Saumitra Jha of Stanford University reviews “Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World” by Marc-William Palen. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Examines the anti-imperialist dissent that accompanied the global spread of imperialism, focusing in particular on how free-trade cosmopolitanism facilitated the international peace and anti-imperialist movements that occurred from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.”

The English Parliament’s struggle for supremacy against monarchical dictatorship during the Civil War (1642–1648) was crucial for the establishment of representative government, yet its lessons continue to be debated. I exploit novel data on individual MPs drawn from 1,842 biographies to show that the conflict was over overseas interests and other factors over which the executive enjoyed broad constitutional discretion, rather than over domestic property rights. I further exploit the coincidence of individual MPs’ ability to sign legally binding share contracts with novel share offerings by overseas companies to measure the effect of overseas share investment on their political attitudes. I show that overseas shareholding pushed moderates lacking prior mercantile interests to support reform. I interpret the effect of financial assetholding as allowing new investors to exploit emerging economic opportunities overseas, aligning their interests with traders. By consolidating a broad parliamentary majority that favored reform, the introduction of financial assets also broadened support for the institutionalization of parliamentary supremacy over dictatorial rule.

Can participation in financial markets lead individuals to reevaluate the costs of conflict, change their political attitudes, and even their votes? Prior to the 2015 Israeli elections, we randomly assigned Palestinian and Israeli financial assets to likely voters and incentivized them to actively trade for up to 7 weeks. No political messages or nonfinancial information were included. The treatment systematically shifted vote choices toward parties more supportive of the peace process. This effect is not due to a direct material incentive to vote a particular way. Rather, the treatment reduces opposition to concessions for peace and changes awareness of the broader economic risks of conflict. While participants who were assigned Palestinian assets are more likely to associate their assets' performance with peace, they are less engaged in the experiment. Combined with the superior performance of Israeli stocks during the study period, the ultimate effects of Israeli and Palestinian assets are similar.

The Administrative Foundations of Self-Enforcing Constitutions by Yadira Gonzalez de Lara, Avner Greif and Saumitra Jha. Published in volume 98, issue 2, pages 105-09 of American Economic Review, May 2008

We measure how a network of heroes can legitimize and diffuse extreme political behaviors. We exploit newly declassified intelligence files, novel voting data, and regimental histories to show that home municipalities of French line regiments arbitrarily rotated under Philippe Pétain’s generalship through the heroic World War I battlefield of Verdun diverge politically thereafter, particularly following Pétain’s own overt espousal of authoritarian views. Further, under Pétain’s collaborationist Vichy regime (1940–1944), they raise 7 percent more active Nazi collaborators per capita. These effects extend across all forms of Nazi collaboration and diffuse beyond the veterans themselves.