Growth, Inequality, and Poverty in Spain, 1850-2000: Evidence and Speculation.

Was the Civil War (1936-39) originated by staggering inequality and extreme poverty? How did Franco’s dictatorship (1939-75) affect inequality and poverty? As a first step to provide an answer, growth and inequality over the long-run are assessed and their impact on absolute poverty calibrated. The paper concludes that during the last one and a half centuries economic growth, but also the decline in inequality during the Interwar years and since the late 1950s, led to a substantial reduction in absolute poverty. Raising inequality and poverty do not seem to have triggered the Civil War.

Perfecting beauty under the knife: the determinants of global cosmetic surgery consumption

We investigate major conjectures regarding the prevalence of cosmetic surgical procedures and their determinants, using a quantitative multidisciplinary approach and a recent international dataset from the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons. Cosmetic surgery predominantly concerns women. The highest frequencies found in Greece, Italy, Korea, and Brazil fall short of epidemic proportions at less than 0.6% of their population. However, consistent with idealized stereotypes reported in the media and the social science literature, a few procedures dominate the composition of surgical interventions and focus on thinning bodies and reshaping breasts. Culture and geography count. We identify Latin and Neo-Confucian cultural effects associated with higher frequencies of surgical procedures. Beyond the Latin effect, a large positive geographical effect persists in Latin-American countries. Economic globalization is positively associated with the higher frequencies of procedures. Gender roles matter. Women reduce their consumption of procedures as they increasingly participate in the labor force and when they are more equally represented politically. Lower fertility increases the consumption. Finally, consumption increases with increasing income and greater availability of surgical services

Growth, inequality, and poverty in Spain, 1850-2000: evidence and speculation.

Was the Civil War (1936-39) originated by staggering inequality and extreme poverty? How did Franco's dictatorship (1939-75) affect inequality and poverty? As a first step to provide an answer, growth and inequality over the long-run are assessed and their impact on absolute poverty calibrated. The paper concludes that during the last one and a half centuries economic growth, but also the decline in inequality during the Interwar years and since the late 1950s, led to a substantial reduction in absolute poverty. Raising inequality and poverty do not seem to have triggered the Civil War

Globalization, Trade, and Development: Some Lessons From History

Recent research in international economic history has opened up new lines of enquiry on the origins of globalization, as well as its causes and consequences. Such findings have the potential to inform contemporary debates and this paper considers what lessons this body of historical work has for our current understanding of the linkages between trade and development.

Participatory Equity, Identity, and Productivity: Policy Implications for Promoting Development

The role of a person's identity and sense of integration into society as instruments

Tariff-Jumping and the Form of FDI: Firm Level Evidence

This paper carries out an empirical analysis with rich, firm-level data on the activities of Swedish multinationals around the globe in manufacturing sectors from 1987 to 1998 to test the main conjectures of traditional trade and recent views of the effects of trade costs on foreign entry. The results of the empirical analysis show almost no evidence of tariff-jumping foreign entry. On the contrary, high tariffs reduce the likelihood of cross-border M&As as conjectured by recent studies. At best, tariff-jumping is a possibility in the case of greenfield FDI or for large, multiple affiliate firms doing business in low-tech industries.foreign direct investment, entry modes, and tariff-jumping

Firms' Main Market, Human Capital and Wages

Recent international trade literature emphasizes two features in characterizing the current patterns of trade: efficiency heterogeneity at the firm level and quality differentiation. This paper explores human capital and wage differences across firms in that context. We build a partial equilibrium model predicting that firms selling in more-remote markets employ higher human capital and pay higher wages to employees within each education group. The channel linking these variables is firms’ endogenous choice of quality. Predictions are tested using Spanish employer-employee matched data that classify firms according to four main destination markets: local, national, European Union, and rest of the World. Employees’ average education is increasing in the remoteness of firm’s main output market. Market–destination wage premia are large, increasing in the remoteness of the market, and increasing in individual education. These results suggest that increasing globalization may play a significant role in raising wage inequality within and across education groups

The Impossible Mission: Global Justice Movement against Transnational Organized Crime

This article argues that the best counterattack against globally oriented transnational organized crime (TOC) is by a global response. The contribution of participating states and the creation of a collective identity against TOC are both necessary. This creation would be more effective through transnational social movements. Therefore, activating the global justice movement (GJM) against TOC would be a significant achievement. This has not yet taken place for both structural and ideological reasons which are on the surface quite rational. If GJM activists create a more unified movement, however, and adhere more strictly to non-violence as have other social movements like the Libera anti-Mafia association of Italy and Flare Network of Europe, there is potential for convergence