Category Archive: Sources

  1. Planet 17

    Comments Off on Planet 17

    STRIKE WAVES

    In October, over 10,000 John Deere workers went on strike, 1,400 Kellogg’s workers followed suit, and observers anticipated thousands more IATSE members and Kaiser Permanente workers to walk out. (After voting down two contracts, workers at Deere reached an agreement last week ending the monthlong strike.) The uptick in industrial activity, which some called “Striketober,” coincided with the highest approval rating of labor unions since 1965—though not all labor scholars agreed it was a strike wave. 

    As workers deal with the ongoing effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the recent labor activity has revived debate over what causes strike surges—with speculations for the present including hazardous working conditions in the pandemic, stagnant wage growth, and labor shortages.

    In a 1982 article, BRUCE E. KAUFMAN investigates the determinants of strike activity in the US between 1900 and 1977.

    From the article:

    “Economic variables influence strike activity through their effect on the ability of either side to force the other to acquiesce to its demands. In this respect the most important economic variable to consider is the unemployment rate. The success of a strike depends on the extent to which workers can minimize costs to themselves while imposing large costs on the employer. Periods of low unemployment increase the bargaining power of workers on both counts: employees have greater alternative sources of work while the costs to the firm both in the form of profits forgone and of difficulty of attracting substitute workers are increased. 

    The pattern of strikes in the United States has also been heavily influenced by the passage of several important pieces of labor legislation. The clearest example of this link between the political arena and strikes surrounds the enactment of the NIRA in 1933 and, after its invalidation by the Supreme Court, of the NLRA (Wagner Act) in 1935. The empirical analysis in this paper indicates that each of these environmental factors had a role in determining the unique pattern of strike activity over the last eight decades. Significantly, however, the quantitative importance of these various economic and noneconomic factors in giving rise to fluctuations in industrial conflict has varied considerably over different periods.”

    Link to the text.

    +  In a 1986 article, James. E Martin investigates worker willingness to strike by analyzing a questionnaire for public school employees. Link. And Philip Rubio explores the significance of the Great Postal Strike of 1970. Link.

    +  John V. Kane and Benjamin J. Newman examine the role of the media in advancing anti-union rhetoric and shaping public opinion on labor politics. Link. 

    +   Two wider looks at worker power and labor markets: Andrew Elrod on ‘labor shortages’ and the US construction industry, link, and Sebastian Teupe on worker power and monetary policy in the US and Germany during the Gold Standard Era, link. 

    +   From the Industrial and Labor Relations School at Cornell University, a database for tracking union and nonunion strike activity. Link.

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Money Bail & Pretrial Misconduct

    In her job market paper, PhD candidate in economics at Harvard ALEX ALBRIGHT examines the effects of eliminating money bail for low-level offenses. 

    From the abstract:

    “Are the effects of money bail on pretrial misconduct large enough to justify its costs? Money bail advocates argue that its usage is critical for averting misconduct, while skeptics counter that its effects are small and not worth the human costs of pretrial detention. I examine these tradeoffs using a program in Kentucky that eliminated financial bail for a subset of low-level cases. I use administrative data and a stacked differences-in-differences approach to estimate the program’s effects on misconduct and detention. The program decreased the rate of financial bail by 50.5 p.p. Even though initial bail amounts were only $360 on average, the program increased the rate of one-day pretrial release by 13.7 p.p., indicating an inability to put up even small bail amounts initially barred release. The program increased failure to appear in court by 3.3 p.p. and had no detectable effect on pretrial rearrest, with the data ruling out even modest sized increases.”

    Link to the paper, link to Albright’s website. 

    Each week we highlight research from a graduate student, postdoc, or early-career professor. Send us recommendations: editorial@jainfamilyinstitute.org.

    + + +

    +   “The central bankers’ rhetoric on Finance Day at COP26 was closely aligned to the preferences of financial capital.” New on PW, Daniela Gabor reflects on the role of private finance in decarbonization. Link. 

    +   “Deindustrialization was one of the most disruptive social transformations of the twentieth century. Why did democratic capitalist regimes permit and survive this process, while state socialist regimes did not?” Maximilian Krahé on deindustrialization in the US, UK, and Poland. Link. And see PW’s book on the decline of social democracy in Europe. Link.

    +   A breakdown of the House-passed Build Back Better Act from the NYT. Link. For a breakdown of the BBB and infrastructure bill’s effects, see this sheet from Princeton’s REPEAT center. Link.

    +   A McKinsey report looks at the role of corporations and flows to households in the 21st century. Link. 

    +   “We find that there would have been 20% more branches and 9.3% more markets with at least one branch after ten years in the absence of the crisis.” Marc Rysman, Robert M. Townsend, and Christoph Walsh on Thai banking following the 1997 financial crisis. Link. 

    +   Two from Roosevelt Institute: Sammi Aibinder and Lindsay Owens on how public investment can control rent inflation; Todd Tucker on how price controls have been used to shape industries. Link, link.

    +   Koji Hirata on the Manchurian and Japanese origins of socialist industrialization in the PRC. Link. And see Ernest Ming-Tak Leung’s PW essay on the origins of East Asian developmentalism. Link. 

    +   “We study what impact malaria eradication programs had on the Black-white wage convergence seen in the 1940s. Our paper finds the following baseline results: increased exposure to the malaria eradication program was associated with higher schooling attainment and higher incomes for whites. The same benefits did not accrue to Blacks. Specifically, a one standard deviation increase in malaria exposure was associated with a 1 percentage point increase in the probability of middle school completion for whites born after the eradication program. We find no such significant changes in schooling for Blacks. Consequently, the Black-white schooling gap widened as a result of the intervention. Similar to the result for schooling, the income gains only accrued to whites, with Black income negligibly impacted.” By Emily Battaglia and Faizaan Kisat. Link. 

  2. Unphotographable

    Comments Off on Unphotographable

    NON-STATE GOVERNANCE

    In recent decades, policy arenas which are resistant to national and international regulation have seen the flourishing of voluntary, self-regulatory, and private accountability mechanisms. Researchers have grouped these broadly as a system of Non-State-Market-Driven-Governance (NSMDG), characterized by the institutional role of markets and supply chains in governing and demand-setting by organized groups.

    A 2002 article by BENJAMIN CASHORE considers why and how NSMDG acquired rule-making authority in the international sphere.

    From the article: 

    “The development of NSMD governance systems owes its origins to economic and political trends in the last ten years that have given market-oriented policy instruments increasing salience. Originally, research on economic globalization found that increased capital mobility, international trade, and foreign direct investment appeared to reduce or constrain domestic policy choices, sometimes leading to downward protection in environmental and social standards. However, other scholars noted that a parallel process was taking place in which domestic policy arenas were facing increasing scrutiny by transnational actors, international rules, and norms, sometimes leading to a reversal of the ‘downward’ effect of globalization.

    In these cases, market-based boycott campaigns were often used to force “upward” governmental and firm-level environmental protection. These internationalization efforts were often deemed easier than attempting to influence domestic- and international-business-dominated policy networks, providing important lessons to environmental NGOs about the power of using market forces to shape policy responses. These international trends were mirrored by increasing domestic interest in the use of voluntary compliance and market mechanisms generally. Innovative market-based solutions, including trading of pollution credits and wetlands, are ever more popular with governments attempting to address environmental problems. In the late 1990s, policy-makers in Canada and the U.S. often faced the competing pressures of reductions in resources available to combat environmental problems and increasing demands from civil society to address environmental protection. The privatization of environmental governance appears to have been an implicit way out of this conundrum, creating a domestic policy climate in the late 1990s in Canada and the U.S. that was hospitable toward expanding market-based environmental governance.”

