Ancient Infrastructure and Economic Activity

 

Roman Roads to Prosperity: Persistence and Non-Persistence of Public Goods Provision

Carl-Johan Dalgaard (University of Copenhagen and CEPR), Nicolai Kaarsen (Danish Economic Council), Ola Olsson (University of Gothenburg) and Pablo Selaya (University of Copenhagen)

Abstract: How persistent is public goods provision in a comparative perspective? We explore the link between infrastructure investments made during antiquity and the presence of infrastructure today, as well as the link between early infrastructure and economic activity both in the past and in the present, across the entire area under dominion of the Roman Empire at the zenith of its geographical extension. We find a remarkable pattern of persistence showing that greater Roman road density goes along with (a) greater modern road density, (b) greater settlement formation in 500 CE, and (c) greater economic activity in 2010. Interestingly, however, the degree of persistence in road density and the link between early road density and contemporary economic development is weakened to the point of insignificance in areas where the use of wheeled vehicles was abandoned from the first millennium CE until the late modern period. Taken at face value, our results suggest that infrastructure may be one important channel through which persistence in comparative development comes about.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12745&r=his

Distributed by NEP-HIS on: 2018-03-26

Revised by: Martin Söderhäll (Uppsala University)

Summary

In the paper Roman Roads to Prosperity: Persistence and Non-Persistence of Public Goods Provision the question “How persistent is public goods provision in a comparative perspective?” is examined by estimating the impact of Roman road-density on various proxies for economic activity today (modern roads, night-lights and population density) and in 500 CE (roman settlements). This is done for areas of Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa covered by Roman roads in 117 CE. The authors argue that the Roman roads “almost presents itself as a natural experiment” since the main purpose of the roads was to simplify military logistics during Roman times. This led to a road network with roads constructed as straight as possible between nodes, especially in newly conquered and undeveloped areas of the Roman Empire.

Figure 1: Roman Roads and Night Lights around Paris

The main findings in the paper are that Roman road density in 117 CE has a statistically significant positive effect on all of the above-mentioned dependent variables, suggesting that the spatial distribution of ancient infrastructure still affects the location of economic activity almost 2000 years later. However, the historical density of ancient infrastructure is not enough to explain the density of modern infrastructure as well as economic activity. The authors hypothesize that persistent use and maintenance of said infrastructure is a necessary condition for the link. To examine the hypotheses the authors’ exploit regional variation in the use of wheeled transport during the first millennia CE. This historical natural experiment is made possible since the Middle East and North Africa abandoned wheeled transport during this period, most probably due to the use of camels, which became a more efficient means of transportation in the region some time during the first millennia (Bulliet 1990).

Figure 2: Roman Roads Network in 117 CE

The developments in the Middle East and North Africa during the first millennia CE led to ancient Roman roads being used to much lesser extent than in Europe were wheeled vehicles (drawn by horses or oxen) continued to dominate among land-based means of transportation up until the nineteenth century. Thus, the authors’ claim, “one should expect influence of Roman roads today only where persistence in infrastructure is found.” In other words, the effect of Roman roads on economic activity today should be insignificant within the Middle East and in North Africa while it should have a positive effect within Europe. However, one should also expect that the density of Roman roads had a positive effect on economic activity in all studied regions before the abandonment of the wheel and the subsequent loss of interest in the use and maintenance of Roman roads in the Middle East and in North Africa.

Figure 3: Relationship between Roman Road Density in 177 CE and Modern Road Density

Econometrically, the hypotheses set by the authors are examined by a cross-sectional specification where the parameter of interest is the influence of Roman road density on various measures of economic activity today and in 500 CE, controlling for (primarily) geographic traits of the grid cells where road density are measured as well as country and language fixed-effects. The empirical results are in line with those hypothesized by the authors. The density of Roman roads had a statistically significant positive effect on economic activity in all specifications except the ones where the modern day variables capturing the degree of economic activity “today” is regressed on Roman road density in the Middle East and North Africa, further strengthening the argument that persistence in infrastructure can explain comparative development over a period of 2000 years.

Comments

The interpretation and implication of the empirical result is quite straightforward. It is clearly a good idea to keep investing in infrastructure as long as the infrastructure has an economic value, something the authors show was the case in Europe but less so in the Middle East and North Africa where the value of Roman infrastructure dropped. At first sight, one potential remark is the large time gap between the cross sections. How would the interpretation of the results look like if the link between Roman roads and economic activity disappeared in large parts of Europe some time during the period 500-2010 CE? Results from previous research (Bosker et. al. 2013; Bosker & Buringj 2017) ease the worry of this question slightly, since they have shown a relationship between Roman road-hubs and city sizes during the period 800-1800. However, it would have been nice to see some specifications for the years between 500 CE and 2010 CE in this paper as well, possibly using city sizes from DeVries (2013) or Bairoch (1991) as a proxy for economic activity. Especially since the scope differs a bit from that in Bosker et. al. (2013) where the estimation (to my knowledge) is done in a panel setting and in Bosker & Buringj (2017) where only Europe is studied.

Aside from that, I have very little to remark on; I find the argumentation against potential threats to internal validity convincing, and find arguments against external validity quite irrelevant due to the exploratory nature of the paper. In a way, the paper can be summarized as both fun and fascinating.

