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The article explores media depictions of industrial labour in Italy, with a special focus on visual, film and television portrayals, spanning from the 1960s to the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Rather than delving into an analysis of labour processes, the primary objective of the article is to scrutinise the gendered representations of work and whether and how the representation of work, including all professions, has played a pivotal role in shaping narratives about Italian society and its inherent contradictions. In this context, the article also emphasises the significance of what remains unrepresented, highlighting the absence of work as equally consequential as its presence. Of particular importance within this exploration is the examination of women's work, a realm less frequently depicted than that of men. The article dedicates specific attention to unravelling the nuances of women's role in the workforce, recognising their portrayal as a key element in understanding broader narratives about Italian society and its complexities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study develops a Malthusian model for the evolution of human society from hunting-gathering to agriculture and from agriculture to industrial production. Human society evolves across these stages as the population grows. However, under endogenous population growth, the population may stop growing at any stage. If it fails to reach the first threshold, the population remains as hunter-gatherers. If it reaches the first threshold, an agricultural society emerges. Then, if the population fails to reach the industrial threshold, it remains in an agricultural Malthusian trap without experiencing industrialization. Interestingly, high agricultural productivity triggers not only the Neolithic Revolution but also the subsequent industrialization. Using cross-country data to test this result, we employ an index of prehistoric biogeographic conditions that affect agricultural productivity as an instrument for the timing of transitions to agriculture and find that an earlier transition to agriculture has a positive effect on industrialization in the modern era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian & Latin American Economic History is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian & Latin American Economic History is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Recent developmental state research highlights state-society configurations and contentious politics in shaping industrialization. Still, much of this work focuses on East Asia and tends to sidestep racialized labor exploitation, imperialism, and uneven incorporation into the global capitalist system through the trans-Atlantic slave trade and colonialism as important drivers. Through an historical analysis of Trinidad and Tobago, this paper examines how interventionist industrial policies emerged out of such structures and conditions. It highlights the role of anti-imperial and anti-racist struggles exemplified by the Black Power Movement in Trinidad and Tobago – a social movement comprising workers, marginalized youth, and civic leaders, which sought to overturn a colonial economy, reconfigure hierarchical race relations, address economic injustices, promote democratically negotiated industrialization, and chart a new course for a post-independent, multiracial Trinidad and Tobago. Utilizing archival data, this paper argues that Trinidad and Tobago's government shifted from a passive industrial strategy characteristic of the colonial era to a more active approach from 1970 to 1984 largely in response to forceful demands and demonstrations by the Black Power Movement, which, in turn, led to improved social conditions, nationalization of key industries, the creation of state-owned enterprises, new skills and technological investments, and more. These findings advance developmental state theory by specifying the heretofore largely unacknowledged role of racial justice and anti-imperialist social movements in bringing about a different path from the East Asian model toward industrial and social transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the intellectual path through which Raúl Prebisch placed industrialization at the center of his economic thought and policy recommendations. It shows how the changing international context of the 1930s and 1940s made him depart from laissez-faire and adopt countercyclical policies, gradually abandoning the agrarian export-led growth model and finally embracing industrialization as the new growth strategy for Argentina and Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature about the nutrition transition has been discussing the existence of different paths. The case of Uruguay is introduced as a different case of transition. We focus on the period 1900–70 when the country shifted from an agricultural-based economy to industrialisation through import substitution. We estimate the annual historical time series of per capita consumption of the main food items in the Uruguayan diet using the commodity flow approach complemented by the FAO's Food Balance Sheets methodology. We identify the major trends in food consumption and discuss the main explanatory factors. We find that Uruguay showed a transition from a very high animal food-based diet towards a more diversified pattern with more milk, cereals, and vegetables. On top of that, we sustain that not only income is important to explain the major shifts in food diet, but also preferences, changes in relative prices, and productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the financing of early industrial corporations using newly constructed panel data from Imperial Russian balance sheets. We document how corporate capital structures and dividend payout policies reflected internal agency issues, information asymmetries with external investors, life cycle considerations, and other frictions present in the Russian context. In particular, we find that widely held, listed and more profitable corporations were less reliant on debt financing. Asset tangibility was associated with lower debt levels, suggesting that Russian corporate debt was