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Showing 1 – 50 of 255 results.
Self-published

A Western Reversal Since the Neolithic? The Long-Run Impact of Early Agriculture (ICPSR 116643)

Released/updated on: 2019-12-11
Summary:
In this paper we document a reversal of fortune within the Western agricultural core, showing that regions which made early transition to Neolithic agriculture are now poorer than regions that made the transition later. The finding contrasts recent influential works emphasizing the beneficial role of early transition. Using data from a large number of carbon-dated Neolithic sites throughout the Western agricultural area, we determine approximate transition dates for about 60 countries, 280 medium-sized regions and 1,400 small regions. Our empirical analysis shows that there is a robust negative, reduced-form relationship between years since transition to agriculture and contemporary levels of income both across and within countries. Our results further indicate that the reversal had started to emerge already before the era of European colonization.
Self-published

A study of the influence of gastronomic tourism motivation on tourists' behavioural intentions (ICPSR 226083)

Released/updated on: 2025-04-09
Summary:
This paper explores the structural relationship between tourists’ motivation for gastronomic tourism and tourists’ behavioural intention in gastronomic tourism, and the mediating role of tourists' satisfaction in this relationship. A questionnaire survey was conducted on Chengdu tourists through random sampling, and a total of 510 valid questionnaires were collected.The data were analysed empirically by constructing a structural equation model using AMOS and SPSS software,the results showed that:push motivation has a significant positive effect on tourist satisfaction, in which the gastronomic experience motivation has the greatest influence, followed by the spiritual experience motivation and cultural experience motivation; pull motivation has a significant positive effect on tourist satisfaction, and the degree of completeness of the service packages has the most significant effect on satisfaction, followed by the gastronomic products; the gastronomic experience motivation, the spiritual experience motivation, the gastronomic products motivation and the service packages motivation do not show a significant positive direct influence on the behavioural intention, but can indirectly influence tourists’ behavioural intention by influencing tourists’ satisfaction; tourists’ satisfaction also enhances tourists’ intention to recommend and revisit.
Self-published

ANCIENT ROMAN THINKERS ABOUT POLITICS, POWER, THE STATE (ICPSR 102761)

Released/updated on: 2018-05-07
Geographic coverage: Russia
Summary:
The article focuses on the main distinctive features of ancient Roman political thought. The General Characteristics of the Political Life of Ancient Rome are cited. Views of Ancient Roman Thinkers on Political Foundations and Relations in a Human Society are considered. 
The history of ancient Roman political thought covers the whole millennium and in its evolution reflects significant changes in socio-economic and political-legal life. The history of Ancient Rome is divided into three periods: the royal period (754-510 BC), the republican (509-28 BC), the imperial (27 BC - 476 AD). In the conditions of a slave society, where slaves were not independent subjects of political life and remained only objects of another's property, the struggle for political power unfolded in the middle of the privileged minority. 
Ancient Roman political thought concerned power, the state and politics as a whole. Their contribution to the development of political thought was decisive for the evolution of political thought in a later period, namely in the Middle Ages. Recognition of the lead-ing role of ancient political thought in the formation of the basic historical foundations of ancient statehood is a priority for our study. Ancient Roman authors played, indeed, a significant and out-standing role in the formation and development of modern political thought.
Self-published

Against the Grain: Spanish Trade Policy in the Interwar Years (ICPSR 136461)

Released/updated on: 2021-04-01
Summary:
This is the replication file for the paper: Against the Grain: Spanish Trade Policy in the Interwar Years. We evaluate Spanish trade policy in the face of domestic challenges and external shocks in the interwar period. Our narrative draws on a new granular dataset on exports, imports, and country-level information on tariffs, trade agreements, and quotas. Into the Depression, the mainstay of policy was the tariff. The establishment of the Second Republic in 1931 was a turning point in policymaking. The Republic initiated reciprocal bilateral exchanges. But Spain was hardpressed to find countries willing to exchange market access. In a daunting international environment, the Spanish case offers a cautionary tale of the perils of going against the grain.
Self-published

Arrested Development? Puerto Rico in an American Century (ICPSR 110324)

Released/updated on: 2019-06-24
Geographic coverage: Puerto Rico, United States
Time period: 1900-01-01--2018-01-01
Summary:
This is the replication package for Arrested Development? Puerto Rico in an American Century.  Using a new GDP index for 1900 to 1940, I show that income per capita grew at impressive rates during direct American rule and Puerto Rico escaped the worst ravages of the Great Depression. I also find the recent growth slowdown is partly a statistical artifact.
Self-published