    Link to the text.

    +  In a 2007 article, Cashore and Steven Bernstein theorize conditions for the political legitimacy of NSMDG. Link.

    +  “Certification has appeared in almost every major industry targeted by environmentalists, including the chemical, coffee, forest products, oil, mining, nuclear power, and transportation sectors. However, it remains a blunt and imperfect tool for augmenting the accountability of global firms.” From 2009, Gary Gereffi, Ronie Garcia-Johnson and Erika Sasser consider the pitfalls of voluntary regulation. Link.

    +   Benjamin Cashore, Graeme Auld, and Deanna Newsom analyze the legitimacy dynamics of forest certification programs across Europe and North America. Link. And from 2003, Tim Bartley historicizes the emergence of private regulation mechanisms in forests and apparel factories. Link.

    +   “Compared to other areas of international policy effort, such as security, trade, and finance, the UN’s climate diplomacy framework places significant emphasis on the role of private actors.” On the blog this week, Kate Mackenzie considers challenges to global green finance initiatives ahead of the COP26. Link.

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Gender-Targeted Cash Transfers in Mexico 

    In her job market paper, PhD candidate in economics at Washington University in St. Louis ANDREA MARÍA FLORES looks at how a cash transfer program in Mexico affects working mothers.  

    From the paper:

    “This paper formally explores the link between gender-targeted benefits and women’s decisionmaking power by providing an empirical application of a collective labor supply model with home production to quantify the impact of Mexico’s Oportunidades cash transfer program on mothers’ Pareto weight in urban two-parent households. We find that participation in Oportunidades increased mothers’ bargaining power by almost 24%, associated with a 20% increase in their individual welfare, and with a 25% increase in the domestic production of a child-related public good. The counterfactual exercises implemented yield two policy-relevant takeaways. First, the Oportunidades program is as effective as alternative cash transfer programs and significantly more effective than wage subsidies at increasing mothers’ bargaining power, individual welfare and domestic output. Second, individual-level poverty rates computed using the money metric welfare index here proposed can help improve the program’s targeting strategy by accounting for the unequal sharing of resources within households.”

    + + +

    +   “Even if Evergrande were salvaged through government intervention, the Chinese state would continue to face new dilemmas.” New on PW, Ho-fung Hung on Evergrande and the changing Chinese growth model. Link. 

    +    “We document that, despite the global nature of the marketplace, the location of the worker accounts for over a third of the variance in wages.” Agostina Brinatti, Alberto Cavallo, Javier Cravino, and Andres Drenik on the price of remote work. Link.

    +    BIS bulletin on supply chain bottlenecks. Link. Hyun Song Shin summarizes on Twitter; Izabella Kaminska replies in the FT. Link, link.

    +   “Anglo American Plc’s exit from coal has become a case study for unintended consequences.” Thomas Biesheuvel in Bloomberg Green on the divestment campaign around coal. Link.

    +   Carolyn Sissoko on the development of the Bank of England’s private sector lending policies. Link.

    +   In ProPublica, detailed mapping and analysis of neighborhoods affected by toxic industrial air pollution in the US. Link. 

    +   “I use computational text analysis methods to quantitatively show that the Republican Party has taken the rhetoric that was used by segregationists to defend Jim Crow racial segregation in the Mid-20th Century and incorporated it into their modern-day speeches about economic issues.” By Chris Becker. Link. 

    +   “COP26 should distance itself from carbon shock therapy.” By Daniela Gabor and Isabella Weber. Link. 

    +   “Japan’s Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 devastated the area around Tokyo and the country’s main port of Yokohama. This article uses the earthquake as a case study to inform our understanding of the economics of disasters and the history of market integration. We make use of a unique monthly wholesale price dataset for a number of cities across Japan, and our analysis suggests three main findings: that price changes in the affected areas immediately following the disaster were in most cases reflected in price changes in Japan’s provincial cities; that cities further away from the devastation witnessed smaller price changes than those nearer to the affected area; and that the observed pattern of price changes reflects the regional heterogeneity identified by scholars who have worked on market integration in Japan.” By Janet Hunter and Kota Ogasawara. Link. 

  3. An Announcement

    Comments Off on An Announcement

    A new look for Phenomenal World

    After two years of publishing, we are thrilled to launch a new website. 

    Our new home—developed and designed by Partner & Partners—retains the style of our original blog layout, while creating new streams of longform and shortform content, gathering a series section, and collecting past PW Sources in a updated archive. If you want to receive updates on new analysis and features on the site, sign up for post alerts here. 

    In a new essay on the site, ADRIENNE BULLER and BENJAMIN BRAUN examine the rise of asset managers over the last two decades. 

    From the piece: 

    “Since the 2008 Financial Crisis, we’ve witnessed in BlackRock the rise of an undisputed shareholder superpower, but the firm, while exceptional, is not alone. Alongside its closest rival Vanguard, these two firms control nearly $20 trillion in assets and a combined market share of more than 50% in the booming market for exchange-traded funds (ETFs). And they’re not just big—they’re “universal,” controlling major stakes in every firm, asset class, industry, and geography of the global economy. It’s an unprecedented conjuncture of concentration and distribution, one which has prompted fierce debate over what this new era of common, universal, and increasingly passively-allocated ownership means.

    At the heart of the debate is the theory of universal ownership, which contends that because today’s asset management giants are universal owners with fully diversified portfolios, they should be structurally motivated to internalize the negative externalities that arise from the conduct of individual corporations or sectors. Whether social inequality or the climate crisis, proponents of universal ownership contend that the enormous externalities of corporate capitalism will, eventually, diminish shareholder returns, and therefore universal owners should and will act to minimize them. It’s an elegant theory, but is it true? Ultimately, the answer to this question hinges on how we understand ownership.” 

    Link to the text.

    And recently on Phenomenal World: 

    +  “A Veblenian framework which accounts for changes in corporate strategy and structure sheds light on how shifting the distribution of profits towards IPR-rich firms that have a low marginal propensity to invest hinders growth.” Herman Mark Schwartz on intellectual property and secular stagnation. Link. 

    +  “The BDI’s positions demonstrate the realization on the part of industry representatives that in order for Germany to cope with economic and geopolitical competition, strong state support for industry and a strong Europe are needed.” Thanos Liapas on Germany’s post-election negotiations. Link. 

    +   “The divergence between core and periphery countries in the monetary and financial system curtails the ability of developing countries to decarbonize.” Kate Mackenzie on climate diplomacy and the financial system. Link. 

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Slum Clearances in Chile

    In her job market paper, PhD candidate in economics at UCLA Fernanda Rojas-Ampuero examines the long-term effects of slum clearances in Santiago, Chile under Pinochet. 

