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Since the 1930s shipping and trade in Southeast Asia during the early modern period have attracted much attention from historians. The pioneer in this field was the Dutch scholar, J. C. van Leur, whose original work was translated into English during the 1950s (Van Leur 1955). Van Leur's interest was heavily weighted toward what he labelled 'old Asian trade,' and as such he was one of the first who called for an Asia-centric perspective. He drew attention to the fact that the maritime sector of Southeast Asia had its own dynamics. In the 1960s, M. A. P. Meilink-Roelofsz carried on the work of analyzing the indigenous maritime sector as well as the effects of the Portuguese and Dutch onslaughts on it up to the 1630s (Meilink-Roelofsz 1962). Limiting our perspective to the Malayo-Indonesian Archipelago, in the last decade several regional case studies have further enhanced our knowledge of the subject, such as those on Sulu (Warren 1981), Batavia (Blussé 1986), Amboina (Knaap 1987), Central and East Java (Nagtegaal 1988), and the Straits of Malacca (Vos 1993). Furthermore, Anthony Reid has recently tried to create a synthesis for the entire region of Southeast Asia up to 1680 (Reid 1993).

"We construct a model of international trade and multinational production (MP) to examine the impact of globalization on the skill premium in skill-abundant and skill-scarce countries. The key mechanisms in our framework arise from the interaction between three elements: cross-country differences in factor endowments and sectoral productivities, technological heterogeneity across producers within sectors, and skill-biased technology. Reductions in trade and/or MP costs induce a reallocation of resources towards a country's comparative advantage sector (increasing the skill premium in skill-abundant countries and reducing it in skill-scarce countries) and within sectors towards more productive and skill-intensive producers (increasing the skill premium in all countries).We parameterize the model to match salient features of the extent and composition of trade and MP between the U.S. and skill-abundant and skill-scarce countries in 2006. We show that a reduction in trade and MP costs, moving from autarky to 2006 levels of trade and MP, increases the skill premium by roughly 5% in skill-abundant and skill-scarce countries. We also show that the growth in US trade and MP between 1966 and 2006 accounts for 1/9th of the 24% rise in the US skill premium over this period. MP is at least as important as international trade in generating this rise in the skill premium"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"A growing body of empirical evidence shows that some financial aid programs increase college enrollment. Puzzlingly, there is little compelling evidence that Pell Grants and Stafford Loans, the primary federal student aid programs, are effective in achieving this goal. In this paper, we provide an in-depth review of this evidence, which taken as a whole suggests that complexity and uncertainty in the federal aid system undermine its efficacy. We document complexity in the aid system, comparing it in particular to complexity in the tax system. We build on our previous work by showing that complexity in the aid process does little to improve the targeting of both student loans and grants, for both dependent and independent students. We conclude that the current targeting of aid can be reproduced with a much simpler aid process. While we show that the targeting benefits of complexity are small, we further document that the costs are large. We offer new estimates of the compliance costs faced by applicants and the administrative costs borne by the government and colleges. These costs total at least $4 billion per year. The perspective of behavioral economics suggests that the true cost is even higher, since complexity and uncertainty may discourage the target population from applying for student aid"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

The big landlords of eastern Germany have loomed large in the country's history, but the absence of official statistics on landownership has left their position and identity confined to folklore, without satisfactory quantification. This study, making extensive use of primary sources from the seven 'core provinces' of eastern Germany-the so-called 'East Elbian' region-establishes answers to questions pivotal to our understanding of pre-war Germany: who were the biggest landowners, both by area and by the tax assessment of their land? Which social groups held land? How much land did they own an