Austerity and the rise of the nazi party (ICPSR 125101)

Released/updated on: 2020-10-25
Summary:
The datasets and replication kit in this project are associated with the research paper, 'Austerity and the rise of the Nazi party'. In this paper we study the link between fiscal austerity and Nazi electoral success. Voting data from a thousand districts and a hundred cities for four elections between 1930 and 1933 show that areas more affected by austerity (spending cuts and tax increases) had relatively higher vote shares for the Nazi Party. We also find that the localities with relatively high austerity experienced relatively high suffering (measured by mortality rates) and these areas’ electorates were more likely to vote for the Nazi Party. Our findings are robust to a range of specifications including an instrumental variable strategy and a border-pair policy discontinuity design. 
Self-published

Bank Lending and Deposit Crunches during the Great Depression (ICPSR 224122)

Released/updated on: 2025-03-24
Geographic coverage: United States
Time period: 1929-01-01--1933-01-01
Summary:
Replication Files for Bank Lending and Deposit Crunches during the Great Depression

Bank distress was a defining feature of the Great Depression in the United States.
Most banks, however, weathered the storm and remained in operation throughout the contraction. We show that surviving banks cut lending when depositors withdrew
funds en masse during panics. This panic-induced decline in lending explains about
one-third of the reduction in aggregate commercial bank lending between 1929 and
1932, more than twice as much as attributed to the failure of banks.
Self-published

Bank of Amsterdam 1736-1791 (ICPSR 110103)

Released/updated on: 2019-06-20
Time period: 1736-01-01--1791-12-01
Summary:
This is the replication package for "A Policy Framework for the Bank of Amsterdam, 1736-1791."
Self-published

Bank of England operations in the British government securities market, 1928 - 1972 (ICPSR 118563)

Released/updated on: 2021-11-24
Geographic coverage: United Kingdom
Time period: 1928-01-01--1972-01-01
Summary:

This data set provides information about the operations of the Bank of England in the market for government securities between 1928 and 1972. It supports the narrative in my book 'The Bank of England and the government debt: operations in the gilt-edged market, 1928 - 1972' (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
The Bank of England's portfolio of government securities increased massively in 1928, when the Issue Department of the Bank absorbed the currency notes that has been issued by the Treasury since 1914, and the accompanying assets. The Issue Department became an increasingly influential participant in the market, underwriting new issues by the government. In the 1950s and 1960s it acted as market-maker of last resort, and this activity led to conflicts with its monetary policy objectives. It also provided covert financial support to the Stock Exchange jobber, who were the principal market-makers.
The conflict between market making and monetary policy was largely resolved in 1971, when the Bank of England curtailed its market-making activities.

Self-published

Basco Tang: JEH Samurai Bond data files (ICPSR 115411)

Released/updated on: 2020-02-17
Summary:
This is the replication package for the paper "The samurai bond: credit supply, market access, and structural transformation in pre-war Japan" published in the Journal of Economic History. It contains the dataset (Stata format), do-file (Stata format), and documentation (PDF).
Self-published

Biological Innovation without Intellectual Property Rights: Cottonseed Markets in the Antebellum American South (ICPSR 127061)

Released/updated on: 2020-11-19
Summary:
This file contains two documents.  1. A stata dataset of newspaper advertisements for cotton seed varieties in the antebellum United States, 2. A set of Stata commands used to generate the tables in the JEH paper "Biological Innovation without Intellectual Property Rights: Cottonseed Markets in the Antebellum American South"
Self-published

CATCHING-UP AND FALLING BEHIND: RUSSIAN ECONOMIC GROWTH, 1690s TO 1880s (ICPSR 206662)

Released/updated on: 2024-06-25
Geographic coverage: Russia
Time period: 1690-01-01--1890-01-01
Summary:
We provide decadal estimates of GDP per capita for the Russian Empire from the 1690s to the 1880s, making it possible for the first time to compare the economic performance of one of the world’s largest economies with other countries. Significant Russian economic growth before the 1760s resulted in catching-up on northwest Europe, but this was followed by a period of negative growth between the 1760s and 1800s and stagnation from the 1800s to the 1880s, leaving late-nineteenth century Russia further behind the West than at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Self-published

Calomiris_Jaremski - Replication File For "Why Join the Fed" (ICPSR 151661)

Released/updated on: 2021-10-05
Geographic coverage: United States
Time period: 1910-01-01--1920-01-01
Summary:
This file contains the data and programs required to reproduce the tables of "Why Join the Fed" by Charles Calomiris and Matthew Jaremski.

