesday 15 November 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  LEMERCIER Claire (CNRS) : Studying apprenticeship in 18th- and 19th-century Paris. Mixing the qualitative and the quantitative

  Clare Crowston (University of Illinois)

• Wednesday 8 November 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  SCALONE Francesco (Université de Bologne) : Neonatal mortality, Cold Weather and Socio-Economic Status in two Northern Italian Rural Parishes from 1820 to 1900

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 25 October 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  HANLON Walker (NYU Stern School of Business) : A Century of Pollution and Mortality: London, 1866-1965

  Abstract

  Abstract: Relatively little is known about how the effects of pollution evolve as countries develop, due in part to the scarcity of historical pollution measures. This study improves our understanding of this process by estimating the acute effects of pollution in London across the century spanning 1866-1965 using detailed new weekly mortality data. To identify pollution effects I reviewed daily weather reports for over 31,000 days to identify fog events. I show that these events substantially increased pollution concentrations and that, because they depended on a complex set of climatic conditions, their week-to-week timing was as good as random after appropriate controls are included. This allows me to explore a variety of questions related to (1) the overall impact of acute pollution effects in London across the century, (2) how this impact evolved over time, (3) how pollution effects varied across age groups, (4) how pollution interacted with infectious diseases and (5) how the reduction in infectious diseases influenced the effects of pollution overall and for different age groups.

• Wednesday 18 October 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  MCGAUGHEY Ewan (Kings College) : On the history of co-determination and power sharing/worker voting rights in company boards

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 11 October 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  BAILEY Marta (University of Michigan) : Prep School for Poor Kids: The Long-Term Effects of Head Start on Children

• Wednesday 4 October 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  CHRISTIN Olivier (CEDRE) : Les vrais actionnaires de l'entreprise sociale (Sieyes) : compagnies par actions et théorie de la représentation à l'époque moderne

• Wednesday 27 September 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  ZHURAVSKAYA Ekaterina (PSE) : Middleman, Minorities and Ethnic Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms in the Russian Empire

  Irena Grosfeld and Seyhun Orcan Sakalli

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 20 September 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  ASANTE Kofi (IAAST) : Fiscal Imperative and Colonial Power in the 19th Century Gold Coast

• Wednesday 13 September 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  MILHAUD Cyril (PSE) : Fragmentation of capital markets in early modern Spain? Composite monarchies and their jurisdictions

• Wednesday 21 June 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  CAMPBELL Cameron (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) : Examination Qualifications and Civil Service Employment during the Qing (1644-1911): New Evidence From Big Data

  James LEE (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)

• Wednesday 14 June 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  CHAMLEY Christophe (PSE) : L’Etat fragmenté sous Philippe II de Castille: intermédiation financière et fiscale

  Abstract

  Through shocks that were to some extent exogenous, Spain became in the pre-modern period the dominant power of its period. Philip II (1556-1598) had to deal with large and fluctuating expenditures and revenues within the constraints of political, fiscal and financial decentralization. In this context, Genoese bankers played a critical role in the management of the “sinews of war”. Current research provides new insights on their actions, on the policy constraints and on the so-called bankruptcies of Philip II. The presentation will provide the elements of a synthesis from the works in http://www.chamley.net/castile/

• Wednesday 7 June 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  REUNION DU GROUPE

• Wednesday 31 May 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  SPITZER Yannay (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) : Pale in Comparison The Economic Ecology of the Jews as a Rural Service Minority

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 24 May 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  VON GLAHN Richard (UCLA) : Modalities of the fiscal state in imperial China in comparative perspective

• Wednesday 17 May 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  ALVAREDO Facundo (PSE) : Top wealth shares in the UK over more than a century

  Anthony B. Atkinson, and Salvatore Morelli

• Wednesday 3 May 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  RAFF Dan (Wharton) : The Book Trade in America: Some Business and Economic History of Twentieth-Century American Culture I. Preliminary Matters and Culture, Reading, and Books as a Business

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 26 April 2017 12:30-14:00

  Campus Jourdan (nouveau bâitment) - Salle R2-01

  RIVA Angelo (European Business School and PSE) : Equipex Données financières historiques ? Questions et Méthodes

  Elisa GRANDI, Raphael HEKIMIAN, Emmanuel PRUNAUX et Stefano UNGARO - (Atelier Histoire Economique)

• Wednesday 19 April 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  SANCHEZ Samuel (Paris 1) : Fiscalité et construction du Royaume de Madagascar au XIXe siècle

  (Atelier Histoire Economique)

• Wednesday 29 March 2017 12:30-14:00

  Campus Jourdan (nouveau bâtiment) Salle R2-20

  FERRIE Joseph (Northwestern) : Intergenerational Mobility in the US, 1850-2015 : Income and Educational attainment across six Generations

• Wednesday 22 March 2017 12:30-14:00

  Campus Jourdan (nouveau bâtiment) R2-20

  LI Shengwu : Scar of Taiping : The Long-Term Development Impact of the Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864)

• Wednesday 15 March 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R1-14 (Nouveau bâtiment), Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  CAGE Julia : Payroll and inequality within the newsroom: evidence from France, 1936-2016

• Wednesday 8 March 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  LEVY John : The 'Capital' in Capitalism

  Abstract

  This talk surveys various approaches to the study of capitalism, exploring relative emphases upon the investment function. Drawing from Keynes’s writings on liquidity preference, the goal is explain why the history of capitalism since 1945 demands special attention to the investment function, what kinds of analyses such attention demands, and what insights about the economic past it might possibly yield.

