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The income of those who attacked the U.S. Congress on January 6, 2021 and were subsequently arrested is estimated using the income in the neighborhood of their residence as a proxy measure. Contrary to common wisdom, we find that the income of the arrestees deviated markedly from that of the population at large. Two groups were conspicuously underrepresented from this subset of the insurrectionists: the poor (whose estimated annual per capita income was below $20K), and those who earned more than $50K per annum. Fully 83% of the arrestees resided in areas with an average annual per capita income between $20K and $50K. This finding dovetails with the argument that the right-wing populist movement is driven largely by the struggling lower-middle class who have been left behind by the transition from an industrial to a knowledge economy.

The textbook theory of public finance delineates three primary functions of government: 1) to provide for public goods, 2) to provide for an equitable distribution of income, and 3) to stabilize the economy. However, it has become evident with the rise of right-wing populism especially, but not exclusively, in the U.S., that this conceptualization contains a crucial oversight of historic proportions because the gap between the haves and have-nots in a society is not merely a question of equity but also a question of the maintenance of political stability. The January 6, 2021 insurrection against the U.S. Congress by an angry mob made it evident that the distribution of income has bounds beyond which social forces exert such pressure on the political system that the whole edifice of liberal democracy is seriously threatened. Hence, democratic governments must consider income distribution also from the vantage point of sustaining itself.

Maximizing output without taking into consideration the negative externalities generated, including the harm to the mental and physical health of the population creates psychological stress. Focusing on the bellwether indicators of economic performance including working more, generating income, accepting more risks, while disregarding its effect on work-life balance, on income distribution, and the quality of life in general creates stressors that harm the human biological system. Stress is the biological reaction to external stimuli that threatens the self-preservation instinct of a human organism. The stress was generated by debilitating poverty, financial insecurity, by the highest level of inequality among rich countries that led to the hollowing out of the middle class, by the lack of social safety nets that might have mitigated the turbulence of adjusting to a knowledge economy, by the downward social mobility of millions disadvantaged by globalization, and by the inadequate retraining opportunities that prevented those displaced by the penetration of imports to find employment in the expanding IT sector. These stressors have been accumulating in the U.S. population for decades, as indicated by the deterioration of mental health, by the propensity to relieve the pain through the use of illicit drugs, by deaths of despair, by the incarceration rate, by mass murders, by the fall in life expectancy, by the attenuation in life satisfaction, and by the rise of populism, creating many mental, biological, social, economic, and political quandaries.

The official U.S. unemployment rate is an inadequate measure of actual labor market conditions. This poses a major challenge for researchers and confuses both the public and policy makers. A new definition of unemployment is proposed. It considers those part-time workers who would like to work full time as 62.7% employed and 37.3% unemployed, inasmuch as this is the proportion of time they worked relative to full-time workers prior to the pandemic. In addition, in contrast to the BLS, we consider those workers who are wanting to work but have not searched for work within the prior month as being unemployed. We find that the actual unemployment rate in May 2020 was 24.4% or 183% of the headline rate of 13.3%.

U3, the official unemployment rate, is an inadequate gauge of labor-market slack and the extent to which it misinforms varies substantially over the business cycle. The U6 unemployment rate is usually about 4 percentage points above U3. However, during the Great Recession it exceeded U3 by 7 percentage points for three years. Moreover, the U6-U3 gap is magnified among disadvantaged groups such as minorities, youth, and for the less educated. For instance, in January 2011 the U6-U3 gap among African American youth was 17.9 pps as U6 climbed to 47.5% and was similarly large among African Americans without a high-school diploma.

The official unemployment rate has become an inadequate measure of labor market conditions. This poses a major challenge for basic research as well as for the formulation of adequate economic policy. We propose a new definition of the unemployment rate by weighing part-time workers with 62.5%, the proportion of the time they work relative to full-time workers. We provide new monthly estimates of the unemployment rate for the period 1994-2019 and find that their average during this 25-year period was 10.1% or 4.4 percentage points above the average of the official rate of 5.7%. The gap between the two rates fluctuated between 3.6 and 5.6 percentage points and rose in wake of the recession of 2008 reaching a peak in 2014 only to decrease slowly thereafter back to its pre-recession level of 4 percentage points. The Phillips curve is investigated with the new unemployment rate as well as with U3 and U6 in seven specifications for the period 2008-2019 confirming the very shallow slope found in other studies. However, in one of the specifications the slope is much steeper, mysteriously reminiscent of the coefficients estimated for the 1970s providing a conundrum for further study.