References

Bairoch, P. (1991). Cities and Economic Development: From the Dawn of History to the Present. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Bosker, M., Buringh, E., & van Zanden, J. L. (2013). “From Baghdad to London: Unraveling Urban Development in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, 800–1800.” Review of Economics and Statistics, 95 (4), 1418-1437.

Bosker, M., & Buringh, E. (2017). “City Seeds: Geography and the Origins of the European City System.” Journal of Urban Economics 98, 139-157.

Bulliet, R. W. (1990). The Camel and the Wheel.  New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

De Vries, J. (2013). European Urbanization, 1500-1800. London: Routledge.

The Middle Income Trap

Development State Evolving: Japan’s Graduation from a Middle Income Country

By Tetsuji Okazaki (University of Tokyo)

Abstract: This paper reexamines the industrial policy in postwar Japan from perspectives of the literature on a “development state” and a “middle income trap”. Japan transited from a middle income country to a high income country in the period from the 1950s to the 1970s. This process was characterized by a large structural change, such as resource reallocation from the primary industry to the secondary and the tertiary industries as well as resource reallocation within the secondary industry. Transition to a high income country is a challenging task for a middle income country. With respect to Japan, the industrial policy played a positive role in the transition. This was achieved by interactions between MITI and other related actors, who constrained and corrected MITI’s attempts of excess intervention.

URL: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tky:fseres:2017cf1063

Distributed by NEP-HIS on 2017‒09‒03

Review by: Joyman Lee (University College London)

Summary

Students of modern Japanese economic history are familiar with the work of Chalmers Johnson (1982) on the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). In that work Johnson argued that MITI was the leading state actor in Japan’s economic miracle, playing a vital coordinating role between policymakers and the private sector. Johnson’s emphasis on the role of the state in the East Asian experience has triggered similar studies on the development state in Korea (Alice Amsden) and Taiwan (Robert Wade).

As Okazaki notes, the emergence of newly industrialising economies facing the challenges of globalisation and democratisation has led to a renewed interest in the development state. Okazaki argues that rather than constituting a static set of policies, Japan’s developmental state was highly dynamic and adaptive, echoing Douglass North’s idea of “adaptive efficiency” (North 2005). Significantly, this ceased to be the case in Japan after the 1990s. A second strand of literature that informs the paper is the idea of the “middle income trap” (Gill and Kharas 2007), which highlights a particularly challenging transition which middle-income economies face, as the policies that have fueled the initial stages of growth are no longer appropriate for continued growth. The idea has gained considerable traction among commentators in China.

The fear of the “middle income trap” has been particularly acute in China.

Okazaki’s paper shows that Japan’s successful voyage through the “trap” was partly facilitated by its success in resource allocation across industries, in addition to well-known increases in the intra-sector productivity. Between 1955 and 1975, Okazaki attributes 29% of the increases in labour productivity to resource allocation, which he stresses was “substantial” (p. 4).

Okazaki traces the evolution of policies from the American occupation period, when U.S. advisor Joseph Dodge initiated the abolition of strict wartime controls. A 1953 government report was followed by the Five Year Plan of 1955, which highlighted the need to transition from light to heavy industries. MITI was formed in 1949 to pursue the policy of “industrial rationalization”. Formal economic controls were replaced by a portfolio of public financial institutions, including the Japan Development Bank (1951), tax relief, and foreign exchange allocation, and a central coordinating Council for Industrial Reorganisationolic . The government promoted new sectors, particularly the machinery and the automobile industries within it, which included the use of cultural strategies such as a campaign to promote the purchase of domestic cars at the same time as regulating foreign direct investment (1952) and curtailing the foreign exchange available for car imports (1954). The government also actively implemented policies concerning the automobile parts industry, which was quite atypical given the miscellaneous and low tech nature of that sector.

A Toyota factory in 1948. MITI’s policy in supporting the automobile parts industry which supplied major manufacturers such as Toyota was particularly distinctive.

At the same time as developing the domestic economy, MITI also foresaw foreign pressure on trade liberalisation, and formed a committee to formulate its strategy in 1959. While the ministry remained ambivalent with respect to its effects, it nonetheless adopted a sequential programme of liberalisation that was intertwined with plans to upgrade the industrial infrastructure. The high level of alert to likely external treasures had a direct effect on the government’s sector-specific strategies, e.g. to focus on passenger cars in the automobile sector. However, MITI’s more radical plans to consolidate the industry by policy intervention were not adopted, and instead the government aided the industry through JDB loans and low interest loans to small and medium-sized suppliers. MITI also successfully resisted IMF pressures to remove the industry from the foreign exchange system until Japan was well established in the world market (1963). Meanwhile, the government conceded that the coal industry would be uncompetitive and adopted a programme of gradual phasing out.

Comment

Okazaki’s study provides a timely, quantitative and authoritative review on an important and relatively understudied topic (given the acceptance of Johnson’s view as orthodoxy among historians) by one of Japan’s leading economic historians, whose trans-war perspective is particularly useful in teasing out more subtle changes amidst MITI’s strong posture towards industrial policy. As Okazaki observes,  the difficulties that middle-income economies face are acute, as “one of the difficulties that middle income countries face is that they should compete with low income countries in the markets of labor-intensive industries as well as with high income countries in the markets of capital and technology intensive industries” (Bulman 2017). In this context, Japan’s success appears remarkable, perhaps no less than the historiographically well-recognised significance of Japan’s Meiji-period Westernisation.

