Dissertation Research in Economics: Trade and Demography in British India

经济学论文研究：英属印度的贸易和人口学

• 批准号: 1426800
• 负责人: Timothy Guinnane
• 金额: $ 2.28万
• 依托单位: Yale University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-07-01 至 2016-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1426800&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dissertation; Research; Economics; Trade; Demography

An enduring debate in South Asian economic history concerns the consequences of two centuries of British rule on economic performance and social welfare. Measurement has been a contentious issue: wages, prices, and agricultural yields have been used and criticized by scholars. However, population indicators which are known to have a major influence on economic activity have not featured prominently in this debate. In other preindustrial societies, we know that birth and death rates varied systematically with economic shocks, so we expect to learn more about how an economy like the British Indian economy developed through these demographic parameters. In particular, this proposal revisits the question of the impact major infrastructure provision, i.e., of the rollout of railroads on the welfare of ordinary people as an illustration of this method.The project will collect and analyze demographic data from British Indian censuses, vital statistics, and economic data from colonial statistical serials from the 1870s through the 1920s. The first contribution of the project will consist of the construction of a new general-use demographic dataset of annual births and deaths at the district level, providing a new and more disaggregated description of the demographic history of South Asia than currently exists. The second contribution is a more thorough understanding of the dynamic interplay between demography and economic factors in this period, such as the causes of the mortality decline and the efficacy of public health expenditures. Finally, this research will employ these data to examine whether or how opening up to trade and the arrival of the railroads affected population growth. Given that theories of trade and Malthusian demography in conjunction imply that gains from trade should be reflected in higher fertility and/or lower mortality, this research will explore theoretically and test empirically a mechanism that could explain how opening up to trade may fail to improve per-capita welfare.

南亚经济史上的一场持久争论涉及英国两个世纪的统治对经济表现和社会福利的影响。计量一直是一个有争议的问题：工资、价格和农业产量都被学者们使用和批评。然而，已知对经济活动有重大影响的人口指标在这场辩论中并未占据突出地位。在其他前工业社会中，我们知道出生率和死亡率会随着经济冲击而系统性地变化，因此我们希望更多地了解像英属印度经济这样的经济体是如何通过这些人口参数发展起来的。特别是，该提案重新审视了主要基础设施供应的影响问题，即铁路的铺设对普通民众福祉的影响，作为该方法的例证。该项目将收集和分析来自英属印度人口普查、人口动态统计的人口数据，以及来自 1870 年代至 1920 年代殖民地统计序列的经济数据。该项目的第一个贡献将包括建立一个新的地区一级年度出生和死亡通用人口数据集，为南亚人口历史提供比目前更详细的新描述。第二个贡献是更透彻地理解这一时期人口与经济因素之间的动态相互作用，例如死亡率下降的原因和公共卫生支出的有效性。最后，本研究将利用这些数据来检验贸易开放和铁路的到来是否或如何影响人口增长。鉴于贸易理论和马尔萨斯人口学理论都表明，贸易收益应体现在更高的生育率和/或更低的死亡率上，本研究将从理论上探索并从实证上检验一种机制，该机制可以解释贸易开放为何可能无法改善每个人的情况。 ——人均福利。