Twentieth-century Data Research Articles

Progressing regressively: conditional convergence and Europeanisation of tax mixes

ABSTRACT Tax mixes are important components of welfare systems, affecting income inequality, labour market outcomes and economic performance. Still, they are relatively under-examined in the literature studying the convergence of EU welfare states. Most existing analyses of tax mix convergence are limited to western Europe, mainly use twentieth-century data and do not control for domestic determinants of tax policy. I therefore study the determinants of tax mix composition and convergence in a panel of 30 EU and OECD countries between 1980 and 2019 using linear regressions. I find that tax mixes converge and shift from personal income taxes towards more regressive revenue sources. Contrary to theoretical predictions, both observations are almost unrelated to proxies of tax competition. Instead, the main driving factor is EU membership. Tax mixes of Central and Eastern European member states, however, do not Europeanise: they constitute a distinct group with low and persistently regressive taxation.

A decade of cold Eurasian winters reconstructed for the early 19th century

Annual-to-decadal variability in northern midlatitude temperature is dominated by the cold season. However, climate field reconstructions are often based on tree rings that represent the growing season. Here we present cold-season (October-to-May average) temperature field reconstructions for the northern midlatitudes, 1701-1905, based on extensive phenological data (freezing and thawing dates of rivers, plant observations). Northern midlatitude land temperatures exceeded the variability range of the 18th and 19th centuries by the 1940s, to which recent warming has added another 1.5 °C. A sequences of cold winters 1808/9-1815/6 can be explained by two volcanic eruptions and unusual atmospheric flow. Weak southwesterlies over Western Europe in early winter caused low Eurasian temperatures, which persisted into spring even though the flow pattern did not. Twentieth century data and model simulations confirm this persistence and point to increased snow cover as a cause, consistent with sparse information on Eurasian snow in the early 19th century.

Investigation of the Long-term Variation of Solar Ca ii K Intensity. I. Density-to-intensity Calibration Formula for Historical Photographic Plates

Abstract This paper presents a novel formula to convert photographic density into intensity for historical photographic plates of the Sun. Photographic photometry is of great importance as the very first step of analyzing century-long archived photographic data to study the long-term variation. The calibration formula is newly developed by using the intensity fluctuation originating in the network pattern in the quiet region, taking into consideration the nonlinearity between the density and the intensity. The formula is useful especially when experimentally obtained characteristic curves are insufficient for homogeneous analysis of a whole long-term data set. An example procedure of the calibration using the formula is demonstrated. Resultant intensity images calibrated from the photographic data can reproduce both the fluctuation and the center-to-limb variation of modern reference data. The calibration procedure is also tested with a whole twentieth century data set and shows good performance, while the preliminary result of the long-term intensity variation seems to be partially affected by the quality of the original plates. The resultant solar Ca II K intensity variation will be updated and discussed in a subsequent paper with the comparison to the solar UV variation related to the terrestrial environment.

Identifying mid-twentieth-century historical trends in United States game law violations: any basis for conservation?

ABSTRACT The mid-twentieth-century was an important period for game laws in the United States. Identifying trends in game law enforcement can help identify violations that occurred more and less over time (e.g. species that have had more or less violations at a particular time). There has been little research on species emphasis with regard to game laws, with respect to historical game law roots in mid-twentieth-century America. For this study, 10,062 violations were identified from randomly selected states including Kansas, North Carolina, Florida, and Oklahoma. New Jersey and Massachusetts were used from a prior nineteenth-century study and used twentieth-century data for this analysis. The results of this study revealed that fishing violations or hunting/ fishing without a license composed the majority of violations and there were some significant differences between species, number of fines, amounts of fines, violations that resulted in jail, and number of acquittals. Potential reasons for these results are discussed. Future studies could encapsulate more states with various ecosystems and biota (e.g. coastal states or Midwestern states) to better understand the majority and minority of species-specific enforcement trends in those states.