short-term, collateral was largely irrelevant, or agency problems dominated. Finally, we find that many of these same issues, for example ownership structure and access to securities markets, also mattered for financial performance and that dividends may have compensated investors for poor legal protections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business process management (BPM) has been the main driver behind company optimization and operational efficiency. However, the digitization era we live in necessitates that organizations be agile and adaptable. Delivering unprecedented rates of automation-fueled agility is necessary to be a part of this digital revolution. On the other hand, BPM automation cannot be done only by concentrating on procedure space and traditional planning methodologies. With the introduction of BPM, where the deployment of BPM with cloud computing has undergone enormous development lately, cloud computing has been considered a particularly active topic of study. Cloud computing points to the provision of dependable computing environments based on improved infrastructure availability and service quality without imposing a significant cost load. This research aims to discover the relationship between technical factors, financial factors, environmental factors, security of the cloud-based information systems, and the agile development of industrial BPM (IBPM). The present study aims to fill this gap and show how partial least squares structural equation modeling (SEM) can be employed in this field. Importance–performance map analysis (IPMA) evaluated the importance and performance of factors in the SEM. IPMA enables the identification of factors with relatively low performance but relatively high importance in shaping dependent variables. The empirical findings showed that four key factors (technical, financial, environmental, and security) positively influence the agile development of IBPM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Special economic zones (SEZs) can be described as "carved out jurisdictions within the overall jurisdiction of a state in order to introduce different laws and regulations that are usually more trade and investment friendly". South Africa's SEZs are created under the Special Economic Zones Act 16 of 2014. This article analyses the country's legal framework for SEZs, which legal scholars have thus far only examined from a purely economic perspective. It provides a brief historical overview of industrial development zones, examines the 2014 act and suggests some reforms within the SEZ legislative framework. A comparative analysis is provided by drawing some lessons from BRICS member countries that have a successful record in operationalizing SEZs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article demonstrates that deindustrialization increases ethnonational mobilization. We maintain that levels of mobilization of ethnonational movements are to an important extent a residual to the class cleavage, that is, to the degree the class conflict dominates political competition. Since in the context of Western Europe industrialism is the main force behind the class cleavage, deindustrialization weakens this cleavage and allows instead for mobilization along ethnonational divisions. In order to empirically test our argument, we analyze levels of electoral mobilization of ethnonational party blocs among 15 Western European minorities between 1918 and 2018. Our analysis clearly reveals that levels of industrialization are negatively related to ethnonational mobilization. However, this is only true for regions with historically high levels of industrialization and if the ethnonational movement is unified. The article contributes to the comparative literature on the electoral performance of ethnonational parties and the literature on deindustrialization and nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the failure of economic and technical cooperation between Companhia Industrial de Rochas Betuminosas (CIRB) and the Soviet Union in the shale gas sector. In 1959, CIRB signed a preliminary contract for the supply of Soviet equipment and the assembly of a pilot plant to extract the shale of Vale do Paraíba, São Paulo State, to produce gas and building materials. Petrobras, by continually defending the inclusion of shale mining and industrialization in the state monopoly, had a decisive influence on CIRB’s inability to obtain government approval for Soviet financing. The São Paulo company would file for bankruptcy in 1973. Using, for the most part, Brazilian primary sources, the article concludes that Petrobras feared the impact that the break of state shale monopoly could have on its interests, which it considered basically equivalent to the national interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While most studies of industrialisation and modernisation in Singapore have focused on the post-1960 period and the role of the new nation-state, multinational corporations, and government-linked companies, Lim Peng Siang's business career shows that these processes and engagements were already under way before the Second World War. This study seeks to foreground the dynamics of industrialisation and modernisation in the historiography of Chinese business in colonial Singapore, Malaya, and Southeast Asia through examining Lim's business career. It shows how the projects of industrialisation and modernisation that Lim and his contemporaries embodied extended beyond business and the economy, and were entangled in broader cultural, sociopolitical, and urban forces and developments in Singapore and other parts of colonial Southeast Asia, maritime Asia, and the world-at-large between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His experiences highlight the pitfalls of assuming a simple traditional–modern dichotomy, and any essentialistic and ethnic constructions of culture, and the discourses surrounding business strategy, behaviour, and thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1939 an earthquake destroyed south-central Chile, especially the city of Chillán. This event was arguably the most catastrophic socio-natural disaster in Chilean history, yet it has been mostly ignored in