| 1. |
- Prado, Svante, 1974, et al.
(författare)
-
Electricity and the Technology–Skill Complementarity: Evidence from the Swedish Industrial Census of 1931
- 2017
-
Ingår i: Essays in Economic & Business History. - 0896-226X. ; 35:1, s. 97-122
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Notwithstanding the popularity among economists of attributing the surging inequality of recent decades to technology–skill complementarity, researchers with a keen eye on history have been reluctant to pick up this thread. This paper joins Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz’s attempt to examine the role of electrification as an example of a technology that is complementary to workers’ rising skill levels. Sweden electrified manufacturing processes rapidly in the first quarter of the twentieth century, while the supply of skills through secondary education only increased significantly in the 1950s. We use industry-specific information from the Swedish Industrial Census of 1931 to establish whether electricity and the use of white-collar workers correlated positively. The results indicate that the correlation was positive, but the estimated effect was rather small. Moreover, the available evidence for skill ratios does not suggest that inequality, thus measured, increased. We conclude that labor market institutions prevented—and also overturned—the inequality push emanating from technology.
|
|
| 2. |
|
|
| 3. |
- Rönnbäck, Klas, 1974, et al.
(författare)
-
African agricultural productivity and the transatlantic slave trade: evidence from Senegambia in the nineteenth century
- 2019
-
Ingår i: Economic history review. - : Wiley. - 0013-0117. ; 72:1, s. 209-232
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The role of agriculture has been central in Africa’s long-term economic development. Previous research has argued that low productivity of African economies has posed significant challenges in African efforts to produce an agricultural surplus or develop commercial agriculture. Low agricultural productivity has also served as a key explanation for the transatlantic slave trade, on the basis that it was more profitable to export humans overseas than to grow and export produce. The field has however suffered from a lack of comparable empirical evidence. This paper contributes to this field by presenting quantitative data on historical land- and labour productivity in Africa, from a case study of the agricultural productivity in Senegambia in the early nineteenth century. Focusing on five key crops, our results suggest that both land- and labour productivity was lower in Senegambia than it was in all other parts of the world for which we have found comparable data. We thus lend support to claims that stress ecological factors as one of the main determinants of Africa’s historical development.
|
|
| 4. |
|
|
| 5. |
- Theodoridis, Dimitrios, 1987
(författare)
-
Development constrained – Essays on land as a factor in nineteenth-century industrialization and trade
- 2018
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation consists of an introductory chapter, four research essays and one essay that describes the collected dataset. The first essay examines how the balance of land embodied in British trade developed during the nineteenth century and provides the first all encompassing accounts on this topic. It is shown that the contribution of vertical expansion has been far larger than that of horizontal expansion. The former thereby contributed significantly more than the latter to overcoming British land constraints and fostering economic development throughout the nineteenth century. The second essay examines the contribution of colonies and colonialism in abolishing Britain’s land constraints. It is found that land embodied in trade from British colonial and former colonial territories represented the lion’s share of total land embodied in imports from overseas territories. The commodities that contributed the most to this process of territorial expansion were the European settlements in British North America and Australia. The results also provide circumstantial evidence that the institution of colonialism could have contributed to consolidating nineteenth-century industrial specialization by providing advantages additional to the terms of trade associated with factor endowments. The third essay provides a sustainability assessment of Britain’s socio-economic system during the nineteenth century, using the ecological footprint methodology. It is found that the economic development of the new industrial socio-economic system was already unsustainable during the period under study, and the socio-economic system thereby represented a system in overshoot. British society was consuming resources to an extent that other European late-industrializers would only reach approximately 100 years later. Additionally, the empirical evidence illustrates that the relationship between globalization, industrialization and sustainable development may be more dynamic and multifaceted than some previous research has assumed. The fourth essay performs a comparative analysis of agricultural productivity in Senegambia in relation to that found in the plantation complex in the Americas. The aim of the essay is to examine the region’s capacity to produce an agricultural surplus, and what implications this might have had for the transatlantic slave trade. It is found that differences in land productivity between Africa and the Americas were very large, indicating a very low agricultural productivity in Senegambia. It is argued in the essay that this low agricultural productivity also could have served as a motivation for the transatlantic slave trade.
|
|
| 6. |
|
|
| 7. |
|
|
| 8. |
|
|
| 9. |
- Theodoridis, Dimitrios, 1987
(författare)
-
The ecological footprint of early-modern commodities: Coefficients of land use per unit of product
- 2017
-
Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Land availability and overseas trade have been central topics in economic history. The current paper contributes to this literature by setting the empirical foundations necessary for the calculation of the direct ecological footprints of more than eighty traded commodities throughout the 19th and early 20th century. The main focus is placed upon products which were heavily traded by and within the British Empire during this period. Various secondary sources have been reviewed and are critically discussed while the methodological steps that have been followed for the calculation of an acreage conversion factor for each product are analyzed in detail. The data presented here can be useful for researchers examining the importance of ghost acreages and ecological footprint historically but also the role of natural resources and land use in a long term perspective.
|
|
| 10. |
- Theodoridis, Dimitrios, 1987, et al.
(författare)
-
Trade and overcoming land constraints in British industrialization: an empirical assessment
- 2018
-
Ingår i: Journal of Global History. - 1740-0228. ; 13:3, s. 328-351
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Land was an unambiguous constraint for growth in the pre-industrial period. In Britain it was 15 overcome partly through the transition from traditional land-based goods to coal (vertical 16 expansion) and partly through accessing overseas land, primarily from colonies (horizontal 17 expansion). Kenneth Pomeranz suggested that horizontal expansion may have outweighed 18 vertical expansion in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Taking a more complete 19 approach to trade, we find that Britain was a net exporter of land embodied in traded 20 commodities, apart from in the early nineteenth century, when potash (rather than cotton or 21 timber) constituted the major land-demanding import from North America. The vertical expan- 22 sion was generally larger than the horizontal expansion. In other words, Britain was not simply 23 appropriating flows of land and resources from abroad but simultaneously providing its trading 24 partners with even more land-expanding resources.
|
|
