Showing 1 - 7 of 7 Items

• Restriction End Date: 2029-06-01

Date: 2024-01-01

Creator: Tingjun Huang

Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

Date: 2011-05-11

Creator: Stephen Meardon

Access: Open access

Condy Raguet (1784-1842) was the first Chargé d’Affaires from the United States to Brazil and a conspicuous author of political economy from the 1820s to the early 1840s. He contributed to the era’s free-trade doctrine as editor of influential periodicals, most notably The Banner of the Constitution. Before leading the free-trade cause, however, he was poised to negotiate a reciprocity treaty between the United States and Brazil, acting under the authority of Secretary of State and protectionist apostle Henry Clay. Raguet’s career and ideas provide a window into the uncertain relationship of reciprocity to the cause of free trade.

Date: 2024-02-20

Creator: Stephen Meardon

Access: Open access

Henry C. Carey led a school of post-Civil War U.S. currency doctors prescribing an “elastic currency,” expanding and contracting according to commercial needs. The problem for the Careyites was reconciling elasticity, which implied inconvertibility with gold, with the related aim of decentralized financial power. Careyite currency doctors included, among others, Wallace P. Groom, editor of the New York Mercantile Journal, and Henry Carey Baird, Carey’s own nephew and inheritor of his mantle. Their prescribed reform of the banking system featured a financial innovation that would remove superfluous currency from circulation while supplying what was needed. The innovation was an “interconvertible bond,” a debt instrument of the U.S. Treasury that was to be issued upon demand and redeemable for currency at the option of the holder. Its function was supposed to be like the mechanical governor of a steam engine, operating by a “subtle principle” that obviated human governing power and discretion. The Carey school’s prescription and its rationale remained salient up to the advent of the Federal Reserve System.

Date: 2013-10-10

Creator: Stephen Meardon

Access: Open access

In two pairs of episodes, first in 1824 and 1846 and then in 1892 and 1935, similar U.S.-Colombia trade agreements or their enabling laws were embraced first by protectionists and then by free traders. The history of the episodes supports the view that although political institutions exist to curb de facto political power, such power may be wielded to undo the institutions’ intended effects. The doctrinal affinities and interests of political actors are more decisive determinants of the free-trade or protectionist orientation of trade agreements than the agreements’ texts or legal superstructures. The long delay from signing to passage of the current U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is another case in point.

Date: 2021-01-01

Creator: Gavin T Shilling

Access: Open access

The Great Recession of 2007 and 2008 exposed the risks of excessive borrowing. We learned the essential economic principle that greater leverage harbors greater risk. Although this global economic contraction was driven primarily by booming private credit expansion, economically inefficient incentives in the public sector, such as short-term reelection concerns, may lead politicians to engage in rash deficit- financed, fiscal spending. The primary purpose of this research is to assess the economic costs of heightened, preexisting government leverage on real economic outcomes during recessionary periods, focusing on both banking and non-banking crisis recessions. In both advanced economies and emerging economies, this study confirms that banking recessions are associated with more severe economic contractions and more persistent output declines than normal recessions. In advanced economies, GDP recovers quickly and strongly with expansionary and supportive fiscal policy during low debt recessions, even with depressed private investment. While GDP recovers slowly and weakly with less expansionary fiscal policy during high debt recessions, even with strong private investment. Thus, the social marginal benefit of public sector investment exceeds the social marginal benefit of private sector investment in advanced economies. In emerging economies, GDP recovers quickly and strongly with strong private investment during high debt recessions, even with weak fiscal spending. While GDP recovers slowly and weakly with depressed private investment during low debt recessions, even with expansionary and supportive fiscal policy. Thus, the social marginal benefit of private sector investment exceeds the social marginal benefit of public sector investment in emerging economies.

Date: 2013-09-29

Creator: Stephen Meardon

Access: Open access

The most notable idea of Charles P. Kindleberger’s later career is the value of a single country acting as stabilizer of an international economy prone to instability. It runs through his widely read books, The World in Depression, 1929-1939 (1973), Manias, Crises, and Panics (1978), A Financial History of Western Europe (1984), and kindred works. “Hegemonic stability,” the idea is called in the literature it inspired. This essay traces Kindleberger’s attachment to the idea back to his tenure as chief of the State Department’s Division of German and Austrian Economic Affairs from 1945 to 1947 and adviser to the European Recovery Program from 1947 to 1948. In both capacities Kindleberger observed and participated indirectly in the 1948 monetary reform in Western Germany. In the 1990s, during his octogenary decade, he revisited the German monetary reform with a fellow participant, economist, and longtime friend, F. Taylor Ostrander. Their collaborative essay marked Kindleberger’s effort to reclaim hegemonic stability theory from the scholars who developed it following his works of the 1970s and 1980s.

Date: 2022-01-01

Creator: Maynor Alberto Loaisiga Bojorge

Access: Open access

For most of their histories, Costa Rica and Honduras were primarily agricultural societies with little economic diversification. However, around 1990, after the implementation of Washington Consensus reforms, the economies of both nations began to diverge. Costa Rica’s economy rapidly expanded for the following 30 years, while Honduras remained stagnant. Through a New Institutional Economics approach, I argue that institutional differences between Costa Rica and Honduras are responsible for the impressive economic growth Costa Rica has been able to achieve in the past few decades. Specifically, early political developments in Costa Rica have deeply imbedded relatively egalitarian values into the population, helping shape formal and informal inclusive political institutions. Meanwhile, Honduras experienced the development of extractive political institutions, as political and economic power was heavily concentrated in the hands of a select few. These political institutions were crucial during the implementation stages of Washington Consensus reforms, as strong and inclusive political institutions attracted Foreign Direct Investment that helped propel the Costa Rican economy and materialize its position as an outlier in the region. In contrast, lack of institutional guarantees discouraged foreign investors from investing money into the Honduran economy. Through a deep dive into the political histories of both nations, from European discovery to modernity, I conclude that the political institutions of these Central American nations have determined their economic growth paths.