Multicollinearity, especially in combination with errors-in-variables, can increase the likelihood of a Type-I error by inflating the value of the estimated coefficients by more than it magnifies their standard errors, thereby increasing the likelihood of obtaining statistically significant results. This anomalous result may be due to an interaction effect between errors-in-variables and multicollinearity.

The socio-economic impact of Reaganomics and its long-run deleterious legacy is documented. The preponderance of data indicate that economic growth was not particularly impressive in the wake of the tax cuts of 1981 or 1986. GDP did snap back to potential but failed to accelerate beyond the rates achieved in prior or subsequent decades. The supposed incentives of supply-side economics failed to materialize. People did not work more, they did not save or invest more than they did before, and the benefits trickled down like molasses and got stuck at the very top of the income distribution. Instead, Reagan’s presidency was a watershed in U.S. economic development in the sense that it reversed many of the accomplishments of the New Deal and inaugurated an era in which low-skilled men’s wages began a long period of decline, and labor’s share of GDP continued to fall. Reagan’s true legacy is a dual economy that accompanied the hollowing out of the middle class, a more business-friendly regulatory and oversight framework for Wall Street that ultimately led to the financial crisis, a stupendous increase in the national debt from 30% to 50% of GDP that put it on a path such that by 2012 it exceeded 100%, anti-statism that contributed to the rise of Trumpism, a remarkable rise in inequality that gave rise to an oligarchy, and the benign neglect of blue-collar workers who eventually became Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables.” Reagan put the economy on a trajectory to ultimately, even if not inevitably, led to the triumph of Trumpism and an economy of malaise.

Donald Trump won the election in 2016 largely because enough voters in three states, all in the Rustbelt, who had voted for Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012, switched their vote from Democratic to Republican. Economic dislocations played a crucial role in these swing states or democratic strongholds to persuade many voters to take the dramatic step to vote for an anti-establishment candidate even if that meant a leap of faith into the unknown. The sources of the dislocation were the development of a dual economy characterized at one end by low and stagnating wages, increasing debt, downward social mobility, declining relative incomes, and the hopelessness accompanying them while at the other end of the income distribution the economy was simply booming. This was longer than a three-decade process that started with Reaganomics and its tax cuts that privileged the rich and conferred immense wealth, and its concomitant, political power, on them. Reaganomics also accelerated the decline in the power of unions which had supported the middle class. The process continued under Bill Clinton’s administration and its continuing both financial deregulation and of hyper-globalization. George Bush continued to pamper the superrich with his tax policies. The process culminated with Barack Obama’s bailing out the superrich and his benign neglect of Mainstreet. Five administration’s disinterest in the social group Hillary Clinton referred to flippantly as “the deplorables” culminated in the revolt of the masses in favor of an incompetent strongman by overthrowing the establishment captured by such chants at Trump rallies as “Lock her up!”, “USA!”, “Build the wall”, or “Drain the swamp” (i.e., in Washington D.C.).

Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom is an influential book more than seventy years after its publication. This paper examines his arguments and finds that they come up short in many ways and suggests that we have taken “another road to serfdom”. Hayek’s mind was completely closed to the possibility that there were multiple threats to individual freedom and not only state power. He failed to see that any concentration of power is dangerous. This was one of his major mistakes. In contrast to Hayek, a public intellectual who warned us of the concentration of power from institutions other than the state was Aldous Huxley who was keenly aware that the danger is not the state per se but rather the concentration of power which might well take on other guises as well. In a 1958 interview he precociously identified Madison Avenue as a potential danger to our autonomy, individuality, and freedom. There are other concentrations of power as well which are just as threatening such as wealthy mega-corporations and billionaire individuals who through their influence on government, on elections, and on the political process are able to change the rules of the market in their favor.

