Category: History

When did the Industrial Revolution start?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Had I mentioned that the Journal of Political Economy is my favorite academic journal?  In the December 2005 issue, the still under-valued Gregory Clark writes:

I use building workers’ wages for 1209-2004 and the skill premium to consider the causes and consequences of the Industrial Revolution.  Real wages were trendless before 1800, as would be predicted for the Malthusian era.  Comparing wages with population, however, suggests that the break from the technological stagnation of the Malthusian era came around 1640, long before the classic Industrial Revolution, and even before the arrival of modern democracy in 1689 [TC: was that when it came?].  Building wages also conflict with human capital intepretations of the Industrial Revolution, as modeled by Gary Becker, Kevin Murphy…and Robert Lucas.  Human capital accumulation began when the rewards for skills were unchanged and when fertility was increasing.

Here is an earlier but longer version of the paper.  Here is an on-line version of his book on growth.  Here is a previous MR post on the long, slow nature of the Industrial Revolution.

Argentina fact of the day

by  Tyler Cowen in

Circa 1910, percentage of Buenos Aires school children with two parents born in Argentina: 21 percent

Circa 1910, percentage of Buenos Aires school children with two parents born in Italy: 41 percent

That is from Ivonne Bordelois´s El pais que nos habla, a study of the evolution of Spanish in this wonderful, wonderful country.  But I am on my way home now, so we will move on to blogging about other locales, including good ol’ Washington D.C….

Crossing the Sahara is costly

by  Tyler Cowen in

A Rough Calculation of Expences to convey Major Laing & Party to Tombuctoo & the termination of the Niger:

To His Highness before leaving Tripoli: $200
To have untouched on your arrival at Tombuctoo: $3000
A present to Hateeta to conduct you to Twat: $500
Do. to the Sheikh sent by the Bashaw: $500
Hateeta’s Friend at Twat to take you to Tombuctoo: $500
The Moor recommended by Messrs Denham & Clapperton: $150
Governor of Gadames Ghadames: $250
Small expences unforeseen say: $300
To Purchase Camels, Horses, Mules, to arm & clothe camel Drivers, say: $1000
Expences from Tripoli to Tombuctoo, say: $1000
on departure from Godames to the Bashaw: $2000
from Twat: $2000
from Tombuctoo: $4000

Total: $17,200

N.B. These sums are certainly large but are in my opinion necessary to ensure success to the Mission as well as your personal safety, and every One of the Africans will expect to make a sort of Harvest of your liberality, & by thus purchase their fidelity, it will leave a lasting Impression of a generous & disinterested conduct envinced by the English Nation.

That is from the fun but not at all new The Conquest of the Sahara, by Douglas Porch, and yes I have double checked the spelling. This anecdote is also a lesson in how the British bureaucracy worked.

Democide

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Rudy Rummel writes that due to new evidence he has significantly updated his figures for 20th century democide,  i.e. murder by government.

Many scholars and
commentators have referenced my total of 174,000,000 for the democide
(genocide and mass murder) of the last century. I’m now trying to get
word out that I’ve had to make a major revision in my total due to two
books. One is Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang, and the
other is Mao: the Unknown Story that she wrote with her husband, Jon
Halliday. I’m now convinced that that Stalin exceeded Hitler in
monstrous evil, and Mao beat out Stalin.

From the time I wrote my book on China’s Bloody Century, I have held to these democide totals for Mao:

Civil War-Sino-Japanese War 1923-1949 = 3,466,000 murdered
Rule over China (PRC) 1949-1987 = 35,236,000 murdered

However,
some other scholars and researchers had put the PRC total as from
60,000,000 to a high 70,000,000. Asked why my total is so low by
comparison, I’ve responded that I did not include the China’s Great
Famine 1958-1961. From my study of what was written on this in English,
I believed that:
(1) the famine was due to the Great Leap Forward when Mao tried to catch up with the West in producing iron and steel;
(2)
the factorization of agriculture, forcing virtually all peasants to
give up their land, livestock, tools, and homes to live in regimented
communes;
(3) the exuberant over reporting of agricultural
production by commune and district managers for fear of the
consequences of not meeting their quotas;
(4) the consequent belief
of high communist officials that excess food was being produced and
could be exported without starving the peasants;
(5) but, reports from traveling high officials indicated that peasants might be starving in certain localities;
(6) an investigative team was sent out from Beijing, and reported back that there was mass starvation;
(7) and then the CCP stopped exporting food and began to import what was needed to stop the famine.