However, the complexity of policies required for breaking the “middle-income trap” in Japan’s case may not provide much comfort for middle-income economies currently facing the challenge. Although Japan rejected centralised state controls, the Japanese example appears to require a complex set of policies that presupposes a high degree of political cohesion and long-range economic planning, which is often difficult in many middle income economies given various political and social challenges. It also requires a state that is highly persuasive to the populace with respect to its vision for economic development. These factors appear to mark Japan out as an exception rather than an example that can be easily perceived as immediately relevant by many developing countries.

Perhaps the most avid student of Japan’s experiences will be China, which possesses a similar state capacity for a coordinated industrial policy and a qualified commitment to the market, even if it may not enjoy the same degree of social cohesion. This likely Chinese interest may explain the timing of Okazaki’s paper. However, the requirement of a strong state may produce perverse incentives for middle-income countries to maintain authoritarian systems of government (even though Japan was not classically authoritarian in that period in its history), and reminds us of unresolved tensions between economic development and democratisation.

Additional References

Alice, A, 1992. Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Bulman, D, Eden, M, Nguyen, H, 2017. “Transition from Low-Income Growth to High-Income Growth: Is there a Middle-Income Trap ?” Journal of the Asian Pacific Economy, 22(1): 5-28.

Gill, I, Kharas, H, 2007. An East Asian Renaissance: Idea for Economic Growth. Washington DC: The World Bank.

Johnson, C, 1982. MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

North, D, 2005. Understanding the Process of Economic Change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Wade, R, 2003. Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Assessing the Determinants of Economic Growth in South East Asia

The Historical State, Local Collective Action, and Economic Development in Vietnam

By Melissa Dell (Harvard University), Nathaniel Lane (Stockholm University), Pablo Querubin (New York University)

Abstract – This study examines how the historical state conditions long-run development, using Vietnam as a laboratory. Northern Vietnam (Dai Viet) was ruled by a strong centralized state in which the village was the fundamental administrative unit. Southern Vietnam was a peripheral tributary of the Khmer (Cambodian) Empire, which followed a patron-client model with weaker, more personalized power relations and no village intermediation. Using a regression discontinuity design across the Dai Viet-Khmer boundary, the study shows that areas historically under a strong state have higher living standards today and better economic outcomes over the past 150 years. Rich historical data document that in villages with a strong historical state, citizens have been better able to organize for public goods and redistribution through civil society and local government. This suggests that the strong historical state crowded in village-level collective action and that these norms persisted long after the original state disappeared.

URL: http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/nbrnberwo/23208.htm

Circulated by nep-his on 2017/03/19

Review by Fernando Arteaga (George Mason University)

What was the impact of the ancient Vietnamese Dai Viet empire in promoting long-term economic development? That is the main question the authors try to assess. Their inquiry is embedded within the now large literature on the importance of culture and institutions, as deep determinants of growth. The contribution the paper makes is, however, not restricted to adding one more piece of evidence in favor of it, but, more importantly, in providing empirical support for a specific transmission channel: how state capacity can be built through time via the fostering of local self-organization capabilities.

The paper’s main story builds on the idea that two distinct meta-societies existed within East Asia, and idea around which, by the way, there is general agreement. One of these societies based on Chinese precepts, prevalent in the Northeastern region; and other spread in the Southeast throughout the Indian Ocean.  Societies of the former category were historically constituted around a sort of Weberian professional bureaucracy that consolidated the working of a central state. The latter depended more on informal networking mechanisms among local elites to survive, and hence, tended to promote hierarchical patriarchal relationships.

Today’s Socialist Republic of Vietnam (henceforth Vietnam) is an interesting case study precisely because it arose out of the union of those two distinct cultures. The northern part, the Dai Viet, is an example of a Sino-style state, while the southern part of Vietnam (initially part of the Champa State and later as part of the larger Khmer Empire) resulted from a Indo-style society.  Figure 1 below offers map of present day Vietnam aligned with the size of the historical Dai Viet empire. Figure 1 suggests the Dai Viet expanded southwards through time but ended up establishing its final frontier in 1698 (orange color). It is this border the authors think provides a natural experiment that allows a clean regression discontinuity (RD) strategy that permits the disentanglement of the effect of being part of a bureaucratized state vis a vis a patriarchal state.

Figure 1: Dai Viet Historical Boundaries (Dell et al., 2017)

The use of the RD design is appropriate, the authors argue, because the chosen border resulted from exogenous contingencies that do not reflect any difference in future economic potential. The 1698 demarcation was settled on the ridges of a river, but there was nothing else particular to it that made that boundary preferable to other potential borders. The Dai Viet stopped its expansion because of constrains imposed by a local civil war (something that has nothing to do with the river itself). Moreover, the environmental characteristics of both sides of the river are almost identical (or vary smoothly), so there is no important geographical difference either. The only thing that changes abruptly is that on the east shore of the 1698 border, Dai Viet settlers occupied and controlled the land, while Khmer villagers occupied and controlled the land to the west of the river. Another possible counterargument to the use of the 1698 border as a natural experiment is the relevance of migration: if settlers moved across villages (at any time after the establishment of the original border), then the boundary becomes inconsequential. The authors argue that, even though they do not have historical data to control for it, there is qualitative evidence that refers to negative attitudes towards outsiders within the villages, which constitutes an important constraint to any major migratory flow. Today, both sides are part of Vietnam. It is then possible to assess if Die Viet institutions still exert some type of effect in current economic outcomes.

