The ‘New Economic History’ has sought to transform the study of history by applying econometric techniques to the past. As such, it has greatly increased the demand for historical statistics. The problem has been the supply, as there simply are not enough good quality data to apply econometric techniques to historical issues.
Revising our assessment of the Spanish empire is in vogue among economic historians. Most notably, Regina Grafe and Alejandra Irigoin (2006; 2008) have sought to revise the nature of the empire’s political economy. Their goal is to refute those who claim that the wealth gap between Anglo and Latin America today is due to the ‘extractive’ institutions established by the Spanish in their colonies compared to the more ‘inclusive’ institutions established by the British (e.g. North, Summerhill & Weingast 2000; Engerman & Sokoloff 2011; Acemoglu & Robinson 2012). While critiques of such deterministic narratives should be welcome, Grafe and Irigoin’s argument unfortunately rests on a misreading of their own data.
During Argentina’s military dictatorship of 1976-1983, up to 30,000 people were killed by the armed forces. Figure 1 provides an indication of why.
In a previous post I presented estimates of the percentage of articles in the five major economics journals that consisted of ‘debate’ – that is, direct discussion of other articles that appeared in those journals. Here I just want to elaborate on how I got those results using JSTOR’s advanced search form.
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson (AJR, 2002) famously argued that a ‘reversal of fortune’ had taken place among ex-European colonies. Generally speaking, they argued, those ex-colonies that had been richest in 1500 would become the poorest by the end of the twentieth century. This, they claimed, was due to the different institutions established by Europeans.
Once upon a time, economists regularly used to publicly criticise each other’s work in academic journals. But not any more.
In a new working paper I report the most important finding of my PhD dissertation. In ‘Resolving the Halperín Paradox: The Terms of Trade and Argentina’s Expansion in the Long Nineteenth Century’ I show that Argentina’s terms of trade improved dramatically during the long nineteenth century.
In a previous post I outlined some of the problems encountered by Jeffrey Williamson when he attempted to measure the periphery’s terms of trade in the nineteenth century. I have now uploaded a new ‘Technical Paper’ titled ‘The Periphery’s Terms of Trade in the Nineteenth Century: A Methodological Problem Revisited’, which is a considerably revised version of Chapter 2 of my PhD dissertation. In it I have detailed the methodological issue and why it affects Williamson’s analysis.
José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz was the product of one of Argentina’s most famous landowning families. As Minister of Economy during the dictatorship of 1976-83, he then became infamous as the architect of an economic programme that left the country racked by stagnation and hyperinflation. To understand why this occurred, it is helpful to look at the origins of the man himself.
Last year the eighth edition of the Penn World Table (PWT) was released to considerable fanfare – indeed, one commentator described it as ‘a special day for all researchers and practitioners of economics‘. Yet its series for Argentina raises more questions than it answers.