    From the abstract:

    “We study the intergenerational effects of moving to a high-poverty neighborhood on earnings and schooling using evidence from a slum clearance program implemented in Santiago, Chile, between 1979 and 1985. During the country’s dictatorship, the government mandated the eviction of entire slums and their relocation to public housing in low-income areas: Two-thirds of slums were relocated to new housing projects on the periphery of the city, and the rest received housing at their initial location. To estimate a displacement effect, we compare the outcomes of displaced and non-displaced children 20 to 40 years after the end of the policy. We construct a novel data set that combines archival records with administrative data containing 19,852 homeowners matched to 55,343 children. We find negative effects on children and families: Displaced children have 10% lower earnings and 0.5 fewer years of education as adults than non-displaced. Moreover, displaced children are more likely to work in informal jobs and their parents are more likely to die after the intervention.”

    Link to the paper, link to Roja-Ampuero’s website. 

    Each week we highlight research from a graduate student, postdoc, or early-career professor. Send us recommendations: editorial@jainfamilyinstitute.org.

    +++

    +   Oddný Helgadóttir reinterprets the rise of Real Business Cycles (RBC) modelling in macroeconomics. “Content analysis, network mapping and deep reading of 197 articles by 331 authors suggest that RBC had a competitive edge as a tool of individual professional advancement.” Link. h/t Paul

    +   “We present evidence confirming that the transformation of energy systems is well under way, and we explore the economic and strategic implications of the emerging energy geography.” By J.F. Mercure, P. Salas, P. Vercoulen, et al. Link.

    +   A randomized experiment of 6,000 households in Indonesia sheds light on the challenges of a universal healthcare system. By Abhijit Banerjee, Amy Finkelstein, Rema Hanna, Benjamin Olken, Arianna Ornaghi, and Sudarno Sumarto. Link. h/tSidhya

    +   “We find that women’s relative earnings and employment increase by 4.4% and 2.9% respectively following the birth of the manager’s first daughter.” Maddalena Ronchi and Nina Smith on gender attitudes in Denmark. Link. 

    +   Thomas Kalinowski examines the “discrepancy between weak emission goals and strong investments in green technology” in South Korea. Link. 

    +   “How did the telegraph improve market integration in late imperial China? This study exploits differences in the exogenous timing of telegraph construction in different prefectures from 1870 to 1911. The empirical results show that the arrival of the telegraph within a prefecture pair reduced the ratio of the two prefectures’ monthly high-grade rice prices by 6.6 percentage points in nine southern Chinese provinces, or 17.2 per cent of the mean of the dependent variable.  In addition, the effect of the telegraph was stronger for prefecture pairs in which information transmission was more costly, and traditional long-distance traders played an important role in the telegraph’s promotion of market integration.” By Yu Hao,Yuanzhe Li, and John Nye. Link. 

  4. Ghost Descending a Staircase

    Comments Off on Ghost Descending a Staircase

    Statistics

    While a group of statisticians recently found the 2020 US Census to be free of major errors, many were concerned about the census’ ability to accurately reflect the population given its coincidence with the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The debate shed light on the political importance of the census, as well as its ability to test state capacity. 

    Considering the role of statistics in defining the state, ARUNABH GHOSH looks at early forms of statistical collection in the People’s Republic of China. 

    From the text: 

    “At the heart of the varied solutions attempted by Chinese statisticians was a contentious debate about the very nature of social reality and the place and efficacy of mathematical statistics—in particular, probability theory—in ascertaining that reality. From the perspective of PRC statisticians the most indigenous among these approaches, because it could be traced to Mao’s 1927 Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan, was the Ethnographic approach. As its label suggests, it relied on a method that placed the researcher in the middle of the people and the phenomena he was surveying. His personal presence on the ground, interacting in-depth with people, observing and recording phenomena first-hand, were deemed indispensable to his ability to understand the objective reality of a place and a person.

    The most pervasive among the three approaches was the Exhaustive, defining statistics as a social science, as opposed to a natural science. Most significant to this definitional distinction was the rejection of mathematical statistics, in particular probability theory and its attention to questions of randomness and chance. Instead, drawing direct inspiration from Soviet statistics, the resultant approach—socialist statistics—favored exhaustive enumeration through periodic complete counts. The dominance of exhaustive enumeration was, as we shall see, instrumental in the shaping of new bureaus, the designing of regimes of statistical work, and the training of personnel. It also generated tremendous incapacities—a country as large and diverse as China was not easy to enumerate. Compared to exhaustive enumeration, large-scale random sampling carried the promise of not only generating more accurate data but also being cheaper and faster. In their desire to learn more about its possible applications, the Chinese turned to a group of Indian statisticians who were at the forefront of international efforts to convince practitioners of the efficacy of this method. In spite of the optimism generated by the possible adoption of random sampling, exchanges with India were stymied by early 1959. During the ensuing months, the tussle between socialist statistics and its probabilistic alternatives was largely overwhelmed by Maoist mass science.”

    Link to the book.

    +   “Taken together these interrelated statistical innovations constituted a new matrix of economic knowledge, which gave substance to a new conception of the economy.” Adam Tooze on statistics in Germany. Link. And see a previous newsletter on the topic here. 

    +   Morten Jerven on the lack of accuracy in African development statistics, and Linnet Taylor and Dennis Broeders on the move towards private-public partnerships in data collection in developing countries. Link and link. 

    +  “We generate an index of ‘information capacity’ for 85 states from 1789 to the present.” Thomas Brambor, Agustín Goenega, Johannes Lindvall, and Jan Teorell on how governments collect and process statistical information. Link. 

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Dust Bowl Innovation

    Prize Fellow in economics, history, and politics at Harvard and MIT, JACOB MOSCONA studies the economics of innovation and development. In a recent paper, he examines technological innovation following the American Dust Bowl and its effects on land values. 

    From the paper:

    “This paper investigates how innovation responded to and shaped the economic impact of the American Dust Bowl, an environmental catastrophe that led to widespread soil erosion on the US Plains during the 1930s. Combining data on county-level erosion, the historical geography of crop production, and crop specific innovation, I document that the crisis led to a major shift in agricultural technology development toward more Dust Bowl-exposed crops and, within crops, toward bio-chemical and planting technologies that could directly mitigate environmental distress. County-level exposure to Dust Bowl-induced innovation significantly dampened the effect of land erosion on agricultural land values and revenue. The baseline estimates suggest that a one standard deviation increase in exposure led to a 0.18-0.32 standard deviation increase in new crop variety releases. Counties with the highest in-sample innovation exposure experienced virtually no long run decline in land value as a result of the Dust Bowl.”

    Link to the paper, link to Moscana’s website. 

    Each week we highlight research from a graduate student, postdoc, or early-career professor. Send us recommendations: editorial@jainfamilyinstitute.org.

    + + +

    +   “The conference will produce dozens of announcements about financial initiatives relating to climate change. Some will be pragmatic attempts to compensate for a global financial system that is structurally blocking efforts to stabilize the climate and keep people safe. Most will barely acknowledge that this situation exists.” Ahead of COP26, Kate Mackenzie in PW on the antinomies of climate diplomacy and the global financial system. Link. 

    +   “Taken together, the studies do not offer a clear picture of how the tax credit—or any guaranteed income programs—would otherwise affect the economy.” In a new paper, Claudia Sahm, Stephen Nuñez, and Sidhya Balakrishnan evaluate six macroeconomic models of guaranteed income policy. Link to the paper, and register here for a 30-minute briefing on the paper led by Sahm on Monday, November 1 at 3pm EST.