historical research. This article shows that the earthquake triggered a critical juncture for the Chilean state and was a determining factor in some of the most important institutional developments of the period. Using primary sources, the article describes this juncture, focusing on the destabilizing effect of the earthquake and linking it to the creation of two new state institutions, the Production Development Corporation (CORFO) and the Reconstruction and Assistantship Corporation (CRA), together with other important changes in state capacities. It concludes that the disaster is crucial in understanding the Chilean transition from an exporting economy to an import-substituting one after 1940, and to account for the strength of the Chilean state in the decades to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the average and heterogeneous effects of railway access on parish-level population, income, and industrialization in Württemberg during the Industrial Revolution. We show that the growth-enhancing effect of the railway was much greater in parishes that were larger and more industrial at the outset. However, such early industrial parishes were rare in the relatively poor German state. This might explain why we find small average growth effects, which only increase at the end of the nineteenth century. Heterogeneity in the impact of the railway thus increased economic disparities within Württemberg and contributed to the state's relatively sluggish growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I use new evidence from servant contracts, 1610–1890, to estimate male farm wages and the length of the work year in Japan. I show Japanese laborers were surprisingly poor and could only sustain 2–3 adults relative to 7 adults for the English. Japanese wages were the lowest among pre-industrial societies and this was driven by Malthusian population pressures. I also estimate the work year and find peasants worked 325 days a year by 1700, predating the "industrious" revolution in Europe. The findings imply Japan had a distinct labor-intensive path to industrialization, utilizing cheap labor over a long work year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1999 onwards, level, lowland forests (altitude < 150 m, slopes < 10°) in the Tanintharyi Region of southern Myanmar have been cleared on a large scale and replaced by oil palm plantations. This has resulted in a drastic decline in suitable habitat for several species, including Gurney's pitta Hydrornis gurneyi (Passeriformes, Pittidae). The habitat for this species has decreased by > 80%, leading to its categorization as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List in 2019. As threats in the region have continued, we updated information on the status of the species' habitat in January 2020, and examined forest loss in the three strongholds where the species still persists in the wild. Since the previous estimate in 2017, suitable habitat in these locations has decreased by 8% (from 656 to 603 km2), with > 10% of the remaining area now in fragments of < 1 km2, which are unsuitable for the mid- to long-term survival of the species. Forest degradation and edge effects from increased fragmentation have led to further loss of suitable habitat in these strongholds. Projections indicate that unless conservation action is taken, all suitable habitat will disappear by 2080. The main threat to the long-term survival of Gurney's pitta is the lack of legal protection of primary lowland forests, resulting in uncontrolled clearance for small- and large-scale agriculture and industrial development. We provide recommendations to reduce the rate of loss of the remaining suitable habitat for the species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the relationship between internal migration and industrialization in the United States between 1850 and 1880. We use the Linked Representative Samples from IPUMS and find significant amounts of rural-urban and urban-urban migration in New England. Rural-urban migration was mainly driven by agricultural workers shifting to manufacturing occupations. Urban-urban migration was driven by foreign-born workers in manufacturing. We argue that rural-urban migration was a significant factor in US economic development and the structural transformation from agriculture to manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fertile soils are essential for human health and nutrition and formed the foundation of human economies for millennia. Soils deserve close attention from environmental and economic historians and sustainability scientists. Most soil history literature addresses failure: misuse of soil, uncontrolled erosion, and the resulting collapse of past civilizations. More important, however, and of urgent interest for our present and future prosperity, are the mundane ways that historical farm communities sustained soil health, even while cultivating the same land for centuries. This article explains five strategies by which European and North American farmers accessed, recycled, replenished, and sustained soil fertility over 250 years. By evaluating inputs, extractions, transfers, and annual balances of potassium, phosphorus, and, especially, nitrogen, it models historical soil management in a variety of agroecosystems in various geographical settings and through time. This biophysical environmental history, based on socioecological metabolism methods borrowed from sustainability science, reveals ongoing adaptation to shifting social and environmental contexts. As industrialization, global trade, and population accelerated, farmers adjusted their soil fertility strategies to keep up with new pressures and opportunities. Each solution to existing soil fertility constraints created new obstacles and bottlenecks. Through the past quarter millennium, farm sustainability meant constant readjustment to new circumstances. As farmers innovated crop choices and rotations, corralled livestock, adopted new technologies, deployed novel energy sources, and expanded into new lands, they increased food productivity to feed growing world population and supply expanding markets, while maintaining the supply of soil nutrients necessary to fertilize next year's