A new approach in temporal-spatial reconstruction and synoptic analysis of cold waves in the northwest of Iran

The present paper intends to reconstruct temporal-spatial patterns of below − 15 °C cold waves in the northwest of Iran and carry out a synoptic analysis of the patterns of these cold waves. Carrying out research on this topic can assist researchers and the state authorities in solving problems of different spheres of society, such as agriculture, economics, public health, etc., since cold waves can affect health problems in society and frosts can inflict severe damages to the agricultural crops and thereby lead to serious economic losses. For the purpose of this paper, a data corpus related to a period of 142 years from 1871 to 2012 was obtained from the relevant twentieth-century data banks of NOAA. Having sorted out the relevant data, cold waves of − 15 °C as well as cold waves of below − 15 °C were identified in the first place. Then, the identified cold wave patterns were classified and synoptically analyzed. The results revealed that, at the sea level, high-pressure waves from Siberia, west and northern regions coupled with the atmospheric blockings and the northern airflow in the upper levels of the atmosphere, led to transition of cold waves from northern latitudes to the northwest regions of Iran, resulting in very intense and long-lasting cold waves.

An updated review about carbon dioxide and climate change

This manuscript will review the essence of the role of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere. The logic of CO2 involvement in changing the climate will be investigated from every perspective: reviewing the historical data record, examining in further detail the twentieth-century data record, and evaluating the radiation role of CO2 in the atmosphere—calculating and integrating the Schwarzschild radiation equation with a full complement of CO2 absorption coefficients. A review of the new theory of climate change—due to the Sun’s magnetic field interacting with cosmic rays, is provided. The application of this new theory is applied to climate-change events within the latter part of the Earth’s interglacial period. The application to the Earth’s Ice Ages is not detailed here due to manuscript size constraints, but is referenced for the reader. The results of this review point to the extreme value of CO2 to all life forms, but no role of CO2 in any significant change of the Earth’s climate.

Multi-model projections of twenty-first century North Pacific winter wave climate under the IPCC A2 scenario

A dynamical wave model implemented over the North Pacific Ocean was forced with winds from three coupled global climate models (CGCMs) run under a medium-to-high scenario for greenhouse gas emissions through the twenty-first century. The results are analyzed with respect to changes in upper quantiles of significant wave height (90th and 99th percentile HS) during boreal winter. The three CGCMs produce surprisingly similar patterns of change in winter wave climate during the century, with waves becoming 10–15 % smaller over the lower mid-latitudes of the North Pacific, particularly in the central and western ocean. These decreases are closely associated with decreasing windspeeds along the southern flank of the main core of the westerlies. At higher latitudes, 99th percentile wave heights generally increase, though the patterns of change are less uniform than at lower latitudes. The increased wave heights at high latitudes appear to be due a variety of wind-related factors including both increased windspeeds and changes in the structure of the wind field, these varying from model to model. For one of the CGCMs, a commonly used statistical approach for estimating seasonal quantiles of HS on the basis of seasonal mean sea level pressure (SLP) is used to develop a regression model from 60 years of twentieth century data as a training set, and then applied using twenty-first century SLP data. The statistical model reproduces the general pattern of decreasing twenty-first century wave heights south of ~40 N, but underestimates the magnitude of the changes by ~50–70 %, reflecting relatively weak coupling between sea level pressure and wave heights in the CGCM data and loss of variability in the statistically projected wave heights.

Twentieth-century varieties reflecting mediaeval settlement in Normandy: Combining modern and historical dialectology

The article demonstrates how the methods of modern dialectology can be used together with established dialectological and toponymic findings to inform our understanding of present-day variation. The linguistic data used are from the Atlas Linguistique et Ethnographique Normand, whose data were collected in the 1970s, and in which many of the words given to researchers are probably Norman as opposed to French. The comparison of these data with the known settlement patterns of Vikings in Normandy in the ninth to eleventh centuries shows clearly that the Vikings' mediaeval settlement patterns are reflected in isoglosses which can be drawn based on the Atlas' twentieth-century data, and the statistics of the modern methods show how strong the correlation is.