Thus,
I believed that Mao’s policies were responsible for the famine, but he
was mislead about it, and finally when he found out, he stopped it and
changed his policies. Therefore, I argued, this was not a democide.
Others, however, have so counted it, but I thought this was a sloppy
application of the concepts of mass murder, genocide, or politicide
(virtually no one used the concept of democide). They were right and I
was wrong.

From the biography of Mao, which I trust (for those
who might question it, look at the hundreds of interviews Chang and
Halliday conducted with communist cadre and former high officials, and
the extensive bibliography) I can now say that yes, Mao’s policies
caused the famine. He knew about it from the beginning. He didn’t care!
Literally. And he tried to take more food from the people to pay for
his lust for international power, but was overruled by a meeting of
7,000 top Communist Party members.

So, the famine was
intentional. What was its human cost? I had estimated that 27,000,000
Chinese starved to death or died from associated diseases. Others
estimated the toll to be as high as 40,000,000. Chang and Halliday put
it at 38,000,000, and given their sources, I will accept that.

Now,
I have to change all the world democide totals that populate my
websites, blogs, and publications. The total for the communist democide
before and after Mao took over the mainland is thus 3,446,000 +
35,226,000 + 38,000,000 = 76,692,000, or to round off, 77,000,000
murdered. This is now in line with the 65 million toll estimated for
China in the Black Book of Communism, and Chang and Halliday’s estimate
of "well over 70 million."

This exceeds the 61,911,000 murdered by the Soviet Union 1917-1987, with Hitler far behind at 20,946,000 wiped out 1933-1945.

For
perspective on Mao’s most bloody rule, all wars 1900-1987 cost in
combat dead 34,021,000 — including WWI and II, Vietnam, Korea, and the
Mexican and Russian Revolutions. Mao alone murdered over twice as many
as were killed in combat in all these wars.

Now, my overall
totals for world democide 1900-1999 must also be changed. I have
estimated it to be 174,000,000 murdered, of which communist regimes
murdered about 148,000,000. Also, compare this to combat dead.
Communists overall have murdered four times those killed in combat,
while globally the democide toll was over six times that number.

The roots of European success

by  Tyler Cowen in

The rise of Western Europe after 1500 is due largely to growth in countries with access to the Atlantic Ocean and with substantial trade with the New World, Africa, and Asia via the Atlantic.  This trade and the associated colonialism affected Europe not only directly, but also indirectly by inducing institutional change.  Where "initial" political institutions (those established before 1500) placed significant checks on the monarchy, the growth of Atlantic trade strengthened merchant groups by constraining the power of the monarchy, and helped merchants obtain changes in institutions to protect property rights.  These changes were central to subsequent economic growth.

That is from "The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth," by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson, American Economic Review, June 2005; here is a longer and earlier version of the paper.

The Treaty of Tripoli

by  Alex Tabarrok in

In the late 1790s the US was having difficulty with Muslim pirates in the waters off Northern Africa.  After some difficulty, a treaty was signed in 1796 with the Bey of Tripoli promising friendship, trade and an end to hostilities.  The 11th article of the treaty provides a remarkable contrast between how these sorts of issues were handled by the founders and how they are handled today.  It reads:

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense
founded on the Christian Religion; as it has in itself no character of
enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen; and as
the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility
against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no
pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an
interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

The Treaty was read aloud in the Senate and approved unanimously.  In his proclamation John Adams said, "I John Adams, President of the United States of America, having seen
and considered the said Treaty do, by and with the advice consent of
the Senate, accept, ratify, and confirm the same, and every clause and
article thereof."  The treaty was published in a number of leading newspapers.  It never aroused any opposition.

Cosby was Correct

by  Alex Tabarrok in

In Debunking Cosby on Blacks Washington Post columnist Michelle Singletary attacks Bill Cosby for his speech last year to the NAACP. 

Poor blacks are bad parents because they waste what little money they have
buying high-priced, brand-name shoes, Cosby chided.

"All this child knows is gimme, gimme, gimme," Cosby said, according to
a transcript of the speech. "They are buying things for the kid. $500 sneakers.
For what?"

Cosby was lauded by white conservatives and some blacks for being brave
enough to speak out. But like the price of sneakers that Cosby got wrong, he was
incorrect about much of what he said.