• Wednesday 1 March 2017 12:30-14:00

  COGNEAU Denis (PSE) : Public Finance in the French Colonial Empire 1870-1970

  Yannick DUPRAZ and Sandrine MESPLE-SOMP - (Atelier Histoire Economique)

• Wednesday 22 February 2017 13:00-14:00

  Salle 8, RDC Bâtiment G, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  REUNION DE GROUPE

• Wednesday 1 February 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle 8, RDC Bâtiment G, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  CASARI Marco (University of Bologna) : Group size and collective action: learning from six centuries of management of the commons in the Italian Alps

  Marco Casari and Claudio Tagliapietra

  Abstract

  Cooperation is challenging in large groups. Here we study what is the group size that characterizes well-functioning social-ecological systems. We consider systems where groups harvest a common resource and govern it through collective deliberations. Through an in depth study of hundreds of communities over six centuries, we report a remarkable long term stability in group size at around 150. This figure is determined by social rather than ecological factors. To maintain a constant size in the presence of population growth, groups engaged in fissions. Moreover, social heterogeneity shaped both group size and institutional complexity. What limits group size seems to be a "Double Bound:" individual cognition constraints in keeping track of resource users as well as the need to reach coherent collective decisions.

• Wednesday 18 January 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle 8, RDC Bâtiment G, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  LEROUXEL Francois (Univ. Paris-Sorbonne) : Le changement dans l'antiquité

  ZURBACH Julien (ENS)

• Wednesday 11 January 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle 8, RDC Bâtiment G, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  TOUZERY Mireille (Université Paris-Est Créteil Val-de-Marne) : Les inégalités fiscales en France en 1789. Territoires et groupes sociaux : les chiffres et les cartes

• Wednesday 4 January 2017 12:30-14:00

  Salle 8, RDC Bâtiment G, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  BROWNLEE Elliot (UC Santa Barbara) : The long-swings in American tax and fiscal policy from the colonial era to the present.

• Wednesday 14 December 2016 12:30-14:00

  Salle 8, RDC Bâtiment G, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  JUHASZ Reka : Temporary Protection and Technology Adoption: Evidence from the Napoleonic Blockade

• Wednesday 30 November 2016 12:30-14:00

  LYON-CAEN Nicolas : Dans la chaleur des enchères : marché et prix des immeubles en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles

  (Atelier Histoire Economique) - BEGUIN Katia

• Wednesday 23 November 2016 12:30-14:00

  MONNET Eric (Banque de France) : Foreign Reserves and International Adjustments under the Bretton Woods System : A Reappraisal

  Vincent DUCHAUSSOY (Université de Normandie)

• Wednesday 16 November 2016 12:30-14:00

  REUNION DU GROUPE

• Wednesday 9 November 2016 12:30-14:00

  MILHAUD Cyril (PSE) : Public borrowing and crowding-out in Spain at the turn of the nineteenth century

  (Atelier Histoire Economique)

• Wednesday 19 October 2016 12:30-14:00

  REUNION DU GROUPE

• Wednesday 12 October 2016 12:30-14:00

  GELDERBLOM Oscar (Utrecht University) : Public Functions, Private Markets : Credit Registration by Aldermen and Notaries in the Low Countries, 1500-1800

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 28 September 2016 12:30-14:00

  CONDORELLI Stefano (Université de Berne) : Why did innovation in state finance spike during the 1719-20 equity boom? A pan-European perspective

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 8 June 2016 12:30-14:00

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 10

  ALFANI Guido (Bocconi University ) : Economic inequality in preindustrial Europe, 1300-1800

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 25 May 2016 12:30-14:00

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  SCHULARICK Moritz : In Debt We Trust, U.S. Household Debt 1950-2013.

• Wednesday 18 May 2016 12:30-14:00

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  MICHAEL Huberman (Université de Montréal) : International competition in cotton textiles before 1914

• Wednesday 13 April 2016 12:30-14:00

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  TRACY DENNISON : The Political Economy of Pre-Soviet Russia

• Tuesday 5 April 2016 14:30-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 10

  Séance Exceptionnelle

  Abstract

  Séance Exceptionnelle
  
  4ème Après-midi de l'Atelier Simiand Doctorants en Histoire Economique
  Organisateur : Angelo Riva
  
  14h30 - Stefano UNGARO (PSE/EHESS/DFIH),
  An inquiry on determinants of risk: the French money market between 1880 and 1914
  Discutant : Clemence JOBST, Oesterreichische Nationalbank
  
  15h20 - Cyril MILHAUD (PSE/EHESS),
  Capital Market Integration in Early Modern Spain. A Reconsideration.
  Discutant : TBA
  
  16h10 - Pause
  
  16h40 - Raphael HEKIMIAN (Economix-Paris Ouest La Défense/DFIH),
  The French banking sector during the interwar: a view from the Paris Bourse
  Discutant: Stefano BATTILOSSI, Carlos III University-Madrid
  
  17h30 Elisa GRANDI (Université Paris Diderot / Università di Bologna/DFIH),
  International advising and economic development in Italy: The World Bank loans (1955-1960)
  Discutant : Francesco VERCELLI, Banca d’Italia

• Wednesday 23 March 2016 12:30-14:00

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  GARCIA-PENALOSA Cecilia (CNRS, Aix Marseille School of Economics, EHESS) ) : Protectionism and the Education Fertility Tradeoff in Late 19th century France

  Vincent Bignon

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 9 March 2016 12:30-14:00

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  CARLO TAVIANI (University of Cape Town) : A Genealogy of the Global Corporations? The Casa di San Giorgio and the Fortune of its Model. *

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 17 February 2016 12:30-14:00

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  YUN-CASALILLA Bartolomé (University Pablo de Olavide) : Fiscal states, composite monarchies and political economies. A view from the Spanish empire

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 27 January 2016 12:30-14:00

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  ZORINA KHAN ( Bowdoin College ) : Related Investing: Corporate Ownership and the Dynamics of Capital Mobilization during Industrialization

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 13 January 2016 12:30-14:00

  GREEN Brett (WUSTL) : A very English institution? Foreign influences and the poor law.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 9 December 2015 12:30-14:00

  SALEH Mohamed (LSE) : The Cotton Boom and Slavery in Nineteenth-Century Rural Egypt