Southern African Monthly Rainfall Variability: An Analysis Based on Generalized Linear Models

Southern Africa is characterized by a high degree of rainfall variability, affecting agriculture and hydrology, among other sectors. This paper aims to investigate such variability and to identify stable relationships with its potential drivers in the climate system; such relationships may be used as the basis for the statistical downscaling of climate model outputs, for example. The analysis uses generalized linear models (GLMs). The GLMs are fitted to twentieth-century observational data for the period 1957–2006 to characterize the dependence of monthly precipitation occurrences and amounts upon the climate indicators of interest. In contrast with many of the analyses that have previously been used to investigate controls on precipitation in the region, GLMs allow for the investigation of the relationships between different components of the climate system (geographical and climatic drivers) simultaneously. Six climate factors were found to drive part of the rainfall variability in the region, and their modeled effect upon rainfall occurrences and amounts resulted in general agreement with previous studies. Among the retained indices, relative humidity and El Niño accounted for the highest degree of explained variability. The location and intensity of the jet stream were also found to have a statistically significant and physically meaningful effect upon rainfall variability.

ENSO influence on Europe during the last centuries

El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) affects climate not only in the Pacific region and the tropics, but also in the North Atlantic-European area. Studies based on twentieth-century data have found that El Nino events tend to be accompanied in late winter by a negative North Atlantic Oscillation index, low temperatures in northeastern Europe and a change in precipitation patterns. However, many questions are open, for example, concerning the stationarity of this relation. Here we study the relation between ENSO and European climate during the past 500 years based on statistically reconstructed ENSO indices, early instrumental station series, and reconstructed fields of surface air temperature, sea-level pressure, precipitation, and 500 hPa geopotential height. After removing years following tropical volcanic eruptions (which systematically mask the ENSO signal), we find a consistent and statistically significant ENSO signal in late winter and spring. The responses to El Nino and La Nina are close to symmetric. In agreement with studies using twentieth-century data only, the ENSO signal in precipitation is different in fall than in late winter. Moving correlation analyses confirm a stationary relationship between ENSO and late winter climate in Europe during the past 300 years. However, the ENSO signal is modulated significantly by the North Pacific climate. A multi-field cluster analysis for strong ENSO events during the past 300 years yields a dominant pair of clusters that is symmetric and represents the ‘classical’ ENSO effects on Europe.

Baseline nitrate concentration in groundwater of the Chalk in south Dorset, UK

Determining the degree of nitrate pollution in Chalk groundwater is difficult without a clear understanding of concentrations naturally present. In the UK, a general shortage of long-term records of nitrate concentrations in Chalk groundwater prevents a full quantification of baseline concentrations. This paper presents late nineteenth and early twentieth century data on nitrate concentrations in Chalk groundwater in south Dorset, UK and compares them with corresponding data for the last 25 years. The nitrate record is instructive in (1) providing an insight into the baseline nitrate concentration of groundwater; (2) defining the level of nitrate pollution in potable supplies from the Chalk aquifer; and (3) identifying the long-term variations in local nitrate concentrations. Over a period exceeding 100 years mean nitrate concentrations increased from 1.04 mg NO 3–N l −1 to 6.37 mg NO 3–N l −1. Anthropogenic modification of the local groundwater composition is not evident in the early nitrate record. Nitrate data throughout this early period reflect natural background concentrations of approximately 1 mg NO 3–N l −1. Intensified fertilser use and increased livestock numbers are suggested as the fundamental cause of the rise in nitrate concentrations. The implications of the nitrate record for regional hydrogeological processes are discussed.

A GLOBAL MODEL OF POPULATION‐RESOURCE INTERACTION

ABSTRACT. A global model of population‐resource interaction is proposed consisting of two first order ordinary differential equations. In it the population growth rate increases due to increasing technology, then declines due to declining resources. When the model is fit to twentieth century data it predicts that global population will peak and then decline while already declining global resources bottom out; both will eventually stabilize slightly above their lows. Because of the uncertainty of model parameters and resource data, the values and times of these peaks and lows are uncertain, but the qualitative behavior of the model transcends this uncertainty. Actual best‐fit values of population include a peak of nearly nine billion about year 2050 and a peak rate of decline of 0.3% about year 2100. Global resources bottom out at 70% of optimum around year 2100. Variability and sensitivity analyses are also provided.

