The impact of women's educational and economic resources on fertility: Spanish birth cohorts 1901-1950

In this chapter we portray the effects of female education and professional achievement on fertility decline in Spain over the period 1920-1980 (birth cohorts of 1901-1950).A longitudinal econometric approach is used to test the hypothesis that the effects of women’s education in the revaluing of their time had a very significant influence on fertility decline. Although in the historical context presented here improvements in schooling were on a modest scale, they were continuous (with the interruption of the Civil War) and had a significant impact in shaping a model of low fertility in Spain. We also stress the relevance of this result in a context such as the Spanish for which liberal values were absent, fertility control practices were forbidden, and labour force participation of women was politically and socially constrained.

Motivation, Test Scores, and Economic Success

This paper argues that low-stakes test scores, available in surveys, may be partially determined by test-taking motivation, which is associated with personality traits but not with cognitive ability. Therefore, such test score distributions may not be informative regarding cognitive ability distributions. Moreover, correlations, found in survey data, between high test scores and economic success may be partially caused by favorable personality traits. To demonstrate these points, I use the coding speed test that was administered without incentives to National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY) participants. I suggest that due to its simplicity its scores may especially depend on individuals' test-taking motivation. I show that controlling for conventional measures of cognitive skills, the coding speed scores are correlated with future earnings of male NLSY participants. Moreover, the coding speed scores of highly motivated, though less educated, population (potential enlists to the armed forces) are higher than NLSY participants' scores. I then use controlled experiments to show that when no performance-based incentives are provided, participants' characteristics, but not their cognitive skills, affect effort invested in the coding speed test. Thus, participants with the same ability (measured by their scores on an incentivized test) have significantly different scores on tests without performance- based incentives.

The Economic Effects of Christian Moralities

This article examines the different influences that Catholicism and Protestantism exert on economically relevant values. It argues that Catholic theology and practice facilitate personal transactions while Protestantism favors values and types of moral and legal enforcement better adapted for impersonal trade. Protestantism may thus be more conducive to economic growth through anonymous exchange while Catholicism may provide better support for personal contracting. Several components of this hypothesis are confirmed using statistical models with data from the 1998 ISSP international survey on religion. These show that Protestants are more trusting of anonymous counter parties, develop more reliable institutions for legal enforcement and are more willing to spend resources on monitoring and punishing other members of the community. Catholicism is more protective of the family and small-group relationships, and provides more tolerant and less motivating beliefs. Relatively smaller and less consistent differences appear in terms of worldly personal success and incentives.

Economic Booms, Trade Deficits, and Economic Policy

Many economic booms have been accompanied by real exchange rate appreciations, large trade defcits -which have sometimes persisted after the return to the initial exchange rate parity- and a deteriorating traded sector. Those circumstances have typically raised the question of the de-sirability of some stabilization policy. We show that the dynamics induced by an expected productivity shock in an economy where the capital stock is non-mobile across sectors, match those circumstances. Furthermore, we obtain that credit market imperfections tend to exacerbate trade deficits, and to cause an inefficient capacity reduction in the traded sector. Some stabilization policies are explored.

Trade, Extent of the Market, and Economic Growth 1960-1996

We find that trade and domestic market size are robust determinants of economic growth over the 1960-1996 period when trade openness is measured as the US dollar value of imports and exports relative to GDP in PPP US$ ('real openness'). When trade openness is measured as the US dollar value of imports and exports relative to GDP in exchange rate US$ ('nominal openness') however, trade and the size of domestic markets are often non-robust determinants of growth. We argue that real openness is the more appropriate measure of trade and that our empirical results should be seen as evidence in favor of the extent-of-the-market hypothesis.

Transitory Economic Shocks and Civil Conflict

I examine whether civil conflict is triggered by transitory negative economic shocks. My approach follows Miguel, Satyanath, and Sergenti (2004) in using rainfall as an exogenous source of economic shocks in Sub-Saharan African countries. The main difference is that my empirical specifications take into account that rainfall shocks are transitory. Failure to do so may, for example, lead to the conclusion that civil conflict is more likely to break out following negative rainfall shocks when conflict is most probable following years with exceptionally high rainfall levels.

The role of moral values in the economic analysis of crime: A general equilibrium approach

In this paper, we develop a general equilibrium model of crime and show thatlaw enforcement has different roles depending on the equilibrium characterization and the value of social norms. When an economy has a unique stable equilibrium where a fraction of the population is productive and the remaining predates, the government can choose an optimal law enforcement policy to maximize a welfare function evaluated at the steady state. If such steady state is not unique, law enforcement is still relevant but in a completely different way because the steady state that prevails depends on the initial proportions of productive and predator individuals in the economy. The relative importance of these proportions can be changed through law enforcement policy.

Entrepreneurship, organization and economic performance among Spanish firms, 1930-1975. The case of the motor industry

Before the Civil War (1936-1939), Spain had seen the emergence offirms of complex organizational forms. However, the conflict andthe postwar years changed this pattern. The argument put forwardin this paper is based on historical experience, the efforts willbe addressed to explain the development of Spanish entrepreneurshipduring the second half of the twentieth century. To illustrate thechange in entrepreneurship and organizational patterns among theSpanish firms during the Francoist regime we will turn to the caseof the motor vehicle industry.