  Abstract

  The “staples thesis” argues that institutions in a given region could be explained by the nature of production of its prevailing staples, whereby slavery is likely to emerge in “slave-conducive” crops, such as cotton, rice, and sugarcane. This paper evaluates the thesis using a unique natural experiment from nineteenth-century rural Egypt, the cotton boom that occurred because of the American Civil War in 1861-1865. Historical evidence suggests that the cotton boom marked the emergence of the short-lived institution of large-scale agricultural slavery in Egypt’s Nile Delta, where all slaves were imported from East Africa, before the abolition of slavery in 1877. Employing the newly digitized Egyptian individual-level population census samples from 1848 and 1868, I find that cotton-favorable districts witnessed greater increases in household’s slaveholdings and the share of slave-owning households between 1848 and 1868 than less favorable districts. Those districts also witnessed greater increase in the population share of free local immigrants. I examine several potential mechanisms of these effects, namely, cross-district differences in the relative scarcity of free local labor and inter-crop differences in economies of scale and skill-intensity (results on mechanisms are not complete). *

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 25 November 2015 12:30-14:00

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  MONNET Eric : Monetary financing of public debt in France (1914-1993): accounting and political economy issues

• Wednesday 28 October 2015 12:30-14:00

  CHAPMAN Jonathan : The franchise, taxes and public goods: the political economy of sanitation infrastructure in nineteenth-century England

• Wednesday 14 October 2015 12:30-14:00

  WALDENSTOM Daniel : Inherited wealth over the path of development: Sweden, 1810–2010

• Wednesday 17 June 2015 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  GAY Victor (University of Chicago, Department of Economics) : The Missing Men. World War I and female labor participation.

  Co-author : Jörn Boehnke

• Wednesday 3 June 2015 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  LOESER Annie (PSE) : Regional Variations in the Severity of the Great Depression in France.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 27 May 2015 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  FEDERICO Giovanni (University of Pisa and Univesity Carlos III, Madrid) : A Tale of two Globalizations: World Trade and Openness 1800-2010

  Co-author : Antonio Tena-Junguito

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 6 May 2015 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  FOCHESATO Mattia (SciencesPo) : Demographic shocks, labor institutions and wage divergence in early modern Europe

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 15 April 2015 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  ZHURAVSKAYA Ekaterina (PSE) : Economic results of abolition of serfdom in Russia

• Wednesday 8 April 2015 17:00-18:30

  The session was canceled.

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  ZHURAVSKAYA Ekaterina (PSE) : Economic results of abolition of serfdom in Russia

• Wednesday 18 March 2015 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  BITTNER Jasper (Oxford University) : Bankruptcy Laws and Standortpolitik –The Case of Hamburg 1850-1870.

• Wednesday 11 February 2015 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  SOLAR Peter (Vesalius College) : British Shipping during the Industrial Revolution

• Wednesday 21 January 2015 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  DUPRAZ Yannick (PSE) : Long Term Persistence of Colonial Education? A Discontinuity Analysis at the Border between French and English Speaking Cameroon.

• Wednesday 17 December 2014 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  SOHN Alexander (Université de Bielefeld) : In Chance We Trust - A critical reflection of a statistical study on the development of professorial salaries in Germany over the 20th century

• Wednesday 26 November 2014 16:00-17:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  ONORATO Massimiliano (IMT Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca) : Military Conflict and the Economic Rise of Urban Europe.

  Co-author : Mark Dincecco

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 5 November 2014 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  WHITE Eugen (Rutgers University) : THE EVOLUTION OF BANK BOARDS OF DIRECTORS IN NEW YORK, 1840-1950

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 8 October 2014 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  DELBOS Jean-Brieux (PSE) : Once in the elite, always in the elite? Changing wealth in a changing city (Paris, France, 1845-1859)

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 25 June 2014 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  AUSTIN Gareth (Graduate Institute Geneva) : Markets, slaves and states in West Africa, 1500 - present

• Wednesday 21 May 2014 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  FURIO Antoni (Université de Valencia) : In the beginning of the public debt. War, State-building and towns in the late Middle Ages

• Wednesday 30 April 2014 14:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  ATELIER SEMIAND

  14h00 – 14h45 Jérémy DUCROS (EHESS and PSE): The Lyon Stock Exchange: the Struggle for the Survival (1866-1914) Co-author: Angelo Riva 14h45 – 15h30 Stefano UNGARO (EHESS and PSE): Between macro and finance: The French reports market at the outbreak of WW1 15h30 – 16h15 Raphael HEKIMIAN (Economix – Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense and PSE): The 1929 NYSE crash: How did the French market react? Co-author: David Le Bris 17h - 18h30 OOSTERLINCK Kim (Université Libre de Bruxelles-Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management) Risk Aversion during World War II: Evidence from Belgian Lottery Bond Prices. Co-authors: Matthieu Gilson & Andrey Ukhov)

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 26 March 2014 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  ARTHI Vellore (University of Oxford) : “THE DUST WAS LONG IN SETTLING”:HUMAN CAPITAL AND THE LASTING IMPACT OF THE AMERICAN DUST BOWL

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 5 March 2014 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  GOÑI TRAFACH Marc (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) : Sorting and the Season: Elite Marriage Matching and Inequality in 19th Century Britain

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 29 January 2014 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  BASSINO Jean-Pascal (ENS-Lyon) : An escape from poverty in medieval Japan; real wages in Kyoto and European cities (1250-1850)

  Co-author(s): K. Fukao et M. Takashima, Hitotsubashi University

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 8 January 2014 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  LEROUXEL François (Université Paris-Sorbonne) : Le marché du crédit en Egypte romaine

• Wednesday 11 December 2013 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  POSTEL-VINAY Natacha (LSE) : What Caused Chicago Bank Failures in the Great Depression? A Look at the 1920

• Wednesday 13 November 2013 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  BRUEGEL Martin (INRA) : Contrôle social de la consommation des pauvres