    +   “Our analysis shows that full refundability does much of the heavy lifting in the CTC expansion—almost half the reduction in child poverty associated with the ARPA CTC expansion could be achieved simply by making the TCJA-era $2000 credit fully refundable.” A new brief by Jack Landry and Stephen Nuñez on CTC proposals. Link. 

    +   Two from Carbon Brief: a “who wants what” at COP26, and a look at nine moments in China’s changing approach to climate by Jianqiang Liu. Link and link.

    +   In Vox, an interview with fellow Paul Williams on the state of housing investments in the Build Back Better framework. Link.

    +   “We show qualitatively and quantitatively that governments systematically weaken financial regulations in the aftermath of central bank independence.” By Michaël Aklin and Andreas Kern. Link. 

    +   Jessica F. Green and Jennifer Hadden investigate the landscape of environmental governance, focusing on interactions between environmental NGOs and international NGOS from the 1970s to the 1990s. Link. 

    +   Ajil Mankunnummal on participatory planning in local self-government institutions in Kerala, India. Link. 

    +   “Under the absence of flow-driven price pressure, the aggregate ESG industry would have strongly underperformed the market from 2016 to 2021.” Philippe van der Beck on inflows to the ESG industry. Link. 

    +   Darren Aiello, Asaf Bernstein, Mahyar Kargar, Ryan Lewis, and Michael Schwert examine the effects of pension shortfalls on real estate values. Link. 

    +   “Specific climate conditions as experienced by different regions and robustly documented by eleven independent proxy data sets coincide with, and probably help to explain, the early expansion of the Roman Empire and the later success of the
    eastern Roman Empire while its western counterpart declined. Drought conditions in Central Asia show a connection with the migration of the Huns and the Avars that brought turmoil to the Roman Empire. Volcanic activity was less prevalent in generally stable periods and more common in centuries known to have been politically, economically, and militarily turbulent. In particular, multiple proxy indicators are consistent with the cooling event of 536 a.d., recently identified as a major environmental moment in the history of the Roman Empire.” By Michael McCormick et al. Link. 

  5. Depth & Boundless Breadth

    Comments Off on Depth & Boundless Breadth

    RISK

    Since the mid-19th century, municipal debt has been responsible for funding some of the most significant investments in US infrastructure, schools, and social services. But rising risks of climate-related flooding threaten the value of municipal bonds, often in cities which need investment most.

    In a 2014 book, MIRIAM GREENBERG and KEVIN FOX GOTHAM consider the cyclical nature of risk exposure and crisis response.

    From the text:

    “In the aftermath of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, New York and New Orleans used disaster aid to pursue a highly uneven approach to redevelopment writ large—one dependent upon, yet much broader than, tourism and marketing. From initial reports, we saw public disaster funds in the form of Community Development Block Grants and lucrative tax abatements channeled to some of the most powerful private interests in the cities—including energy corporations, hotels, real estate developers, and financial firms.

    In addition to similarity in the aftermath of the disasters, we observed similarities in the historical conditions that lead up to them. Namely, processes of uneven redevelopment seemed to be occurring on top of the uneven development that we had seen play such a large role in shaping both cities over the preceding decades, and that positioned certain communities to be far more vulnerable to disaster than others. Prior advantages or disadvantages—in access to credit, insurance, and wealth; to stable and well-paid work; and to political influence—were compounded by inequitable access to post-disaster redevelopment aid. In terms of the latter, we discovered that policies pushed through in the crisis environment played a powerful role. Following 9/11, redevelopment agencies in New York City attained sweeping waivers of federal regulations governing the use of disaster and redevelopment funds—such that they no longer had to meet “public benefit” standards, be “means-tested,” or be subject to “public oversight.” After Katrina, these deregulations were extended to the entire Gulf Coast, on the basis of no argument beyond the New York precedent. This was a major victory, and source of legitimacy, for local growth coalitions who had long sought new flexible revenues to speed market-oriented redevelopment. This, in turn, had the effect of driving wider market-oriented redevelopment citywide and, by leaving other needs unmet, dramatically augmented socio-spatial inequality.”

    Link to the book.

    • On natural disasters and municipal bond prices in New Orleans, Omaha, and California. Link, link, and link.
    • “Rising risk levels pose a threat to the insurability of floods, and insurance without risk reduction elements could lead to moral hazard.” Swenja Surminski and Delioma Oramas-Dorta analyze 27 insurance schemes that transfer the risk of flood-related economic losses in low and middle-income countries. Link.
    • “Risks are not catastrophes. They are the believed expectation of catastrophes.” From a 2006 interview with sociologist Ulrich Beck. Link.

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    FAFSA & College Enrollment

    In her job market paper, PhD candidate in economics at the University of Oregon JENNI PUTZ studies a Louisiana law that requires high school students to submit a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).

    From the abstract:

    “Aiming to reduce inequalities between low- and high income students enrolling in college, many states have proposed legislation requiring high school students to file a FAFSA application, or opt-out, prior to graduation. Louisiana was the first to implement this policy in the 2017-2018 academic year, thus potentially impacting enrollments in Fall 2018. FAFSA submissions increased significantly in Louisiana following the policy change, suggesting there may have been some follow through into post-secondary institutions. I use a synthetic control approach to estimate causal impacts of Louisiana’s FAFSA policy on college enrollment and Pell Grant awards. I find suggestive evidence that students may have substituted away from public two-year institutions towards four-year institutions. Specifically, I find marginally significant effects on enrollment for Black students at large, public four-year universities.”

    Link to the paper, link to Putz’s website.

    Each week we highlight research from a graduate student, postdoc, or early-career professor. Send us recommendations: editorial@jainfamilyinstitute.org.

    + + +

    • “The flight of these drivers shines a light on the longstanding labor problems endemic in the UK transport industry.” New on PW, Jörg Nowak on the petrol crisis and the UK’s trucking industry. Link.
    • Jessie Handbury & Sarah Moshary look at the 2010 expansion of the National School Lunch Program, finding that “by 2016, the indirect benefit had reduced grocery costs for the median household by approximately 4.5%.” Link.
    • “If workers had correct beliefs about outside options, 13% of jobs would not be viable at current wages, concentrated in the low-wage segment of the labor market.” Simon Jäger, Christopher Roth, Nina Roussille, and Benjamin Schoefer on workers’ beliefs about rents and outside options. Link.
    • Ayhan Kose, Franziska Ohnsorge, and Naotaka Sugawara on the rise of global government debt and personal debt during Covid-19. Link.
    • “China’s vision of global economic governance is not external to the liberal international order but emerged from China’s particular position within it.” By Jake Werner. Link.
    • Michael Dinerstein and Troy D. Smith estimate the effects of value-added taxes on trade flows in EU member states. Link.
    • Total’s responses to global warming and campaigns for climate change denial, from 1971 to 2021, by Christophe Bonneuil, Pierre-Louis Choquet, and Benjamin Franta. Link.
    • “In the absence of a centralized and detailed federal tracking system, the monitoring of relief funds flowing to the nation’s more than 13,000 school districts has largely been left to states.” At ProPublica, Annie Waldman and Bianca Fortis report on federal pandemic support for schools. Link.
    • Jonathan Pattenden and Gaurav Bansal compare the 2020 farmers’ protests in India with the new farmers movement of the 1980s and 90s and examine a shift in class alliances. Link.
    • “It has often been claimed that the structure of export trade between Africa and Europe during the colonial period depended on the colonizer’s identity, with the British relying on free trade and the French, in contrast, employing monopsonistic policies. However, due to the lack of systematic data on colonial trade, this claim has remained untested. This study uses recently available data on export prices from African colonies to estimate monopsonistic profit margins for British and French trading companies. The results challenge the view of the British colonizers as champions of free trade. The level of profit margins was determined much more by the local conditions in Africa (history of trade and the presence of European producers) than by the identity of the colonial power. ” By Federico Tadei. Link.