Long Run Wealth Inequality

One approach to analyzing inequality is to compare average economic choices from a classical theoretical framework. Another approach considers the impact of the formation of society, through statutes and institutions, on average economic outcomes. This dissertation studies the effects of slavery on black-white wealth inequality upon the emancipation of slaves in the US using historical, crosssectional data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Samples (IPUMS). Foremost, a theory of relative wealth is presented, where wealth is determined by group-specific wages, hours of work, consumption, and interest rates. Historical black-white differences in wealth were estimated using regression decomposition. This technique decomposes economic differences into the portion explained by differences in characteristics and the unexplained portion due to different returns to a set of characteristics (See, e.g., Blinder 1973 and Oaxaca 1973). Results confirm that we cannot reject that the claim that, when comparing the wealth of ex-slaves to the wealth whites, differences in wealth due to unexplained (or discrimination) effects dominate the portion due to classical characteristic differences. Furthermore, the size and source of contemporary black-white wealth differences have historical roots: In 1870, at least 75 percent of white-black wealth differences were not explained by characteristic differences described by the classical model when employing the primary index. This is consistent with wealth decompositions of late twentieth century data that shows that three-quarters of white-black differences in wealth were unexplained (See, e.g., Blau and Graham 1990). Finally, since unexplained differences in states that abolished slavery after the CivilWar were 10 percent higher than unexplained effects in states that abolished slavery well before the CivilWar and the magnitudes of the unexplained effects were similar over the long-run, we cannot reject the existence of a negatively bounded correlation between the duration of time from enslavement and the magnitude of unexplained differences in wealth.

The Ordering of Time: From the Ancient Computus to the Modern Computer

This book is a concise history of the use and interpretation of time, written by one of the foremost medievalists in Europe today. Arno Borst examines the various ways that time has been calculated by numbers and measured by instruments over several centuries, from the an ancient method of determining times and dates to the present-day computer. In a wide-ranging discussion, he analyzes the classical Greek concepts of divine, natural, and human time; the universal time of ancient Rome; the Easter cycle of the Middle Ages; the development of the mechanical clock in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; early modern chronology; and twentieth-century data processing. Borst argues that although many centuries and countless different instruments sundials, horologia, abaci, astrolabes, calendars, and calculating machines separate the medieval computus from the modern computer, each generation has had to answer the same question: how can we make the best use of our available time to improve our lives? computer, he suggests, is merely a new instrument employed for an ancient purpose. Lively and accessible, The Ordering of Time will be welcomed by students and researchers in social and cultural history, the history of science and mathematics, as well as anyone interested in the history of time and numbers.

Supply Shocks and Net Exports: Some Evidence for Australia

The theory of intertemporal substitution predicts that households will attempt to smooth the fluctuations in consumption caused by temporary supply shocks. This substitution leads to an increase in the short-term interest rate when temporary decreases in supply occur. Observing agricultural supply shocks, Dave Denslow and Mark Rush (1989) found evidence to support this theory in a closed economy (nineteenth century France). In an open economy, a temporary drop in agricultural output would decrease net exports rather than affect the interest rate. Evidence to support this theory is found using twentieth-century Australian data. Copyright 1993 by Ohio State University Press.

Denomination and fertility decline: the Catholics and Protestants of Gillespie County, Texas

This article is a study of religious fertility differentials in Gillespie County Texas between 1850 and 1910....The results show that Protestants (Lutherans and Methodists) had significantly lower fertility than Catholics and began to limit their fertility earlier....The results also show that the convergence of Protestant and Catholic fertility in the United States often seen in twentieth-century data had begun much earlier. The conclusions of the article suggest that the long process of convergence of Protestant and Catholic fertility which was not complete until the 1970s had more to do with the appearance of regular waves of mostly Catholic immigrants than to a long process by which Catholics very gradually came to have fertility like that of Protestants. (SUMMARY IN FRE AND GER) (EXCERPT)

Economic Antecedents of Mental Hospitalization: A Nineteenth-Century Time-Series Test

