Suchergebnisse

Abstract
How did the emerging market for land in the 19th century influence land distribution in East Prussia? And how did land markets respond to the emergence of financial institutions that relied on land as collateral but also affected the ease and speed of land transfer?
Focusing on the example of a specific financial institution – the East Prussian Landschaft – this paper empirically tests the hypothesis that the Landschaft credit institutes, through their provision of privileged credit, enabled noble estates to expand their landholdings. It also tests whether the existence of Landschaft-credit helped noble estates to remain in the hands of nobles and halted estate sales to the emerging bourgeoisie. The analysis combines several datasets on East Prussian landed estates in 1796, 1834 and 1882 and matches these with borrowing records of the East Prussian Landschaft from 1823 and 1829. The study finds that access to Landschaft-credit correlates positively with estate size over the 19th century, suggesting that the Landschaft credit institutes did play a role in ownership concentration. The results regarding the transfer of estates from the nobility to the bourgeoisie show a weaker link between Landschaft-credit and ownership status of estate holders.

Landschaften were cooperative mortgage associations that emerged in Prussia after the Seven Years War (1756–1763) to support the Prussian landed nobility. Landschaften issued covered mortgage bonds, called Pfandbriefe, which helped re-capitalize the Prussian estates. Relying on mortgage data for 554 estates, this article provides a detailed look at one of these institutions—the Landschaft of East Prussia. The article offers insights into the self-selection of participants and the distribution of credit. It also gives a quantitative assessment of the economic effects of the Landschaften with respect to ownership patterns and estate size.

Economic historians have devoted enormous attention to the collapse of the interwar gold standard. This article proposes a discrete time duration model (using a panel data set of 24 countries for 1928–1936) to analyze how economic and political indicators affected a country's term on the gold standard. High per capita income, international creditor status, and prior hyperinflation increased the probability of continuation. In contrast, democratic regimes left early. Unemployment, sterling group membership, higher inflation, and the experience of banking crises reduced the time a country remained on the gold standard. This study also predicts sample countries' survival probabilities.

This paper describes the monetary policy response of countries during the inter-war period. How did central banks react to the Great Depression? How did countries balance the externals demands of the gold standard with domestic policy pressures? What was the optimal level of international policy coordination? We use weekly data over the period 1925-1936 to estimate central bank rate reaction functions for a panel of 22 countries during the inter-war gold standard. The estimates suggest to us changing objectives for monetary policy. Countries moved away from the sole objective of convertibility and towards a more 'modern' monetary policy based on exchange rate stabilization, but not yet output stabilization or even modern price level targeting. Importantly, this move to exchange rate stabilization was accompanied by the formation of monetary policy blocs around pre-existing economic relations. Countries' interwar policy choices offer lessons for countries remaining in or choosing to join the European Monetary Union today.

AbstractWe document the outbreak of a trade war after the United States adopted the Smoot-Hawley tariff in June 1930. U.S. trade partners initially protested, with many eventually choosing to retaliate with tariffs. Using a new quarterly dataset on bilateral trade for ninety-nine countries, we show that U.S. exports to retaliators fell by 28%–32%. Using a second new dataset on U.S. exports at the product level, we find that the most important U.S. exports to retaliating markets were particularly affected, suggesting a possible mechanism whereby the United States was targeted despite most-favoured-nation obligations. The retaliators' welfare gains from trade fell by 8%–16%.