1,721,098 research outputs found
Contingent expectations
No full textThe Routledge Handbook of Economic Expectations in Historical Perspective offers a one-stop reference that distills and summarizes the recent scholarship on economic expectations. Investigating the dynamics, effects, and determinants of economic expectations from a global perspective since the seventeenth century, the book enhances the understanding of expectation formation across time and space.
Expectations drive economic decision-making―and thus offer a fundamental key to understanding economic behavior. Given the centrality of economics to society, the historical study of economic expectations is a highly relevant endeavor, for which this volume provides an accessible starting point. Featuring 33 chapters written by leading scholars from fields ranging from anthropology to political science, this handbook provides a uniquely interdisciplinary perspective. Together, the collection of essays argues that the development of economic theory and empirical research on expectation formation has not taken place in a vacuum. Rather, it must be understood as one strand in a complex entanglement of knowledge production, experiences, and economic and political decision-making, which interacted with, challenged, and transformed each other.
With its broad scope, this handbook will be of interest to students and scholars across multiple disciplines including economic history, economics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and political science
The Wuerttemberg Patent Law in Administrative Practice
Full text linkEconomists stress the leading role that inclusive institutions play among the various factors that foster a country’s economic growth. In this article, we show that it might be misleading to mistake the codification of a formal rule for its effective administrative implementation. As the case of the German state Wuerttemberg demonstrates, a government’s lip service to the
principle of equal treatment does not guarantee that the local patent authority refrains from
discriminating against foreign patentees by charging comparatively high patent fees. We
conclude that the introduction of a stringent and formally fair patent law alone does not
guarantee that foreign inventors’ intellectual property rights are protected as well as those of
the domestic patentees
Demographic decision-making under uncertainty
No full textThe Routledge Handbook of Economic Expectations in Historical Perspective offers a one-stop reference that distills and summarizes the recent scholarship on economic expectations. Investigating the dynamics, effects, and determinants of economic expectations from a global perspective since the seventeenth century, this book enhances the understanding of expectation formation across time and space.
Expectations drive economic decision-making and thus offer a fundamental key to understanding economic behavior. Given the centrality of economics to society, the historical study of economic expectations is a highly relevant endeavor, for which this volume provides an accessible starting point. Featuring 33 chapters written by leading scholars from fields ranging from anthropology to political science, this handbook provides a uniquely interdisciplinary perspective. Together, the collection of essays argues that the development of economic theory and empirical research on expectation formation has not taken place in a vacuum. Rather, it must be understood as one strand in a complex entanglement of knowledge production, experiences, and economic and political decision-making, which interacted with, challenged, and transformed each other.
With its broad scope, this handbook will be of interest to students and scholars across multiple disciplines, including economic history, economics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and political science
Does Social Security crowd out Private Savings? The Case of Bismarck’s System of Social Insurance
Full text linkImperial chancellor Bismarck’s system of social insurance (with its three pillars health, accident and pension insurance) was an important role model for social security systems across Europe and in the US. How the introduction of the German system changed economic expectations and decisions of the German workforce has not been researched, though. This article closes this gap by analyzing the development of Prussian savings banks’ deposits in the late 19th century with the help of a difference-in-difference-like approach. We show that, in the Prussian case, social security crowded out private savings considerably. As counterfactual voluntary savings would have been far from sufficient, however, Bismarck’s social insurance system was still needed to fight the misery workers and their families potentially faced in old age or times of sickness
The role of human capital and innovation in economic development: evidence from post-Malthusian Prussia
Full text linkThe effect of human capital on growth involves multiple channels. On the one hand, an increase in human capital directly affects economic growth by enhancing labor productivity in production. On the other hand, human capital is an important input into R&D and therefore increases labor productivity indirectly by accelerating technological change. In addition, different types of human capital such as basic and higher education or training-on-the-job might play different roles in both production and innovation activities. We merge individual data on valuable patents granted in Prussia in the late nineteenth-century with county-level data on literacy, craftsmanship, secondary schooling, and income tax revenues to explore the complex relationship between various types of human capital, innovation, and income. We find that the Second Industrial Revolution can be seen as a transition period when it comes to the role of human capital. As in the preceding First Industrial Revolution, “useful knowledge” embodied in master craftsmen was related to innovation, especially of independent inventors. As in the subsequent twentieth century, the quality of basic education was associated with both workers’ productivity and firms’ R&D processes. In a final step, we show that literacy had also a negative effect on fertility which increased with innovation. In general, our findings support the notion that the accumulation of basic human capital was crucial for the transition to modern economic growth
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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