What Is to Be Explained, and How

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian W. McLean
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Average Level ◽  
Economic Prosperity ◽  
European Settlement ◽  
Alternative Measures ◽  
Australian History

This chapter sets out the evidence of Australia's economic prosperity, covering the entire era of European settlement, and includes comparisons with the performance of other selected countries. Particular attention is paid to alternative measures of prosperity, their relationships to one another, and their limitations. As a first step toward the explanation of this evidence, the chapter reviews existing suggestions as to what are likely the most important determinants of Australia's levels of productivity and living standards. It also analyzes several literatures of relevance, especially those on Australian history, comparative economic history, and growth economics—both theoretical and empirical. The chapter argues that the determinants of this prosperity are pertinent to any accounting for the variation across time in Australia's average level of income.

scholarly journals The Distribution of Consumption Expenditure in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Inequality Among All Africans

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
La-Bhus Fah Jirasavetakul ◽  
Christoph Lakner
Keyword(s):  
Wide Distribution ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Household Surveys ◽  
Consumption Expenditure ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Full Sample ◽  
Alternative Measures ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Measures Of Inequality

Abstract This paper uses a set of national household surveys to study the regional Sub-Saharan Africa distribution of consumption expenditure among individuals during 1993–2008. The analysis puts the disparities in living standards that exist among all persons in Africa into context with the disparities that exist within and between African countries. We find some evidence that African interpersonal inequality has increased, but this depends on the measure of inequality. The Africa-wide Gini increased from 53% in 1993 to 56% in 2008 in the full sample, compared with an increase from 54% to 56% in the balanced sample of countries. In the full sample, this result is robust to alternative measures of inequality, while in the balanced sample, some bottom-sensitive measures show a decline. Disparities in living standards between countries have increased, while there has been no systematic increase in within-country inequality. For the Africa-wide distribution, the growth of consumption expenditure (from household surveys) has been low (between 0.9% and 1.6% per year depending on the sample). This growth has been uneven such that the richest 5% of Africans received around 40% of the total gains.

Innovation and Patents in American Economic History

2018 ◽  
pp. 2-22
Author(s):  
Petra Moser
Keyword(s):  
Technical Change ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Innovative Activity ◽  
World's Fair ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Crystal Palace ◽  
Patent Laws ◽  
Alternative Measures

This chapter summarizes historical evidence on the link between patent laws and innovation. Earlier historical analyses have emphasized the importance of patent laws in encouraging innovation. Data on exhibits at international technology fairs, such as the 1851 Crystal Palace world’s fair, however, indicate that only a small share of innovations are patented and that non-patent mechanisms may play an important role in encouraging innovation. They also show that inventors’ dependency on patents varies strongly across industries, so that radical changes in patent laws may influence the direction, if not the level, of technical change. Exhibition data also indicate that patents may play an important role in facilitating the diffusion of innovative activity by encouraging inventors to advertise their ideas. These results highlight the need for additional analyses of innovation that systematically analyze patents and alternative measures of innovation.

scholarly journals A Review of Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World

2008 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 946-973 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C Allen
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Preventive Check ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

A Farewell to Alms advances striking claims about the economic history of the world. These include (1) the preindustrial world was in a Malthusian preventive check equilibrium, (2) living standards were unchanging and above subsistence for the last 100,000 years, (3) bad institutions were not the cause of economic backwardness, (4) successful economic growth was due to the spread of “middle class” values from the elite to the rest of society for “biological” reasons, (5) workers were the big gainers in the British Industrial Revolution, and (6) the absence of middle class values, for biological reasons, explains why most of the world is poor. The empirical support for these claims is examined, and all are questionable.

Kazakhstan

2019 ◽  
pp. 69-94
Author(s):  
Richard Pomfret
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
National Economy ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Oil Prices ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Economic Adjustment ◽  
National Economic ◽  
The World ◽  
Transition Strategies

This chapter discusses the national economy and transition strategies of Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan's national economic history divides sharply between 1991 and 1998, and the years since 1999. The first period, dominated by nation-building, saw traumatic economic adjustment to the shocks of the early 1990s and a large unanticipated decline in living standards. As the country started to recover from the economic nadir in 1997 it was hit by the 1998 Russian crisis, and only in 1999 did sustained economic growth begin. However, when growth did begin—stimulated by policy decisions such as a large currency devaluation and sustained by rising oil prices—Kazakhstan enjoyed a decade during which it was one of the fastest growing economies in the world. The chapter also considers the banking crisis in 2007–2008, whose impact was exacerbated by the collapse in the price of oil in the second half of 2008.

Life Under Pressure: France and England, 1670–1870

1984 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
David R. Weir
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Early Onset ◽  
Marital Fertility ◽  
Population History ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Economic Shocks ◽  
European Economic ◽  
Family Limitation ◽  
History Of

Comparative methods are used to examine two hypotheses derived from Wrigley and Schofield's Population History of England. Contrary to their expectations, economic shocks produced greater marriage responses in France than in England, and the early onset of family limitation in France did not increase the responsiveness of marital fertility to living standards in the aggregate. Mortality was strongly dependent on economic shocks only in France prior to 1740. The results question the usefulness of Maithusian models for early modern European economic history.

