Dissecting the sinews of power: international trade and the rise of Britain's fiscal-military state, 1689-1823

We evaluate the role of taxes on trade in the development of imperial Britain's fiscal-military state. Influential work, e.g., Brewer's (1989) Sinews of Power, attributed increased fiscal capacity to the taxation of domestic, rather than traded, goods: excise revenues, coarsely associated with domestic goods, grew faster than customs revenues. We construct new historical revenue series disaggregating excise revenues from traded and domestic goods. We find substantial growth in taxes on traded goods, accounting for over half of indirect taxation around 1800. This challenges the conventional wisdom attributing the development of the British state to domestic factors: international factors mattered, too

The Persistence of (Subnational) Fortune

Abstract Using subnational historical data, this paper establishes the within country persistence of economic activity in the New World over the last half millennium, a period including the trauma of the European colonization, the decimation of the native populations, and the imposition of potentially growth inhibiting institutions. We construct a data set incorporating measures of pre-colonial population density, new measures of present regional per capita income and population, and a comprehensive set of locational fundamentals. These fundamentals are shown to have explanatory power: native populations throughout the hemisphere were found in more livable and productive places. We then show that high pre-colonial density areas tend to be dense today: population agglomerations persist. The data and historical evidence suggest this is due partly to locational fundamentals, but also to classic agglomeration effects: colonialists established settlements near existing native populations for reasons of labor, trade, knowledge and defense. The paper then shows that high density (historically prosperous) areas also tend to have higher incomes today, and largely due to agglomeration effects: fortune persists for the United States and most of Latin America. JEL: J1, N9, R1, O1, O4

Search for eccentric black hole coalescences during the third observing run of LIGO and Virgo

Despite the growing number of confident binary black hole coalescences observed through gravitational waves so far, the astrophysical origin of these binaries remains uncertain. Orbital eccentricity is one of the clearest tracers of binary formation channels. Identifying binary eccentricity, however, remains challenging due to the limited availability of gravitational waveforms that include effects of eccentricity. Here, we present observational results for a waveform-independent search sensitive to eccentric black hole coalescences, covering the third observing run (O3) of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. We identified no new high-significance candidates beyond those that were already identified with searches focusing on quasi-circular binaries. We determine the sensitivity of our search to high-mass (total mass M>70 M⊙) binaries covering eccentricities up to 0.3 at 15 Hz orbital frequency, and use this to compare model predictions to search results. Assuming all detections are indeed quasi-circular, for our fiducial population model, we place an upper limit for the merger rate density of high-mass binaries with eccentricities 0<e≤0.3 at 0.33 Gpc−3 yr−1 at 90\% confidence level

Ultralight vector dark matter search using data from the KAGRA O3GK run

Among the various candidates for dark matter (DM), ultralight vector DM can be probed by laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors through the measurement of oscillating length changes in the arm cavities. In this context, KAGRA has a unique feature due to differing compositions of its mirrors, enhancing the signal of vector DM in the length change in the auxiliary channels. Here we present the result of a search for U(1)B−L gauge boson DM using the KAGRA data from auxiliary length channels during the first joint observation run together with GEO600. By applying our search pipeline, which takes into account the stochastic nature of ultralight DM, upper bounds on the coupling strength between the U(1)B−L gauge boson and ordinary matter are obtained for a range of DM masses. While our constraints are less stringent than those derived from previous experiments, this study demonstrates the applicability of our method to the lower-mass vector DM search, which is made difficult in this measurement by the short observation time compared to the auto-correlation time scale of DM

