An Empirical History of the US Postal Savings System

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 667-696
Author(s):  
Steven Sprick Schuster ◽  
Matthew Jaremski ◽  
Elisabeth Ruth Perlman

AbstractSeeking to reach the unbanked, the US Postal Savings System provided a federally insured savings alternative to traditional banks. Using novel data sets on postal deposits, demographic characteristics, and banks, we study how and by whom the system was used. We find the program was initially used by nonfarming immigrant populations for short-term saving, then as a safe haven during the Great Depression, and finally as long-term investments for the wealthy during the 1940s. Postal Savings was only a partial substitute for traditional banks, as locations with banks often still heavily used Postal Savings.

Author(s):  
Marianna Astore

The surge in public debt during the recent pandemic crisis has made high debt a prominent policy issue. Italy is an interesting case study since it has experienced high levels of debt for a significant part of its history. This article revisits the history of Italian public debts in the inter-war period. Italy emerged from WWI with public debt that peaked around 160 percent of GDP. In the mid-1920s a significant reduction of public debt occurred, in concomitance with a regime of fiscal austerity and two restructuring agreements that wiped more than 80 percent of Italian foreign debts. By the early 1930s, the US reaction to the Great Depression that opposed any form of international cooperation, led to an Italian default on war debts in 1934 and a move toward autarky.


2014 ◽  
Vol 230 ◽  
pp. R16-R33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franklin Allen ◽  
James R. Barth ◽  
Glenn Yago

The recent crisis has underlined the importance of the interaction of financial innovations and the housing market. We consider five major innovations relevant to housing finance. These are (i) mortgages; (ii) specialised housing finance institutions; (iii) government interventions in housing finance in the US during the Great Depression; (iv) covered bonds; and (v) securitised mortgages. The history of these innovations and their positive and negative aspects are discussed. Future innovations to help the stability of the housing market are also suggested.


2021 ◽  
pp. 097226292198912
Author(s):  
Vikas Barbate ◽  
Rajesh N. Gade ◽  
Shirish S. Raibagkar

Pessimism looms large all over. COVID-19 has been projected as worse than the Great Depression of 1930. Everyday analyst and agency reports are diving into new bottoms of a fall-down in economic activities. Indian economy, however, has a slightly different story to tell at this hour of crisis. The silver lining for the Indian economy comes from a steep fall in the crude oil prices from around $70 per barrel to a record 18 years low of $22 per barrel. This windfall gain can, to some extent, offset the direct losses due to COVID-19. At the same time, dreams like a $5 trillion economy no longer look even a remote possibility. This article takes stock of the likely impact of COVID-19 on the Indian economy in the short term and the long term. A decision-tree approach has been adopted for doing the projections.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 164
Author(s):  
Chuyao Luo ◽  
Xutao Li ◽  
Yongliang Wen ◽  
Yunming Ye ◽  
Xiaofeng Zhang

The task of precipitation nowcasting is significant in the operational weather forecast. The radar echo map extrapolation plays a vital role in this task. Recently, deep learning techniques such as Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network (ConvRNN) models have been designed to solve the task. These models, albeit performing much better than conventional optical flow based approaches, suffer from a common problem of underestimating the high echo value parts. The drawback is fatal to precipitation nowcasting, as the parts often lead to heavy rains that may cause natural disasters. In this paper, we propose a novel interaction dual attention long short-term memory (IDA-LSTM) model to address the drawback. In the method, an interaction framework is developed for the ConvRNN unit to fully exploit the short-term context information by constructing a serial of coupled convolutions on the input and hidden states. Moreover, a dual attention mechanism on channels and positions is developed to recall the forgotten information in the long term. Comprehensive experiments have been conducted on CIKM AnalytiCup 2017 data sets, and the results show the effectiveness of the IDA-LSTM in addressing the underestimation drawback. The extrapolation performance of IDA-LSTM is superior to that of the state-of-the-art methods.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-41
Author(s):  
Quentin Lippmann

This paper studies the evolution of mate preferences throughout the twentieth century in France. I digitized all the matrimonial ads published in France’s best-selling monthly magazine from 1928 to 1994. Using dictionary-based methods, I show that mate preferences were mostly stable during the Great Depression, WWII, and the ensuing economic boom. These preferences started transforming in the late 1960s when economic criteria were progressively replaced by personality criteria. The timing coincides with profound family and demographic changes in French society. These findings suggest that, in the search for a long-term partner, non-material needs have replaced material ones.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bobby V. Reddy

Big Tech has flourished on the US public markets in recent years with numerous blue-chip IPOs, from Google and Facebook, to new kids on the block such as Snap, Zoom, and Airbnb. A key trend is the burgeoning use of dual-class stock. Dual-class stock enables founders to divest of equity and generate finance for growth through an IPO, without losing the control they desire to pursue their long-term, market-disrupting visions. Bobby Reddy scrutinises the global history of dual-class stock, evaluates the conceptual and empirical evidence on dual-class stock, and assesses the approach of the London Stock Exchange and ongoing UK regulatory reforms to dual-class stock. A policy roadmap is presented that optimally supports the adoption of dual-class stock while still protecting against its potential abuses, which will more effectively attract high-growth, innovative companies to the UK equity markets, boost the economy, and unleash the true potential of 'founders without limits'.


2002 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amado Peirό

AbstractThis paper studies the existence of a world business cycle by examining quarterly and annual comovements in production, prices and interest rates in the three main world economies: Germany, Japan and the US. In accordance with earlier studies, contemporaneous relationships clearly dominate short-term dynamics. The evidence indicates the existence of strong comovements in prices and long-term interest rates, and, to a lesser degree, in GDP and short-term interest rates. They are, however, rather unstable over time.


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