• Wednesday 9 October 2013 14:00-18:30

  14H-15h30 - Salle E101 1) Jinzhao Chen (PSE) « European Financial Market Integration, 1844-1870 Co-author(s): avec Vincent Bignon, Stefano Ugolini 2) Emmanuel Prunaux (PSE et BdF) « La classification des crédits à la banque de France au début du XIXe siècle » 15h30-17H - Salle E101 Carlos Álvarez-Nogal (Carlos III) et Christophe Chamley (PSE), "Public debt, private credit markets, fairs and the payment stop of Philip II in 1575” 16h30 - Coffe Break - room 8 17h-18h30 - Salle 8 Oscar Gelderblom, “Banks versus Markets: The Character of the Amsterdam Financial System during the Seventeenth-Century”, Co-author(s): Joost Jonker et Clemens Kool

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 18 September 2013 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  VELINOV Daniel (Post Doctorant à l'Université Lyon 2) : Intégration des marchés financiers et signification de l'écart entre des cours du change à échéances différentes : l'enseignement de la documentation du banquier anversois La Bistrate (1654-1674)

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 11 September 2013 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  ZHURAVSKAYA Ekaterina (PSE-EHESS) : Radio and the rise of the Nazis in Pre-War Germany

  Co-author(s): M. Adena, R. Enikolopov, M. Petrova & V. Santarosa

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 27 May 2013 17:30-19:00

  The session was canceled.

  REYNAUD Bénédicte (CNRS-PSE) : Les usines en feu : industrialisation, risque et incendies au milieu du XIXe siècle (1830-1870).

• Monday 8 April 2013 17:30-19:00

  CONDORELLI Stefano (UNIGE) : La reconstruction de Catane après le tremblement de terre de 1693 : quel financement et quel impact sur l’économie citadine ?

• Friday 29 March 2013 14:00-18:00

  WONG R. BIN (UCLA) HOFFMAN Philip

  SEANCE EXCEPTIONNELLE JOINTE AVEC LE PROGAMME OSE 3 Etats et Empires Autour de : R. Bin WONG & Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, _Before and Beyond Divergence. The Politics of Economic Change in China and Europe_, Harvard University Press 2011 Philip HOFFMAN, "Why Was It Europeans Who Conquered the World?", w.p., 2012 Alessandro Stanziani, _Bâtisseurs d'empires, Russie, Chine et Inde à la croisée des mondes, XVème-XIXème siècle_, Editions Raisons d'Agir, 2012

• Monday 18 March 2013 17:30-19:00

  DHERBECOURT Clément (PSE) : L’échec des héritiers

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 4 March 2013 17:30-19:00

  WHITE Eugen (Rutgers) : Can Moral Hazard Be Avoided? The Banque de France and the Crisis of 1889

• Monday 18 February 2013 17:30-19:00

  BEGUIN Katia (EHESS-CRH) : Dissimulation du coût des emprunts et insoutenabilité de la dette : une relecture de la course à l'abîme financier de la monarchie absolue (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècle)

• Monday 7 January 2013 17:30-19:00

  ARNOUX Mathieu (Université de Paris 7 et EHESS) : Le temps des laboureurs - Travail, ordre social et croissance en Europe (XIe-XIVe siècle)

• Monday 17 December 2012 17:30-19:00

  CHATZIMPIROS Petros (Université de Paris VII) : Histoire agricole de l'approvisionnement de Paris (titre provisoire)

• Monday 3 December 2012 17:30-19:00

  FLANDREAU Marc (The Graduate Institute) : The Price of Media Capture and the Looting of Newspapers in Interwar France

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 19 November 2012 17:30-19:00

  LEOSER Annie (PSE) : Economic voting in interwar France: the impact of local economic conditions (1928-1936)

• Monday 5 November 2012 17:30-19:00

  GRAFE Regina (Northwestern) : Revisiting Spanish "backwardness" 1650-1800: Economists' mythical models

• Monday 29 October 2012 17:30-19:00

  SALEH Mohamed (TSE) : On the Road to Heaven: Poll tax, Religion, and Human Capital in Medieval and Modern Egypt

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 15 October 2012 17:30-19:00

  HUBERMAN Michael (Unige) : Commerce international et protection sociale

• Monday 1 October 2012 17:30-19:00

  STANZIANI Alessandro (CNRS et EHESS) : "Bâtisseurs d'Empires. Russie, Chine et Inde à la croisée des mondes, XVe-XIXe siècles"

• Monday 4 June 2012 17:30-19:00

  STASAVAGE David (New York University ) : Technology and the Era of thé Mass Army

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 21 May 2012 17:30-19:00

  HUMPHRIES Jane (Oxford University) : Childhood and child labour in the British industrial revolution

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 7 May 2012 17:30-19:00

  RIVA Angelo (European Business School) : Stock exchange industry regulation. The Paris Bourse, 1893 - 1898

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 2 April 2012 17:30-19:00

  BOSKER Marteen (Erasmus University, Rotterdam) : City seeds: geography and the origins of European cities

  Co-author(s) : Eltjo Buringh

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 19 March 2012 17:30-19:00

  PLOECKL Florian (Oxford University ) : Market Access and Information Technology Adoption : Historical Evidence from the Telephone in Bavaria

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 5 March 2012 17:30-19:00

  WALLIS Patrick (London School of Economics ) : Why did (pre - industrial) firms train? Premiums and apprenticeship contracts in 18th century England

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 20 February 2012 17:30-19:00

  HOFFMAN Philip (California Intitute of Technology) : Entry, Information, and Financial Development: A Century of Competition between French Banks and Notaries

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 30 January 2012 17:30-19:00

  DAUDIN Guillaume (Lille) : Fertility convergence through internal migration: the French case

  Co-author(s) : Raphael Franck, Bar Ilan U, Israel

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 16 January 2012 17:30-19:00

  FRANKEMA Ewout (Utrecht University) : Structural Impediments to African Growth? New Evidence from Real Wages in British Africa, 1880-1965

  Co-author(s):Marlous van Waijenburg, Northwestern University

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 5 December 2011 17:30-19:00

  BIGNON Vincent (Banque de France) : Stealing to Survive : Crime and Income Shocks in 19th Century France

  Co-author(s): Roberto Galbiati

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 21 November 2011 17:30-19:00

  ESTEVES Rui (Oxford University) : The First Global Emerging Markets Investor : Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust 1880-1913

  Joint paper with David Chambers

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 7 November 2011 17:30-19:00

  SAARITSA Sakari (Economic and Social Research Foundation (ESRF)) : La répartition des ressources à l'intérieur des ménages en Finlande au début du XXe siècle

• Monday 31 October 2011 17:30-19:00

  SANTACREU-VASUT Estafania (ESSEC) : A Novel Approach to the Study of Culture and Economics: Languages Grammatical Structures

  Joint paper with Amir Shoham

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 17 October 2011 17:30-19:00

  DHERBECOURT Clément (EHESS) : Les conséquences redistributrices de la courbe en J des taux de reproduction par classes sociales à Paris et en France de 1860 à 1950.

