Asia‐Pacific Economic History Review最新文献

This study reviews research examining agricultural development in industrialising Japan. We focus on the (dys)functioning of markets for land, finance, labour and agricultural commodities. We cover topics including land (mis)allocation, size-productivity relationships, tenancy contract choice and Marshallian inefficiency, property rights, microfinance, shock-coping strategies, rural–urban migration and agricultural market integration. The literature reveals that market failures often observed in developing economies were not prominent, except for possibly labour markets. The literature also highlights the roles and administrative capacities of central and local governments. Tight local communities served to reduce transaction costs.

Quantitative comparisons of living standards across Eurasia continue to conclude that the eastern side of the “great divergence,” including Japan, lagged behind the leading regions of Europe from early-modern times onwards. The “industrious revolution” model attributes this to the early spread in Europe of markets for labour and consumer goods. By contrast, in Japan, persistent household self-sufficiency must have precluded improvements driven by market participation. However, qualitative evidence on the history of the now globally renowned Japanese diet reveals how a different dietary pattern, involving continued household-based, non-market production activities, might nonetheless have generated improved living standards, even if these are invisible to quantitative assessment.

Empirical work is dominating business history, with a particular emphasis on case research using rich primary sources. I argue that the field of business history would benefit from a balanced combination of theoretical and empirical work. Restoring this balance requires that business historians build theories using their empirical observations. This approach – theorising – may enrich the field of business history and enhance the impact on related fields. I also argue that testing business history theory requires a broad set of empirical techniques, that is, bizhismetrics.

This paper introduces a new dataset of commodity-specific, bilateral import data for four large Asian economies in the interwar period: China, the Dutch East Indies, India and Japan. It uses these data to describe the interwar trade collapses in the economies concerned. These resembled the post-2008 Great Trade Collapse in some respects but not in others: they occurred along the intensive margin, imports of cars were particularly badly affected, and imports of durable goods fell by more than those of non-durables, except in China and India which were rapidly industrialising. On the other hand the import declines were geographically imbalanced, while prices were more important than quantities in driving the overall collapse.

The Australian economy experienced very frequent and sizeable terms of trade shocks. These shocks at times were more pronounced than commodity exporting developing countries and disproportionately benefited the extreme top end of income distribution. Did they derail overall economic progress? Circumstantial evidence suggests that they did not, but hard econometric evidence appears to be rare. In this paper, I revisit the Australian resource curse question from a long-run perspective. Using time series data on commodity prices, real GDP, real wages, non-farm GDP, manufacturing share of GDP, and manufacturing share of employment covering the period 1900 to 2007, I find very little evidence of a resource curse. Commodity booms in general and positive agricultural price shocks in particular appear to have impacted the rest of the economy positively both in short- and long-run. The positive effect is primarily led by expansion in manufacturing. This is perhaps reflective of trade protection, labour and credit market flexibility, and relatively open skilled migration in Australia especially during the post-war period.

We document the origins of Australia's egalitarianism by quantifying both the level and trends of earnings inequality during 1870–1910 by constructing social tables for earnings, thus overcoming the constraints imposed by the lack of income, tax and wealth data. We find that earnings inequality was much lower in Australia than in the United States and the United Kingdom in 1870 and that there was no rise in Australian earnings inequality over the half century 1870–1910, but rather a fall. We argue that such findings are driven by a faster skill supply growth relative to demand.

We provide evidence on the dynamic effects of fuel price shocks, shipping demand shocks and shipping supply shocks on real dry bulk freight rates in the long run. We first analyse a new dataset on dry bulk freight rates for the period from 1850 to 2020, finding that they followed a downward but undulating path with a cumulative decline of 79%. Next, we turn to understanding the drivers of booms and busts in the dry bulk shipping industry, finding that shipping demand shocks strongly dominate all others as drivers of real dry bulk freight rates in the long run. Furthermore, while shipping demand shocks have increased in importance over time, shipping supply shocks in particular have become less relevant.

This paper revisits the determinants of emigration from the United Kingdom to the United States, Canada and Australia/New Zealand from 1870 to 1913. In the absence of restrictive immigration policies, the flow of emigration to these destinations responded to economic shocks and trends. Emigrants to Australia and New Zealand were more skilled on average than those heading across the Atlantic, a feature that does not correspond well with skill differentials in the manner predicted by the Roy model. While assisted passages (subsidised fares) increased the volume of emigration to Australia and New Zealand they cannot account for its higher skill content.

This issue of the Australian Economic History Review honours the many contributions of Jeffrey Gale Williamson. Although Jeff has worked on an extraordinarily wide range of topics, countries and time periods, he is perhaps best known for his work on globalisation and the world economy beyond Europe and the United States. As part of this work, he has written extensively on Australian and Asia-Pacific economic history, the primary remit of this journal. This special issue features papers by several of Jeff's former PhD students and long-time collaborators on topics related to shared research agendas in Asian, Australian and global economic history.

Jeff Williamson needs little in the way of introduction. He has spent his academic career at Vanderbilt University (1961–1963), University of Wisconsin (1963–1983) and Harvard University (1983–2008). Since 2008 he has been an emeritus professor at Harvard and held a variety of visiting positions across the globe. As a scholar, Jeff is nothing if not prolific. His first paper in a leading economic history journal was published in 1961. He continues to publish frequently in these journals, with little sign of slowing down since his “retirement” in 2008. As of 2021, Jeff has published over 50 articles in the “top five” economic history journals. In addition, he has published over 20 articles in the leading general economics journals and the leading field journals in urban and development economics. He has written or edited 31 books. Over 70 of his works have at least 100 citations on Google Scholar (as of 30 March 2021). His production ranks at or near the very top of the all-time list of economic historians in virtually every meaningful category of measurable research output.

However, Jeff's contribution to economic history cannot be measured solely by quantity of output. Jeff's research has influenced generations of scholars on such diverse topics as globalisation during the nineteenth century and beyond (Bordo et al., 2003; Jacks et al., 2011; O'Rourke & Williamson, 1994, 1999; Taylor & Williamson, 1994; Williamson, 1996); migration from the Old World to the New World (Hatton & Williamson, 1991, 1994, 1998, 2005) and within the United States and United Kingdom (Weiss & Williamson, 1972; Williamson, 1986); the early development of the United States (Lindert & Williamson, 2013; Williamson, 1961, 1965, 1974); the consequences of the industrial revolution for quality of life (Lindert & Williamson, 1983; Williamson, 1981, 1984, 1990); the development of various Asia-Pacific economies (Becker et al., 1986; Kelley & Williamson, 1971, 1974; Williamson, 1969