Figure 2 portraits the main outcome of the paper. Using household expenditure data from recent censuses (2002-2012), the authors find that today, villages situated along the historical Die Viet side of the border earn a third more than those communities that are situated on the historical Khmer side (Within the figure, the darker the zone depict lower earnings).

Figure 2a: Household Consumption, RD Graph (Dell et al., 2017)

The authors, however, not content with establishing the effects on current outcomes, look for historical evidence too. They collect data from different periods of Vietnamese history: 1878-1921 for the French Colonization, 1969-1973 for the South Vietnam State, and 1975-1985 for the early Communist Period; and find that the pattern is persistent through time: The Diet Viet zone is, in general, more developed than the Khmer side.

How can these results be interpreted?  The income differences must be due to the Die Viet heritage of greater state capacity that acted through local community self-organization that made them more co-operative and facilitated the resolution of local collective action problems. To test whether this transmission channel matters, the authors looked for data on social capital. Their main sources were the surveys and census of the South Vietnamese period. What they find corroborates their story: villagers on the Diet Viet side were more prone to participate in community activities, to collect more taxes (that at the time were local responsibility, not provincial), to have greater access to public goods (health, school and law enforcement), to be skeptical of central government in favor of local, and to give more to charity.

Comment

All in all, the authors do a thorough job in assessing the robustness of their main story. They control for several of potential alternative stories and/or possible variables that could affect the results and mechanisms.  Any critique of it may sound redundant or unreachable.  Yet, I would point to three different aspects that may be important.

First, and perhaps most importantly, I would stress that although the argument makes sense, the narrative is unclear as to how specifically the Dai Viet, which supposedly was a centralized bureaucratized state, fostered local governance. As the authors mention in the introduction, the literature on social capital is ambivalent on its effects on economic outcomes. As it is, the paper’s contribution is the finding of empirical evidence on the presence of a particular transmission channel (from state to local governance), but without a clear model and/or an analytical narrative, we are left in the dark about how explicitly this mechanism worked its way throughout society.

Second, and pushing the level of pickiness even further, one can always speak of a potential omitted variable bias. I must ask then: what about genes? The authors minimize ethnic fragmentation as a problem because they find the studied area is cataloged as being almost entirely composed of homogeneously ethnic Vietnamese. The problem is that censuses and surveys may under-report true ethnicity, and cannot capture genetic differences at all. By the authors’ own account, we are told the Diet Viet State originated as, and remained for a long time, Chinese. Moreover, as Tran (1993) attests, Chinese ethnicity may conflate the results of the paper in other several ways:

• the largest Chinese migration occurred between the late 17^th century and early 19^th century, just at the time that the Dai Viet-Khmer border was being established;
• The Chinese settled mostly in southern Vietnam, the part that the authors use as study case;
• Chinese early importance resided precisely in that they helped establish new villages and trade outposts. They (not merely the Diet Viet heritage) helped to build local governance structures.

If ethnicity has been underreported and/or Chinese genetics matter in fostering economic development in any way (as suggested by Ashraf-Galor, 20013a, 2013b) then the interpretation of the paper could dramatically change: the importance of the Dai Viet state would be downplayed in favor of just being more ethnic/genetic Chinese. After all, it is known that there is a correlation between having larger ethnic Chinese minority and larger economic growth (Priebe and Rudulf, 2015).

Third, related to the last point: one would expect that given the importance of the result – the long-term reach of Diet Viet institutions–, its impact would feel more broadly across all the territory, not only in the immediate zones of the frontier which were the last to be incorporated into the state.  Figure 3, for example, shows the level of poverty in Vietnam (Epprecht-Heinmann,2004). It is visible that the area under study (along the last border of the historical Diet Viet) has the lowest share of poverty in the whole country. The immediate area to the left (which coincides with the area that historically belonged to the Khmer Empire) is poorer indeed. But the differences are minor if we compare them to the rest of current Vietnam, which belonged almost entirely to the Diet Viet, and has the largest poorer areas.  The RD design may be identifying a non-observable variable that is concentrated in the southern part (like ethnicity or/and genes) and is not broadly distributed across the rest of Vietnam.

Figure 3: Incidence of Poverty in Vietnam (Epprecht-Heinmann, 2004: 155).

Additional References

Ashraf, Q., Galor, O., 2013a. Genetic Diversity and the Origins of Cultural Fragmentation. The American Economic Review: Papers on Proceedings 103, 528–533.

Ashraf, Q., Galor, O., 2013b. The “Out of Africa” Hypothesis, Human Genetic Diversity, and Comparative Economic Development. American Economic Review 103, 1–46.