  6. Attersee

    Comments Off on Attersee

    RETAIL EXPANSION

    Both consumers and businesses have felt the effects of ongoing backlogs in global supply chains. The world’s largest retailers have been integral in shaping these supply chains, especially in the global South, where changing patterns of consumption have been met by corresponding production shifts.

    A 2019 article by MARTÍN ARBOLEDA looks at the expansion of Walmart in Chile over the last decade and its implications for finance and agricultural supply chains.

    From the text:

    “Building upon the synergistic combination of cutting-edge logistical infrastructure, mass issuance of retail financial instruments, and innovation in digital platform technology, Walmart Chile is spearheading interlocking transformations in the organization of capitalist agriculture and of spaces of urban mass consumption. As of 2017, the company had issued nearly 1.4 million credit cards, a figure that represents more than 10% of all active credit cards in Chile. In 2018, Walmart Chile acquired Cornershop, an online platform for on-demand delivery for supermarkets, an acquisition that reflects the company’s global strategy to overhaul its supply chain capacity by more comprehensively harnessing new developments in digital technology and freelance, contingent labour. As a result, the sales of Walmart Chile increased by 63.4% between 2011 and 2016, a period in which the productivity of agriculture also grew by leaps and bounds. The dramatic enlargement of effective demand accomplished by Walmart Chile and other supermarket chains, the paper intends to illustrate, has been premised on and also given momentum to the territorial expansion and productive reconfiguration of agro-industrial hinterlands.

    In 2018, Walmart Chile embarked on a strategic partnership with Banco Banco de Crédito e Inversiones (BCI), one of the major banks in Chile, basically with the objective of expanding the company’s customer base into new socio-economic groups. As Popkin and Reardon’s groundbreaking study demonstrates, “diet changes have occurred in parallel to, and in two-way causality with, changes in the broad food system—the set of supply chains from farms, through midstream of processing, wholesale and logistics, to down-stream segments of retail and food service ….”

    Link to the piece.

    • “Far from a monolithic force conquering the world, Walmart uses a global strategy and tactics that are contested and contradictory.” A 2018 volume compiles eight case studies of labor resistance to Walmart’s presence in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Link.
    • Thomas Reardon, C. Peter Timmer, Christopher B. Barrett and Julio Berdegué examine the rise of supermarkets across the world and their implications for agrifood supply chains in a 2003 article. Link.
    • “Walmart and “Made in China” are practically synonymous; Walmart imports some 70 percent of its merchandise from China.” Anita Chan’s edited book investigates the retailer’s distinct import and retail operations in China. Link.

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Gender & Job Vacancies

    PhD Student in Economics at HEC University of Lausanne FABRIZIO COLELLA studies firm labor demand and hiring. A recent working paper co-authored with David Card and Rafael Lalive investigates the elimination of gender preferences in job advertisements in Austria.

    From the abstract:

    “In spring 2005, Austria launched a campaign to inform employers and newspapers that gender preferences in job advertisements were illegal. At the time over 40% of openings on the nation’s largest job-board specified a preferred gender. Over the next year the fraction fell to under 5%. We merge data on filled vacancies to linked employer-employee data to study how the elimination of gender preferences affected hiring and job outcomes. Prior to the campaign, most stated preferences were concordant with the firm’s existing gender composition, but a minority targeted the opposite gender – a subset we call non-stereotypical vacancies. We find that the elimination of gender preferences led to a rise in the fraction of women hired for jobs likely to be targeted to men (and vice versa), increasing the diversity of hiring workplaces. Partially offsetting this effect, we find a reduction in the success of non-stereotypical vacancies in hiring the targeted gender, and indications of a decline in the efficiency of matching. For the much larger set of stereotypical vacancies, however, vacancy filling times, wages, and job durations were largely unaffected by the campaign, suggesting that the elimination of stated preferences had at most small consequences on overall job match efficiency.”

    Link to the paper, link to Colella’s website.

    Each week we highlight research from a graduate student, postdoc, or early-career professor. Send us recommendations: editorial@jainfamilyinstitute.org.

    + + +

    • “Is stock index membership for sale?” By Kun Li, Xin (Kelly) Liu, and Shang-Jin Wei. Link.
    • Radha Sarkar examines alliances between leftists and evangelicals in Latin America. Link.
    • The economic drivers of biodiversity loss from 1965 to 2015, by Yuanning Liang, Ivan J. Rudik, and Eric Zou. Link.
    • Christopher R. Tamborini and Andrés Villarreal on immigrant men’s employment instability after the Great Recession. Link.
    • Comparing three illicit supply networks: cocaine, illegally-traded wildlife, and illegally-mined sand. By Nicholas Magliocca et al. Link.
    • “It looks like a liability bomb that’s destined to explode.” A Bloomberg investigation by Zachary Mider and Rachel Adams-Heard into old gas wells and methane leaks. Link.
    • Michael Pettis on Beijing’s common prosperity policy. Link.
    • On US glove makers’ 1977 failed campaign for protection from Chinese textile imports & tensions between labor and diplomats, by Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson. Link.
    • “Two of Europe’s historically most powerful states, France and Britain, were fierce competitors for many centuries and usually of comparable military strength. Their capitals, Paris and London, are relatively close: about 400 km as the crow flies. So why did neither of them ever dominate and/or absorb the other? And how come they so often ended up fighting each other far beyond their own state territories? This paper proposes that the location of state capitals and a region’s overall state structure (i.e., the territorial size of states) both depend on geography. Specifically, we argue that terrain that slows down military incursions makes state capitals more secure, in effect allowing them to locate closer to each other, and also gives rise to a less unified state structure, i.e., many small states rather than one single unified state.” By Shuhei Kitamura and Nils-Petter Lagerlöf. Link.

  7. Mecklinburg Autumn

    Comments Off on Mecklinburg Autumn

    CAPITAL FLIGHT

    As the Fed moves towards tightening its post-pandemic monetary policy, developing countries around the world face growing risks of capital flight. The deep political constraints posed by this risk are not new, but their implications for contemporary policymaking are persistent.

    In a 2014 book chapter, Léonce Ndikumana and James Boyce consider strategies to overcome the tension.

    From the text:

    “On the African side, capital flight is associated with the embezzlement of national resources, corruption and political instability. But external agents and institutions also contribute to capital flight from the continent, in particular through the opacity of the international banking system and inadequate enforcement of rules on financial transparency.

    This implies that efforts to stem and prevent capital flight must be organized on both domestic and international fronts. At the national level, the effectiveness of official institutions in preventing capital flight is contingent on the existence of a dynamic network of civil society entities committed to financial transparency and accountability. Civil society needs to be given ample space to operate as a counterbalancing force to executive power. In turn, civil society must take advantage of this position to consolidate action plans in the fight against illicit financial flows. Internationally, the establishment of a body to adjudicate questions of debt legitimacy would add an important missing piece to the current financial architecture. The coordination and harmonization of regulatory frameworks and enforcement mechanisms are critical to increase effectiveness in preventing illicit financial flows and tax evasion, and in facilitating stolen asset recovery. A more transparent international financial system will benefit developing and developed countries alike.”