Hsc Australian History: An Aboriginal Perspective

1983 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 56-61
Author(s):  
N. Blair
Keyword(s):  
Aboriginal Education ◽  
History Teachers ◽  
European Settlement ◽  
Core Subject ◽  
Aboriginal Society ◽  
Resource Material ◽  
Australian History ◽  
Aboriginal History ◽  
Work Done ◽  
Group 1

Since 1980 the Victorian Institute of Secondary Education has implemented a new style of program for the Higher School Certificate course. Australian history is a Group 1 subject within this restructured program.Australian history, according to most literature, is only two hundred years old. In teaching Australian history some teachers have ‘done’ the Aborigines by studying a traditional precontact history. Teachers may have even allocated a whole week to such a program, relying mainly on resource material available on northern or desert peoples. There has been virtually no work done on Victorian Aborigines and very little done on both contemporary and contact history in relation to the traditional history. There is now an option open to teachers to teach Aboriginal history as the HSC core subject, “Aborigional society before European settlement” and “European settlement and the effects on Aboriginal society”, or as the option subject, “Aborigines in the twentieth century”. This has placed an increased demand on the services offered by Aboriginal Education Services. A number of teachers are electing to teach either all three units or a combination of the units. The problem then arises that teachers themselves often have information which is limited, inaccurate and irrelevant.The archetypal image of an Aborigine standing on one leg on the edge of a precipice, peering out across the horizon, holding a spear and wearing a red ‘nappy’, is often the only picture that the schooling system has presented of an Aboriginal. It is no wonder then that electing to teach even one of the units offered suggests a dramatic redirection of thought. Not only does traditional resource material require revision, but an Aboriginal perspective is essential. This perspective will then validate Australian history.

scholarly journals The Yorkshire miners 1786-1839: a study of work, culture and protest

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Joseph William Stanley
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Work Culture ◽  
Cost Of Living ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Friendly Societies ◽  
Wage Increases ◽  
The Cost

This thesis examines the work, culture and protest of the Yorkshire miners between 1786-1839. The original contribution of this work is to emphasise the intimate connection between protest, mainly trade union co-ordinated strikes, and living standards. In doing so, this work brings together areas of investigation into protest history, social history, and economic history, which have in recent years become divorced from one another. For many years historians have accepted that protest was an indicator of discontent, proof of exploitation, and evidence of oppression. This thesis offers an alternative argument. It shows that protest was used strategically, and with a growing level of sophistication, to win real wage increases in a high-wage industry that prospered across the period. This thesis also adds to existing debates around working class radicalism and conservatism. It argues that the Yorkshire miners were conservative loyalists across the entire 1786-1839 period. Chapters 2 and 3 examine the work and culture of the Yorkshire miners. The former emphasises the experience of labour for miners, taking stock of why the industry paid such high wages, which the colliers' trade unions capitalised on. The latter makes sense of their culture, emphasising how the nature of their work and their high wages engendered a competing alehouse and chapel culture. The alehouse and the chapel played an important role in creating and maintaining trade unions. Chapters 4-8 examine instances of protest chronologically. Chapter 4 considers the years 1786-1801, which witnessed a rise in the cost of living and the growth of miners' trade unionism. Chapter 5 explores how and why the Yorkshire miners combined under the Combination Laws. It highlights the role of friendly societies in maintaining living standards when trade declined. Chapter 6 assesses the first regional colliers' strike in 1819 to raise wages when living standards had fallen to their lowest level in the decade. Chapter 7 illuminates 1820-32, years of prosperity, when the cost of living fell and strikes for higher wages became more frequent. Chapter 8 investigates trade unionism in the pre-Chartist years, when wages were unprecedentedly high. It focusses on the violent strike at Wakefield and disputes at Earl Fitzwilliam's collieries.

scholarly journals Unemployment – the Macroeconomic Imbalance

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 52-56
Author(s):  
Mihaela Nicoară
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Political System ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Social Phenomenon ◽  
Financial Difficulties ◽  
Ideal Solutions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Integrated Programs ◽  
Economic Reality ◽  
The Government

Abstract Through the socio-economic generated implications, unemployment is a very complex social phenomenon. The economic reality showed there is no single solution for unemployment. There are no pure and perfect solutions, only integrated programs in the anti-crisis political system. The phenomenon itself cannot be eliminated, it can only be addressed. Through the socio-economic generated implications, the unemployment is a very complex social phenomenon, being related with poverty. Unemployment induces a drastic decrease of the living standards. As a macroeconomic complex imbalance, it impacts all the compartments of the national economy. The economic history of our century reveals that unemployment has become a mass nature. The financial difficulties of the companies, inlet by covid-19 global crises, caused a mass disorder of all the economic activity, impacting the labour market and a concern of the government to find ideal solutions to increase employment.

Psychological origins of the Industrial Revolution

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Baumard
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Local Environment ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Psychological Traits ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Since the Industrial Revolution, human societies have experienced high and sustained rates of economic growth. Recent explanations of this sudden and massive change in economic history have held that modern growth results from an acceleration of innovation. But it is unclear why the rate of innovation drastically accelerated in England in the eighteenth century. An important factor might be the alteration of individual preferences with regard to innovation resulting from the unprecedented living standards of the English during that period, for two reasons. First, recent developments in economic history challenge the standard Malthusian view according to which living standards were stagnant until the Industrial Revolution. Pre-industrial England enjoyed a level of affluence that was unprecedented in history. Second, behavioral sciences have demonstrated that the human brain is designed to respond adaptively to variations in resources in the local environment. In particular, Life History Theory, a branch of evolutionary biology, suggests that a more favorable environment (high resources, low mortality) should trigger the expression of future-oriented preferences. In this paper, I argue that some of these psychological traits – a lower level of time discounting, a higher level of optimism, decreased materialistic orientation, and a higher level of trust in others – are likely to increase the rate of innovation. I review the evidence regarding the impact of affluence on preferences in contemporary as well as past populations, and conclude that the impact of affluence on neurocognitive systems may partly explain the modern acceleration of technological innovations and the associated economic growth.

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