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 6 June 2011 17:30-19:00

  ZHURAVSKAIA Ekaterina (PSE) : M-form hierarchy with poorly-diversified divisions: a case of Khrushchev’s reform in Soviet Russia

  Co-auteur(s) : Andrei Markevich

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 30 May 2011 17:30-19:00

  CANTONI Davide (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) : The Consequences of Radical Reform: The French Revolution

  Co-auteur(s) : Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 23 May 2011 17:30-19:00

  WHITE Eugene (Rutgers University) : To Establish a More Effective Supervision of Banking : How the Birth of the Fed Altered Bank Supervision

• Monday 16 May 2011 17:30-19:00

  The session was canceled.

  WHITE Eugene (Rutgers University) : To Establish a More Effective Supervision of Banking: How the Birth of the Fed Altered Bank Supervision

  Séance reporter le 23 mai

• Monday 2 May 2011 17:30-19:00

  DELBOS Jean Brieux (PSE) : La mobilité économique des Parisiens au XIXème siècle

• Saturday 30 April 2011 09:00-18:00

  EurHiStock Conference

  ATTENTION : LE 30/04/2011 EST UN SAMEDI

• Friday 29 April 2011 09:00-18:00

  EurHiStock Conference

  ATTENTION : LE 29/04/11 EST UN VENDREDI

• Monday 4 April 2011 17:30-19:00

  CHAMBERS David (University of Cambridge) : Is Regulation Essentiel to Stock Market Development ? Going Puplic in London and Berlin, 1900-1913

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 21 March 2011 17:30-19:00

  THOMAS Mark (University of Virginia) : Chamberlain, Tariff Reform and British Economic Performance before World War I

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 7 March 2011 17:30-19:00

  FENSKE James (LSE) : Ecology, trade and states in pre-Colonial Africa

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 7 February 2011 17:30-19:00

  HOFFMAN Philip T. (Caltech) : Causes and Consequences of World Conquest: An Economic Model

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 21 January 2011 09:00-12:30

  Inheritance, wealth accumulation and growth in France, 1820-2050

  WORKSHOP Intervenants : Robert ALLEN, Anthony ATKINSON, Giovannin FEDERICO & Thomas PIKETTY ATTENTION : SEANCE EXCEPTIONNELLEMENT UN VENDREDI

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 3 January 2011 17:30-19:00

  CHAMLEY Christophe (PSE) : Fiscal Policy under constraints between Philip II, the Cortes and Genoese Bankers

  Co-auteur: Carlos Alvarez Nogal

  Abstract

  > Castile created in the 16th century the large nation-wide domestic public debt (half GDP). We present a new view of the fiscal system under Philip II. Given historical and institutional constraints, the feasibility of the debt depended on the funding through taxes administered by the towns that represented the realm in the Cortes. Short-term unfunded debt depended on the intermediation of commercial paper through Genoese bankers who managed international transfers. ``Debt crises'' were caused by protracted negotiations about domestic taxation in the Cortes. The most important one, 1573-1577, froze the commercial paper market, prevented the holdings of trade fairs, which induced the towns to eventually accept higher taxes to convert the bankers' loans into domestic debt.

• Monday 6 December 2010 17:30-19:00

  OLMSTEAD Alan (University of California) : Adapting to Climate: The Transformation of North American Wheat Production, 1839-2009

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 29 November 2010 17:30-19:00

  PUERTA Juan Manuel (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) : The Fewer, the Merrier: Compulsory Schooling Laws, Human Capital, and Fertility in the United States

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• Monday 15 November 2010 17:30-19:00

  RITSCHL Albrecht (LSE) : Crisis ? What Crisis ? Currency vs. Banking in the Financial Crisis of 1931

  Co-auteur(s) : Samad Sarferaz

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 18 October 2010 18:00-19:30

  MARKOVITS Claude (CNRS) : Le travail contraint en Asie et en Europe, 17e-20e siècles

  Editions de la MSH, Paris 2010

• Monday 4 October 2010 17:30-19:00

  GELDERBLOM Oscar (Utrecht University) : One Recipe, Seventeen Outcomes ?

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 27 September 2010 17:30-19:00

  YUNG Liu Shi (Academia Sinica) : Malaria Eradication in Colonial Taiwan: The Long-term Effect on Human Capital Formation

• Tuesday 21 September 2010 10:00-18:00

  JOURNEES DOCTORANTS

• Monday 13 September 2010 17:00-19:30

  Quelles normes pour l'entreprise ?

  Séance exceptionnelle Avec la participation de: Blanche Segrestin (Mines ParisTech) Hervé Joly (LARHRA-CNRS) Jean-Laurent Rosenthal (Caltech) Patrick Fridenson (CRH-EHESS)

• Monday 21 June 2010 17:30-19:00

  CHAUDHURY Pradipta (Delhi) : Political Economy of Caste in Northern India, 1901-1931

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 7 June 2010 17:00-18:30

  MORADI Alexander (Sussex : tba) : "Borders that divide: Ghana and its neighbors since colonial times"

• Monday 31 May 2010 14:00

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  SEANCE EXCEPTIONNELLE SUITE ARTICLES

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• Monday 31 May 2010 14:00-18:30

  GRANTHAM Georges (Université Mc Gill) : Histoire économique de la très longue durée

  Séance Exceptionnelle Autour de travaux de Georges Grantham Avec Olivier Buchsenschutz (CNRS) Katherine Gruel (CNRS) Frédéric Trément (Université de Clermont-Ferrand) Séance exceptionnelle Alain Villes (musée d'archéologie nationale)

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 17 May 2010 17:00-18:30

  The session was canceled.