This paper is based on the ideas of political philosopher John Rawls who suggested that a just society is one which would be created behind a “veil of ignorance”, that is to say, without knowing where one would end up in the society’s distribution of talent and other attributes valued in the labor market. Today’s labor market does not meet this criterion inasmuch as risk averse people would not be willing to enter it at random, being too concerned about ending up among the excluded, i.e., those without full time jobs which today in the U.S. is still 10% of the labor force or some 15 million people (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014). This is substantial but it does not even include about 5 million additional people who have dropped out of the labor force altogether or the 2.3 million convicts in jail. Thus, a just labor market would strive for full employment beyond the implications of NAIRU. The latter concept is actually misleading, because most economists and commentators in the media equate it with “full employment”. As a consequence, endemic and large scale un- and underemployment is accepted as an inevitable attribute of the labor market. This is insidious inasmuch as the concept assumes that the institutional structure of the labor market is held constant. According to Rawlsian principles the aim should be to bring unemployment down to the minimum feasible rate which in the U.S. is most likely around 1.2%,--the rate which prevailed in 1944 and which probably represents an attainable lower bound. Instead of the prevailing system, the right to work needs to be recognized as a natural right, because the right to life depends upon it. Several ways are proposed to create an inclusive labor market that distributes the available work in a more equitable fashion than the current system and envisions a just economy on Rawlsian principles that risk-averse people would be willing to enter at random.

We estimate growth rates of real incomes in the U.S. by quintiles using the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) post-tax, post-transfer data as basis for the period 1979-2011. We improve upon them by including only the present value of earnings that will accrue in retirement and excluding items included in the CBO income estimates such as “corporate taxes borne by labor” that do not increase either current purchasing power or utility. We estimate a high and a low growth rate using two price indexes, the CPI and the Personal Consumption Expenditure index. The major consistent findings include what in the colloquial is referred to as the “hollowing out” of the middle class. According to these estimates, the income of the middle class 2nd and 3rd quintiles increased at a rate of between 0.1% and 0.7% per annum, i.e., barely distinguishable from zero. Even that meager rate was achieved only through substantial transfer payments. In contrast, the income of the top 1% grew at an astronomical rate of between 3.4% and 3.9% per annum during the 32-year period, reaching an average annual value of $918,000, up from $281,000 in 1979 (in 2011 dollars). Hence, the post-tax, post-transfer income of the 1% relative to the 1st quintile increased from a factor of 21 in 1979 to a factor of 51 in 2011. However, income of no other group increased substantially relative to that of the lowest quintile. Oddly, the income of even those in the 96-99 percentiles increased only from a multiple of 8.1 to a multiple of 11.3. We next estimate growth in welfare assuming diminishing marginal utility of income. A logarithmic utility function yields a growth in welfare for the middle class of roughly 0.01% to 0.07% per annum, which is indistinguishable from zero. With interdependent utility functions only the welfare of the 5th quintile experienced meaningful growth while those of the first four quintiles tend to be either negligible or even negative.

This paper investigates the biological standard of living toward the end of Spanish rule. We investigate levels, trends, and determinants of physical stature from the birth cohorts of the 1860s to the 1890s using data on 23,000 Filipino soldiers enlisted by the U.S. military between 1901 and 1913. We use truncated regression technique for estimating average height and use province level information for investigating the determinants of biological wellbeing. The results indicate a decline of more than 1.5 cm (0.6 inches) in the height of soldiers born between the early 1870s and the late 1880s. The decline in heights at the end of the 19th century occurred at a time when there was an expansion of commercial activity in cash crop production for export. Heights did not regain the level of the 1870s until the late 1930s and early 1940s. We also find that at 159.3 cm (62.7 inches), the average height of soldiers born in the mid-1870s was very short even for the time. The low biological standard of living observed in late 19th century Philippines was not due to the tropical disease environment alone since greater average heights were recorded for the same period in other parts of Asia with a similar climate.

The decline in the physical stature of the American population for more than a generation beginning with the birth cohorts of the early 1830s was brought about by a diminution in nutritional intake in spite of robust growth in average incomes. This occurred at the onset of modern economic growth on account of rising inequality and an increase in food prices, which brought about dietary changes through the substitution away from edibles toward non-edibles. In a recent working paper, Bodenhorn, Guinnane, and Mroz question this consensus view, suggesting that a decline in heights in a military sample may not be representative of the population at large. They argue that increasing wages in the civilian labor market may well induce an increased proportion of shorter men to volunteer for military service thereby driving down the mean height of soldiers even if the height of the population remains unchanged. However, they neglected to examine whether labor market conditions did actually improve during the Civil War in such a way as to induce shorter men to enlist. Had they done so they would have found just the opposite: during the course of the war real compensation in the military increased by some 39% to 66% relative to civilian earnings. This should have led to an increase in military heights if the logic of their model were accurate, when in fact they declined. A thorough analysis of the Union Army height data, considering recruiting periods as short as 90 days during which labor market conditions could not have changed markedly indicates that there can be no doubt at all that the decline in the height of soldiers beginning with the birth cohorts of the early 1830s is representative of the trend in the physical stature of the male population at large. The implication is that there was a widespread diminution in nutritional status of the population in the antebellum period.