More than 100 studies have cited M. Harvey Brenner's (1973) claim that fluctuations in the economy increase the onset of mental illness and thus generate increases in mental hospitalization. Published attempts to replicate Brenner, however, have considered only twentieth-century data. One of Brenner's most memorable claims was that a stable inverse relationship between mental illness and the economy could be seen over a 127-year span beginning in the early nineteenth century. Unfortunately, no research since Brenner's has considered nineteenth-century populations. In this paper we analyze the hypothesis that economic change provokes a substantial fraction of first admissions to mental hospitals. We used admissions registers from the three institutions to construct a data base that approximates a psychiatric case register for a nineteenth-century American city from 1881 to 1891. Time-series tests show no support for the "provocation" hypothesis.

Interactions among transportation fuel substitution, vehicle quantity growth, and national economic growth

Hypotheses concerning the micro- and macroeconomic effects of historically important fuel switches in the vehicles operating on the dominant U.S. transportation modes are statistically tested using nineteenth and twentieth century data. Estimates of annual rates of change of fuel switching are constructed using logistic curve models fitted to often sparse data on fuel use. The estimated annual rate of loss of market share of an old fuel is then shown to be positively and consistently correlated with five-year averages of declines in the rate of growth of the fleets of vehicles affected by ongoing fuel switch. Other statistical tests show that five-year average changes in the rate of growth of the quantity of vehicles positively correlate with five-year average changes in the rate of growth of macro-economic activity when the affected vehicles are directly (through production and sales) responsible for a large share of macroeconomic activity (real GNP). The vehicle types shown to have this effect are locomotives from 1885–1915 and automobiles thereafter. The third set of tests supports an interpretation that the indirect effects of fuels switches, acting through their effects on the costs of transporting factors of production (both labor and physical inputs), have a significant and consistent GNP effect throughout the 1880–1980 period, even during the WWII-influenced period when the test for direct effects of automobiles fails. In case study discussion of each fuel switch it is shown that a pronounced drop in GNP growth occurs at the time when the important fuel switches are most rapidly being accomplished. Results of the statistical and case study analyses are compared to the author's prior research on vehicle engine innovation. The timing of peak rates of fuel switching and vehicle engine innovation are graphically shown to coincide for locomotives and automobiles from the 1880s to the 1980s. Further, the peak rates of fuel switching are graphically shown to occur when current real GNP relative to trend real GNP is declining and/or below the trend.

Transported to Van Diemen's Land: the boys of the Frances Charlotte (1832) and Lord Goderich (1841).

From the logs of ships transporting convicts from Great Britain to Australia in the early nineteenth century, records of 2 ships carrying juveniles have been transcribed. Data on the backgrounds of the boys and height data are presented and analyzed. Comparisons are made with nineteenth- and twentieth-century data sets. Caution is expressed about limitations of the data, which constitute a sample stratified by age whose differences in means are sometimes anomalous.

Econometric Evaluation of Alternative Money Stock Series, 1880-1913

STUDIES OF THE DEMAND FOR MONEY have in recent years played an important part in the discussion of economic policy. Three aspects of money demand functions have been of particular importance in these discussions. Estimates of income elasticities of money demand are essential before one can calculate what rate of growth of the money stock would not produce an excess supply of money; estimates of the interest elasticity and the implications these have, ceteris panbus, for the LM function used to play an important role in debates over the effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policy; and demonstrations of the stability or instability of the demand function are important in analyzing the records of monetary policymakers, the policymakers eagerly searching for evidence of instability and their critics generally rejecting such evidence. These contemporary discussions were initially set in a context where activist policymaking, fine tuning, was the norm, and therefore such questions do not, at first glance, appear to arise in discussions of nineteenth-century and early twentiethcentury data. But, of course, there were exogenous shocks to economies then, and these are identical to policy-imposed disturbances. For instance, cyclical downtutms abroad affected aggregate output, and gold discoveries affected the world money stock. In analyzing the consequences of such events, knowledge of the form of the money demand function can play a very useful role. Can an inflow across the