Epprecht, M., Heinemann, A., 2004. Socioeconomic Atlas of Vietnam: A depiction of the 1999 Population and Housing Census. Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research, Bern.

Priebe, J., Rudolf, R., 2015. Does the Chinese Diaspora Speed Up Growth in Host Countries? World Development 76, 249–262.

Trần, K., 1993. The Ethnic Chinese and Economic Development in Vietnam. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.

On Social Tables, Inequality and Pre-Industrial Societies

“Towards an explanation of inequality in pre-modern societies: the role of colonies and high population density”

by Branko Milanovic (City University of New York)

Abstract: Using the newly expanded set of 40 social tables from pre-modern societies, the paper tries to find out the factors associated with the level of inequality and the inequality extraction ratio (how close to the maximum inequality have the elites pushed the actual inequality). We find strong evidence that elites in colonies were more extractive, and that more densely populated countries exhibited lower extraction ratios. We propose several possibilities linking high population density to low inequality and to low elite extraction.

URL: http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/pramprapa/74877.htm

Distributed by NEP-HIS on: 2016-11-13

Guido Alfani (Bocconi University, Milan)

Given the recent increase in the availability of good-quality data on pre-industrial (or pre-modern) societies, there is much need for works of synthesis aimed at discovering the factors shaping long-term inequality trends. Branko Milanovic has been particularly active in this field, with the publication of a recent book on Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization (2016, Harvard University Press) [see the reviews here – Ed]. In this new working paper, Milanovic tries to move forward, using a large database of social tables to single out the potential causes of differences in historical inequality levels and in inequality extraction. He focuses in particular on institutional factors (inequality in colonies vs other areas) and on demographic factors (population density). The results are very interesting and represent a useful step forward in our understanding of inequality change in preindustrial societies.

Summary
This paper was distributed by NEP-HIS on 2016-11-13. It makes use of a relatively large collection of social tables for preindustrial societies, including overall 40 social tables for about 30 distinct countries/world areas over a very long time: from Athens in 330 BCE to British India in 1938. As is well known, social tables allow us to roughly estimate income inequality. They are particularly useful in situations of relative scarcity of data and although they have been in use for centuries – the first example is Gregory King’s social table dating 1688 – many new ones have recently been produced for a variety of preindustrial societies across the world (see Lindert and Williamson 2016 for the U.S., Saito 2015 for Japan, Broadberry et al. 2015 for England, and Alfani and Tadei 2017 for Ivory Coast, Senegal and the Central African Republic). Although estimating complete distributions is the better option (see for example the accurate reconstruction of income distribution in Old Castile around 1750 by Nicolini and Ramos 2016, the impressive work by Reis 2017 on Portugal from 1565 to 1770, and finally, the estimates of wealth inequality in the period 1300-1800 produced by the EINITE project for a variety of Italian pre-unification states and other European areas: Alfani (2015, 2017); Alfani and Ryckbosch (2016); Alfani and Ammannati (2017), this is not always possible or feasible and social tables must be considered a good alternative especially when there is a relative scarcity of data.

As rightly argued by Milanovic, the recent accumulation of new evidence has not been accompanied by equal advances in the work on causal factors driving inequality change in preindustrial times. The seminal article by Van Zanden (1995), in which long-term inequality growth in the Dutch Republic was explained by long-term economic growth, has later been nuanced by works demonstrating that during the early modern period, in many parts of Europe inequality grew also in phases of economic stagnation, or even decline (Alfani 2015; Alfani and Ryckbosch 2016). The role played by large-scale mortality crises, particularly plague epidemics, has been underlined and the Black Death of 1347-51 has been shown to be the only event able to produce large-scale and enduring inequality decline in the period from ca. 1300 to 1800 (Alfani 2015; Alfani and Ammannati 2017). In a very recent book, Scheidel (2017) has taken this line of reasoning further, arguing that all substantial declines in inequality recorded in human history are due to catastrophic events (epidemics, wars, revolutions…).

Milanovic’s aim is to find further regularities, looking for possible economic, institutional or demographic drivers of inequality change in preindustrial times. He adopts the theoretical framework of the Inequality Possibility Frontier (introduced in Milanovic, Lindert and Williamson 2011), arguing that we should focus not only on how unequal a society is, but also on how much inequality it manages to “extract” compared to the maximum inequality it could achieve given that everybody needs to reach at least the subsistence level. Hence, as an economy manages to increase the per-capita surplus produced, it also acquires a potential for becoming more unequal. A first relevant empirical finding is that colonies tend to be exceptionally extractive, especially at low levels of per-capita GDP. As Milanovic points out, this is not surprising and can be explained by colonies being more exploitative, i.e. being pushed closer to the inequality possibility frontier by rapacious elites. This is apparent when looking at inequality extraction (being a colony raises the “inequality extraction ratio” by almost 13 percent points), but not necessarily when looking at overall inequality as measured by a Gini index.