Schumpeter's concept of creative destruction as the engine of capitalist development is well-known. However, that the destructive part of creative destruction is a social cost and therefore biases our estimate of the impact of the innovation on NNP and on welfare is hardly acknowledged, with the exception of Witt (1996). We conjecture that recently the new technologies are often creating products which are close substitutes for the ones they replace whose value depreciates substantially in the process of destruction. Consequently, the contribution of recent innovations to NNP and to welfare is likely biased upward. This note calls for a research agenda to estimate and decompose innovations into their creative and destructive components.

According to the endowment effect there is some discomfort associated with giving up a good, that is to say, we are willing to give up something only if the price is greater than the price we are willing to pay for it. This implies that the indifference curves should designate a reference point at the current level of consumption. Such indifference maps are kinked at the current level of consumption. The kinks in the curves imply that the utility function is not differentiable everywhere and the budget constraint does not always have a unique tangent with an indifference curve. Thus, price changes may not bring about changes in consumption which may be the reason for the frequent stickiness of prices, wages and interest rates. We also discuss a multiple period example in which the indifference map shifts as the reference point shifts implying that the curves cross over time even though tastes do not change.

The “natural” in the natural rate of unemployment is a misnomer, insofar as unemployment does not occur in nature. The concept is especially misleading because many economists and media commentators inappropriately equate it with “full” employment. As a consequence, endemic un- and underemployment is accepted as an inevitable attribute of the labor market. This is inaccurate inasmuch as the concept assumes that the institutional structure of the labor market is held constant. However, with creative restructuring of that market our aim should be bring the underemployment rate down to 1.2%, the rate that obtained in 1944 and which probably represents the lower bound rate physically attainable. Instead of the prevailing system, the right to work needs to be recognized as a natural right, because the right to life depends upon it. Several ways are proposed to create an inclusive labor market that distributes the available work in a more equitable fashion than the current system.

The trend of the height of Indian scouts in the U.S. Army born between ca. 1825 and 1875 is analyzed. Their average height of ca. 170 cm (67 in.) confirms that natives were tall compared to Europeans but were nearly the shortest among the rural populations in the New World. The trend in their height describes a slightly inverted U shape with an increase between those born 1820-34 and 1835-39 of ca. 1.8 cm (0.7 in.) (p=0.000) and a subsequent slight decline after the Civil War. This implies that they were able to maintain and perhaps even improve their nutritional status through the Civil War, though harder times followed for those born thereafter. We also recalculate the heights of Native Americans in the Boas sample and find that the Plains Indians were shorter than most rural Americans. The trend in the height of Indians in the Boas sample is similar to that of the Scouts.

In 1979, when anthropometric history was still in its infancy, Robert Fogel and collaborators reported that the height of the US male white population began to decline quite unexpectedly around the birth cohorts of 1830. This was quite a conundrum on account of the fact that according to conventional economic theory nutritional status was not expected to diminish at the outset of modern economic growth, i.e., at a time when incomes were growing robustly. Although many hypotheses were offered, not until 1987 was the comprehensive solution to the puzzle offered that the height decline was due primarily to a decline in food consumption: agricultural productivity did not keep pace with rapid population growth and urbanization. However, it took a third of a century for a Kuhnian paradigm shift to occur until most of the participants in the debate accepted the model elucidated by Komlos in 1987.

In 1979, when anthropometric history was still in its infancy, Robert Fogel and collaborators reported that the height of the US male white population began to decline quite unexpectedly around the birth cohorts of 1830. This was quite a conundrum on account of the fact that according to conventional economic theory nutritional status was not expected to diminish at the outset of modern economic growth, i.e., at a time when incomes were growing robustly. Although many hypotheses were offered, not until 1987 was the comprehensive solution to the puzzle offered that the height decline was due primarily to a decline in food consumption: agricultural productivity did not keep pace with rapid population growth and urbanization. However, it took a third of a century for a Kuhnian paradigm shift to occur until most of the participants in the debate accepted the model elucidated by Komlos in 1987.