De qué hablamos cuando hablamos de bienes públicos

No existe en la literatura económica un consenso preciso acerca de la naturaleza de los bienes públicos. En este artículo se estudian sus atributos definitorios, no excluibilidad y no rivalidad, y se disciernen sus consecuencias específicas sobre la clasificación de los bienes como públicos o privados. Para ello se presentan elaboraciones relativas a una teoría del uso compartido de los bienes. Como resultado se ofrece una definción no abigua de los bienes públicos que elucida otras menos claras o completas, otorgando a la distinción semántica "privado-público" una implicancia precisa sobre la cuestión del régimen de la propiedad.Economic literture has reached no precise consensus on the nature of the public goods. This article studies their defining characteristics: non-excludability and non-rivality. The specific implication that each of these has on the status of goods (as public o private) is distinguished. To this end, some arguments are elaborated pertinent a theory of the shared use of goods. Consequently an unambiguous definition of public goods is offered wich elucidates some less clear and incomplete definitions, thus endowing the semantic distinction between public and private with a precise implication for the property regime issue.Este trabajo presenta algunas de las ideas centrales de la tesis de Maestría en Política Económica del autor, "Bienes club y bienes públicos. El espacio de la acción colectiva en las economías descentralizadas", defendida publicamente en la Universidad de Buenos Aires en agosto de 1996.Instituto de Investigaciones Económica

De qué hablamos cuando hablamos de bienes públicos

No existe en la literatura económica un consenso preciso acerca de la naturaleza de los bienes públicos. En este artículo se estudian sus atributos definitorios, no excluibilidad y no rivalidad, y se disciernen sus consecuencias específicas sobre la clasificación de los bienes como públicos o privados. Para ello se presentan elaboraciones relativas a una teoría del uso compartido de los bienes. Como resultado se ofrece una definción no abigua de los bienes públicos que elucida otras menos claras o completas, otorgando a la distinción semántica "privado-público" una implicancia precisa sobre la cuestión del régimen de la propiedad.Economic literture has reached no precise consensus on the nature of the public goods. This article studies their defining characteristics: non-excludability and non-rivality. The specific implication that each of these has on the status of goods (as public o private) is distinguished. To this end, some arguments are elaborated pertinent a theory of the shared use of goods. Consequently an unambiguous definition of public goods is offered wich elucidates some less clear and incomplete definitions, thus endowing the semantic distinction between public and private with a precise implication for the property regime issue

Bribing voters.

We show how an outside party offering incentives to voters can manipulate at no cost collective decisions made through voting. Under influence, these decisions can become inefficient. Therefore, the market for policies may be more likely to fail than the markets for goods, because (democratic) politics involves influence and collective decisions to a greater extent than markets for goods do. We develop and use a model to analyze different incentive schemes, credibility situations, and payoff and information structures. We discuss implications for the efficiency of democracy, voting, lobbying, committee decision making, and legislatures

De qué hablamos cuando hablamos de bienes públicos

No existe en la literatura económica un consenso preciso acerca de la naturaleza de los bienes públicos. En este artículo se estudian sus atributos definitorios, no excluibilidad y no rivalidad, y se disciernen sus consecuencias específicas sobre la clasificación de los bienes como públicos o privados. Para ello se presentan elaboraciones relativas a una teoría del uso compartido de los bienes. Como resultado se ofrece una definción no abigua de los bienes públicos que elucida otras menos claras o completas, otorgando a la distinción semántica "privado-público" una implicancia precisa sobre la cuestión del régimen de la propiedad.Economic literture has reached no precise consensus on the nature of the public goods. This article studies their defining characteristics: non-excludability and non-rivality. The specific implication that each of these has on the status of goods (as public o private) is distinguished. To this end, some arguments are elaborated pertinent a theory of the shared use of goods. Consequently an unambiguous definition of public goods is offered wich elucidates some less clear and incomplete definitions, thus endowing the semantic distinction between public and private with a precise implication for the property regime issue.Este trabajo presenta algunas de las ideas centrales de la tesis de Maestría en Política Económica del autor, "Bienes club y bienes públicos. El espacio de la acción colectiva en las economías descentralizadas", defendida publicamente en la Universidad de Buenos Aires en agosto de 1996.Instituto de Investigaciones Económica