  BERGMANN Dirk (Yale) : Public Finances in cities and state: the Spanish Habsburg moment

  Participants : C. Nogual (Carlos III), M. Dincecco (Lucca IAS), M. Drelichmann (UBC), D. Fortea Perez (Cantabria), Organizers : Ch. Chamley and P.-C. Hautcoeur (PSE)

• Monday 3 May 2010 17:30-19:00

  VOLCKART Oliver (LSE tba) : Money, States and Empire: Financial Integration Cycles and Institutional Change in Central Europe, 1400-1520

  Co-auteur(s) : David Chilosi

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• Monday 29 March 2010 17:30-19:00

  MONNET Eric (PSE) : Credit controls did matter. An evaluation of monetary policy during France's Golden Age, 1945-1973

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• Monday 15 March 2010 17:30-19:00

  WHITE Eugene (Rutgers tba) : Lessons from the Great American Real Estate Boom and Bust of the 1920s

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• Monday 15 February 2010 17:30-19:00

  SUSSMAN Nathan (Hebrew tba) : Taxation Mechanisme and Growth, in Medieval Paris

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• Monday 1 February 2010 17:30-19:00

  PIKETTY Thomas (PSE) : On The Long-Run Evolution of Inheritance - France 1820-2050

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• Monday 18 January 2010 17:30-19:00

  CASSAN Guilhem (Phd Student - Paris School of Economics) : British law and caste identity manipulation in colonial India: the Punjab alienation of land act

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 4 January 2010 17:30-19:00

  HOFFMAN Philip (CalTech) : Why Was It that Europeans Conquered the World

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• Monday 14 December 2009 17:30-19:00

  O’SULLIVAN Mary (Wharton) : Merchants Go to Market: Securities Markets and the Development of the U.S. Retail Industry, 1885-1930

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• Monday 30 November 2009 17:30-19:00

  O'GRADA Cormac (University College Dublin) : harvest shortfalls, grain prices and famines in pre-industrial England

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• Monday 16 November 2009 17:30-19:00

  SOLAR Peter (Vesalius College, Vrije Universiteit Brussel) : The English cotton spinning industry, 1780-1840, as revealed in the columns of the London Gazette” (co-écrit avec John Lyon, Miami University

• Monday 2 November 2009 17:30-19:00

  BAZOT Guillaume (PSE) : Credit constraint in 19th France: the role of geographical access to the Bank of France (1882-1911

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• Monday 2 November 2009 17:30-19:00

  BAZOT Guillaume (PSE) : Credit constraint in 19th France: the role of geographical access to the Bank of France (1882-1911

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• Monday 19 October 2009 17:30-19:00

  KESZTENBAUM Lionel (INED) : The health cost of living in a city: The case of France at the end of the 19th century" (co-écrit avec L.-L. Rosenthal)

• Monday 19 October 2009 17:30-19:00

  KESZTENBAUM Lionel (INED) : The health cost of living in a city: The case of France at the end of the 19th century" (co-écrit avec L.-L. Rosenthal)

• Monday 18 May 2009 14:30-18:00

  Travail et conditions de vie en Afrique dans la longue durée

  14h30-16h00: Gareth Austin (LSE): "Coercion and markets: the political economy of slavery in West Africa, c.1450-1900" Issiaka Mandé (Université Paris-Diderot): "Législation du travail en Afrique occidentale française, de la fin XIXe siècle à 1956" 16h30-18h00: Alexander Moradi (University of Sussex): "Exploring the evolution of living standards in Ghana, 1880-2000: An anthropometric approach", with Gareth Austin and Joerg Baten Denis Cogneau (PSE et IRD): "Social mobility and colonial legacy" with T. Bossuroy

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 27 April 2009 17:30-19:00

  MURPHY Tommy (Bocconi univ.) : When Smaller Families Seem Contagious: A Spatial Look at the French Fertility Decline Using an Agent-Based Simulation Model

  Co-auteur : Sandra González-Bailón

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 16 March 2009 10:00-17:00

  Journée retraites et vieillissement

  Participants : Elise Feller, Georg Fertig, Chulhee Lee, Mathieu Leimgruber, Michel Oris, Susannah Ottaway, David Weir

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 2 February 2009 17:30-19:00

  FERRIE Joseph (Nortwestern univ.) : Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise'? The Link Between Conditions in Childhood and Physical, Economic, and Cognitive Outcomes After Age 65 in the U.S., 1895-2005

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 19 January 2009 17:30-19:00

  The session was canceled.

  FERRIE Joseph (Nortwestern univ.) : Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise'? The Link Between Conditions in Childhood and Physical, Economic, and Cognitive Outcomes After Age 65 in the U.S., 1895-2005

• Monday 1 December 2008 17:30-19:00

  DAUDIN Guillaume (Univ. de Lille) : Domestic Trade and Market size in Late Eighteenth century France

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 13 October 2008 17:30-19:00

  On the crest of price waves or steady as she goes ? Explaining the food purchases of the convent-school at Saint-Cyr 1703-1788

  Auteurs : Martin Bruegel, Jean-Michel Chevet, Sébastien Lecocq et Jean-Marc Robin - Discutante : Anne McCants

• Monday 2 June 2008 17:30-19:00

  DODMAN Thomas (PSE) : Acclimatizing to Alienation: Nostalgia in Colonial Algeria (1830-1871)

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 19 May 2008 17:30-19:00

  CUMMINS Neil (PSE) : Marital Fertility and Wealth in Transition Era France – a First Look

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• Monday 5 May 2008 17:30-19:00

  BATEN J. (Univ. de Tubingen) : Global Heights: anthropometric development in 165 countries, 1810-1980

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• Monday 7 April 2008 17:30-19:00

  SCHELTJENS Werner (PSE) : The impact of a new port on the organization of maritime shipping: an attempt to generalize the results of a case-study on the foundation of St. Petersburg and its influence on Dutch maritime shipping in the Gulf of Finland and Archangel (1703-1740)

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• Monday 31 March 2008 17:30-19:00

  RASS Christoph (Université d'Aix la Chapelle (RWTH)) : Did international labour treaties help to spread equal labour standards?

