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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2005‒07‒11
eight papers chosen by |
| By: | Warren E. Weber |
| Abstract: | This paper describes a newly constructed data set of all U.S. state banks from 1782 to 1861. It contains the names and locations of all banks that went into business and an estimate of the time interval during which each operated. The compilation is based on reported balance sheets, listings in banknote reporters, and secondary sources. Based on these data, the paper presents a count of the number of banks in business daily by state. I argue that my series are superior to previously existing ones for reasons of consistency, accuracy, and timing. The paper contains examples to support this argument. |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedmwp:634&r=his |
| By: | Robert M. Hunt |
| Abstract: | In the United States today, there is at least one credit bureau file, and probably three, for every credit-using individual in the country. Over 2 billion items of information are added to these files every month, and over 3 million credit reports are issued every day. Real-time access to credit bureau information has reduced the time required to approve a loan from a few weeks to just a few minutes. But credit bureaus have also been criticized for furnishing erroneous information and for compromising privacy. The result has been 30 years of regulation at the state and federal levels. ; This paper describes how the consumer credit reporting industry evolved from a few joint ventures of local retailers around 1900 to a high-technology industry that plays a supporting role in America’s trillion dollar consumer credit market. In many ways the development of the industry reflects the intuition developed in the theoretical literature on information-sharing arrangements. But the story is richer than the models. Credit bureaus have changed as retail and lending markets changed, and the impressive gains in productivity at credit bureaus are the result of their substantial investments in technology. ; Credit bureaus obviously benefit when their data are more reliable, but should we expect them to attain the socially efficient degree of accuracy? There are plausible reasons to think not, and this is the principal economic rationale for regulating the industry. An examination of the requirements of the Fair Credit Reporting Act reveals an attempt to attain an appropriate economic balancing of the benefits of a voluntary information sharing arrangement against the cost of any resulting mistakes. Subsequent litigation and amendments to the act reveal how this balance has evolved over time. |
| Keywords: | Consumer credit ; Fair Credit Reporting Act |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedpwp:05-13&r=his |
| By: | W. G. Huff |
| Abstract: | This article examines the relationship between currency boards and the development of local Chinese deposit banking in pre-World War II Malaya and the Philippines. While in both countries Chinese banks filled an important gap in financial intermediation, the currency board system - an especially strict version of the classical gold standard - virtually ensured that these institutions remained small. Moreover, in the 1930s slump the currency board system's preclusion of a central bank and requirement to pay depositors in 100 per cent metropolitan currency, together with the volatility of highly staple-dependent export economies, pushed Chinese banks to the verge of bankruptcy or beyond. Examination of the 1930s crisis in Southeast Asia and role of banks in it reveals more differences from than parallels with 1990s experience. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gla:glaewp:2003_2&r=his |
| By: | Yukihiko Kiyokawa; Hiroyuki Oba; P. C. Verm |
| Abstract: | This paper aims to analyze the effect of "Japanese style management" on job-consciousness at Indo-Japanese joint ventures. Our analysis for this purpose is focused on uncovering the differences in job-consciousness between the joint ventures and indigenous firms. The transfer of management, which is essentially a transfer of a portion of culture, necessarily colors the job-consciousness in the recipient firms. To prove this hypothesis, we conducted a structured interview survey in 1998 at three Indo-Japanese joint ventures and two Indian firms. Then we confirmed, through canonical discriminant analysis applied to our survey data, that (1) the introduction of various Japanese management practices promoted 'a sense of unity' and 'job satisfaction,' and (2) such management was welcome particularly by workers in the joint ventures, since those practices partly realized egalitarianism in the firm. |
| Date: | 2005–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:hituec:a464&r=his |
| By: | Elke Muchlinski (Free University of Berlin, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this paper is to explain why Keynes revolutionized economic theory. He developed an epistemological approach to economic theory by integrating the categories of knowledge, ignorance, rational degree and precariousness. He abandoned constructivism because he rejected empty concepts as dry dones. He also left empiricism and realism behind since he needed to discuss his categories as a priori principles. He viewed bivalent logic as inadequate for his purpose to find solutions on economic problems. To defend his view of uncertainty inherent in all economic decisions he relied on the concepts of degree of credibi¬ity, degree of confidence and conventional judgement. His economic theory can be interpreted as an integrative approach to applied economics. |