Self-published

Can Pensions Save Lives? Evidence from the Introduction of Old-Age Assistance in the UK (ICPSR 238061)

Released/updated on: 2025-09-19
Geographic coverage: United Kingdom
Time period: 1891-01-01--1913-01-01
Summary:
We study the impact of old-age assistance on mortality using the 1909 introduction of public pensions in the UK as a quasi-natural experiment. Estimating difference-in-differences and an event-time design, we show that elderly mortality in England and Wales declined with the pension introduction. The estimated decline is economically relevant, stronger in counties with more pensioners and driven by fewer deaths from both infectious and non-infectious diseases. Analyzing full-count individual-level census data points to a reduction in residential crowding and retirement, especially from occupations associated with high mortality rates, as likely channels.
Self-published

Can Stimulating Demand Drive Costs Down? World War II as a Natural Experiment (ICPSR 170901)

Released/updated on: 2022-05-21
Geographic coverage: United States
Time period: 1939-01-01--1945-12-31
Summary:
This is the replication package for Can Stimulating Demand Drive Costs Down? World War II as a Natural Experiment. U.S. military production during World War II increased at an impressive rate and led to large declines in unit costs. However, the literature has focused on elucidating detailed mechanisms behind this relationship, using small datasets on specific products. Here we take a step back and, looking at an unprecedently large collection of data, we show that both exogenous technological progress and endogenous effects from increasing production experience were important, in roughly similar proportions. The demand for military products was largely exogenous, and the correlation between production, cumulative production, and time was weak, limiting issues of reverse causality and multicollinearity.
Self-published

Careworn: The Economic History of Caring Labor (ICPSR 199041)

Released/updated on: 2024-03-16
Geographic coverage: Britain, Virginia, United States
Time period: 1270-01-01--1870-01-01
Summary:
Economists ignore caring labor since most is provided unpaid.  Disregard is unjust, theoretically indefensible, and probably misleading.   Valuation requires estimates of time spent and the replacement or opportunity costs of that time.  I use the maintenance costs of British workers, costs which cover both the material inputs into upkeep and the domestic services needed to turn commodities into livings, to isolate the costs of paid domestic labor. I then impute the value of unpaid domestic labor from these market equivalents, and aggregate across households without domestic servants. Historically, unpaid domestic labor represented c. 20 per cent of total income, a contribution that suggests the need to revise some standard narratives.
Self-published

China GDP: Some Corrections (ICPSR 141782)

Released/updated on: 2021-06-02
Geographic coverage: China
Time period: 0980-01-01--1840-01-01
Summary:
Historical GDP estimates for China by Broadberry, Guan, and Li are problematic because of an implausible series for government expenditure. Revised estimates reduce GDP per capita, mainly during the Ming, by up to a third. Two peaks in income now stand out: the Song efflorescence and the years around 1700. If the latter peak is real, comparisons of the Yangzi delta with leading European countries show a Great Crossing in the middle ages, a Great Convergence in the seventeenth century, and a Great Divergence in the eighteenth. Otherwise, the Great Divergence may date from the sixteenth century.
Self-published

China Great Divergence Restatement (ICPSR 132382)

Released/updated on: 2021-05-12
Summary:
This is a replication kit for Broadberry, Guan and Li (2021). 
Abstract: Peter Solar highlights some shortcomings of our treatment of government spending. However, correcting for these shortcomings using data rather than assumptions confirms our principal findings. GDP per capita in the leading region of China remained around the same level as in the leading region of Europe until the 18th century before declining substantially during the Qing dynasty. The Great Divergence thus began around 1700, earlier than originally suggested by the California School, but later than implied by earlier writers. The new data do not support Solar’s novel chronology with its Great Crossing, Great Convergence and Greater Divergence.
Self-published

China, Europe & Great Divergence (ICPSR 105383)