crop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decades, finite element analysis (FEA) has become a standard tool in industrial product development, allowing for virtual analysis of designs, quick turnaround times and prompt implementation of results. Although academic research also provides numerous approaches for evaluating a product's robustness towards geometrical, material and load variations based on FEA analyses, this, however, stands in striking contrast to the limited use of these FEA-based variation simulations in industry. In order to bridge the existing gap between academic research and industrial application, this paper explores the barriers that limit the adoption of FEA-based variation simulation. The investigation is based on interviews with five lead engineers, followed by a case study that details the underlying technical challenges and allows for some initial suggestions for future solutions. The case study involves a sterile canister with seven geometrical variables. The design objective is to ensure sufficient sealing within the range of expected probabilistic variation. The combined study details the identified main barriers for a wider application, that is, the lack of robust CAD, practical guidelines to select an efficient design of experiments for design purposes, and the complexity of the automated processes. From a technical perspective, the case study results in estimations for main and interaction effects, an accurate metamodel and Monte Carlo simulations of 100,000 samples providing the design engineer with more detailed and actionable insights on the performance of the product compared with the traditional nominal or best/worst case simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty is the consequence of not having sufficient income to sustain lives and ways of life. While there are many papers addressing poverty in today's Poland, no comprehensive study was done to explain and describe rural poverty also in a historical aspect. Therefore, this article attempts to synthetically identify the patterns and particularities of rural poverty in Poland between the wars, and to present the multifaceted and diverse nature of Polish poverty in the initial years of national independence. The authors' main objective is to indicate the changes in the scope of Polish poverty and to describe the adaptive mechanisms and the discomfort involved in the depreciation of needs. Before independence, the situation varied across the Polish territory. The relatively worst socio-economic conditions were experienced in Galicia due to absence of non-agricultural activities. The population of Prussian rural areas found themselves in a more advantageous situation because of industrial development and working outside agriculture. The situation of peasants was exacerbated by the destructive and resource-draining First World War, whereas rural misery was made even worse by the combination of unemployment and underdevelopment of the country. In the Second Polish Republic, the situation of the rural population did not improve even though the country made great progress at that time. Note that rural poverty varied across employee groups, with cultural and lifestyle differences, limited competences and passive attitudes playing an important role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global food system exhibits dizzying complexity, with interaction among social, economic, biological, and technological factors. Opposition to the first generation of plants and animals transformed through rDNA-enabled gene transfer (so-called GMOs) has been a signature episode in resistance to the forces of industrialization and globalization in the food system. Yet agricultural scientists continue to tout gene technology as an essential component in meeting future global food needs. An ethical analysis of the debate over gene technologies reveals the details that matter. On the one hand, alternative regimes for institutionalizing gene technology (through regulation, trade policy, and intellectual property law) could mitigate injustices suffered by politically marginalized and economically disadvantaged actors in the food system, especially smallholding farmers in less industrialized economies. On the other hand, GMO opposition has been singularly effective in mobilizing citizens of affluent countries against policies and practices that lie at the heart of these same injustices. As part of the roundtable, "Ethics and the Future of the Global Food System," this essay argues that charting a middle course that realizes the benefits of gene technology while blocking its use in the perpetration of unjust harms may require a more detailed grasp of intricacies in the food system than even motivated bystanders are willing to develop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women played a vital role in British industrialization. However, studies of women's work are often hindered by data limitation. The British censuses provide an unparalleled opportunity to study women's work and its impact systematically. However, the reliability of the census recording of female employment is still under debate. This articles aims to contribute to this ongoing debate by examining a particular census recording concerning married women who were supposedly working with their husbands, that is "occupation's wife." By analyzing a new source of big data, namely 100 percent sample of Census Enumerators' Books and published census reports, this article shows that the recording of "occupation's wife" was not informative about the level of married women's labor in the form of working together with their husbands in the same trade. Given the important fact that married women recorded as "occupation's wife" constituted the largest group of married women with any occupational titles in the censuses, the results presented in this article suggest a reassessment of some of the empirical foundations in the studies of married women's work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How did the Prussian three-class franchise, which politically over-represented the economic elite, affect policies? Contrary to the predominant and simplistic view that the system allowed the landed elites to capture most political