    Link to the piece.

    • “Paradoxically, even as African countries have become more attractive to foreign private capital, they have continued to experience capital exodus in the context of improved economic performance, especially since the turn of the century.” A 2019 article by Ndikumana and Mare Sarr. Link.
    • “To what extent did the threat of a relocation of assets cause the dismantling of progressive taxation on wealth and income introduced in European countries during the First World War?” Christophe Farquet analyzes the French tax cuts of 1922-28. Link.
    • From 1990, Manuel Pastor on capital flight and IMF restructuring across Latin America: “4 of the 5 low-flight countries in our sample—Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Peru—had at least creaky exchange controls through most of the period. Meanwhile, Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela, free of the ‘impediments to social welfare’ imposed by capital controls, hemorrhaged resources over the same period.” Link.
    • “[Capital owners have] a powerful indirect control over government policy: everything which may shake the state of confidence must be carefully avoided because it would cause an economic crisis. But once the government learns the trick of increasing employment by its own purchases, this powerful controlling device loses its effectiveness.” Michael Kalecki’s seminal paper on the “Political Aspects of Full Employment.” Link.

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Macroeconomic Modeling & Policy

    Juan Acosta is a historian of economics at Universidad del Valle in Calí, Colombia who studies the production of economic knowledge in central banks. In recent paper co-authored with Erich Pinzón-Fuchs, he examines the Social Science Research Council’s Committee on Economic Stability.

    From the paper:

    “The Committee on Economic Stability of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) was established in 1959 and played a key role in the construction of large-scale macroeconometric models during the 1960s and early 1970s. Using archival material from the SSRC, we discuss the two projects that the Committee carried out during its first three years of existence: (i) the construction of a macroeconometric model (1960-1963) and (ii) the organization of a conference on quantitative policy analysis (1963). We focus on the effect of the Committee’s activities on public economic discourse and argue that, while the Committee did not participate directly in the policy debate, it did purposefully contribute to the growing importance of macroeconometric models in policy analysis. Thus, with its activities, the Committee helped usher in an age of quantified and model-based economic discourse that was not, however, exclusively technical but that recognized both the importance of the political character of the policy-making process and the limits of the economists’ toolkit.”

    Link to the paper, link to Acosta’s website.

    Each week we highlight research from a graduate student, postdoc, or early-career professor. Send us recommendations: editorial@jainfamilyinstitute.org.

    + + +

    • Yu-Ling Chang, Jennifer Romich, and Marci Ybarra examine SNAP, the EITC, TANF, unemployment insurance, and the CTC from 2009 to 2019. Link.
    • “Notes on the Gini Coefficient” by Rajiv Sethi, with responses from Debraj Ray, as well as Samuel Bowles and Wendy Carlin. Link to Sethi’s post. Link and link to the responses.
    • Justin Sandefur explains the Doing Business scandal. Link.
    • Diverging debt servicing burdens among large and small corporations, by Joseph Baines and Sandy Brian Hager. Link.
    • Amir Kermani and Francis Wong on the racial gap in distressed home sales. Link.
    • Felipe Fernandes Cruz on the role of aviation technology in Brazil’s frontier colonization in the 1940s. Link.
    • A study of union membership composition in four European countries over the past 60 years. By Cyprien Batutl, Ulysse Lojkine, and Paolo Santini. Link.
    • Pedro Teixeira on the Columbia Labor Workshop in the 1960s and 70s. Link.
    • “This article provides a novel framework within which to evaluate real household incomes of predominantly rural working families of various sizes and structures in England in the years 1260–1850. We reject ahistorical assumptions about complete reliance on men’s wages and male breadwinning, moving closer to reality by including women and children’s contributions to family incomes. Our framework suggests living standards varied widely by family structure and dependency ratio. Incorporating detailed demographic data available for 1560 onward suggests that small and intact families enjoyed high and rising living standards after 1700, while large or disrupted families depended on child labour and poor relief until c. 1830.” By Sara Horrell, Jane Humphries, and Jacob Weisdorf. Link.

  8. Stranger

    Comments Off on Stranger

    THE HART CELLER ACT

    A rise in deportations of Haitian immigrants at the US-Mexico border has brought another cycle of media attention to the US immigration system and border security apparatus.

    The modern US immigration system was largely shaped by the 1965 Hart Celler Act, which passed amidst a wave of civil rights reforms. In a 2010 article, MAE NGAI unpacks the political history of the legislation and its role in defining contemporary understandings of legal and illegal immigration.

    From the text:

    “The problem of our present system is that it is based on a core paradox: Our system of allocating visas for the admission of permanent residents—the vaunted green card—is based on principles of equality and fairness, yet that very system has generated an ever-larger caste-population of unauthorized immigrants. We rarely, if ever, question the principle embedded in Hart-Celler that we should treat every country the same. It is based on a logic of equality and fairness and was meant to replace the patently inequitable and discriminatory system of national origin and racial quotas that had governed immigration policy since the 1920s. It was also very much in line with the outlook of the civil rights era. That was the ethos of the time—Hart-Celler is often recalled as being of a piece with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It was also the self-conscious strategy of immigration reformers in the 1950s and early 1960s who decried the national origins quota system for its discrimination against eastern and southern Europeans.

    When the initial hemispheric quotas under Hart-Celler went into effect in 1968, deportations to Mexico increased by forty percent, to 151,000. In 1976, when the country caps went into full effect, the United States deported 781,000 Mexicans. This compares with a total of 100,000 removals to all other countries in the world combined. By 1980 it was estimated that an illegal population of some two million people had accreted. There are now some twelve million unauthorized migrants in the United States. Three-quarters of them are from Mexico and Central America. They are the direct beneficiaries of legislation passed in the era of civil rights, founded on the principle of formal equality.”

    Link to the piece.

    • In her 2019 book, Jane Hong looks at the 20th-century transnational movement across the Philippines, India, and the United States to repeal exclusionary immigration laws against Asians, which culminated in the passage of Hart Celler in 1965. Link.
    • “This duality of Hart Celler Act becomes even more striking when we consider how the act that fostered an increase in the numbers and diversity of immigrants also inspired a reactionary movement that has sought to marginalize those same immigrants inside the United States.” In a recent book, Sarah Coleman explores the anti-immigrant movement in the 1970s and 80s. Link.
    • “Paradoxical as it may seem, US immigration policy often has very little to do with trends and patterns of immigration.” Douglas Massey and Karen Pren on the unintended consequences of Hart Celler. Link.

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Firms from Pinochet to Democracy

    Felipe González is Assistant Professor in economics at Pontificia Universidad Católica De Chile. A 2020 paper co-authored with Mounu Prem looks at how Chilean firms with ties to the Pinochet government responded to the end of the dictatorship.

    From the abstract:

    “We use new firm-level data from Chile to document resource misallocation in favor of politically connected firms during the transition from dictatorship to democracy. We find that firms with links to the Pinochet regime (1973–1990) were relatively unproductive and benefited from resource misallocation under dictatorship, and those distortions persisted into democracy. We show that, after learning that the dictatorship was going to end, firms in the dictator’s network increased their productive capacity, experienced higher profits, and obtained more loans from the main state-owned bank. We test for different explanations and provide suggestive evidence consistent with connected firms aiming to shield their market position for the transition to democracy.”