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• Monday 17 March 2008 17:30-19:00

  HANNAH Leslie (University of Tokyo) : Logistics, market size and plant size before 1914

  Abstract

  Around 1900, the businesses of developed Europe – transporting freight by a more advantageous mix of ships, trains and horses – encountered logistic barriers to trade lower than the tyranny of distance imposed on the sparsely populated United States. Highly urbanized, economically integrated and compact northwest Europe was a market space larger than, and - factoring in other determinants besides its (low) tariffs - not less open to inter-country trade than the contemporary American market was to interstate trade. By the early twentieth century, the First European Integration enabled mines and factories – in small, as well as large, countries – to match the size of United States plants, where factor endowments, consumer demand or scale economies required that.

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 18 February 2008 17:30-19:00

  THISSE Jacques (CORE) : Inégalités spatiales de développement économique en France (1860-2000)

  Pierre-Philippe COMBES (GRECAM, Marseille) and Jean-Claude TOUTAIN

• Monday 4 February 2008 17:30-19:00

  SIMMONS D. (Univ. of Chicago) : Accounting for Life: the Sciences of Human Need

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 21 January 2008 17:30-19:00

  FERTIG Georg (Univ. of Muenster) : What did 19th century farmers need a savings bank for? The life cycle, saving, and its substitutes (a case study)

  Co-auteur : J. Bracht

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 3 December 2007 17:30-19:00

  BASSINO J.P. (Faculty of Mathematics and Social Sciences Paul Valéry University (Mon) : Market Integration and Famines in Early Modern Japan, 1717-1857

  Abstract

  While enjoying a long period of peace under the rule of the Tokugawa (1603-1867), associated with regional specialization and a relatively high degree of market integration, the Japanese population experienced severe famines that claimed several hundred thousands lives. The most dramatic episodes of the 18th and 19th century occurred in 1731-1733, 1783-1786, and 1833-1838. As agricultural practices, crop mix, and degree of commercialization and specialization varied across Japan, it is worth considering the possibility of regional differences of economic systems in response to exogenous shocks. This paper evaluates the degree of market integration and investigates how regional markets functioned during famines.

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 19 November 2007 17:30-19:00

  VELDE F. (Federal reserve bank of Chicago) : Chronicle of a Deflation Unforetold

  Abstract

  Suppose the nominal money supply could be cut literally overnight by, say, 20%. What would happen to prices, wages, output? The answer can be found in 1720s France, where just such an experiment was carried out, repeatedly. Prices adjusted instantaneously and fully on one market only, that for foreign exchange. Prices on other markets (such as commodities) as well as prices of manufactured goods and industrial wages fell slowly, over many months, and not by the full amount of the nominal reduction. Coincidentally or not, the industrial sector (as represented by manufacturing of woolen cloths) experienced a contraction of 30%. When the government changed course and increased the nominal money supply overnight by 20%, prices responded much more, and the woolen industry rebounded.

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 5 November 2007 16:00-17:30

  BOTTICINI M. (Univ. di Torino) : Matching in Marriage Markets: Theory and History

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 29 October 2007 17:30-19:00

  VOLODIN A. (Moscow state univ.) : Russian Factory Inspection (1882-1918): Cui Bono?

  Abstract

  Andrei VOLODIN (Historical Information Science Department, Moscow Lomonosov State University): Russian Factory Inspection (1882-1918): Cui Bono? This study deals with history of important state institution in late Russian Empire – factory inspection. Such aspects of institutional development as evolution of legislative regulations, staff growth, and diversity of functions (and particularly, mediation in labour conflicts) are scrutinized. This paper presents results on Russian experience of labour law implementation seeking to determine and evaluate the role and efficiency of Russian factory inspectors in conflicting triangle of relations among state, industrialists and workers.

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 29 October 2007 14:00-17:30

  HAUTCOEUR P.C. (Paris School of Economics) : Young researchers' workshop in economic history

  Participants : Neil Cummings (Paris School of Economics and London School of Economics), Claudia Riani (European University Institute), Paul Lagneau (EHESS (CSE) and Paris School of Economics ) and Angelo Riva (U. di Milano, IDHE and Paris School of Economics), Paul Sharp (European University Institute and University of Copenhagen), Jacob Weisdorf (Paris School of Economics and University of Copenhagen)

  Abstract

  Journée d'étude de rentrée des doctorants et post-doctorants en histoire économique (October 29, 2007) 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm < location > The main aim of the workshop is to gather new researchers of economic history in a friendly and non-imposing environment where they can present their ongoing research and receive constructive criticism from their peers as well as from more experienced researchers. Non-presenters, including more experienced researchers, are encouraged to participate, in order to learn about the research interests of young researchers and discuss their papers. Organizers: Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur and Jacob Weisdorf

• Monday 22 October 2007 17:30-19:00

  NOGUAL C. (Universidad Carlos III, Madrid) : The Spanish Monarchy´s Credit: was really a bad strategy to borrow from foreing bankers?

• Monday 15 October 2007 17:30-19:00

  WEISDORF J. (Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen) : A Malthusian Model for all Seasons

  Paul Sharp (Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen)

  Abstract

  It has become popular to argue (e.g. Clark 2007) that all societies were Malthusian until about 1800. At the same time, the phenomenon of surplus labour is well-documented for historical (as well as modern) pre-industrial societies. This study discusses the paradox of surplus labour in a Malthusian economy. Inspired by the work of Boserup (1965) and others, and in contrast to the Lewis (1954) approach, we suggest that the phenomenon of surplus labour is best understood through an acceptance of the importance of seasonality in agriculture. Boserup observed that the harvest season was invariably associated with labour shortages (the high-season bottleneck on production), although there might be labour surplus during the low season. We introduce the concept of seasonality into a Malthusian model, and endogenize the extent of agricultural labour input, which is then used to calculate labour surplus and the rate of labour productivity. We observe the effects of season-specific technological progress, and find that technological progress in the low-season increases labour surplus and labour productivity whilst, perhaps surprisingly, technological progress in the high-season, by relaxing the high-season bottleneck, leads to work intensification and a drop in labour surplus and labour productivity.