rents, we find that members of parliament from constituencies with a higher vote inequality support more liberal policies, gauging their political orientation from the universe of roll call votes cast in parliament during Prussia's rapid industrialization (1867–1903). Consistent with the characteristics of German liberalism that aligned with economic interests of business, the link between vote inequality and liberal voting is stronger in regions with large-scale industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have pointed to the period 1958-1962 as the beginning of Taiwan's transition to export-oriented industrialization. Although the Nationalist Party (KMT) had traditionally supported state socialism, the KMT began to oversee economic reforms in the late 1950s, setting Taiwan on the course of export-led growth under a capitalist model. Using archival materials from both the United States and Taiwan, I argue that the reforms resulted from U.S. influence on how the KMT understood the role of economic development in its grand strategy. U.S. arguments succeeded in creating political support at the highest levels of the KMT leadership for a reform-oriented faction in the economic bureaucracy. This finding shows how an aid donor can promote economic reforms even when the recipient is strategically important for the donor: although threats to enforce conditionality may not be credible, the donor can influence the recipient through persuasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ratification of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) marked a landmark event in the quest to achieve intra-African free trade. AfCFTA is poised to represent the largest free trade area outside the World Trade Organization. Although AfCFTA aspires to liberalize intra-African trade in goods and services to foster socio-economic development, there are concerns that capacity constraints may stultify the underlying goals. AfCFTA is expected to build on the considerable successes already achieved by Africa's regional economic communities. However, it fails to clarify how the overlapping regimes will be reconciled and harmonized. Nevertheless, the agreement is laudable for its quest to facilitate intra-African trade, foster regional value chains that can facilitate integration into the global economy, and energize industrialization, competitiveness and innovation. This article examines the celebrated AfCFTA to understand its potential amid local realities and the possible implications for the multilateral trading system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ottoman-Turkish historiography has been largely concerned with the economic nationalism of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which consisted of four doctrines: elimination of foreign dominance on the Ottoman economy, removal of non-Muslims from the economic sphere, creation of a Turkish/Muslim bourgeoisie, and rapid industrialization. Through its focus on the economic activities of the Society for the Ottoman Navy, a CUP-affiliated charitable organization with enormous economic power, the present study investigates how the economic policies of the period can be regarded as a practice of economic nationalism. Based on archival material and in dialogue with secondary sources, this article argues that although the Unionist leadership and intelligentsia employed the language of economic nationalism, the operation of the economy in practice was considerably different from its rhetoric. War conditions, the lack of indigenous capital accumulation, and relations of the Ottoman Empire with foreign powers heavily shaped the implementation of the economic nationalism of the CUP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative historians have illuminated the weaknesses in the Europe-derived and Europe-centred historical paradigms of the preceding century-and-a-half, while questioning the factual foundations and depth of Europe's development towards capitalism, imperialism, and industrialism. But a continental perspective on China's early modern development suggests the possibilities of a vicinage—or integrated environment—approach to China's development and its relevance to more widespread changes of the early modern period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the impact of the construction of hydropower facilities on labor market outcomes in Norway at the turn of the twentieth century (1891–1920). The sudden breakthrough in hydropower technology provides a quasi-experimental setting, as not all municipalities had suitable natural endowments and the possible production sites were often located in remote areas. We find that hydropower municipalities experienced faster structural transformation and displayed higher occupational mobility. We interpret this as evidence that this early twentieth-century technology was skill biased, as workers in the new skilled jobs were recruited from a broad segment of the population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a general level of neoliberal repudiation or expansion of social policies, most post-neoliberal Latin American governments in the 2000s have exhibited similarities. However, coalitions with popular actors have displayed a lot of variation. In order to compare popular-sector coalitions the article constructs a framework with two central dimensions: electoral and organisational/interest; in post-import substitution industrialisation (ISI) Latin America the latter is composed of both unions and territorial social movements (TSMs). It contends that the region witnessed four types of popular coalitions: electoral (Ecuador and Chile), TSM-based (i.e. made up of informal sector-based organisations, Venezuela and Bolivia), dual (i.e. composed of both unions and TSMs, Argentina and Brazil) and union/party-based (Uruguay). The study argues that government–union coalitions are largely accounted for by the relative size of the formal economy, and by the institutional legacies of labour based-parties. Coalitions with informal sector-based organisations are rooted in the political activation of these TSMs during the anti-neoliberal struggles of the 1990s and early 2000s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the