    Link to the paper.

    Each week we highlight research from a graduate student, postdoc, or early-career professor. Send us recommendations: editorial@jainfamilyinstitute.org.

    + + +

    • “We show a robust increase in mobility between the 1910s and 1940s cohorts, about half of which is driven by absolute convergence in racial income gaps. We also find that excluding Black Americans, particularly Black women, considerably overstates mobility throughout the 20th century.” Elisa Jácome, Ilyana Kuziemko and Suresh Naidu estimate trends in intergenerational mobility. Link.
    • Brian Potter on the history of bricks and changes in production during the industrial revolution. Link.
    • “We find significantly and substantially higher pain in the U.S. than in Canada.” Anna Zajacova, Jinhyung Lee, and Hanna Grol-Prokopczyk on the geography of chronic pain. Link.
    • In Rest of World, Phil Jones investigates the landscape of “microwork” for machine learning advances among the world’s displaced and refugee populations. Link. (ht: Laura)
    • Stephen Stapczynski, Akshat Rathi, and Godfrey Marawanyika on ‘carbon-neutral’ gas and carbon offsets in Zimbabwe. Link.
    • A new paper by Stephany Griffith-Jones, Kevin Gallagher, and Ulrich Volz on the 1989 Brady Plan, the foundation for the sovereign debt restructurings across Latin America. Link.
    • “We show that there is no positive relationship between trade liberalization and economic growth during the Great Liberalization of the 1990s.” Mateo Hoyos replicates Estevadeordal and Taylor (2013). Link. (ht: Paul)
    • “I argue that strong party-union ties and party leadership centralization may, in fact, insulate leftist presidents against redistributive pressures from below.” Andrés Schipani on PT rule in Brazil. Link.
    • “Not until the introduction of opera theaters that catered to a paying public in Venice did these ponderous courtly spectacles mutate into the lively popular art that opera has remained for the past 400 years. Why Venice and why then? The answer is to be found in the conjunction between Venetian carnival festivity and the intellectual politics of Venetian republicanism during the two generations after the lifting of the papal interdict against Venice in 1607. During this extraordinary period of relatively free speech, which was unmatched elsewhere at the time, Venice was the one place in Italy open to criticisms of Counter Reformation papal politics. Libertine and skeptical thought flourished in the Venetian academies, the members of which wrote the librettos and financed the theaters for many of the early Venetian operas.” By Edward Muir. Link.

  9. Dionysus, Silver and Red

    Comments Off on Dionysus, Silver and Red

    REAL ESTATE

    The possible collapse of Evergrande, China’s second largest property developer, has reverberated through global financial markets. With over $300 billion in outstanding debt, 3.8 million jobs on the line, and investments across consumer industries, the scale of the impact could be great.

    The company’s fall bodes poorly for China’s over-leveraged and over-expanded real estate market. In a 2012 paper, YA PING WANG, LEI SHAO, ALAN MAURIE, and JIANHUA CHENG present a detailed history of the sector.

    From the text:

    “In 1981, over 82% of urban housing was in public ownership but by 2002, 80% of public housing had been sold, mainly to their occupiers. Comprehensive reform policies that commercialised urban housing were implemented in the early 1990s. In this reformed system, most urban housing would be provided through the market but some 15% of low-income families, with insufficient financial power to become homeowners, would require socially rented housing. Government supported affordable housing was to be the main source of urban housing and would cater for low to middle-income urban households (~70% of the population), including most public sector employees. On top of the housing market was commercial housing provision for the rich (~15% of the population).

    Nominally, in two decades China had changed from a nation renting from state owned enterprises to a nation of homeowners. However, a large proportion of homeowners had not been fully exposed to the market; they purchased as sitting tenants, at prices that did not fully reflect market values. In 1997, China’s central bank encouraged all government owned banks to undertake mortgage business. The bank reduced basic interest rates seven times between 1996 and 1999, and introduced a 20% income tax on interest earned from savings. Mortgage interest rates were gradually reduced from 10.5 per cent in 1997 to 5.7 per cent in 2002. These policies were accompanied by a continuous and steady increase in housing supply. Between 2000 and 2002, over 2 million new homes were built each year in cities and towns. This urban housing development helped China successfully avoid serious impacts from the Asian financial crisis. The real estate industry emerged as a key economic sector and in some cities contributed more than half of total local GDP.”

    Link to the piece.

    • “Land has moved to the center of local politics in post-Mao China. It now shapes the restructuring of Chinese state power and radically impacts state–society relations.” A 2010 book by You-tien Hsing examines real estate investment across 24 Chinese cities. Link.
    • In another paper, Ya Ping Wang, Jing Yao, and Xiaoxiang Zhang use satellite images from 1995 to 2015 to examine patterns of urbanization in Tianjin, Hangzhou and Chengdu. Link.
    • “As the financial community seeks to maximize returns, minimize risk and recoup its investments easily, major metropolitan cities stand as primary targets for capital investment in real estate.” A recent book chapter by Natacha Aveline-Dubach compares trajectories of real estate financialization in Japan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China. Link.

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Labor Conflicts in the US-Mexico Borderlands

    Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies at Kyoto University YO TOKUNAGA studies interactions between immigrant societies in the United States. In a 2020 paper, he examines labor conflicts between Japanese and Mexican workers in California in the 1930s.

    From the abstract:

    “Launched by Mexican farmworkers against Japanese farmers in Los Angeles, the 1933 El Monte Berry Strike became one of California’s largest labor conflicts. The strike evolved from a local conflict into an international problem in which anti-Japanese sentiment travelled across the U.S.-Mexico border, merged with Mexican nationalism, and forced Japanese residents in Mexico to issue an unexpected pro-strike statement against their co-ethnics in Los Angeles. Using Japanese diplomatic documents and local ethnic newspapers, this article details the process by which Mexican nationalism trumped ethnic solidarity among Japanese immigrants in the transpacific borderlands, where local and international concerns of Japan, Mexico, and the United States intersected. The exacerbating situation in Mexico, rather than in California, played a decisive role in the settlement of the strike.”

    Link to the article.

    Each week we highlight research from a graduate student, postdoc, or early-career professor. Send us recommendations: editorial@jainfamilyinstitute.org.

