Emerging Growth
The Likelihood of Persistently Low Global Fertility
Michael Geruso & Dean Spears
Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2026, Pages 3-26
Abstract:
For the world as a whole, average birth rates have been falling for decades — from about 5 in 1950 to a little above 2 today. Two-thirds of people today live in a country where the birth rate is below an average of two children per two adults, which means below the fertility level needed to sustain population sizes (without net migration). In this paper, we assess whether low fertility is likely to persist as a global phenomenon. We distinguish cohort birth rates, which matter for generation-to-generation population change, from period birth rates, which present a snapshot of birth rates at a point in time, but may offer less insight on longer-run possibilities. Where cohort birth rates have fallen low, they have not subsequently rebounded. We show that both increasing rates of lifetime childlessness and smaller family sizes among parents have contributed to falling cohort birth rates. Pronatal policies, we discuss, can have large effects on the annual fertility data without substantially changing the average number of children women have over their lifetimes. Although future birth rates remain uncertain, we conclude from the evidence that, over a long horizon, persistent low fertility is a likely future.
The industrial cost of fixed exchange rate regimes
Blaise Gnimassoun, Carl Grekou & Valérie Mignon
Journal of Macroeconomics, March 2026
Abstract:
Premature deindustrialization in most emerging and developing economies is one of the most striking stylized facts of the recent decades. In this paper, we provide solid empirical evidence supporting that the choice of a fixed exchange rate regime accelerates this phenomenon. Relying on a panel of 146 developed, emerging, and developing countries over the 1974-2019 period, we show that fixed exchange rate regimes have had a negative, significant, and robust effect on the size of the manufacturing sector — developing countries being the most affected by the industrial cost of such a regime. Additional gravity model regressions show that the impact of fixed regimes passes through the trade channel. In particular, this regime has kept countries with low relative productivity in a state of structural dependence on imports of manufactured products to the detriment of the emergence of a strong local manufacturing sector.
Seeds of knowledge: Premodern scholarship, academic fields, and European growth
Matthew Curtis & David de la Croix
European Economic Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Academic human capital is widely believed to be important for economic growth, both historically and today. However, different fields of knowledge — such as theology, law, or science — are not equally important. Using a novel database of premodern European academics (1000-1800), we apply machine learning to classify scholars' fields based on publication titles. We compare these constructed fields to scholars' teaching disciplines and trace how their shares evolved, highlighting the Humanistic Revolution, Reformation, Scientific Revolution, and Enlightenment. As an application, we measure the historical relationship between scholarly output and economic growth. We find that an increase in scholarly output equivalent to a thousand minor scholars is associated with a 20.56% higher income per capita in the scholars' regions of birth by 1900. Furthermore, regions with a higher share of scholars in science and botany show stronger income growth. To address endogeneity, we instrument scholarly activity using exogenous variation from forced migration. We propose a mechanism consistent with these findings: scholars foster human capital accumulation among their fellow natives.
Consequences of the Black Sea Slave Trade: Long-Run Development in Eastern Europe
Volha Charnysh & Ranjit Lall
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigate the developmental consequences of slave-raiding in Eastern Europe, the largest source of slaves in the early modern world after West Africa. Drawing on a wide-ranging new dataset, we estimate that at least five million people were captured from hundreds of locations across Eastern Europe between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. We hypothesize that, over time, raids encouraged an economically advantageous process of defensive state-building linked to raided societies' resistance to and lack of integration into the slave trade. Using difference-in-differences and instrumental variables strategies, we find that exposure to raids is positively associated with long-run urban growth and related indicators of demographic and commercial development. Consistent with our posited mechanism, raided areas constructed more robust defensive infrastructures and attained higher levels of military, administrative, and fiscal capacity. Our findings suggest that the structure of slave production conditions its developmental legacies, cautioning against drawing generalizations from the African context.
