Montesquieu against Jared Diamond

Guns, germs and steel? No. Ideas were the key of western domination of the Americas:

"Can it be said that this destruction, the greatest history has ever known, was only a simple effect of the ignorance of a principle of philosophy? It can, and I am going to prove it."

Montesquieu in The Motives That Ought to Encourage Us to the Sciences

(I recommend the whole paper.)

via aldaily.

Made in America? The New World, the Old, and the Industrial Revolution

On the same subject of yesterday's post:
Made in America? The New World, the Old, and the Industrial Revolution
by Gregory Clark, Kevin H. O'Rourke, Alan M. Taylor - #14077 (DAE IFM ITI)

Abstract:

For two decades, the consensus explanation of the British Industrial
Revolution has placed technological change and the supply side at
center stage, affording little or no role for demand or overseas
trade. Recently, alternative explanations have placed an emphasis on
the importance of trade with New World colonies, and the expanded
supply of raw cotton it provided. We test both hypotheses using
calibrated general equilibrium models of the British economy and the
rest of the world for 1760 and 1850. Neither claim is supported.
Trade was vital for the progress of the industrial revolution; but it
was trade with the rest of the world, not the American colonies, that
allowed Britain to export its rapidly expanding textile output and
achieve growth through extreme specialization in response to shifting
comparative advantage.

Power and Plenty:Trade, War, and the World Economy in the II Millennium- O'Rourke and Findlay

The book is not for everyone. It presumes that the reader has a quite comprehensive knowledge about the last 1,000 years of world economic history and some training in Economics. Nevertheless, it is a must if you are a serious researcher of any of these issues.
The book has changed my mind on several issues, mainly about the Industrial Revolution. I used to take the New-Economic-History side: it was slow and foreign markets were not important. Now I am not so sure at all. The bottom line: Power and Plenty is a great book!

III Research Workshop on Institutions and Organizations - Call for papers

Ramon Fernandez emailed me:

"Call for papers

The III Research Workshop on Institutions and Organizations will be held at Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV-SP) from October 13th to 14th 2008. The III RWIO is sponsored by three Brazilian Academic Institutions (Fundação Getúlio Vargas São Paulo, IBMEC São Paulo and University of São Paulo).

Seminar participants will discuss recent developments in the analysis of institutions and organizations through the lenses of Economics, Management, Sociology, Law and other social sciences. Instead of focusing on the contributions of specific disciplines dealing with institutions and organizations, workshop participants will emphasize differences and commonalities among different approaches, leading to potential advances and refinements in the field.

We encourage the participation of researchers of Brazilian and international institutions. The following program is based on both invited and selected papers.

The organizational committee invites the submission of papers to the following the topics:

CHAIRS

Panel I: Organizations, law and corruption

Panel II: Institutions and Development

Panel III: Institutions and environment

Panel IV: Psychological issues and organization strategies

Panel V: Industrial and competition policy

*More details about the panels will be announced soon.

DEADLINES

-Deadline for submission of an extended abstract: July 15th 2008

-Acceptance of proposal: July 25th 2008

-Deadline for submission of final papers: August 30th 2008

-Acceptance of final papers: September 15th 2008


Proposal must be sent in English as PDF attachment to workshop_io@yahoo.com.br and should include an extended abstract (maximum of 1.000 words). A confirmation message will be sent."

Greg Clark reviews a book that I am not going to read

Adam Smith in Beijing by Giovanni Arrighi.

Why study economic history?

Brad DeLong explains.

Brazilian 1872 and 1890 Censuses

They are now available on-line. Many thanks to Prof Puntoni and to the CEBRAP's team.
(HT Eustáquio Reis)

Two links

The Brazilian Journal História e Economia has just released a new number. (Some papers are available in English).

IPEADATA - the main economic data repository in Brazil- has new looks and datasets. Many thanks to Eustáquio Reis and his team.

Best economics paper of 1958

Which paper/book should we celebrate its 50th year? Obviously, my vote goes to the paper that started the cliometric revolution:
The Economics of Slavery in the Ante Bellum South
Alfred H. Conrad, John R. Meyer
The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 66, No. 2 (Apr., 1958), pp. 95-130
Is there any other contestant?

