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Showing 1 – 50 of 258 results.
Self-published

The Aftermath of Sovereign Debt Crises: A Narrative Approach (ICPSR 300891)

Released/updated on: 2025-12-10
Time period: 1870-01-01--2010-01-01

This paper investigates the causal effects of sovereign debt crises in a sample of 50 defaulting economies between 1870 and 2010. As default is potentially endogenous, we use the narrative approach to identify plausibly exogenous episodes. We find economically and statistically significant costs of up to 3.2 percent of GDP before recovering to the pre-crisis level after five years. The average aftermath, however, conceals a large heterogeneity by default cause. Defaults originating from negative supply shocks, political crises, or adverse terms of trade are associated with higher costs. Demand shocks, in contrast, have a moderate effect that is quickly reversed.

Self-published

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

Released/updated on: 2021-04-01
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

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

Released/updated on: 2018-05-07
Geographic coverage: Russia
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

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
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
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
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
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

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
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

The Belle-Epoque of Portfolios (ICPSR 203481)

Released/updated on: 2024-05-21
Geographic coverage: Paris, Île-de-France, France
Time period: 1908-01-01--1912-01-01
This is the replication package for the paper "The Belle-Epoque of Portfolios? How Returns, Risk, and Diversification Correlated with the Wealth Distribution in Paris in 1912" which contains Python scripts and csv files to replicate tables and charts used in this paper.



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
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
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
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
Time period: 1270-01-01--1870-01-01
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

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
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

China, Europe & Great Divergence (ICPSR 105383)

Released/updated on: 2018-08-13
Geographic coverage: China
Time period: 0980-01-01--1850-01-01
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

China GDP: Some Corrections (ICPSR 141782)

Released/updated on: 2021-06-02
Geographic coverage: China
Time period: 0980-01-01--1840-01-01
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
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

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

Released/updated on: 2023-07-27
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
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
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
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
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
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
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

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
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

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
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

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

Released/updated on: 2018-03-30
Time period: 1920-01-01--1950-01-01
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

The Demographic Effects of Colonialism: Forced Labor and Mortality in Java, 1834-1879 (ICPSR 143581)

Released/updated on: 2021-06-23
Geographic coverage: Indonesia
Time period: 1834-01-01--1879-01-01
We investigate the demographic effects of forced labor under an extractive colonial regime: the Cultivation System in nineteenth-century Java. Our panel analyses show that labor demands are strongly associated with mortality rates, likely resulting from malnourishment and unhygienic conditions on plantations and the spread of infectious disease. An instrumental variable approach, using international market prices for coffee and sugar to predict labor demands, addresses potential endogeneity concerns. Our estimates suggest that without the abolition of the Cultivation System average overall mortality in Java would have been between (roughly) 10 and 30 percent higher by the late 1870s.
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
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)

Released/updated on: 2025-12-19
Geographic coverage: United Kingdom
Time period: 1930-01-01--1931-01-01

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
Time period: 1830-01-01--1865-01-01
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
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

The distribution of land in Luxembourg (1766–1872): Family-level wealth persistence in the midst of institutional change (ICPSR 195987)

Released/updated on: 2023-12-22
Geographic coverage: Luxembourg
Time period: 1766-01-01--1872-01-01
This is the replication package for "The distribution of land in Luxembourg (1766–1872): Family-level wealth persistence in the midst of institutional change". The paper analyses family-level wealth inequality and social mobility in Dudelange (Luxembourg) over five generations between 1766 and 1872, a period that saw the end of feudal social relations. While the integration of Luxembourg into the French revolutionary regime produced a reduction in the Gini coefficient for the ownership of land, the social mobility analysis reveals a relative stability of family positions within the land-wealth distribution throughout the period. This shows that family-level transmission mechanisms limit social mobility and strongly advantage those with ancestors owning property wealth, even when there are significant changes in the organization of property relations.
Self-published

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

Released/updated on: 2022-07-18
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.