    + + +

    • JFI, in collaboration with Federal Fluminense University (UFF) and the Euclides da Cunha Foundation, is excited to announce a partnership with the Municipal Treasury of the city of Niterói, Brazil on a pathbreaking sovereign wealth fund, the Fundo de Equalização da Receita. Read here for more details.
    • “Limiting the refundability of the CTC would increase child poverty by 53 percent…the largest impacts would fall on Black children, increasing the Black child poverty rate by 83%.” A new brief from JFI Fellow Jack Landry and Lead Researcher Stephen Nuñez outlines the consequences of limiting the refundability of the Child Tax Credit. Link.
    • “I argue that using inflation expectations to explain observed inflation dynamics is unnecessary and unsound.” Link. A new paper by Federal Reserve economist Jeremy Rudd on inflation theories and policy errors).
    • “From 1989 to 2017, $34 trillion of real equity wealth was created by the U.S. corporate sector. We estimate that 44% of this increase was attributable to a reallocation of rewards to shareholders in a decelerating economy, primarily at the expense of labor compensation.” By Daniel Greenwald, Martin Lettau, and Sidney Ludvigson. Link.
    • Gerhard Toews and Pierre-Louis Vézina examine long-run consequences of the forced resettlement of ‘enemies of the people’ in the Soviet Union. Link.
    • “Focusing on Rawabi, the celebrated first Palestinian planned city, this study unsettles the city’s narrative of triumphant urban development.” Linda Tabar and Samia Al-Botmeh on development and accumulation in Palestine. Link.
    • Galina Hale and Luciana Juvenal on currency-induced external balance sheet effects caused by the onset of Covid-19. Link.
    • “This borderlands case study places the birth control movement’s attention to overpopulation within the context of immigration restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border.” Lina-Maria Murillo on the opening of a birth control clinic in El Paso, Texas in 1937. Link.
    • The financialization of slavery by the First and Second Banks of the United States, by Sharon Ann Murphy. Link.
    • “The productivity of agriculture in England and the Yangtze Delta are compared c.1620 and c.1820 in order to gauge the performance of the most advanced part of China vis-à-vis its counterpart in Europe. Output per hectare was nine times greater in the Yangtze Delta than in England. More surprisingly, output per day worked was about 90 per cent of the English performance. This put Yangtze farmers slightly behind English and Dutch farmers c.1820, but ahead of most other farmers in Europe—an impressive achievement. There was little change in Yangtze agricultural productivity between 1620 and 1820. In 1820, the real income of a Yangtze peasant family was also about the same as that of an English agricultural labourer. All was not rosy in the Yangtze, however, for incomes there were on a downward trajectory.” By Robert Allen. Link.

  10. Lead the Horse

    Comments Off on Lead the Horse

    DIRECT DEMOCRACY

    This week, millions in California voted in support of Governor Gavin Newsom in a recall election. California is one of 19 states that grants power to voters to recall a sitting governor, a law which was passed in 1911 as part of a wider swath of Progressive-era reforms meant to bolster direct participation in government.

    A 2013 article by Glen Gendzel examines the political context of California’s early 20th century reforms, finding that the laws led to unexpected results for progressive politicians.

    From the article:

    “In October 1911, California voters approved the initiative, referendum, and recall amendments by a three-to-one margin. They also approved women’s suffrage, railroad regulation, workmen’s compensation, and a raft of other progressive reforms in the same election. No less than twenty-two amendments to the state constitution passed all at once. Conservatives predicted that disaster would ensue from the passage of “freak legislation” in California. Business was expected to flee the state, investors to pull out their funds, and home-seekers to look elsewhere. In fact, however, the progressive revolution of 1911 ushered in two decades of rapid growth and prosperity such as the state had not seen since the Gold Rush.

    Nonetheless, there were some early indications that direct democracy might not serve the ends that Governor Johnson and the progressives originally had in mind. For example, the first successful state recall elections in 1913 and 1914, using this tool of progressive politics, removed two progressive legislators from office. In 1915, the first statewide referendum, using another progressive electoral tool, repealed a key progressive law, backed by Governor Johnson, which would have made all state elections non-partisan. The progressive legislature then passed an open primary law, which would at least encourage non-partisanship, but state party leaders forced another referendum on this law in 1916, and the voters rejected it, too. These early uses of the recall and the referendum – to expel progressive legislators and to repeal progressive electoral reforms – did not bode well for progressive hopes for direct democracy.”

    Link to the text.

    • “Historical accounts of California progressivism have failed to mention L. G. Robinson and his fellow black progressives in Los Angeles.” Douglas Flamming on the politics of race in the Progressive era. Link.
    • Nathan Persily argues that the expansion of direct democracy measures across the American West was a response to the rising power of railroads and other trusts. Link. Amy Bridges and Thad Kousser assert that progressive support for direct democracy measures was more fractured, instead resulting from a political calculus based on legislative success. Link.
    • “Liberals and Democrats have gone from being regular winners in the 1980s to disproportionate losers in the 1990s.” A 2001 study by Zoltan Hajnal and Hugh Louch looks at the probabilities of being on the “winning side” in California’s statewide initiative process. Link.

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Administering the Bracero Program

    Alberto García is Assistant Professor of History at San Jose State University. In a recent paper, he examines how state and municipal governments determined contracting for the Bracero program, which permitted Mexican men to work as seasonal farmworkers in the US between 1942 and 1964.

    From the abstract:

    “This article examines how federal, state, and municipal governments administered the migrant worker selection process in the states of Guanajuato, Jalisco, and Michoacán during the initial phase of the Bracero Program, a bilateral initiative that allowed Mexican men to work in the United States as seasonal contract farmworkers. It argues that multiple political factors—such as the activities of groups that opposed the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional, organized labor conflicts, and the need to respond to natural disasters—influenced how officials allocated contracts, which rural workers were deemed eligible or ineligible to migrate, and which individual rural workers ultimately received contracts. The article shows that federal authorities delegated increased administrative responsibilities to state and municipal governments as the Bracero Program progressed, which in turn allowed regional and local officials to exercise considerable influence during selection periods.”

    Link to the article.

    + + +

    • “In the late 19th century, Chinese and Japanese economists drew inspiration from Hamiltonianism and German State Socialism to pursue social reformist aims while managing rebellions from below. Developmentalist ideas formulated in this era formed the foundation for later revolutionary programs… Accurately historicizing these models is crucial to understanding their role in contemporary East Asian politics.” New on PW, from Ernest Ming-Tak Leung. Link.
    • “Limiting the refundability of the Child Tax Credit would reduce the potential poverty impacts dramatically.” From a forthcoming brief on the poverty impacts of proposed changes to the CTC. Link.
    • “This study provides novel evidence that the globalization of production directly reduces collective labor practices in the global South and indirectly reduces these practices through hindering skill development in industrial labor.” By Anthony Roberts. Link.
    • Javier Rodríguez, Byengseon Bae, Arline T. Geronimus, and John Bound examine how changing partisan leadership in the US affected infant health from 1915 to 2017. Link.
    • Hielke Van Doorslaer and Mattias Vermeiren investigate why expansionary measures by central banks have seen little success in meeting inflation targets. Link.
    • “We conclude that the Home Owners Loan Corporation’s redlining maps had little effect on the geographic distribution of either the HOLC’s and the Federal Housing Administration’s mortgage market activity, and that the FHA crafted and implemented its own redlining methodology prior to the HOLC.” Price Fishback, Jonathan Rose, Kenneth Snowden and Thomas Storrs on redlining. Link.
    • Sarah Hughes, Andrew Dick, and Anna Kopec on municipal takeovers in Michigan. Link.
    • “Evidence from 18th-century marriage applications in Mexico City and Cadiz reveals that migration from Spain to the New World was primarily an extension of domestic movements from rural to urban areas, not the direct result of transatlantic networks. The migratory dynamism that pervaded Spanish society fueled Spain’s fledgling urbanization in the era of commercial capitalism, as peasants increasingly moved to towns and cities, especially to Cadiz. Many of these internal migrants subsequently used the social capital and other resources that they had accumulated in Cadiz and elsewhere on the Iberian Peninsula to facilitate migration to the New World.” By Hillel Eyal. Link.