Branko Milanovic

A more novel finding is the negative correlation between population density and both inequality and inequality extraction. In fact, a “high number of people per square kilometer seems to be a strong predictor of relatively egalitarian economic outcomes” (p. 16). Explaining this empirical finding is not easy and Milanovic resorts to two conjunctures: 1) in a less extractive economy, the poor enjoy relatively good living conditions and this might lead to greater population growth; or 2) a particularly dense population might be better able to make the position of the elite/of the ruler relatively precarious, enjoying de facto some sort of control over the actions of the elite and forcing it to adopt less extractive policies. As is clear, the direction of causality is the opposite in the two explanations – which are probably to be considered not mutually exclusive. Other correlates of inequality and inequality extraction include per-capita GDP and urbanization rates, which turn out being borderline significant (per-capita GDP) or positively but non-significantly correlated (urbanization rate), coherently with what was found by other recent comparative studies (Alfani and Ryckbosch 2016; Alfani and Ammannati 2017).

Comment

Undoubtedly, Milanovic’s new article helps to fill in a real need for more comparative research on preindustrial societies. The findings, albeit provisional, are very interesting and either they provide useful confirmation of what has already been argued by others – for example about the inability of per-capita GDP to explain preindustrial inequality growth in a satisfying way– or they lead us to think along new lines, especially regarding the impact on inequality of demographic variables. In fact, as urbanization rates proved to be a far poorer explanatory variable for inequality change than we expected (see in particular Ryckbosch 2016; Alfani and Ryckbosch 2016; Alfani and Ammannati 2017), demographic factors came to be perceived as probably relevant, but also somewhat puzzling (exception made for mass-mortality events like the Black Death, whose inequality-reducing effects now stand out very clearly). Population density offers us a novel perspective and in time, might prove to be the right path to follow.

However, there is also some space for constructive criticism. A first point to underline is that, differently from what Milanovic argues, the time might not yet be ripe for the kind of definitive and encompassing comparison that he seems to have in mind. The data available is still relatively scarce, including for Europe, which is the world area that has attracted the greatest amount of recent research. Additionally, social tables, albeit easily comparable, are not perfectly comparable – for example because they can include a greatly varying number of classes/groups. In some instances, classes are very few and we have no hint at within-class inequality. These are two reasons why, as argued above, complete distributions are strictly preferable to social tables. Finally, in the current version of Milanovic’s database, for the vast majority of countries only one social table is available, whereas multiple social tables for the same country at different time points would make for sounder statistical analyses. There are ongoing projects, especially EINITE and related projects, whose aim is to provide comparable state-level information on wealth and income inequality for large areas of the world at different points in time in the long run of history, but these projects are heavily dependent on new archival research and require time to be completed.

Secondly there are other possible common factors shaping long-term inequality change which Milanovic cannot consider in the context of the current article. Some of these have been underlined by a recent comparative paper by Alfani and Ryckbosch (2016) which, although focusing on “only” four European states during 1500-1800, nevertheless had the advantage of having recourse to inequality measures produced with a common methodology and covering all states continuously in time. This study underlined two factors common to all the areas covered: 1) “proletarianization”, i.e. the progressive disappearance of small peasant ownership, which occurred throughout Europe during the early modern period, and 2) the inequality-increasing consequences of the rise of the fiscal-military states from ca. 1500. These factors might have played a role also in other world areas, from the broader Mediterranean to East Asia and maybe elsewhere – but at present that is no more than speculation.

Obviously, such criticism in no way negates the considerable usefulness of Milanovic’s new paper – which is also a further demonstration of how his relatively new concept of the inequality possibility frontier allows for a deeper understanding of the actual conditions and consequences of distribution. It does, however, indicate that we are still a long way from being able to identify without ambiguity the main causes of inequality change in preindustrial societies that so many international economic historians are now attempting to discover.

Selected bibliography

Alfani, G. (2015), “Economic inequality in northwestern Italy: A long-term view (fourteenth to eighteenth centuries)”, Journal of Economic History, 75(4), 2015, pp. 1058-1096.

Alfani, G. (2017), “The rich in historical perspective. Evidence for preindustrial Europe (ca. 1300-1800)”, Cliometrica 11(3), forthcoming (early view: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11698-016-0151-8 ).

Alfani, G., Ryckbosch, W. (2016), “Growing apart in early modern Europe? A comparison of inequality trends in Italy and the Low Countries, 1500–1800”, Explorations in Economic History, 62, pp. 143-153.

Alfani, G., Ammannati, F. (2017), “Long-term trends in economic inequality: the case of the Florentine State, ca. 1300-1800”, Economic History Review, forthcoming.

Alfani, G., Tadei, F. (2017), Income Inequality in Colonial Africa: Building Social Tables for Pre-Independence Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, and Senegal, IGIER Working Paper, forthcoming.

Broadberry, S., Campbell, B., Klein, A., Overton, M, Van Leeuwen, B. (2015), British Economic Growth 1270-1870, Cambridge University Press.

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A Gift From Europe to the World: Globalization, Capitalist Expansionism and Professional Bicycle Road Racing

The History of Professional Road Cycling

by Jean-François Mignot

Abstract:

Why did cycling become professional as early as the late nineteenth century, while other sports (such as rugby) and other sport events (such as the Olympic Games) remained amateur until the 1980s? Why are the organizers of the most important bicycle races private companies, while in other sports such as soccer the main event organizer is a nonprofit organization? To what extent have bicycle races changed since the late nineteenth century? And how does cycling reflect long-term economic changes? The history of professional road cycling helps answer these questions and understand many related phenomena. This chapter provides a long-term, historical perspective on (1) professional road cycling’s economic agents, i.e., the public, race organizers, team sponsors and riders, and the relationships amongst them; (2) cycling’s governing body, the International Cycling Union; and (3) professional cycling’s final product, i.e., the show of bicycle races. More precisely, the chapter mostly focuses on the history of male professional road cycling in Western Europe since the late nineteenth century. It is founded on both an analysis of quantitative time series on the Grand Tours (and, to some extent, the classics) and a review of the existing literature on the history of professional cycling, whether economic history, institutional history, cultural history, or sport history.