Economic growth with bubbles

We develop a stylized model of economic growth with bubbles. In this model, changes in investorsentiment lead to the appearance and collapse of macroeconomic bubbles or pyramid schemes.We show how these bubbles mitigate the effects of financial frictions. During bubbly episodes,unproductive investors demand bubbles while productive investors supply them. These transfersof resources improve the efficiency at which the economy operates, expanding consumption, thecapital stock and output. When bubbly episodes end, these transfers stop and consumption, thecapital stock and output contract. We characterize the stochastic equilibria of the model and arguethat they provide a natural way of introducing bubble shocks into business cycle models.

A global view of economic growth

This paper integrates in a unified and tractable framework some of the key insights of the field of international trade and economic growth. It examines a sequence of theoretical models that share a common description of technology and preferences but differ on their assumptions about trade frictions. By comparing the predictions of these models against each other, it is possible to identify a variety of channels through which trade affects the evolution of world income and its geographical distribution. By comparing the predictions of these models against the data, it is also possible to construct coherent explanations of income differences and long-run trends in economic growth.

Property as an economic concept: Reconciling legal and economic conceptions of property rights in a Coasean framework

Adopting a simplistic view of Coase (1960), most economic analyses of property rightsdisregard both the key advantage that legal property rights (that is, in rem rights) provide torightholders in terms of enhanced enforcement, and the difficulties they pose to acquirers interms of information asymmetry about legal title. Consequently, these analyses tend to overstatethe role of "private ordering" and disregard the two key elements of property law: first, theessential conflict between property (that is, in rem) enforcement and transaction costs; and,second, the institutional solutions created to overcome it, mainly contractual registries capable ofmaking truly impersonal (that is, asset-based) trade viable when previous relevant transactionson the same assets are not verifiable by judges. This paper fills this gap by reinterpreting bothelements within the Coasean framework and thus redrawing the institutional foundations of bothproperty and corporate contracting.

The economic effects of a Spanish trade boycott against Catalan products

We study the potential consequences of a hypothetical trade boycott against Catalan products organized by some sectors of the Spanish society mainly for political reasons. A symmetric trade boycott would have two effects: a reduction of Catalan exports to Spain and a partial process of import substitution in Catalonia. In order to quantify the economic impact of the boycott, we compare the "actual" Catalan economy, as described in the input-output table for 2005, with a "simulated" Catalan economy that takes into account the effects of a boycott on the trade exchanges between Catalonia and Spain.

Estimating the effect of transitory economic shocks on civil conflict

This note tries to clarify some remaining issues in the debate on the effect of income shocks oncivil conflict. Section 1 discusses the discrepant findings on the effect of rainfall shocks oncivil conflict in Miguel and Satyanath (2010, 2011) and Ciccone (2011). Section 2 develops aninstrumental variables approach to estimate the effect of transitory (rainfall-driven) incomeshocks on civil conflict and contrasts the conclusions with those of Miguel, Satyanath, andSergenti (2004) and Miguel and Satyanath (2010, 2011). Throughout, the note uses the data ofMiguel, Satyanath, and Sergenti to focus on the methodological issues at the core of the debate(for results using the latest data see Ciccone, 2011).

Banks and development: Jewish communities in the Italian Renaissance and current economic performance

Are differences in local banking development long-lasting? Do they affect long-term economic performance?I answer these questions by relying on an historical development that occurred in Italian cities during the 15thcentury. A sudden change in the Catholic doctrine had driven the Jews toward money lending. Cities thatwere hosting Jewish communities developed complex banking institutions for two reasons: first, the Jews werethe only people in Italy who were allowed to lend for a profit and, second, the Franciscan reaction to Jewishusury led to the creation of charity lending institutions, the Monti di Pietà, that have survived until today andhave become the basis of the Italian banking system. Using Jewish demography in 1500 as an instrument, Iprovide evidence of (1) an extraordinary persistence in the level of banking development across Italian cities (2)large effects of current local banking development on per-capita income. Additional firm-level analyses suggestthat well-functioning local banks exert large effects on aggregate productivity by reallocating resources towardmore efficient firms. I exploit the expulsion of the Jews from the Spanish territories in Italy in 1541 to arguethat my results are not driven by omitted institutional, cultural and geographical characteristics. In particular,I show that, in Central Italy, the difference in current income between cities that hosted Jewish communitiesand cities that did not exists only in those regions that were not Spanish territories in the 16th century.

The impact of investment in education on economic development: Spain in comparative perspective (1860-2000)

Throughout the 19th century and until the mid-20th century, in terms of long-terminvestment in human capital and, above all, in education, Spain lagged far behind theinternational standards and, more specifically, the levels attained by its neighbours inEurope. In 1900, only 55% of the population could read; in 1950, the figure was 93%.This no doubt contributed to a pattern of slower economic growth in which thephysical strength required for agricultural work, measured here through height, had alarger impact than education on economic growth. It was not until the 1970s, with thearrival of democracy, that the Spanish education system was modernized and theinfluence of education on economic growth increased.