echoes

March 2, 2013 10:40 AM

A brief history of the Chinese growth model [note: not so brief] - "the Chinese development model is an old one, and can trace its roots at least as far back as the 'American System' of the 1820s and 1830s. This 'system' was itself based primarily on the works of the brilliant first US Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton..."

The American System was developed in opposition to the then-dominant economic theories of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, in part because classic British economic theory seemed to imply that reductions in wages were positive for economic growth by making manufacturing more competitive in the international markets. A main focus of the American System, however, was... Sustaining high wages... thereby both driving productivity growth and creating a large domestic consumption market for American producers...

First U.S. Bank Regulations May Look Strikingly Familiar - "One hundred fifty years ago, the U.S. was two years into a brutal Civil War. The financial cost left the federal government under enormous stress, leading to a result no one had imagined: the first modern system of bank regulation."

more from Echoes:
-Why the Founding Fathers Loved the National Debt
-Piracy and Fraud Propelled the U.S. Industrial Revolution
-The British Bank That Forever Altered the U.S. Economy
-Founding Father of the Quants Was Revolutionary Marxist

also btw...
Casualties of Credit: The English Financial Revolution, 1620-1720

Modern credit, developed during the financial revolution of 1620–1720, laid the foundation for England's political, military, and economic dominance in the eighteenth century. Possessed of a generally circulating credit currency, a modern national debt, and sophisticated financial markets, England developed a fiscal-military state that instilled fear in its foes and facilitated the first industrial revolution. Yet a number of casualties followed in the wake of this new system of credit. Not only was it precarious and prone to accidents, but it depended on trust, public opinion, and ultimately violence.

Economic Development in the Americas since 1500: Endowments and Institutions

Relative to the baseline provided by Canada and the Northern United States, the most important institutional divergences of the Caribbean and Latin America that they see come in the areas of suffrage, education, and land policy... institutional trajectories once embarked upon became very difficult to change... The political power of the entrenched and unequal elite simply turned out to be too great. This is a brilliant book, an example of what economic historians do best--better than non-economic historians, and better than non-historical economists.

posted by kliuless (6 comments total)

I wasn't able to find this on the Echoes website anywhere, but some googling around revealed this RSS feed for just Echoes.
posted by pwnguin at 12:53 PM on March 2, 2013

Another super-excellent post kliuless, thanks!
posted by moorooka at 1:58 PM on March 2, 2013

God damn, I'm trying not to find new interesting reads......now i'm screwed
posted by C.A.S. at 3:03 PM on March 2, 2013

I love this post, thanks.
posted by maiamaia at 3:07 PM on March 3, 2013

say you want a revolution?
-60 Minutes on China's real estate bubble [YT]
-World's biggest mall a China 'ghost town'
-Deflating shadow credit in China
-The pollution constraint on China's future growth
-China bets on consumer-led growth to cure social ills: "China's new rulers will focus on consumer-led growth to narrow the gap between rich and poor while taking steps to curb pollution and graft, the government said on Tuesday, tackling the main triggers for social unrest in the giant nation."

also btw...
Are we living in the early 19th century? - "Eventually all of the creative ferment of the industrial revolution pays off in a big 'whoosh', but it takes many decades, depending on where you draw the starting line of course. A look at the early 19th century is sobering, or should be, for anyone doing fiscal budgeting today. But it is also optimistic in terms of the larger picture facing humanity over the longer run."

Mutualisation and constitutionalisation - "Can the euro exist without fiscal or political union? This column draws on the history of the US – especially its assumption of states’ debt after the War of Independence – to investigate which path might best serve the Eurozone. History tells us that unions require a well-constitutionalised system of restraint on fiscal behaviour, both at the federal level and at that of individual states."

The surprisingly long path to US monetary union - "it took about 147 years for the US to become a monetary union"

Benjamin Graham's Clever Idea for Averting Currency Wars - "he developed a subtle and clever idea for stabilizing currencies -- and economies -- that might bear closer examination today..."
posted by kliuless at 4:04 PM on March 6, 2013

another one from brad delong on economic history!

What do modern people do? Increasingly, they push forward the corpus of technological and scientific knowledge. They educate each other. They doctor each other. They nurse each other. They care for the young and the old. They entertain each other. They provide other services for each other to take advantage of the benefits of specialization. And they engage in complicated symbolic interactions that have the emergent effect of distributing status and power and coordinating the seven-billion person division of labor of today's economy. We have crossed a great divide between what we used to do in all previous human history and what we do now. Since we are not in the realm of necessity, we ought to be in the realm of freedom.

But although we have largely set these post-agrarian post-industrial patterns for the next stage of human history, the human world of this next stage is only half-made. The future is already here--it is just not evenly distributed. Of the 7.2 billion people alive in the world today, at least 25% billion still live lives that are hard to distinguish from the lives of our pre-industrial ancestors. Only 5% of today's world population lives in countries where income per capita is greater than $40,000 per year; only 10% lives in countries where income per capita is greater than $20,000 per year.

The bulk of the world's population is on the stairway to modernity. The patterns are set. The top of the stairway is visible--although it is not clear which top we shall reach: many possible tops are immanent in the patterns. Nevertheless, the climb will be hard. And that is what much of the history of the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries is likely to be about...

(i'm still waiting for _Slouching toward Utopia: The Economic History of the Twentieth Century_; 2014/09/21? ;)
posted by kliuless at 10:55 AM on March 10, 2013