URL: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01326719

Distributed by NEP-HIS on 2016-10-02

Revised by: Stefano Tijerina, Ph.D.

The professionalization and commercialization of sports illustrates the forces of capitalism in action, as its culture and institutional structures transition from the local to the global in response to the demands of the market and the increasing interdependence among multiple private and public stakeholders. In his brief history of professional road cycling Jean-François Mignot demonstrates how the sport is transformed throughout the twentieth century as it transitioned from amateur to professional. Mignot argues that the professionalization of this sport anticipated many other international sports because the forces of capitalism pressured the athletes to abandon their amateur status early on in order to secure an income.[1] His research reveals the early infiltration of the private sector within the culture of cycling in Europe, the institutional transformation of the sport, the market’s impact on the institutional structure of bicycle racing, and its integration into the global system. Ultimately, his historic analysis allows the possibility of drawing parallels with the processes of transformation experienced by other goods, commodities, and services that adapted to the inevitable pressures of the expansion of capitalism.

Jean-François Mignot’s research shows that the idea of organizing road race competitions around the commonly used bicycle emerged from the desire of newspapers across Europe to sell more newspapers through this new and creative marketing scheme. Newspapers in France, Belgium, Spain, and Italy began organizing races on public roads in the late 1800s to show the public that human and bicycles could cover vast distances across flat and mountainous terrain. As indicated by Mignot, early races of 25 to 70 hours in duration covering 250 to 400 kilometers became epic sporting events of duration and perseverance among extraordinary European athletes.[2] The media’s construct of these epic figures created the thirst for road cycling, but it was the fact that the spectator standing on the side of the road was only able to watch the spectacle for a few seconds and depended on the print media to recreate the rest of the race, that pushed newspapers into the sponsorship business. It was this interdependent relation between spectator, athlete, and newspapers that inspired the print media industry to organize these road races, hoping that races would become magnets for advertisement sales. As indicated by Mignot, “cycling fans demanded more information” and “pictures of the race,” and the race organizing newspapers were interested in supplying the demand by covering the races in detailed form as they watched circulations increase.[3]

The one-day races or “Classics” and the three-week “Grand Tours” became the backbone of professional road racing in Europe. By the 1930s newspapers had monopolized the sponsorship of the events, while fans filled the roadways accompanied by publicity caravans “that distributed product samples to spectators.”[4] Meanwhile bicycle and tire companies became the sponsors of teams, as individual riders were replaced by teams that worked on behalf of the stars that made up the top cycling teams in Europe.[5]

In the early stages of professionalization, cycling stars did not receive any wages and were therefore forced to secure their income through race earnings. The increase in the popularity of the sport was followed by the increase in riders’ income.[6] The interdependent relations necessary for the expansion of capitalism slowly developed; increasing sales motivated the newspapers to improve the quality of the spectacle by increase the race winnings, forcing the sponsors to offer better wages in order to recruit and maintain the loyalty of the top cyclists, ultimately attracting more fan-base that in turn attracted other secondary sponsors that turned the caravans into marketing spectacles as well. This became even more lucrative as other means of communication joined in, particularly radio and later on television.

Jean-François Mignot points out at the first three decades of the Cold War was a period of crisis for the sport in Europe, emphasizing that urbanization and the increasing sales of motorcycles forced bicycle manufacturers to decrease their team sponsorship funding and ultimately sending the salaries of professional riders in a downward spiral.[7] This, argued Mignot, forced the professional rider to seek sponsorships outside of the bicycle world.[8] The stars and their teams began to tap the “extra-sportif” market for sponsorship and this market segment was quick to capitalize on the opportunity.[9]

Jean-François Mignot points out that sponsoring newspapers and bicycle companies interested in protecting their own profit margins opposed the penetration of “extra-sportif” sponsors by trying to control the rules of the sport in order to impede their participation, but at the end the market forces prevailed.[10] This European crisis that unfolded between the 1950s and 1980s was in fact the initial era of global commercialization of the sport. Mignot’s Euro centrism impedes him from moving beyond the region’s Grand Tours and Classics, not recognizing that the “extra-sportif” sponsorships that challenged the status quo took professional cycling outside of Europe and introduced it to the rest of the world. For example, by the 1950s radio transmissions of the European races were common in distant places like Colombia where their own private sectors had replicated the European business model and established lucrative professional road races to supply the local demand for professional bicycle road racing. The first edition of the Colombian Grand Tour, La Vuelta a Colombia, was organized in 1951, and by then several local Classics like the Tunja-Bucaramanga and the Medellín-Sansón were already engrained in the Colombian cycling culture. As in the case of Europe, local newspapers like El Tiempo became interested in sponsoring the local Grand Classic as a means to increase sales and circulation, but contrary to the European distrust of “extra-sportif” sponsors, the Colombian organizers welcomed other private local sponsors including the national airline Avianca, the Bavaria brewery, Avisos Zeón and the Flota Mercante Grancolombiana.[11]