Trends in BMI values are estimated by centiles of the US adult population by birth cohorts 1886-1986 stratified by ethnicity. The highest centile increased by some 18 to 22 units in the course of the century while the lowest ones increased by merely 1 to 3 units. Hence, the BMI distribution became increasingly right skewed as the distance between the centiles became increasingly larger. The rate of change of BMI centile curves varied considerably over time. The BMI of white men and women experienced upsurges after the two World Wars and downswings during the Great Depression and again after 1970. However, among blacks the pattern is different during the first half of the century with men's rate of increase in BMI values decreasing substantially and that of females remaining unchanged at a relatively high level until the Second World War. However, after the war the rate of change of BMI values of blacks resembled that of the whites with an accelerating phase followed by a slow down around the 1970s. In sum, the creeping nature of the obesity epidemic is evident, as the technological and lifestyle changes of the 20th century affected various segments of the population quite differently.

Background: The trend in the BMI values of the US population has not been estimated accurately because time series data are unavailable and because the focus has been on calculating period effects. Object: To estimate the trend and rate of change of BMI values by birth cohorts stratified by gender and ethnicity born 1882-1986. Methods: We use loess additive regression models to estimate age and trend effects of BMI values of US-born black and white adults measured between 1959 and 2006. We use all the NHES and NHANES survey data. Results: The increase in BMI was already underway among the birth cohorts of the early 20th century. The rate of increase was fastest among black females; for the three other groups under consideration, the rates of increase were similar. The generally persistent upward trend was punctuated by upsurges, particularly after each of the two World Wars. That the estimated rate of change of BMI values increased by 71% among black females between the birth cohorts 1955 and those of 1965 is indicative of the rapid increases in their weight. Conclusion: We inference that transition to post-industrial weights was a gradual process and began considerably earlier than hitherto supposed.

In his recent presidential address to the American Economic History Association, Paul Hohenberg argued that anthropometric history does not meet his criteria for useful research in the field of economic history. He considers research useful if (a) it "helps shape one of our underlying disciplines"; b) it contributes "to clear—even fresh—thinking about current, policy-related issues or on-going scholarly debates about the historical past"; and c) it "penetrates the fuzzy realm of identity-shaping popular discourse". I argue briefly that only a superficial reading of the literature would lead to the conclusion that anthropometric history has not been useful.

In his recent presidential address to the American Economic History Association, Paul Hohenberg argued that anthropometric history does not meet his criteria for useful research in the field of economic history. He considers research useful if (a) it "helps shape one of our underlying disciplines"; b) it contributes "to clear—even fresh—thinking about current, policy-related issues or on-going scholarly debates about the historical past"; and c) it "penetrates the fuzzy realm of identity-shaping popular discourse". I argue briefly that only a superficial reading of the literature would lead to the conclusion that anthropometric history has not been useful.

When rounded data are used in place of the true values to compute the variance of a variable or a regression line, the results will be distorted. Under suitable smoothness conditions on the distribution of the variable(s) involved, this bias, however, can be corrected with very high precision by using the well-known Sheppard’s correction. In this paper, Sheppard’s correction is generalized to cover more general forms of rounding procedures than just simple rounding, viz., probabilistic rounding, which includes asymmetric rounding andmixture rounding.

Background: The trend in the BMI values of US children has not been estimated very convincingly because of the absence of longitudinal data. Our object is to estimate time seriesof BMI values by birth cohorts instead of measurement years. Methods: We use five regression models to estimate the BMI trends of non-Hispanic US-born black and white children and adolescents ages 2-19 between 1941 and 2004. Results: The increase in BMIZ values during the period considered was 1.3σ (95% CI: 1.16σ; 1.44σ) among black girls, 0.8σ for black boys, 0.7σ for white boys, and 0.6σ for white girls. This translates into an increase in BMI values of some 5.6, 3.3, 2.4, and 1.5 units respectively. While the increase in BMI values started among the birth cohorts of the 1940s among black girls, the rate of increase tended to accelerate among all four ethnic/gender groups born in the mid-1950s - early-1960s. Conclusion: Some regional evidence leads to the conjecture that the spread of automobiles and radios affected the BMI values of boys already in the interwar period. We suppose that the changes in lifestyle associated with the labor saving technological developments of the 20th century are associated with the weight gains observed. The increased popularity of television viewing was most prominently associated with the contemporaneous acceleration in BMI gain.