Happy December 25th!

There is a good reason to celebrate.

News...

- I would like to apologize to my three and a half readers for not posting. It is almost the end of the term and things are really busy. So the blog will be on hold for a while.
-Ubuntu is doing fine. Compiz is running full throttle and I am able to do 99% of the things that I used to, but much faster. I think that I will never go back to Windows.
- Today I am going to the 1er Congreso Latinoamericano de Historia Económica in Montevideo. My expectations are quite high. Many dear friends will be there giving papers. Moreover, I will be the first time that I will meet researchers like Roberto Cortés Conde, James Robinson and others.
- Otávio Damé, my former undergrad student and research assistant at UFPel, has won the Controladoria Geral da União monographs prize. Congratulations to him and his advisor, André Carraro!
- See you soon!

My Ubuntu experience- day 1

A few problems:
Hardware: I could not manage to solve an issue with the graphics card. Therefore the extended screen (or "extended desktop" for windows user) is not working.
Software:I lost 1 hour trying to figure out how to run R. How stupid I am... It is so easy.
The reaplayer plug-in is not working. Ok. I guess I can stand one more day without listening to the BBC.

My Ubuntu experience- day 0

Ubuntu is running like a breeze. In fact, I've spent 4 hours backing up Vista and my stuff, but the Ubuntu installation took me less than one hour.
Sure there are many things that do not work and I haven't noticed yet. But I have a whole week-end to sort it out... I will keep you informed.

Going Ubuntu

I can not stand Vista anymore. I am a proud owner of a Thinkpad T61, but after 3 months I noticed that things are just getting worse. Vista has lots of bugs, crashes a lot and it is painfully slow.
This week, Vinícius, a geek student of mine, convinced me to try Ubuntu. I downloaded the iso file, burned a CD-ROM and ran it. Everything went surprisingly smooth. In minutes, without any configuration, the notebook was wireless connected and running Firefox faster than ever. I tried OpenOffice and it opened a huge doc file with track changes without any problem.
So, this week-end I am going Ubuntu. In order to prepare for this historical moment, I have printed the instructions and I've downloaded the episodes of Going Linux podcast. This show is co-hosted by Serge Rey, the über economic geographer. (Update: I've just noticed that Serge has his own podcast on Linux installation!)
Any suggestion or advice?

Institutions matter. Really?

What are the causes of the Industrial Revolution? It is amazing that THE most important event in human history remains a mystery. Gregory Clark and James "Reversal of Fortune" Robinson take opposite sides on the issue. Greg has a point when he says that institutions are not everything, but I think he takes his point too far. Robinson is much more convincing.
(Daniel Brook criticizes the weakest point in Farewell to Alms: the biological factors behind the Industrial Revolution)

Rio de Janeiro, 1936

The city looks like a tropical Paris. But the movie is quite misleading. In 1936 Brazil:
- Income per capita was a fifth of the today's
-Life expectancy at birth was 36 years (Arriaga);
- 57% of the population was illiterate;
- Infant mortality was 150 per thousand. Today:28/1000.
I do not miss Brazil in the thirties.

Free trade & the size of government

Kevin O'Rourke is among the top economic historians. His papers with Jeffrey Williamson on the history of globalisation and the role of tariffs are a must.
Now he has turned his attention to the determinants of individual attitudes toward free trade. In a new paper, he and his coauthors show that "government expenditure can boost support for free trade."

Via Vox EU.

US Dollar lows and Gisele Bündchen

Here.

Day of the Dead and the Dismal Science

"Finados", a national holiday in Brazil, is not as entertaining as the Dia de los Muertos in Mexico. So, the post today will be quite morbid.
What is the monetary value of a death of a loved one? That is, what is the monetary value that would take you back to the same indifferent curve? Instead of asking people, this study used happiness studies to calculate it. The results are surprising:

Your partner has the highest value and it worths more than the sum of the your mother and father! Policy recommendation: take care of your partner. He/She is much more important for your happiness than you think.

World Bank & IMF

One new data source and one new report.
Via Gustibus.