| Keywords: | Epistemology, mental mapping, decision making under uncertainty |
| JEL: | A12 B22 D81 D83 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bef:lsbest:025&r=his |
| By: | Radaelli, Claudio M. |
| Abstract: | Is there something new in recent research on Europeanisation? Or should we go back to what we already know about political integration in Europe and avoid the term? This article reviews recent work in four steps: the identification of the specific domain of Europeanisation; the relationship between Europeanisation, on the one hand, and governance, institutions, and discourse, on the other; the methodological problems and the models emerging in this new field of research; and an assessment of the results arising out of theoretical and empirical research. One theme throughout the article is that, in order to develop a progressive agenda, Europeanisation should be seen as a problem, not as a solution. It is neither a new theory, nor an ad-hoc approach. Rather, it is a way of orchestrating existing concepts and to contribute to cumulative research in political science. Europeanisation does not provide any simple fix to theoretical or empirical problems. Quite the opposite, it can deliver if approached as a set of puzzles. A problem in search of explanation not the explanation itself (Gualini 2003). The conclusion is that Europeanisation has contributed to the emergence of new insights, original explanations, and interesting questions on three important issues: the understanding and analysis of 'impact', how to endogeneise international governance in models of domestic politics, and the relationship between agency and change. These three issues are prominent in the research agendas of international relations, theoretical policy analysis, and comparative politics. To contribute to major issues at the core of political science is a valuable result for a relatively new field of inquiry. |
| Keywords: | Europeanization; governance; regulation; political science |
| Date: | 2004–10–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:erp:eiopxx:p0121&r=his |
| By: | Daniel L. Thornton |
| Abstract: | This paper creates a new series of the FOMC*s Target for the federal funds rate for the period September 27, 1982 through December 31, 1993. The creation of this series was motivated by Thornton (2005). Analyzing the verbatim transcripts of the FOMC, Thornton finds that most of the FOMC believed they began targeting the funds rate even before it deemphasized M1*s role in the Fed*s daily operating procedure. The new series was constructed using the verbatim transcripts of FOMC meetings, the FOMC Blue Book, the Report of Open Market Operations and Money Market Conditions, and data that the author obtained from the Desk for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York dealing with open market operations over the period March 1984 through December 1996. The new series compared with another widely used series presented in Thornton and Wheelock (2000). There are some differences in the dating and magnitude of target changes between the two series prior to but not after August 1989. |
| Keywords: | Monetary policy ; Interest rates |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2005-032&r=his |
| By: | Masayuki Tanimoto (Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo) |
| Abstract: | It is the common knowledge that the modern textile factories, cotton spinning and silk reeling, which led the Japan's industrialization, based their labor foundation on the juvenile female workers. These female workers, however, might have made only a slight impact on the indigenous development based on the household economy as they had withdrawn from factories in their late twenties at the latest and tended to be embedded afterwards in the households of peasants' or urban non-agricultural occupations'. To consider the impact of the industrialization on the indigenous society in Japan, we should pay the special attention to the life courses of the male labor force. The aim of this paper is to give an example of the factory life of the male workers in the middle scale factory, by analyzing the primary source of the firm. The analysis of the archives revealed that the life course as a lifetime factory worker, though the mobility rate between factories was rather high, emerged even in the middle scale factory circa 1910. However, the wage for the worker over the age of twenty was irrelevant to the age, varied just with attendance and the wage level was relatively low in the local labor market. These fact findings indicate that the emergence of the fulltime and lifetime factory workers can not be fully accounted for by the explanation of existing literatures that emphasize the role of the skilled and high wage workers. |
| Date: | 2005–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tky:fseres:2005cj134&r=his |