The authors trace the introduction and use of anthropometric indicators (height, weight, body mass index) into development and labor economics in the late 1970s. These biological markers are used as a proxy measure for health human capital, the degree of poverty or malnutrition, net nutritional status, and productive capacity. The use of these indicators has spread rapidly after the 1980s., Historical Social Research Vol. 32, No. 1 (2007)

We examine spatial convergence in biological well-being in the Habsburg Monarchy circa 1890-1910 on the basis of evidence on the physical stature of 21-year-old recruits disaggregated into 15 districts. We find that the shorter was the population in 1890 the faster its height grew thereafter. Hence, there was convergence in physical stature between the peripheral areas of the monarchy (located in today's Poland/Ukraine, Romania, and Slovakia) and the core (located in today's Austria, Czech Republic, and Hungary). The difference between the trend in the height of the Polish district of Przemysl and the Viennese trend was about 0.9 cm per decade in favor of the former. But the convergence among the core districts themselves was minimal or non-existent, whereas the convergence among the peripheral districts was more pronounced. Hence, spatial convergence took place exclusively within the peripheral areas, and between the peripheral regions and the more developed ones. The pattern is somewhat reminiscent of modern findings on convergence clubs in the global economy. However, the East-Central European pattern was the reverse of this modern finding: heights converged to the levels of the developed regions, but did not converge among the more developed regions themselves.

Objective: We use the complete set of NHES and NHANES data collected between 1959 and 2004 in order to construct trends for the physical stature of the non-Hispanic white and black US adult population and compare them to those of Western- and Northern-Europeans. Method: Regression analysis is used to estimate the trend in US heights stratified by gender and ethnicity holding income and educational attainment constant. Results: US heights have stabilized at mid-century and a perio0d of stagnation set in with the birth cohorts 1955-74, concurrent with continual rapid increases in heights in Western and Northern Europe. The American population had been the tallest in the world for two centuries until World War II, but by the end of the 20th century fell behind many of their European counterparts. Only since the most recent birth cohorts 1975-83 is some gain apparent among whites but not among blacks. The relationship between height and income and between height and educational attainment has not changed appreciably over time for either men or women. Conclusion: We conjecture that the American health-care system, as well as the relatively weak welfare safety net might be the reason why human growth in the United States has not performed as well in relative terms as one would expect on the basis of income. The comparative pattern bears some similarly to that of life expectancy insofar as the US is also lagging behind in that respect.

Objective: We use the complete set of NHES and NHANES data collected between 1959 and 2004 in order to construct trends for the physical stature of the non-Hispanic white and black US adult population and compare them to those of Western- and Northern-Europeans. Method: Regression analysis is used to estimate the trend in US heights stratified by gender and ethnicity holding income and educational attainment constant. Results: US heights have stabilized at mid-century and a perio0d of stagnation set in with the birth cohorts 1955-74, concurrent with continual rapid increases in heights in Western and Northern Europe. The American population had been the tallest in the world for two centuries until World War II, but by the end of the 20th century fell behind many of their European counterparts. Only since the most recent birth cohorts 1975-83 is some gain apparent among whites but not among blacks. The relationship between height and income and between height and educational attainment has not changed appreciably over time for either men or women. Conclusion: We conjecture that the American health-care system, as well as the relatively weak welfare safety net might be the reason why human growth in the United States has not performed as well in relative terms as one would expect on the basis of income. The comparative pattern bears some similarly to that of life expectancy insofar as the US is also lagging behind in that respect.

If rounded data are used in estimating moments and regression coffiecients, the estimates are typically more or less biased. The purpose of the paper is to study the bias inducing effect of rounding, which is also seen when population moments intstead of their estimates are considered. Under appropriate conditions this effect can be approximately specified by versions of Sheppard's correction formula. We discuss the conditions under which these approximations are valid. We also investigate the efficiency loss that comes along with rounding. The rounding error, which corresponds to the measurement error of a measurement error model, has a marginal distribution which can be approximated by the uniform distribution. We generalize the concept of simple rounding to that of asymmetric rounding and study its effect on the mean and variance of a distribution under similar circumstances as with simple rounding.