Released/updated on: 2018-08-13
Geographic coverage: China
Time period: 0980-01-01--1850-01-01
Summary:
This is the replication package for  "China, Europe and the Great Divergence: A Study in Historical national Accounting". As a result of recent advances in historical national accounting, estimates of GDP per capita are now available for a number of European economies back to the medieval period, including Britain, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain. The approach has also been extended to Asian economies, including India and Japan. So far, however, China, which has been at the center of the Great Divergence debate, has been absent from this approach. This paper adds China to the picture and shows that the Great Divergence began earlier than originally suggested by the California School, but later than implied by older Eurocentric writers.
Self-published

Classicism and Modern Growth: The Shadow of the Sages (ICPSR 192983)

Released/updated on: 2023-07-27
Summary:
This is the replication package for the empirical results in the paper entitled "Classicism and Modern Growth: The Shadow of the Sages" published in the Journal of Economic History.
Self-published

Closing Time: The Local Equilibrium Effects of Prohibition (ICPSR 137222)

Released/updated on: 2021-04-09
Geographic coverage: United States
Time period: 1900-01-01--1920-01-01
Summary:
This folder includes all the replication code to generate figures and tables for the paper "Closing Time: The Local Equilibrium Effects of Prohibition." Please refer to the README.txt file for further information.


Self-published

Collective Action and the Origins of the American Labor Movement (ICPSR 102902)

Released/updated on: 2019-04-05
Geographic coverage: United States
Time period: 1880-01-01--1902-01-01
Summary:
This is the replication package for "Collective Action and the Origins of the American Labor Movement" by Ethan Schmick, The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 78, No. 3.
Self-published

Collins Holtkamp and Wanamaker Black Americans’ Landholdings and Economic Mobility after Emancipation (ICPSR 187441)

Released/updated on: 2023-08-04
Summary:
Abstract: Large and persistent racial disparities in land-based wealth were an important legacy of the Reconstruction era.  To assess how these disparities were transmitted intergenerationally, we build a dataset to observe Black households’ landholdings in 1880 alongside a sample of White households. We then link sons from all households to the 1900 census records to observe their economic and human capital outcomes. We show that Black landowners (relative to laborers) transmitted substantial intergenerational advantages to their sons, including an 11 pp advantage in literacy. But such advantages were small relative to the racial gaps in metrics of economic status.




Self-published

Common tongue: The impact of language on educational outcomes (ICPSR 100356)

Released/updated on: 2017-01-13
Geographic coverage: India
Time period: 1951-01-01--1991-01-01
Summary:
This paper investigates the impact of official language policies on education using state formation in India. Colonial provinces consisted of some districts where the official language matched the district's language and some where it did not. Linguistically mismatched districts have 18.0% lower literacy rates and 20.1% lower college graduation rates, driven by difficulty in acquiring education due to a different medium of instruction in schools. Educational achievement caught up in mismatched districts after the 1956 reorganization of Indian states on linguistic lines, suggesting that political reorganization can mitigate the impact of mismatched language policies.


Self-published

Data and Code For "State Formation and Bureaucratization: Evidence from Pre-Imperial China" (ICPSR 202661)

Released/updated on: 2024-05-12
Summary:
This is the replication package for State Formation and Bureaucratization: Evidence from Pre-Imperial China, to be published in the Journal of Economic History. This paper studies the relationship between military conflicts and state-building in pre-imperial China. I develop an incomplete contract model to examine rulers’ and local administrators’ incentives in conflict. Defensive wars drive decentralization: landowning local administrators have more to gain from a successful defense and are therefore more committed to it. Offensive wars drive centralization: the landowning ruler has personnel control over the non-land-owning local administrator and can therefore force the latter to participate in less lucrative attacks. Model predictions are consistent with empirical tests and historical cases, and offer broader implications for the political divergence between China and Europe.
Self-published

Data and code for "The Electric Telegraph, News Coverage and Political Participation" (ICPSR 214861)

Released/updated on: 2025-01-05
Geographic coverage: United States
Time period: 1840-01-01--1852-01-01
Summary:
This paper uses newly digitized data on the growth of the telegraph network in America during 1840–1852 to study the impacts of the electric telegraph on national elections. Exploiting the expansion of the telegraph network in a difference-in-difference approach, I find that access to telegraphed news from Washington significantly increased voter turnout in national elections. Newspapers facilitated the dissemination of national news to local areas. Text analysis on historical newspapers shows that the improved access to news from Washington led local newspapers to cover more national political news, including coverage of Congress, the presidency, and sectional divisions involving slavery.



