Trade contraction and economic regression: the Paraguayan economy under Francia, 1814-1840

I argue here that economic activity fell considerably in the first three decades of Paraguay's early national period, below levels it had attained in the late colonial period and would attain again only after the mid-nineteenth century. I attribute this economic depression primarily to regional political fragmentation and the institutional regression it triggered. In the 1810s, the United Provinces of the River Plate sought to keep the former Viceroyalty of the River Plate under a single federal government, but failed to prevent Paraguay's early secession. Their subsequent trade blockades and military threats had profound economic and political effects on Paraguay: revenues from foreign trade taxation fell, scale economies in defence and justice provision vanished, a standing army emerged, government budget deficits worsened, mercantilist regulations heightened, the fiscal burden increased, and transactions costs generally rose. Proponents of federation, more representative governments, and freer trade progressively declined, while supporters of secession, political absolutism, and government regulation became ever more prominent. In the 1820s, blockade relaxations exacerbated economic intervention by the state, which substantially redistributed property rights in land towards itself. In the 1830s, renewed blockading had more than proportional negative effects on economic activity, which remained below late colonial levels at least until international waterways became freely navigable shortly after mid-century. Colonial absolutism and mercantilism may be said to have been restored with a vengeance. Long-run economic performance worsened.autarky, economic contraction, institutional regression; trade exposure, political cleavages; "autonomous' development; financing of public spending, state land ownership, taxation of peasantry.

"Coerced indigenous labor and free mestizo peasantry: a property-rights, rent-seeking view of colonial Paraguay."

Here I first survey the evidence on forced and free labor in a resource-abundant, sparsely settled Spanish-American colony on the American Indian and Portuguese frontiers. The focus among forced labor forms is on the compulsory labor service obligations the Spanish exacted as tribute from the indigenous people they eventually resettled in segregated towns. The “encomienda” and “congregación,” respectively, were justified by right of conquest and in exchange for the protection and conversion to Catholicism of the new subjects of the Crown. Among free labor forms I focus on the free peasantry that arose in the lands left vacant as the indigenous population declined. Free peasants included the American born offspring of Spanish parents (creoles), as well as the “mestizo” offspring of Spanish and indigenous parents, which in distant and isolated Paraguay had led to legally consider mestizos as Spaniards, not subject to paying tribute in the form of labor services. I then offer a conceptual framework based on Domar’s hypothesis on the causes of slavery or serfdom (which I previously reviewed in Pastore 1990), augmented to include property-right and rent-seeking considerations. Next, I use this conceptual framework to interpret the evidence presented earlier. Subsequently I find the analysis to be robust, particularly in connection with the previously expressed contention that the labor services “encomienda” in Paraguay were a tax-farming scheme. Last, I recapitulate and gather the conclusions.In the Spanish american colony of Paraguay, inland and on the Indian and Portuguese frontiers, tribute extraction from indigenous people in the form of labor services took the form of the encomienda (from the Latin "commenda"), mit'a, and yanaconazgo. Because of the paucity of Spanish immigration, however, children of Spanish and indigenous parents (the so-called "mestizos), were considered Spanish and exempt from the encomienda. However, in exchange for granting encomiendas to its worthiest subjects the Crown had required them, as well as colonists of lesser means to provide military service for their own defense against Indian and Portuguese attacks, thus saving the expenditure of royal revenues . A small peasantry free from labor services obligations but subject to military contributions to defense thus developed. In a resource-abundant frontier setting, therefore, a "free" mestizo peasantry thus developed, even though in similar circumstances elsewhere these were subject to the same compulsory labor as those to those imposed on indigenous people.

Dynamics of conduction blocks in a model of paced cardiac tissue

We study numerically the dynamics of conduction blocks using a detailed electrophysiological model. We find that this dynamics depends critically on the size of the paced region. Small pacing regions lead to stationary conduction blocks while larger pacing regions can lead to conduction blocks that travel periodically towards the pacing region. We show that this size-dependence dynamics can lead to a novel arrhythmogenic mechanism. Furthermore, we show that the essential phenomena can be captured in a much simpler coupled-map model.Comment: 8 pages 6 figure

Tools for incorporating a D-wave contribution in Skyrme energy density functionals

The possibility of adding a D-wave term to the standard Skyrme effective interaction has been widely considered in the past. Such a term has been shown to appear in the next-to-next-to-leading order of the Skyrme pseudo-potential. The aim of the present article is to provide the necessary tools to incorporate this term in a fitting procedure: first, a mean-field equation written in spherical symmetry in order to describe spherical nuclei and second, the response function to detect unphysical instabilities. With these tools it will be possible to build a new fitting procedure to determine the coupling constants of the new functional

Effects of patch size and number within a simple model of patchy colloids

We report on a computer simulation and integral equation study of a simple model of patchy spheres, each of whose surfaces is decorated with two opposite attractive caps, as a function of the fraction $\chi$ of covered attractive surface. The simple model explored --- the two-patch Kern-Frenkel model --- interpolates between a square-well and a hard-sphere potential on changing the coverage $\chi$. We show that integral equation theory provides quantitative predictions in the entire explored region of temperatures and densities from the square-well limit $\chi = 1.0$ down to $\chi \approx 0.6$. For smaller $\chi$, good numerical convergence of the equations is achieved only at temperatures larger than the gas-liquid critical point, where however integral equation theory provides a complete description of the angular dependence. These results are contrasted with those for the one-patch case. We investigate the remaining region of coverage via numerical simulation and show how the gas-liquid critical point moves to smaller densities and temperatures on decreasing $\chi$. Below $\chi \approx 0.3$, crystallization prevents the possibility of observing the evolution of the line of critical points, providing the angular analog of the disappearance of the liquid as an equilibrium phase on decreasing the range for spherical potentials. Finally, we show that the stable ordered phase evolves on decreasing $\chi$ from a three-dimensional crystal of interconnected planes to a two-dimensional independent-planes structure to a one-dimensional fluid of chains when the one-bond-per-patch limit is eventually reached.Comment: 26 pages, 11 figures, J. Chem. Phys. in pres