The physical stature of lower- and upper-class English youth are compared to one another and to their European and North American counterparts. The height gap between the rich and poor was the greatest in England, reaching 22 cm at age 16. The poverty-stricken English children were shorter for their age than any other European or North American group so far discovered, while the English rich were the tallest in their time: only 2.5 cm shorter than today’s US standards. Height of the poor declined in the late-18th century, and again in the 1830s and 1840s conforming to the general European pattern, while the height of the wealthy tended rather to increase until the 1840s and then levelled off.

The physical stature of lower- and upper-class English youth are compared to one another and to their European and North American counterparts. The height gap between the rich and poor was the greatest in England, reaching 22 cm at age 16. The poverty-stricken English children were shorter for their age than any other European or North American group so far discovered, while the English rich were the tallest in their time: only 2.5 cm shorter than today’s US standards. Height of the poor declined in the late-18th century, and again in the 1830s and 1840s conforming to the general European pattern, while the height of the wealthy tended rather to increase until the 1840s and then levelled off.

We argue that with interdependent utility functions growth can lead to a decline in total welfare of a society if the gains from growth are sufficiently unequally distributed in the presence of negative externalities, i.e., envy.

Aiming to further explore possible underlying causes for the recent stagnation in American heights, this paper describes the result of analysis of the commercial U.S. Sizing Survey. Using zip codes available in the data set, we consider geographic correlates of height such as local poverty rate, median income, and population density. We find that after adjusting for variables known to influence height such as income and education, population density is negatively correlated with height among white men, but only marginally among white women. Similar analysis of Body Mass Index (BMI) also shows a negative correlation with population density after adjustment for income, education, and age for both sexes. Local economic conditions as measured by median income, unemployment rate or poverty rate do not have a strong correlation with height or weight after adjusting for individual income and education.

We trace the introduction of anthropometric indicators into development and labor economics in the late 1970s.

The Great Depression in Germany led to the radicalization of the electorate, leading the country and then the world into the darkest days of Western Civilization. Could it have been otherwise? This paper explores whether the NSDAP takeover might have been averted with a fiscal policy that lowered the unemployment rate in those parts of Germany where their support rose most rapidly. A counterfactual simulation model based on estimates of the relationship between unemployment and the radical vote at the electoral district level provides a framework for considering how much lower unemployment would have to have been in those districts to prevent the NSDAP from becoming a formidable political force in Germany. Budget neutrality is maintained, so that the simulations do not depend on an expanded fiscal policy. The results indicate that such a policy could well have averted the NSDAP's seizure of power, and the catastrophe that followed in its wake.

Aiming to further explore possible underlying causes for the recent stagnation in American heights, this paper describes the result of analysis of the commercial U.S. Sizing Survey. Using zip codes available in the data set, we consider geographic correlates of height such as local poverty rate, median income, and population density. We find that after adjusting for variables known to influence height such as income and education, population density is negatively correlated with height among white men, but only marginally among white women. Similar analysis of Body Mass Index (BMI) also shows a negative correlation with population density after adjustment for income, education, and age for both sexes. Local economic conditions as measured by median income, unemployment rate or poverty rate do not have a strong correlation with height or weight after adjusting for individual income and education.

The Great Depression in Germany led to the radicalization of the electorate, leading the country and then the world into the darkest days of Western Civilization. Could it have been otherwise? This paper explores whether the NSDAP takeover might have been averted with a fiscal policy that lowered the unemployment rate in those parts of Germany where their support rose most rapidly. A counterfactual simulation model based on estimates of the relationship between unemployment and the radical vote at the electoral district level provides a framework for considering how much lower unemployment would have to have been in those districts to prevent the NSDAP from becoming a formidable political force in Germany. Budget neutrality is maintained, so that the simulations do not depend on an expanded fiscal policy. The results indicate that such a policy could well have averted the NSDAP's seizure of power, and the catastrophe that followed in its wake.

We trace the introduction of anthropometric indicators into development and labor economics in the late 1970s.

This study analyses the physical stature of runaway apprentices and military deserters based on advertisements collected from 18th-century newspapers, in order to explore the biological welfare of colonial and early-national Americans. The results indicate that heights declined somewhat at mid-century, but increased substantially thereafter. The findings are generally in keeping with trends in mortality and in economic activity. The Americans were much taller than Europeans: by the 1780s adults were as much as 6.6 cm taller than Englishmen, and at age 16 American apprentices were some 12 cm taller than the poor children of London.