Self-published

Data for: The Efficiency of Occupational Licensing during the Gilded and Progressive Eras: Evidence from Judicial Review (ICPSR 193966)

Released/updated on: 2023-09-21
Geographic coverage: United States
Time period: 1885-01-01--1912-01-01
Summary:
This is the replication package for the paper with the above title.  These data were used for the empirical analysis of this paper.  The project includes three files of data and a data appendix that describes the collection of the data and the variable calculations.  
Self-published

Database of firms in Istanbul, 1926-50 (ICPSR 107183)

Released/updated on: 2018-11-05
Geographic coverage: Istanbul, Istanbul, Türkiye
Time period: 1926-01-01--1950-01-01
Summary:
This is a replication package for "The Wealth Tax of 1942 and the Disappearance of Non-Muslim Enterprises in Turkey," published in the Journal of Economic History. Turkey imposed a controversial tax on wealth to finance the army in 1942. This tax was arbitrarily assessed and fell disproportionately on non-Muslim minorities. We study the heterogeneous impact of this tax on firms by assembling a new dataset of all enterprises in Istanbul between 1926 and 1950. We find that the tax led to the liquidation of non-Muslim-owned firms, which were older and more productive, reduced the formation of new businesses with non-Muslim owners, and replaced them with frailer Muslim-owned startups. The tax helped "nationalize" the Turkish economy but had negative implications for productivity and growth.
Self-published

Demand for Women Workers in World War II (ICPSR 102281)

Released/updated on: 2018-03-30
Time period: 1920-01-01--1950-01-01
Summary:
These are data sets used in Dina Shatnawi and Price Fishback.  "The Impact of World War II on the Demand for Female Workers in Manufacturing."  Journal of Economic History (June 2018).  It includes data on Pennsylvania labor markets in the 1920s and 1940s and programs and data used to show the relationships at that time.
Self-published

Demographic Shocks and Women’s Labor Market Participation: Evidence from the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in India (ICPSR 173561)

Released/updated on: 2022-06-26
Geographic coverage: India
Time period: 1901-01-01--1931-01-01
Summary:
How did the 1918 influenza pandemic affect female labor force participation in India over the short run and the medium run? We use an event-study approach at the district level and four waves of decadal census data in order to answer this question. We find that districts most adversely affected by influenza mortality saw a temporary increase in female labor force participation in 1921, an increase that was concentrated in the service sector. We find suggestive evidence that distress labor supply by widows and rising wages help account for this result.
Self-published

Devaluation, Exports, and Recovery from the Great Depression (ICPSR 301321)

Geographic coverage: United Kingdom
Time period: 1930-01-01--1931-01-01
Summary:

Data and code for "Devaluation, Exports, and Recovery from the Great Depression," JEH 2026.


This paper evaluates how a major policy shift—the suspension of the gold standard in September 1931—affected employment outcomes in interwar Britain. We use a new high-frequency industry-level dataset and difference-in-differences techniques to isolate the impact of devaluation on exporters. At the micro level, the break from gold reduced the unemployment rate by 2.7 percentage points for export-intensive industries relative to non-export industries. At the aggregate level, this effect stimulated the labor market, the fiscal outlook, and economic growth. Devaluation was therefore an important initial spark of recovery from the depths of the Great Depression.

Self-published

Diagnosing Sample-Selection Bias in Historical Heights (ICPSR 112001)

Released/updated on: 2019-09-22
Geographic coverage: United States, England, United Kingdom
Time period: 1830-01-01--1865-01-01
Summary:
This is the replication package for Diagnosing Sample-Selection Bias in Historical Heights: A Reply to Komlos and A'Hearn. One file replicates Figure 1 from the Union Army Sample. Several files provide the data and the simulation code to replicate Figure 2.
Self-published

Discrimination against Foreigners (ICPSR 118081)

Released/updated on: 2020-03-06
Summary:
Some economists doubt whether it makes sense to push developing countries to introduce strict national patent laws because the enforcement of foreigners’ intellectual property rights prevents companies from catching up by learning through imitation. As the historical case of the German state Wuerttemberg demonstrates, however, a government’s lip service to the principle of equal treatment does not guarantee that its administration adheres to this formal rule. We show that the patent office of Wuerttemberg strategically discriminated against foreign inventors for fiscal and protectionist reasons. Comparatively high patent fees led foreign inventors to waive their patent protection prematurely. The study is based on individual patents granted in Wuerttemberg (Germany) in the period between 1820 and 1868.
Self-published