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 18 June 2007 17:30-19:00

  CHAMLEY C. (PSE) : Contingent Government Liabilities against Private Expectations in England, 1743-49

  Abstract

  England financed its war of the Austrian succession (1743-48) mainly by issuing 3% bonds and 4% callable bonds which were indeed redeemed by Pelham in 1749 through an interest reduction. The implicit policy rules and constraints made the 4% bond a derivative asset of a 3% perpetual. The price data fit with a model of pricing of this derivative. The estimated model shows that the redemption terms were well anticipated, but government bond prices recovered after the war much sooner than expected. Callable bonds enabled the government to exploit that excess of pessimism in reducing its borrowing cost. Key words: Callable bonds, Derivative Asset Pricing, War Financing, Rational Expectations, Excess-pessimism. Classification: N23, N43, G14, G18.

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 4 June 2007 17:30-19:00

  BORDO M. D. (Rutgers univ.) : Foreign Capital and Economic Growth in the First Era of Globalization

  Co-auteur (s) : C. M. Meissner

  Abstract

  The First Era of Globalization, 1870-1913, was marked by a degree of integration in goods and financial markets comparable to that which prevails today. It also exhibited a large number of financial crises that unfolded in ways very similar to those experienced since the 1970s. In light of skepticism about whether market-based finance is good for development, this paper will reexamine the impact of capital market integration on economic growth during this period. First we will explore whether there are growth benefits from participation in the international capital market. Second we will analyze the side effects of open international capital markets. Between 1880 and 1913 financial crises that accompanied sudden stops meant that any growth advantages to greater inflows of foreign capital were greatly diminished. We then look at several determinants of debt crises and financial crises including the currency composition of debt, debt intolerance and the role of political institutions. We argue that the set of countries that had the worst growth outcomes were those that had currency crises, original sin, poorly developed financial markets and presidential political systems. Those that avoided financial catastrophe generated credible commitments and sound fiscal and financial policies. Such countries succeeded in escaping major financial crises and grew relatively faster despite the potential of facing sudden stops of capital inflows, major current account reversals and currency speculation that accompanied international capital markets free of capital controls.

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 30 April 2007 17:30-19:00

  OGILVIE S. C. (Univ. of Cambridge) : Can We Rehabilitate the Guilds? A Sceptical Re-Appraisal

• Monday 23 April 2007 17:30-19:00

  KLEIN A. (LSE) : All in the Family: Rural-Urban Migration in Bohemia at the End of the Nineteenth Century

  Abstract

  This paper analyzes the rural-urban migration of families in the Bohemian region of Pilsen in 1890–1900. Using a new 2000-family dataset from the 1900 population census I examine the human capital investment aspect of rural-urban migration. I find that families migrated to the city such that the educational attainment of their children would be maximized and adolescent children are systematically more present as apprentices than unskilled workers. The results strongly suggest that in addition to labor reallocation, rural-urban migration is also a mechanism of human capital investment.

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 2 April 2007 17:30-19:00

  DUFLO E. (MIT) : Long run impacts of income shocks: Wine and Phylloxera in 19th century France

  Co-auteur (s) : A. Banerjee, G.Postel-Vinay & T. Watts

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 26 March 2007 17:30-19:00

  EHESS, 54 bd Raspail, 2e étage, salle 215

  HARRIS R. (Tel Aviv univ.) : The Institutional Dynamics of Early Modern Eurasian Trade: The Corporation and the Commenda

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 5 February 2007 17:30-19:00

  SOLAR P. (Vesalius College) : Nominal Wage Rigidity in Pre-Industrial Labour Markets

• Monday 29 January 2007 17:30-19:00

  ORLEAN A. (PSE) : Croyances monétaires et pouvoir des banques centrales

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 15 January 2007 17:30-19:30

  ATKINSON A. (Nuffield College) : The Distribution of Individual Earnings in Historical Perspective

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 18 December 2006 17:30-19:00

  GELDERBLOM O. (Utrecht Univ.) : Exploring the market for Government bonds in the Dutch Republic (1600-1800)

  Co-auteur (s) : J. Jonker

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 20 November 2006 17:30-19:30

  FISHBACK P. V. (Univ. of Arizona) : The Effect of Internal Migration on Local Labor Markets: American Cities During the Great Depression

  Co-auteurs : L. Platt Boustan & S. E. Kantor

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 6 November 2006 17:30-19:00

  DI MARTINO P. (Univ. of Manchester) : Bankruptcy, insolvency, and the problem of re-starting business: the economic perspective

  Co-auteur (s) : M. Vasta

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 23 October 2006 17:30-19:00

  ROSENTHAL J.L. (California institute of technology) : Business organization in the long run : private limited companies rules

  Co-auteurs : T. Guinnane, R. Harris, N.R. Lamoreaux

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 9 October 2006 17:30-19:00

  GRANTHAM G. (Mc Gill univ.) : The prehistoric origins of european economic integration

  Full text [pdf]

• Monday 25 September 2006 17:30-19:00

  CERRETANO V. (Libera università di Bolzano) : Bank of England and british industry : from industrial decontrol to industrial intervention, 1920-1931

  Full text [pdf]

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  R1.09

  KESSLER Amalia : l'arbitrage corporatiste et la poursuite de la démocratie industrielle aux Etats Unis (1900-1940)

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  Salle R.00, Campus Jourdan 48 Boulevard Jourdan 75014 Paris

  MC CARTIN Joseph A. (Georgetown University) : TBA

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  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, 1er étage, salle de réunions

  Inherited wealth over the path of development: Sweden, 1810–2010