This paper describes a two-sector demo-economic model (agricultural and non-agricultural sectors) applied to Europe and spanning the period from the neolithic agricultural revolution to the Industrial Revolution. The model describes the "incessant contest" between population growth and food production. As long as per capita agricultural output is above a critical minimum, the population is assumed to grow at a constant rate. When this output drops below the minimum, the population is subjected to random mortality "shocks" which lower the population until the production grows above the minimum. Society is thus in a "Malthusian trap". The average magnitude of the mortality crises is assumed to decrease as capital increases, which captures an increased "resistance" that comes with increased knowledge and technology. The slow accumulation of capital thus diminishes the severity of the mortality shocks; as a result both the population of the non-agricultural sector and capital grow sufficiently to bring about a permanent escape from the Malthusian trap, i.e. the Industrial Revolution.

The first known experiment with an exchange rate band took place in Austria- Hungary between 1896 and 1914. The rationale for introducing this policy rested on precisely those intuitions that the modern literature has emphasized: the band was designed to secure both exchange rate stability and monetary policy autonomy. However, unlike more recent experiences, such as the ERM, this policy was not undermined by credibility problems. The episode provides an ideal testing ground for some important ideas in modern macroeconomics: specifically, can formal rules, when faithfully adhered to, provide policy makers with some advantages such as short term autonomy? First, we find that a credible band has a "microeconomic" influence on exchange rate stability. By reducing uncertainty, a credible fluctuation band improves the quality of expectations, a channel that has been neglected in the modern literature. Second, we show that the standard test of the basic target zone model is flawed and develop an alternative methodology. We believe that these findings shed a new light on the economics of exchange rate bands.

The height of the French male population of the Ancien Régime is estimated, on the basis of military records, to have been about 162 cm in the 17th century. This extremely short stature implies that, "the crisis of the 17th century" had an immense impact on the human organism itself. The improvement in climatic conditions at the turn of the 18th century had an ameliorating effect on the human organism, increasing in size by nearly 4 cms within a span of 12 years. Improved weather had a beneficial impact on agricultural conditions as well as a direct effect on biological processes. The physical stature of men increased until the birth cohorts of the 1740s, to decline thereafter, in keeping with the European pattern, although the decline of the second half of the 18th century was not more severe than elsewhere in Europe. France was not suffering from a prolonged period of malnutrition of unusual severity, and the threat of a Malthusian crisis was mild compared to 17th-century conditions. Hence, the anthropometric evidence supports the notion that the French economic malaise was not a fundamental cause of the political turmoil. To be sure, there were very large social differences in the biological standard of living, which clearly fuelled the fires of revolution. The height of the French upper classes was 7 cm above average, but, that, too, was standard for contemporary Europe.

Researchers analyzing historical data on human stature have long sought an estimator that performs well in truncated-normal samples. This paper reviews that search, focusing on two currently widespread procedures: truncated least squares (TLS) and truncated maximum likelihood (TML). The first suffers from bias. The second suffers in practical application from excessive variability. A simple procedure is developed to convert TLS truncated means into estimates of the underlying population means, assuming the contemporary population standard deviation. This procedure is shown to be equivalent to restricted TML estimation. Simulation methods are used to establish the mean squared error performance characteristics of the restricted and unconstrained TML estimators in relation to several population and sample parameters. The results provide general insight into the bias-precision tradeoff in restricted estimation and a specific practical guide to optimal estimator choice for researchers in anthropometrics.

We explore the efficiency of the forward reichsmark market in Vienna between 1876 and 1914. We estimate ARIMA models of the spot exchange rate in order to forecast the one-month-ahead spot rate. In turn we compare these forecasts to the contemporaneous forward rate, i.e., the market’s forecast of the future spot rate. We find that shortly after the introduction of a “shadow” gold standard in the mid-1890s the forward rate became a considerably better predictor of the future spot rate than during the prior flexible exchange rate regime. Between 1907 and 1914 forecast errors were between a half and one-fourth of their pre-1896 level. This implies that the Austro-Hungarian Bank’s policy of defending the gold value of the currency was successful in improving the efficiency of the foreign exchange market.