Economic History Seminars 2024-25

Winter Term 2024-25

Winter Term seminars are in CKK.LG.03 (Cheng Kin Ku), 4-5.30pm.

 23 January

• Andrea Papadia (York)
• The Effects of Immigration in a Developing Country: Brazil in the Age of Mass Migration
  
  

  Abstract: We study the effects of immigration on Brazil’s agricultural development during the Age of Mass Migration. We leverage the widely recognized value of historical perspective in immigration economics and Brazil’s unique characteristics among major immigrant destinations of the period—a low-income country with a large agricultural sector and weak institutions—to shed light on the effect of immigration in heavily agricultural economies at an early stage of development. Instrumenting for a municipality’s immigrant share using the interaction of aggregate immigrant inflows and the expansion of Brazil’s railway network, we find that a greater immigrant share in a municipality led to an increase in farm values and that the bulk of the effect was the product of more intense cultivation of land. Additionally, we find that it is unlikely that immigration’s effect on agriculture slowed Brazil’s structural transformation.

13 February

• Patrick Wallis (LSE) and Julius Koschnik (SDU) 
• The Complementarity of Education and Skills in Early Industrial England
  
  Abstract: Recent analyses of the drivers of the industrial revolution have drawn attention to the importance of two ingredients in the implementation of new technologies. First, the ideas that were created, disseminated, and refined by an extensive group of inventors and industrialists who were utilizing the tools of science and were informed by the values of the enlightenment. Second, the mechanical skills of the upper tail of artisans and mechanics trained through apprenticeship who implementation these ideas into useable technologies. In this paper we document a novel channel that connects the enlightenment and industrialisation by showing that the supply of skilled artisans grew in response to the expansion in formal education in Britain. Locations in England that saw an increase in the provision of schooling also saw a growth in investment in apprenticeship training. We argue that this reflects the value of formal education for apprentices who were then better able to access training positions based on their competency in reading, writing and numeracy, skills that youths were expected to obtain prior to entering an apprenticeship. General and vocational human capital formation were, in short, complementary in this period.  Given that the substantial expansion in schooling was promoted and justified by enlightenment ideas, this demonstrates a further connection between the major social and cultural shifts of the period and the economic transformations that followed.

6 March

• David Jacks (NUS-Yale)
• Suez
  
  Abstract: For all its importance, there still is no comprehensive quantitative assessment of the Suez Canal’s opening in 1869. We find that it led to a 72% relative increase in bilateral exports for affected country pairs, suggesting a 12% permanent increase in world trade. With respect to the composition of trade, Suez was associated with large changes in export shares but only for a handful of goods categories. With respect to mechanisms, the relative cost of using steamships on Suez-affected routes fell dramatically and immediately after 1869, suggesting a vital role for the canal in the global diffusion of steam technology.

13 March

• Vellore Arthi (UC Irvine)
• Traumatic Financial Experiences and Persistent Changes in Financial Behavior: Evidence from the Freedman's Savings Bank
  
  Abstract: The failure of the Freedman's Savings Bank (FSB), one of the only Black-serving banks in the early post-bellum South, was an economic catastrophe and one of the great episodes of racial exploitation in post-Emancipation history. It was also most Black Americans' first experience of banking. Can events like these permanently alter financial preferences and behavior? To test this, we examine the impact of FSB collapse on life insurance-holding, an accessible alternative savings vehicle over the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We document a sharp and persistent increase in insurance demand in affected counties following the shock, driven disproportionately by Black customers. We also use FSB migrant flows to disentangle place-based and cohort-based effects, thus identifying psychological and cultural scarring as a distinct mechanism underlying the shift in financial behavior induced by the bank's collapse. Horizontal and intergenerational transmission of preferences help explain the shock’s persistent effects on financial behavior.

27 March

• Valerie Ramey (Stanford)
• Why Didn’t the U.S. Unemployment Rate Rise at the End of WWII?
  
  Abstract: This paper investigates why the U.S. unemployment rate rose only a few percentage points despite the dramatic decline in government spending and other upheaval at the end of World War II. Using a new longitudinal data set based on archival sources and government surveys, we study the many facets of this question. We find five main results. First, withdrawals from the labor force at the end of WWII were an important part of the explanation for the small rise in the unemployment rate. These withdrawals tended to be concentrated among females between the ages of 20 and 44 and male war veterans. Second, among those staying in the labor force, most of the workers who separated from their jobs moved directly into a new job. Third, workers accomplished these job-to-job transitions despite moving across industries. Fourth, returning veterans quickly returned to their previous position on the occupation ladder whereas those laid off from civilian jobs experienced a significant step down the occupation ladder. Fifth, a neoclassical model suggests that the post-war boom in job creation was a direct consequence of the crowding out of investment in consumer durable goods, residential capital, and business capital by military spending during the war.