Economic Ideas and Policy Implementation: Evidence from Malthusian Training in British Indian Bureaucracy
Eric Robertson
University of Virginia Working Paper, November 2025
Abstract:
Public officials often fail to implement government policy as directed, yet the role of economic ideas in shaping these implementation choices is poorly understood. This paper provides causal evidence that exposure to economic ideas can durably influence bureaucrat behavior. I study British colonial bureaucrats in India, exploiting a natural experiment created by the abrupt death of Thomas Malthus in 1834, replacing his economics instruction at a bureaucrat training college for that of a contemporary critic, Richard Jones. Whereas Malthus regarded economic distress as a natural mechanism for restoring equilibrium by reducing population growth, Jones disagreed with this view. Linking rainfall shocks to district-level fiscal responses, I show that officials trained by Malthus delivered less relief during droughts, providing 0.10-0.25 SD less aid across all major measures compared with officials taught by Jones. The results reveal that exposure to abstract economic ideas can shape real-world policy implementation for decades.
The Limits and Consequences of Population Policy: Evidence from China's Wan Xi Shao Campaign
Kimberly Singer Babiarz et al.
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Most of China's fertility decline predates the famous One Child Policy — and instead occurred under its predecessor, the Wan Xi Shao, or Later, Longer, Fewer (LLF) campaign. Studying LLF's contribution to fertility and sex selection behavior, we find that LLF i) reduced China's total fertility rate by 0.95 births per woman (explaining 30.6% of its fertility decline), ii) doubled the use of male-biased fertility stopping rules, and iii) promoted postnatal selection (implying 180,000 previously unrecognized missing girls, or 19% of the total during our study period). Considering Chinese population policy to be extreme in global experience, our paper demonstrates the limits of population policy — and its potential human costs.
Long-lasting health effects of Soviet education
Joan Costa-Font & Anna Nicińska
Economica, forthcoming
Abstract:
Education systems serve various purposes, including the enhancement of later-life health, though effects can differ by sociopolitical regime. This paper examines the effect of communist education, which exposed children to a distinct curriculum and ideological content, on later-life health. We exploit a novel dataset that collects information on compulsory education reforms in several European countries, with different cohorts exposed and unexposed to Soviet communist education. Using a difference-in-differences (DiD) design, we show that while the extension of compulsory education improved some relevant measures of health, communist education encompassed an additional health-enhancing effect. We document that the effect remains robust when using staggered DiD approaches and various robustness tests, and that it is explained by the priority given to physical education in the school curricula, together with an increased likelihood of marriage.
How Britain Unified Germany: Trade Routes and the Formation of the Zollverein
Thilo Huning & Nikolaus Wolf
Journal of Economic History, March 2026, Pages 109-145
Abstract:
Does the location of a state relative to others matter? We argue that a state's location can affect its bargaining power, and thus multilateral relations if trade costs depend on trade routes that pass through other states. This is an important, yet neglected aspect of economic history. We show how an exogenous border change — caused by Britain's intervention at Vienna in 1815 — affected the location and trade routes of Prussia and other German states. We find that this border change led to the formation of the first customs union in history, the German Zollverein of 1834.
The commercialization of labour markets: Evidence from wage inequality in the Middle Ages
Jordan Claridge, Vincent Delabastita & Spike Gibbs
Economic History Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper moves beyond the focus on 'average' wage trends in pre-industrial economies by examining the broad diversity of pay rates and forms of remuneration across occupations and regions in medieval England. We find that whilst some workers enjoyed substantial growth in wage rates after the Black Death, there was a large group who experienced no real increases. We argue that wage inequality in post-Black Death England reflects the uneven penetration of market forces across occupations and regions, with deep-rooted customary structures continuing to shape remuneration. Its findings suggest that a more nuanced approach is essential for understanding the complexities and continuities of pre-industrial labour dynamics.
Felons' chattels and English living standards in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
Chris Briggs et al.
Economic History Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
The later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have long occupied an intriguing and contested place in discussions of England's long-run economic development. One key issue around which debate has coalesced is the living standards of the population as a whole and of different groups within it. We contribute to this debate by bringing forward new evidence on the material living standards of peasants, artisans, and wage-earners in the countryside and small towns. This consists of lists of goods and chattels forfeited to the crown by felons, fugitives, and outlaws. This material, found in the archive of the royal escheator, is not without its problems. Yet, a careful quantitative analysis of both the overall valuations of forfeited goods and the incidence of specific items in such lists of forfeitures shows that there was relatively little change in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This is surprising, given the traditional characterization of this period as a time of rising consumption during the 'golden age of the labourer'. This later medieval evidence is contextualized through the analysis of similar forfeiture data relating to the sixteenth century.