
The Habsburg Empire and the long half-life of economic institutions - MaysonL
http://voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/6596
======
rickdangerous1
In 100 years I'll bet that there would still be significant social and
cultural differences between hong kong and mainland China. These cultural
legacies live for a long time when they are popular and widely accepted as
norms.

------
bergie
Very interesting, especially considered how many societal changes these
countries have gone through post-WWI. I wonder if similar results could be
drawn about the Roman Empire, for instance?

~~~
troels
Of course it can. The (western) roman empire roughly corresponds to the
christian part of the world.

~~~
bergie
There is that, true. And I guess some legal principles also derive from Roman
times. But I meant more the trust/mistrust in government that they were
measuring in the article.

~~~
troels
Yeah. I went into hand-waving-territiry, because didn't have any concrete
references at hand. In medieval history, there is a distinction to be made
between roman and germanic law. The concept of roman law is that things are
written down and a crime is interpreted in relation to the formal, written
text. In germanic law, things are much more contextual. There weren't a lot of
formal laws, instead you'll have collection of respected eldars pass
judgement. So basically, roman law is pretty much what we have today.

Now, I still haven't directly answered your question of course, but the fact
that the whole concept of law can be traced back to the romans is at least
fairly close.

~~~
bergie
Some of that Roman vs. Germanic distinction still remains, right? The European
continental system relies much more on the written laws, and the Anglo-Saxon
system more on precedent.

Should also be noted that I wasn't really expecting an answer. A proper answer
would probably require another study like the one referenced in this post :-)

------
glimmung
Thought provoking. Whilst I understand acqq's cautions about specifics, I
think that the long-term view of these things is insufficiently discussed. We
have a limited understanding of how e.g. language and phraseology, which are
passed from generation to generation, affect our judgements - but it would be
surprising if they did not.

------
bluekeybox
As someone from that area, who had met people both from the inside and from
the outside of the former border, I would like to tell you that the
conclusions of this study are 100% correct.

------
rospaya
As someone from the former empire, I stopped reading after this:

> it shows that firms and people living in what used to be the empire have
> higher trust in courts and police.

People in eastern and southeastern Europle have a low trust of police, courts
and government.

~~~
ugh
And? Those two statements don't contradict each other.

~~~
rospaya
How don't they contradict each other? They said one thing, the reality is
another thing.

~~~
ugh
Earning $1 per day is a very low income yet it is still higher than earning
$0.5 per day.

~~~
rospaya
It is so low that any additional lower rating would be complete anarchy.

------
acqq
The "maximal extent" limits in Balkan states happened only during the wars.
Moreover, the population structure in some areas changed significantly after
the same wars. I'd be vary of a "discussion paper" that doesn't consider these
nuances when sampling. Then how much of the discussion paper uses scientific
method properly and how much of it just matches the agenda? I don't know, the
discussion paper is behind the paywall.

~~~
ugh
The paper is here: <http://ftp.iza.org/dp5584.pdf>

Some quotes relevant to the questions you asked:

 _To ensure that the “control group” to which the Habsburg “treatment group”
is compared does not include locations that had actually also been exposed to
the Habsburg treatment at some time, throughout the definition of the Habsburg
variable H is an indicator of whether a location has ever been part of the
Habsburg Empire. By contrast, defining the Habsburg variable by Habsburg
affiliation at any particular point in time would mean that part of the
“control group” had also received a “Habsburg treatment” at some point in
history. For example, defining the Habsburg treatment by its borders just
before its demise in 1918 would mean that several regions that had been part
of Habsburg until 1908 would constitute a substantial part of the control
group in the border sample. However, as one robustness analysis below, we show
that results are robust in a specification that restricts the analysis to
locations that were part of the Habsburg Empire in 1900 (and their control
locations) while dropping all locations from the analysis that had been part
of the Habsburg Empire at some time but were no longer in 1900.

The specification of our basic model assumes that the Habsburg treatment
effect is independent of the duration of treatment. To test for the validity
of this assumption, we will also estimate models that allow the Habsburg
effect to differ by length of a community’s affiliation with the Habsburg
Empire: […]_

— Empirical Model, p. 13

 _Third, and most importantly, in contrast to the basic assumption of a
regression discontinuity design, there are a number of reasons to expect some
sort of diffusion to and interdependence between neighboring towns across the
former Habsburg border. Such reasons include migration and marriage between
neighboring towns; local spillovers whereby inhabitants of an Ottoman town
just across the border observe that well-functioning public services may have
positive consequences, so that they may imitate them to some extent;
“frontier” effects in that authorities may behave differently if located close
to the enemy, such as when a Habsburg local authority may behave more
authoritarian if the Ottomans are next door; and political competition across
neighboring locations. All of these effects would mean that the Habsburg
status of one town may affect outcomes in towns that are located directly on
the other side of the border. Note that any of such diffusion or interaction
effects work against our identification strategy finding a significant
difference between Habsburg and non-Habsburg locations in the border sample._

— Empirical Model, p. 15

(There is also some relevant discussion with regard to your questions in the
Results section.)

Note that all of the things you mentioned would have made it less likely to
find an effect.

This looks like solid work. Like always (especially when social sciences are
involved), there are problematic aspects to it. Social science is damn hard to
get right.

~~~
acqq
Thank you for the link to the paper. I wasn't able to find in the paper any
basic data, only derived coefficients. The map is the same, including the
"maximal extent" which happened only at the few years the territories were
occupied during WWI. The big movements of big amount of people over the
territories during the turbulent history are also somehow not addressed.
There's a unique history behind each settlement, not taking that in the
consideration or not showing what you actually did I believe any conclusion
can be generated. I still question some premises and the execution of the
paper.

------
Create
These "leading economists" have understood nothing about the Habsburg Empire.
Nor the economic power of thereof (see China). Habsburgs were ruling by force,
but it would have been a perpetual war without prosperity (see Iraq,
Afghanistan) if they wouldn't have observed the following.

The premise was, that it has three foundation pillars, supporting each other:

\- members of the empire had a common monetary policy, to have a common
economy

\- which supported a common military power to ensure the "freedom" to

\- have a common foreign policy.

If you follow the above, you understand that it is a recurring theme, and it
is still the premise as of today.

In fact, the American Empire [1] has drawn from it heavily (USD, .mil, and the
current situation). Furthermore, this is the underlying thesis of the European
Union: common market, common currency (€), a very discretely nascent military
power which is heavily opposed by the USA (but all is in the guise of NATO),
in order to have a common foreign policy (most people's interest of this globe
do not coincide with the interest of those who shape USA foreign policy [not
so] behind the scenes). Even so, aspirations of the Latin American Union and
the Arab Union are also taking a page from this book -- though sidelined by
western propaganda as much as possible, for obvious reasons. China with the
cantons and the Yuan has a very coherent execution.

Regarding the half-life of the empires, the Habsburgs were well educated
enough to know their lessons from history. They know the opening chapters of
Bainville's bestsellers. They knew what to avoid but alas, nothing can last
forever...

[1] <http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/1020_ageofempire/>

~~~
ugh
I’m not sure what you are disagreeing with. The paper doesn’t seem to be
incompatible with your views.

Here is what this column is all about (second sentence of the introduction):
“This column shows that these empires can leave behind a long-lasting legacy
through cultural norms.”

The column doesn’t want to shed light on how empires work. It’s like you are
talking about completely different things.

~~~
Create
I'll just say, that this blog/paper is pseudoscience, with all the bells and
whistles of the formalities [1].

[1] i.e. /“control group” to which the Habsburg “treatment group”/

~~~
ugh
Why is that? Justification for such an accusation is very much in order.