Trade contraction and economic regression: the Paraguayan economy under Francia, 1814-1840

I argue here that economic activity fell considerably in the first three decades of Paraguay's early national period, below levels it had attained in the late colonial period and would attain again only after the mid-nineteenth century. I attribute this economic depression primarily to regional political fragmentation and the institutional regression it triggered. In the 1810s, the United Provinces of the River Plate sought to keep the former Viceroyalty of the River Plate under a single federal government, but failed to prevent Paraguay's early secession. Their subsequent trade blockades and military threats had profound economic and political effects on Paraguay: revenues from foreign trade taxation fell, scale economies in defence and justice provision vanished, a standing army emerged, government budget deficits worsened, mercantilist regulations heightened, the fiscal burden increased, and transactions costs generally rose. Proponents of federation, more representative governments, and freer trade progressively declined, while supporters of secession, political absolutism, and government regulation became ever more prominent. In the 1820s, blockade relaxations exacerbated economic intervention by the state, which substantially redistributed property rights in land towards itself. In the 1830s, renewed blockading had more than proportional negative effects on economic activity, which remained below late colonial levels at least until international waterways became freely navigable shortly after mid-century. Colonial absolutism and mercantilism may be said to have been restored with a vengeance. Long-run economic performance worsened

"Coerced indigenous labor and free mestizo peasantry: a property-rights, rent-seeking view of colonial Paraguay."

Here I first survey the evidence on forced and free labor in a resource-abundant, sparsely settled Spanish-American colony on the American Indian and Portuguese frontiers. The focus among forced labor forms is on the compulsory labor service obligations the Spanish exacted as tribute from the indigenous people they eventually resettled in segregated towns. The “encomienda” and “congregación,” respectively, were justified by right of conquest and in exchange for the protection and conversion to Catholicism of the new subjects of the Crown. Among free labor forms I focus on the free peasantry that arose in the lands left vacant as the indigenous population declined. Free peasants included the American born offspring of Spanish parents (creoles), as well as the “mestizo” offspring of Spanish and indigenous parents, which in distant and isolated Paraguay had led to legally consider mestizos as Spaniards, not subject to paying tribute in the form of labor services. I then offer a conceptual framework based on Domar’s hypothesis on the causes of slavery or serfdom (which I previously reviewed in Pastore 1990), augmented to include property-right and rent-seeking considerations. Next, I use this conceptual framework to interpret the evidence presented earlier. Subsequently I find the analysis to be robust, particularly in connection with the previously expressed contention that the labor services “encomienda” in Paraguay were a tax-farming scheme. Last, I recapitulate and gather the conclusions

Trade contraction and economic regression: the Paraguayan economy under Francia, 1814-1840

I argue here that economic activity fell considerably in the first three decades of Paraguay's early national period, below levels it had attained in the late colonial period and would attain again only after the mid-nineteenth century. I attribute this economic depression primarily to regional political fragmentation and the institutional regression it triggered. In the 1810s, the United Provinces of the River Plate sought to keep the former Viceroyalty of the River Plate under a single federal government, but failed to prevent Paraguay's early secession. Their subsequent trade blockades and military threats had profound economic and political effects on Paraguay: revenues from foreign trade taxation fell, scale economies in defence and justice provision vanished, a standing army emerged, government budget deficits worsened, mercantilist regulations heightened, the fiscal burden increased, and transactions costs generally rose. Proponents of federation, more representative governments, and freer trade progressively declined, while supporters of secession, political absolutism, and government regulation became ever more prominent. In the 1820s, blockade relaxations exacerbated economic intervention by the state, which substantially redistributed property rights in land towards itself. In the 1830s, renewed blockading had more than proportional negative effects on economic activity, which remained below late colonial levels at least until international waterways became freely navigable shortly after mid-century. Colonial absolutism and mercantilism may be said to have been restored with a vengeance. Long-run economic performance worsened

"Coerced indigenous labor and free mestizo peasantry: a property-rights, rent-seeking view of colonial Paraguay."

Here I first survey the evidence on forced and free labor in a resource-abundant, sparsely settled Spanish-American colony on the American Indian and Portuguese frontiers. The focus among forced labor forms is on the compulsory labor service obligations the Spanish exacted as tribute from the indigenous people they eventually resettled in segregated towns. The “encomienda” and “congregación,” respectively, were justified by right of conquest and in exchange for the protection and conversion to Catholicism of the new subjects of the Crown. Among free labor forms I focus on the free peasantry that arose in the lands left vacant as the indigenous population declined. Free peasants included the American born offspring of Spanish parents (creoles), as well as the “mestizo” offspring of Spanish and indigenous parents, which in distant and isolated Paraguay had led to legally consider mestizos as Spaniards, not subject to paying tribute in the form of labor services. I then offer a conceptual framework based on Domar’s hypothesis on the causes of slavery or serfdom (which I previously reviewed in Pastore 1990), augmented to include property-right and rent-seeking considerations. Next, I use this conceptual framework to interpret the evidence presented earlier. Subsequently I find the analysis to be robust, particularly in connection with the previously expressed contention that the labor services “encomienda” in Paraguay were a tax-farming scheme. Last, I recapitulate and gather the conclusions