The crisis of professional bicycle road racing in Europe described by Mignot was certainly caused by a decreasing popularity of the sport and the internal struggles over the monopoly of the sponsorship and management of the sport, but it was also the market’s response to the emergence of other professional sports in Europe as well as the professional cyclist’s ability to capitalize on the globalization of the sport. It was an illustration of how, in a capitalist system, the internal saturation of a market led to the natural expansion into other global markets, as in the case of Colombia in the 1940s and 1950s.[12]

Such was the case of French Born, José Beyaerst, the 1948 Olympic road race champion who moved to Colombia after the Second World War, winning the second edition of the Vuelta a Colombia in 1952 and later on establishing a career as the coach for the Colombian national cycling team.[13] Beyaerst would make Colombia his home, developing the professionalization of the sport and becoming a key player in what would later become one of the cycling powers of the world. The expansionism of the sport would reach all corners of the world between the 1950s and the 1980s, it was a period of crisis for Europe as Mignot points out but it was a glorious time for global professional bicycle road racing.

Television was the game-changer, spearheading the resurgence of professional cycling in Europe in the 1980s. Taking advantage of the integration of Europe, race organizers capitalized on the magic of television to attract new European audiences, redesigning the stage circuits of the Grand Tours (Giro d’Italia, Vuelta a España, and the Tour de France) with the intention of tapping new urban centers that were outside of Spain, France, and Italy.[14] Television also globalized the European Grand Tours, introducing the cycling stars to the world, providing an opportunity for sponsors to reach a global audience, selling commercial air space, and as a result increasing revenues, salaries and profits for the whole sport.

Jean-François Mignot points out that the globalization of the sport also impacted the nature of cycling teams. By the 1980s the teams competing in the Grand Tours were no longer made up of Spanish, Italian, and French riders; their nationalities diversified and so did their sponsors.[15] Although Mignot highlights the fact that by 1986 the American Greg LeMond had won the Tour de France, Colombia’s Lucho Herrera had conquered the Vuelta a España (1987), the Russian Evgueni Berzin the Giro d’Italia (1994), and the Australian Cadel Evans the Tour de France (2011), he does not point out that these foreign cyclists also brought with them new local sponsors that then began to compete with European sponsors.[16] Mignot avoids talking about the American Lance Armstrong, leaving a large gap in the history of the globalization of the sport, considering that the American rider won seven consecutive Tour de France championships (1999-2005) before the US Anti-Doping Agency and the Union Cycliste Internationale stripped him from his titles after a doping scandal. Although LeMond popularized cycling racing in the United States it was Armstrong that converted it into a multi-billion dollar industry bringing in American brands such as RadioShack and Motorola into the world of cycling.

Jean-François Mignot’s research illustrates how the sport expanded globally as the Western World exported the idea of the professionalization and commercialization of cycling, taking advantage of the expansion of Western culture across the world, the increasing leisure time and incomes of the global population, and the increasing communications technology that allowed viewers from across the world to connect with the live stage by stage action of the Grand Tours and the Classics. Nevertheless, his Euro centric approach impedes him from explaining how the professionalization of the sport evolved outside of Europe. Although Mignot clarified early on that his analysis centered on Europe, this approach weakened his argument regarding the globalization of the sport and its repercussion on the European construct, as foreigners began to conquer and dominate the sport as in the case of Americans Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong, or the current stars South African born Christopher Froome and the Colombian climber Nairo Quintana. The incorporation of a broader global perspective would have allowed Mignot to test whether or not the professionalization of the sport in other markets was also spearheaded by other local newspapers or if on the contrary other media and non-media-based sponsors jumped on this business opportunity. It would have also been important to identify when professionalization took place in other markets to compare whether or not the influence of the European sport transcended the borders in a timely manner or even identifying political, economic, social, and cultural factors that delayed its expansion into other global markets. Moreover, it would have been important for Mignot to link the policies of the Union Cycliste Internationale to the globalization of the sport, as well as the escalation of global competition among bicycle manufacturers, and the global competition between scientists, technological designers, and pharmaceutical industries that centered on the legal and illegal preparation of the current athlete.

[1] Jean-François Mignot. “The History of Professional Road Cycling.” HAL archives-ouvertes.fr, https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01326719/document, June 5, 2016, p. 4.

[2] Ibid., 2.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 3.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., 4.

[7] Ibid., 5.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] “Vuelta a Colombia Historia.” Ciclismo colombiano – La Vuelta a Colombia. April 25, 2007. Accessed November 21, 2016. http://ciclismo.al-dia.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Kidnapping of Lucho Herrera (and José Beyaert’s Narrow Escape”. Alps&Andes, March 2000. Accessed November 21, 2016. http://www.alpsandes.com/posts/clinginquisition.com/2013/04/the-kidnapping-of-lucho-herrera-and.html

 

[14] Mignot, “The History of Professional Road Cycling,” 5.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid., 6.