Nostalgia, a longing for the past, has been used successfully by marketers via nostalgia marketing or retro-marketing, including retro-branding, of goods and/or services. The nostalgia market has stereotypically been of interest to older consumers so it is surprising that a significant number of...

Bartels, Jäger and Obergruber (2024) examine how division rules for the inheritance of agricultural land affected distributional outcomes in 19th century and contemporary Germany. The authors use a regression discontinuity design to show that equal-division counties-those in which inheritance...

This paper investigates how kinship and professional networks shaped labour market outcomes in early modern Genoa. Using a newly constructed dataset of over 8,000 apprenticeship contracts (1450-1530), I examine the extent to which kinship ties with masters or guild members influenced both entry...

Can a brief period of economic prosperity leave a legacy of long-term adversity for local populations? This study investigates the enduring impact of the Amazon rubber boom around 1900 on contemporary income, inequality, Indigenous groups presence, and forest conservation. Identification...

The persistence literature connects recent outcomes to events long ago. Although this literature is promising, it raises serious questions about how to distinguish deep causal factors that persist across time from alternative explanations derived from the rapidly changing historical context or...

India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), enacted in 2005, is an experiment of major significance. Drawing on official statistics, this paper presents a broad-brush retrospective on MGNREGA's first 20 years, focusing inter alia on employment generation, the...

Auch 35 Jahre nach der deutschen Einheit wird in Politik und Öffentlichkeit weiterhin intensiv darüber diskutiert, welche Unterschiede zwischen Ost und West bestehen und wie weit das Land tatsächlich zusammengewachsen ist. Besonders deutlich treten diese Differenzen im politischen...

We re-assess the consequences of a NIT for two-parent families, utilizing hitherto untapped data. The Gary and Seattle experiments fail balancing tests. In New Jersey, Denver and Manitoba we estimate far greater labor supply responses than the current consensus, with remarkable consistency in...

How do new leaders rebuild the state after a civil war in which the central government disintegrates, and the army is defeated? The end of the Porfirian regime and dissolution of the army in 1914 during the Mexican revolution gave way to armed conflict between three factions: Constitucionalista,...

Der Band behandelt das wissenschaftliche Werk sowie die Lebens- und Arbeitsbedingungen von neun Ökonominnen in einem Zeitraum zwischen der Mitte des 19. und dem Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts. Darunter finden sich international bekannte Namen (wie Joan Robinson oder Claudia Goldin, die...

State-led repression of minority identities is a well-documented phenomenon, yet its implications for national identity remain understudied. We examine how the Soviet state-induced famine (1932–33) shapes contemporary Ukrainian national identity through vertical (familial) and horizontal...

When agrarian societies urbanize their governments face a policy dilemma: farmers seek fair prices, while urban workers and employers desire cheap food. Drawing on a new dataset of historical food prices in 146 markets, we explore the political economy of maize markets in East Africa...

This study examines the long-term impact of Hyanggyo, state-sponsored educational institutions established during the early Joseon Dynasty in Korea (1392-1592), on human capital accumulation. Although these schools largely ceased functioning as educational centers by the late 16th century, their...

We examine Qin Dynasty (221 to 207 BCE) wood bookkeeping slips from 217 to 210 BCE unearthed in Hunan province, China. While purely written slips were unearthed before, these slips are unique in that they contain written records of details of transactions as well as notches on their sides that...

As seldom before, the current war in Ukraine has seen the use of World War II analogies by belligerents and also some Western non-belligerents. They thereby follow in the footsteps of such political leaders as Anthony Eden, Margaret Thatcher, Joseph Stalin, or John F. Kennedy. Indeed, statesmen...

Are railways always a harbinger of prosperity? We examine the economic effects of railways in Bosnia-Herzegovina under Habsburg colonial rule. Our novel dataset consistently tracks the non-agrarian population share of over 4,500 settlements in Habsburg Bosnia in 1885, 1895, and 1910, based on...

We introduce a new dataset on British exports at the bilateral, commodity-level from 1700 to 1899. We then pit two primary determinants of bilateral trade against one another: the trade-diminishing effects of distance versus the trade-enhancing effects of the British Empire. We find that the...

While several studies have shed light on the emergence of consumer society in Western Europe and the Atlantic world, our knowledge on the spread of new consumption patterns in regions beyond the core areas of European economic development is still limited. To gain insights into patterns of...

The transition from sail to steam for emigrant ships on the route to Australia took place in the early 1880s, nearly two decades later than on the route across the Atlantic. The lag can be accounted for by the incremental improvement in steam technology and by aspects of economic and business...