conventional wisdom, the promise of the Chinese revolution of 1949 went unfulfilled in the Maoist era. Instead of taking off, the economy grew slowly, and widespread rural poverty persisted. The economic turning point was instead the famous political climacteric of 1976–78. But this metric of aggregates is the wrong criterion by which to judge China's economic record because industrial revolutions have regional beginnings. They invariably take place against a backcloth of slow aggregate growth and stagnant material living standards. Accordingly, we should dwell neither on China's slow overall growth nor its widespread poverty before 1978 but look instead for evidence of an emerging regional growth pole. This article argues that Jiangsu was such a growth pole in the late Maoist era, and that its record bears comparison with that of Lancashire and Yorkshire during the early years of Britain's industrial revolution. This holds out the intriguing possibility that a Chinese economic take-off, diffusing out of the Yangtze Delta, would have occurred even without post-1978 policy changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commission would suggest immigration quotas and literacy tests as a means of controlling immigration, yet it would also highlight how dependent American industrialists were on immigrant labour. These immigrants became the backbone of American industrial development, with industrialists seeking out immigrant labour, and in the process creating a new industrial working class. Here, and elsewhere, Zeidel is attuned to how industrialists perceived immigrants both as one homogeneous and potentially subversive group, and as an essential labour supply with certain groups favoured over others. [Extracted from the article]

This study provides new evidence on top income shares in Germany from industrialization to the present. Income concentration was high in the nineteenth century, dropped sharply after WWI and during the hyperinflation years of the 1920s, then increased rapidly throughout the Nazi period beginning in the 1930s. Following the end of WWII, German top income shares returned to 1920s levels. The German pattern stands in contrast to developments in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, where WWII brought a sizeable and lasting reduction in top income shares. Since the turn of the millennium, income concentration in Germany has been on the rise and is today among the highest in Europe. The capital share is consistently positively associated with income concentration, whereas growth, technological change, trade, unions, and top tax rates are positively associated in some periods and negative in others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latin American scholars in the twentieth century often pointed to the agrarian question and the dominance of the large latifundio estates as the key to explaining their countries’ underdevelopment. Yet, in more recent years, the emphasis on agrarian structures has declined and the latifundio is no longer seen as a relevant factor to economic development. In its place have emerged explanations that emphasize international trade relations, institutions, or the capacity of local states. This study makes a case for bringing the latifundio “back in” to explanations of underdevelopment in Latin America, and points to the persistence of particular property relations, low-intensity land use, and low-risk productive strategies throughout the region as barriers to development. Agricultural census data and various other sources on land use suggest that large latifundio estates are still a relevant factor throughout the region, and I argue that they continue to represent a significant barrier for the deepening of industrialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Chinese investors set up business operations in Africa, disagreements between Chinese and Africans regarding work attitudes have emerged. A prevailing view is that cultural differences cause tensions between groups with regards to the meaning of "hard work," "discipline" and "eating bitterness." However, we argue that conflicting perceptions of work ethics between Chinese and Africans are instead caused by evolving notions of time that accompany a transition from a pre-capitalist manner of production to that of industrial capitalism. First, we refute the assumption that culture determines work ethics. Second, we show that when a society industrializes, its notions of work ethics and time perception change; we then show how China's industrialization impacts its approaches to operations in Africa. Third, we use two case studies of Chinese investments in Tanzania and Ethiopia to illustrate how Chinese managers are changing African workers' attitudes through time discipline. Finally, we discuss the implications of a convergence of work ethics between Chinese and Africans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The origins of the Italian North-South divide have always been controversial. We fill this gap by estimating a new dataset of real wages (Allen 2001; Allen et al. 2011) from Unification (1861) to WWI. Italy was very poor throughout the period, with a modest improvement since the late nineteenth century. This improvement started in the Northwest industrializing regions, while real wages in other macro-areas remained stagnant. The gap Northwest/South widened until the end of the period. Focusing on the drivers of regional trends, we find that human capital formation exerted strong positive effect on the growth of real wages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In nineteenth century Britain atmospheric pollution from coal-fired industrialization was on the order of 50 times higher than today. We examine the effects of these emissions on child development by analysing the heights on enlistment during WWI of men born in England and Wales in the 1890s. We find a strong negative relationship between adult heights and the coal intensity of the districts in which these men were observed as children in the 1901 census. The subsequent decline in atmospheric pollution likely contributed to the long-term improvement in health and increase in height. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]