Search results for "Autarky"
showing 6 items of 6 documents
Arsenical Pesticides in Early Francoist Spain: Fascism, Autarky, Agricultural Engineers and the Invisibility of Toxic Risks
2019
Abstract Lead arsenate was introduced on a massive scale in agriculture in Spain in the early 1940s. With the support of a network of agricultural engineers, the new Francoist state encouraged the production and use of lead arsenate as the main weapon against a newly arrived pest, the Colorado potato beetle. In this paper I discuss arsenical pesticides as sociotechnological products which played a pivotal role in the joint production of both chemical-based agriculture and the emerging Francoist regime in Spain during the 1940s. I review the campaigns organized by agriculture engineers and the making of the new National Register for Phytosanitary Products in 1942. The new regulations promote…
1936. Frustrated Hopes: The Great Depression, the Second Republic and the Civil War
2020
The Great Depression was accompanied by the collapse of the monarchical regime and the establishment of a modern democracy with the Second Republic in April 1931. The new regime had to balance the importance of gaining domestic and international respectability (using orthodox fiscal and monetary policy) with efforts to shift towards a moderate protectionist policy, and enact land, labour and educational reforms. There were fierce confrontations from 1934 on, eventually culminating in a civil war in 1936. The consequences included a long-lasting impact on economic growth; autarky and interventionist policies; a huge loss of human capital; poverty and rising inequality; and a 40-year-long dic…
Cost uncertainty and trade liberalization in international oligopoly
1998
Abstract Trade liberalization has been shown to be unfavourable for firms of at least one country for the homogeneous goods case in an environment of certainty. We show that, in the presence of private cost information and for ex ante identical firms, oligopolistic firms will prefer to operate under free trade rather than under autarky in homogeneous goods industries provided there exists a certain degree of firms' heterogeneity and a sufficiently large amount of uncertainty. For the particular case of symmetry both in demand and industry sizes, the firms of at least one country prefer to operate under autarky rather than under free trade.
1959: The Stabilization Plan and the End of Autarky
2020
This chapter analyses the contribution of the 1959 Plan de Estabilizacion (Stabilization Plan) to the economic changes that occurred in Spain during the 1960s. Economic growth improved in the 1950s after a decade of stagnation, but it was autarkic growth and the country accumulated serious imbalances. By reducing interventionism, initiating a process of liberalization and creating an appropriate economic framework, after two decades of autarky, the Plan contributed to promoting economic growth and helped change attitudes and mentalities. Moreover, the Plan had a long-term impact by allowing Spain to take advantage of a favourable international context during the 1960s. However, the dictator…
Globalization, Worker Mobility and Wage Inequality
2015
In the present paper, I integrate frictional labor markets with on-the-job search into an otherwise standard heterogeneous firm model of intra-industry trade. Most importantly, I show that the returns to workers’ inter-firm mobility are higher in a trade equilibrium than in autarky. Intuitively, by favoring large and productive firms, international trade amplifies the disparities in profitability between small and large firms. Hence, the returns to labor reallocation across firms rise. In view of the empirically observed higher inter-firm mobility among high-skill workers, this suggests a skill-biased impact of trade liberalization.
From arsenic to DDT: Pesticides, Fascism and the invisibility of toxic risks in the early years of Francoist Spain (1939-1953)
2021
This paper reviews the way in which Spanish agriculture climbed onto the pesticide treadmill. We claim that Fascist policies and expert advice assembled in the early 1940s accelerated the introduction of pesticides into Spanish agriculture and promoted the emergence of the Spanish pesticide industry in the times of autarky. Agricultural engineers were the key protagonists in this process, but other human and non-human actors also played a pivotal role: a new pest (the Colorado beetle), Francoist politicians, farmers, landowners and industry managers. Our focus is on the use of pesticides against the Colorado beetle (the main threat to the potato crop), and the transition from arsenical pest…