Big push or big grab? Railways, government activism, and export growth in<scp>L</scp>atin<scp>A</scp>merica, 1865–1913

Bignon, Vincent; Esteves, Rui; Herranz‐Loncán, Alfonso

doi:10.1111/ehr.12094

Cited by 23 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Yet very often, governments would favour foreign investment in this sector through the entitlement of a minimum dividend to shareholders, thereby placing more pressure on the fiscal balance. Therefore, a default would affect investment rates on railroad construction, affecting the export's potential of the country (Bignon, Esteves, & Herranz-Loncán, 2015). In the case of Brazil, Leff (1997) attributes the delay of Brazil in the construction of railroads to the lack of foreign investment, given that 'British investment was directed away from Brazil by such non-market considerations as imperial policy' (Leff, 1997, p. 45).…”

Section: Sovereign Debt As a Control Mechanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sovereignty and Debt in Nineteenth-Century Latin America

Zendejas¹,

Cole²

2021

Sovereign Debt Diplomacies

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After their independence from Spain and Portugal, Latin American governments became frequent borrowers in international capital markets. However, the region’s political and economic instability also led to recurrent episodes of sovereign defaults. During the particular historical context of the nineteenth century, remedies to debt defaults were not limited to bilateral negotiations between creditors and governments. They also encompassed military interventions or control commissions formed by foreign governments, bondholders, or merchant bankers. In North Africa and the Middle East, debt defaults could even trigger military interventions from creditor states ending in the establishment of colonial regimes. This paper shows that such interventions were rare in Latin America, as creditors only enlisted their governments’ military intervention in the most extreme cases. In most cases, external control was exerted privately by bondholders and merchant banks through the imposition of economic policies promoting trade openness and fiscal management. Additionally, bondholders turned to legal methods of contractual enforcement to obtain debt settlements that limited the sovereignty of debtor states over their land, infrastructure, and resources. By the end of the century, Latin American jurists began to respond to the increasing use of legal techniques to settle sovereign debts by developing counter-legal discourses aimed at limiting foreign intrusion in sovereign affairs.

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Section: Sovereign Debt As a Control Mechanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sovereignty and Debt in Nineteenth-Century Latin America

Zendejas¹,

Cole²

2021

Sovereign Debt Diplomacies

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“…First, it provided the resources for investments in railways. Bignon, Esteves, and Herranz‐Loncán (2015) argue that a two‐way relationship between government revenues and railways existed, with a potential for multiple equilibria. In particular, countries could end up in a “poverty‐trap” with few railways and little revenue.…”

Section: Model and Estimation Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Railways and manufacturing productivity in Italy after unification

Pontarollo

Ricciuti

2020

Journal of Regional Science

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This paper contributes to the debate on the effects of transport infrastructure endowment on productivity by adding a historical perspective. This allows us to address the issue in a proving ground where the effects of the existing stock of infrastructure are negligible. At the time of unification, the Kingdom of Italy initiated a large infrastructure project to build railways. We find that railways had a positive effect on manufacturing productivity over the period 1871–1911. Railways also had strong spillover effects in neighboring provinces so that provinces that started with a higher endowment of railways benefited more than those who were newly endowed.

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“…11 Agriculture was therefore badly hit by the expansion of international trade in agricultural commodities triggered by the growing use of steamships to transport cereal across the Atlantic ocean starting in the 1870s. The subsequent development of domestic railway networks in Argentina and the US, between 1870 and 1913, allowed devoting an ever-growing surface of land to the cultivation of cereals, see Bignon et al (2015). The price gap between the Americas and Europe together with a steady reduction of freight rates allowed the export from Toutain (1987), who provides figures for the nominal value of agricultural production and nominal GDP (column V3 p. 102ff and V41 p. 150ff), and Golob (1944, p. 18).…”

Section: Historical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Toll of Tariffs: Protectionism, Education and Fertility in Late 19th Century France

Bignon

Garcı́a-Peñalosa

2018

SSRN Journal

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This paper examines a novel negative impact of trade tariffs and the costs they induce by documenting how protectionism reversed the long-term improvements in education and the fertility transition that were well under way in late 19th-century France. The Méline tariff, a tariff on cereals introduced in 1892, was a major protectionist shock that shifted relative prices in favor of agriculture and away from industry. In a context in which the latter was more intensive in skills than agriculture, the tariff reduced the relative return to education, which in turn affected parents' decisions about the quantity and quality of children. We use regional differences in the importance of cereal production in the local economy to estimate the impact of the tariff. Our findings indicate that the tariff reduced enrolment in primary education and increased birth rates and fertility. The magnitude of these effects was substantial, with the tariff offsetting the increasing trend in enrolment rates and the decreasing one in birth rates by a decade.

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Big push or big grab? Railways, government activism, and export growth inLatinAmerica, 1865–1913

Cited by 23 publications

References 45 publications

Sovereignty and Debt in Nineteenth-Century Latin America

Sovereignty and Debt in Nineteenth-Century Latin America

Railways and manufacturing productivity in Italy after unification

The Toll of Tariffs: Protectionism, Education and Fertility in Late 19th Century France

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