…the comedian was rattling off
nonsense much like his Fat Albert character Mushmouth.

I was curious so I went to Table 2100 of the Consumer Expenditure Survey and found the following for 2003:

Average income of whites and other races: $53,292.
Average income of blacks: $34,485.

The survey then lists expenditures on a wide variety of goods from eggs and fish to books and televisions; to do a proper comparison we would have to correct for income and other demographic variables but some figures just jump out at you, including this:

Expenditures on footwear by whites and other races: $274
Expenditures on footwear by blacks: $440.

Chalk one up for the good Dr. Cosby. 

Bohemians of times past

by  Tyler Cowen in

By February, Michelle realized she was pregnant.  With Sartre, as with Boris, she became pregnant the very first time she slept with him.  Sartre could not believe it at first.  He had practiced his usual method of contraception, coitus interruptus, and thought it foolproof.  "Of course, it wasn’t safe at all," says Michelle Vian.  "Sartre would withdraw, and ten minutes later, he would make love again.  We [TC: who?] didn’t know it back then, but it takes only a drop of semen…"

Were any of these sex lives any good?  And does this help explain Sartre’s blindness toward Stalin?  Was he simply pigheaded when it came to his perceived self-interest?

The quotation is from Hazel Rowley’s excellent Tete-a-Tete: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Why is social science so late to the science party?

by  Robin Hanson in

Our ancestors thousands of years ago knew that if they really wanted to understand the heavens, they would have to sit down and carefully count some things.  By a few centuries ago, such painstaking efforts had yielded an impressive understanding of dozens of other subjects.  By the twentieth century, the virtues of counting to understand would seem to have long been established.

Ordinary people are far more interested in the social world around them than they are in most of the arcane topics to which counting was first applied.  And yet, social science didn’t really start to count in ernest until the twentieth century.  Why?  Here are some possible theories:

  1. We thought we already understood the social world as well as we needed.
  2. Social science is just very hard – simple counting yields far fewer
    useful insights than in other fields.  So social counting had to wait
    until we could do it on a massive scale.
  3. The subject was taboo because we thought that a better social science would mainly just let some people take more advantage of others – there were few net benefits.
  4. We held strong opinions on social topics, but at some level knew many of them to be false.  Social science was taboo for fear of confronting our self-deceptions about the social world.

I lean toward #4.  Comments are open.

The secret history of the minimum wage

by  Alex Tabarrok in

It’s no surprise that progressives at the turn of the twentieth century supported minimum wages and restrictions on working hours and conditions.  Isn’t this what it means to be a progressive?  Indeed, but what is more surprising is why the progressives advocated these laws.  A first clue is that many advocated labor legislation "for women and for women only."

Progressives, including Richard Ely, Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, the Webbs in England etc., were interested not in protecting women but in protecting men and the race.   Their goal was to get women back into the home, where they belonged, instead of abandoning their eugenic duties and competing with men for work.

Unlike today’s progressives, the originals understood that minimum wages for women would put women out of work – that was the point and the more unemployment of women the better! 

Much more on the secret history of the minimum wage in Tim Leonard‘s paper, Protecting Family and Race: The Progressive Case for Regulating Women’s Work.

The Undercover Economist, part II

by  Tyler Cowen in

I once made the mistake of entering into a sportsman’s bet with the economist John Kay.  He wondered what would have happened if you had bought shares in the Great Western Railway, the most famous of all the rail companies in Britain, the birthplace of train travel.  He speculated that even had you bought them on the first day they were available, and held them for the long term, your returns would have been quite modest, say, less than 10 percent a year.  I couldn’t conceive that one of the most successful companies of the railroad revolution could have possibly returned such a modest sum to shareholders.  Off I went to flick through dusty nineteenth-century editions of The Economist and find out the answer.  Of course, Kay was right.  Not long after the Great Western Railway shares were put on sale for 100 pounds a share in 1835, there was a tremendous burst of speculation in rail shares.  Great Western shares peaked at 224 pounds in 1845, ten years after the company was formed.  Then they crashed and never reached that level again in the century-long life of the company.  The long-term investor would have received dividend payments and would have made a respectable but unremarkable 5 percent annual return…

Here is my previous post on Tim Harford’s The Undercover Economist, the hot popular economics book of the moment.  Here is a history of the railway.