Drafting the Great Army: The political economy of conscription in Napoleonic France (ICPSR 175583)

Released/updated on: 2022-07-18
Summary:
Napoléon Bonaparte revolutionized the practice of war with his reliance on a mass national army and large-scale conscription. This system faced one major obstacle: draft evasion. This article discusses Napoléon’s response to widespread draft evasion. First, we show that draft dodging rates across France varied with geographic characteristics. Second, we provide evidence that the regime adopted a strategy of discriminatory conscription enforcement by setting a lower (higher) conscription rate for those regions where the enforcement of conscription was more (less) costly. Finally, we show that this strategy resulted in a rapid fall in draft dodging rates across France.
Self-published

Droughts, Conflict, and the Importance of Democratic Legitimacy: Evidence from Pre-Industrial Europe (ICPSR 206441)

Released/updated on: 2024-06-22
Time period: 0900-01-01--1799-12-31
Summary:
This research shows that droughts are robustly associated with city-level unrest in Europe over the years 900 to 1800 CE. This relationship is non-linear, with disproportionately greater increases in the probability of a conflict among droughts in the upper tail of the severity distribution. Elected city governments are relatively immune from drought-induced conflict, while those based on representation by burghers or guilds are not. These results suggest that local governments are key for maintaining social stability during economic shocks, and are most successful when they have a greater degree of democratic legitimacy.
Self-published

Dust Bowl Migrants: Environmental Refugees and Economic Adaptation (ICPSR 192264)

Released/updated on: 2023-06-19
Geographic coverage: United States
Time period: 1935-01-01--1940-01-01
Summary:
This is the replication package for:

Dust Bowl Migrants: Environmental Refugees and Economic Adaptation

Abstract:

The 1930s American Dust Bowl created archetypal “Dust Bowl migrants,” refugees from environmental collapse. I examine this archetype, comparing migration from more-eroded and less-eroded counties to distinguish Dust Bowl migrants from other migrants. Dust Bowl migrants were “negatively selected,” in years of education, compared to other migrants who were “positively selected.” Dust Bowl migrants had lower incomes than natives in their destinations, which is reflected in popular impressions. I estimate strikingly modest impacts of the Dust Bowl on average wage incomes in 1939, however, which contrasts with the Dust Bowl’s large and enduring impacts on agricultural land.
Self-published

Economic Shrinking (ICPSR 219484)

Released/updated on: 2025-02-14
Time period: 1348-01-01--2015-01-01
Summary:
  This paper examines the role of economic shrinking in the process of long term economic growth over the last millennia, the last two centuries, and the last 70 years. The paper's main conclusion is that economic shrinking, both the rate at which economies shrink when they shrink and the frequency that they shrink (i.e., real per capita GDP declines) is a more important determinant of economic growth over the long term than the rate of growth when economies grow.  In fact, economies in the developed world actually grow more slowly when they grow than poorer economies.
Several possible reasons for the decline in shrinking and the associated increase in economic stability are considered and found wanting as explanations: structural change, demography, technological change, and stabilization policy.  The paper concludes that the ultimate source of the reduction in shrinking is institutions.
Self-published

Economic Uncertainty and Divisive Politics: Evidence from the dos Españas (ICPSR 186621)

Released/updated on: 2023-03-16
Geographic coverage: Spain
Time period: 1905-01-01--1945-01-01
Summary:
This is the replication package for "Economic Uncertainty and Divisive Politics: Evidence from the dos Españas" (Sandra García-Uribe, Hannes Mueller, and Carlos Sanz), Journal of Economic History, 2023.

This article exploits two newspaper archives to track economic policy uncertainty in Spain in 1905-1945. We find that the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936 was anticipated by a striking upward level shift of uncertainty in both newspapers. We study the reasons for this shift through a natural language processing method which allows us to leverage expert opinion to track specific issues in our newspaper archives. We find a strong empirical link between increasing uncertainty and the rise of divisive political issues like socio-economic conflict. This holds even when exploiting content differences between the two newspapers in our corpus.

Please, use the Readme.txt file with the full description of the replication package.