New Economics Papers
on Business, Economic and Financial History
Issue of 2005‒11‒12
twelve papers chosen by
  1. Americanisation behind the Curtain: the History of Management Consulting in Estonia By Jaak Leimann; Antti Ainamo; Janne Tienari
  2. Mughal Decline, Climate Change, and Britain's Industrial Ascent: An Integrated Perspective on India's 18th and 19th Century Deindustrialization By David Clingingmsith; Jeffrey G. Williamson
  3. Unification of the private law in Germany in the nineteenth century : an economic perspective By Kanning,A.
  4. The Origins of the German Corporation – Finance, Ownership and Control By Julian Franks; Colin Mayer; Hannes F. Wagner
  5. Colorism and African American Wealth: Evidence from the Nineteenth-Century South By Howard Bodenhorn; Christopher S. Ruebeck
  6. "Contract Enforcement in the Early Transition to a Market Economy." By Jeffrey B. Miller; Kenneth Koford
  7. Réflexions sur l'économie cubaine. By Rémy Herrera
  8. Delayed Privatization in Kosovo: Causes, Consequences, and Implications in the Ongoing Process By Isa Mulaj
  9. The Colonial Origins of Inequality: Exploring the Causes and Consequences of Land Distribution By E.H.P. Frankema
  10. "Social Security's 70th Anniversary: Surviving 20 Years of Reform" By L. Randall Wray
  11. Codification of the common law in the United States : an economic perspective By Kanning,A.
  12. The Information Technology Revolution and the Puzzling Trends in Tobin’s average q By Adrian Peralta-Alva
  1. By: Jaak Leimann (School of Economics and Business Administration at Tallinn University of Technology); Antti Ainamo (Jaakko Pöyry Consulting); Janne Tienari (Lappeenranta University of Technology)
    Abstract: Management consulting started to evolve in Estonia around 40 years ago. The development was affected by the consulting practice and literature mostly from the United States and neighbouring Finland. The most important factors in the development of the consulting sector in Estonia were direct contacts and cooperation of Estonian and Finnish management experts. As a result, the Estonian management theorists and practicioners were of the top level in the whole Soviet Union and affected the management-related thinking and practice in many other management knowledge centres in the Soviet Union. The development of management consulting between 1970 and 1990 formed a good basis for contemporary management consulting and development after Estonia regained its independence from the Soviet rule in 1991.
    Keywords: historical research, management consulting, iron wall, American model, consulting practice, consulting project, conference, theory-building, internationalisation
    JEL: L84 N01 P20
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ttu:wpaper:tutwpe05/125&r=his
  2. By: David Clingingmsith; Jeffrey G. Williamson
    Abstract: India was a major player in the world export market for textiles in the early 18th century, but by the middle of the 19th century it had lost all of its export market and much of its domestic market. India underwent secular deindustrialization as a consequence. While India produced about 25 percent of world industrial output in 1750, this figure had fallen to only 2 percent by 1900. We ask how much of India's deindustrialization was due to local supply-side forces -- such as political fragmentation in the 18th century and rising incidence of drought between the early 18th and 19th century, and how much to world price shocks. We use an open, three-sector neo-Ricardian model to organize our thinking about the relative role played by domestic and foreign forces. A newly compiled database of relative price evidence is central to our analysis. We document trends in the ratio of export to import prices (the external terms of trade) from 1800 to 1913, and that of tradable to non-tradable goods and own-wages in the tradable sectors back to 1765. Whether Indian deindustrialization shocks and responses were big or small is then assessed by comparisons with other parts of the periphery.
    JEL: F1 N7 O2
    Date: 2005–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11730&r=his
  3. By: Kanning,A. (TILEC (Tilburg Law and Economics Center))
    Date: 2004
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:kubtil:200408&r=his
  4. By: Julian Franks (London Business School, Sussex Place Regent’s Park, London NW1 4SA, England, jfranks@london.edu); Colin Mayer (Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, Park End Street, OX1 1HP Oxford, England, colin.mayer@sbs.ox.ac.uk); Hannes F. Wagner (Munich School of Management, Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Schackstrasse 4, D-80539 Muenchen, Germany, hwagner@bwl.uni-muenchen.de)
    Abstract: The ownership of German corporations is quite different today from that of Anglo-American firms. How did this come about? To what extent is it attributable to regulation? A specially constructed data set on financing and ownership of German corporations from the end of the 19th century reveals that, as in the UK, there was a high degree of activity on German stock markets with firms issuing equity in preference to borrowing from banks, and insider and family ownership declining rapidly. However, unlike in the UK, other companies and banks emerged as the main holders of equity, with banks holding shares primarily as custodians of other investors rather than on their own account. The changing pattern of ownership concentration was therefore very different from that of the UK with regulation reinforcing the control that banks exercised on behalf of other investors.
    Keywords: Evolution of ownership, German stock markets, financial regulation
    JEL: G32 N23 N24
    Date: 2005–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:trf:wpaper:65&r=his
  5. By: Howard Bodenhorn; Christopher S. Ruebeck
    Abstract: Black is not always black. Subtle distinctions in skin tone translate into significant differences in outcomes. Data on more than 15,000 households interviewed during the 1860 federal census exhibit sharp differences in wealth holdings between white, mulatto, and black households in the urban South. We document these differences, investigate the relationships between wealth and the recorded household characteristics, and decompose the wealth gaps into treatment and characteristic effects. In addition to higher wealth holdings of white households as compared to free African-Americans in general, there are distinct differences between both the characteristics of and wealth of free mulatto and black households, whether male- or female-headed. While black-headed households' mean predicted log wealth was only 20% of white-headed households', mulatto-headed households' was nearly 50% that of whites'. The difference between light- and dark-complexion is highly significant in semi-log wealth regressions. In the decomposition of this wealth differential, treatment effects play a large role in explaining the wealth gap between all subpopulation pairs.
    JEL: N3 J7
    Date: 2005–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11732&r=his
  6. By: Jeffrey B. Miller (Department of Economics,University of Delaware); Kenneth Koford
    Abstract: How were contracts among firms enforced in the early phase of a transition economy when firms lacked experience with commercial contracts or legal procedures? What were their views of their new business environment? We interviewed a sample of Bulgarian firms, including private, state-owned and cooperative firms in 1994. Consistent with Williamson’s (1994) theories, complex contracts were quite limited, sometimes implying the breakdown of important markets, but we also found that even spot-market contracts had severe problems of bilateral dependency. Having been "burned" in previous transactions, firms were very cautious in dealing with new potential trading partners and tried to work closely with trustworthy counterparts. These results are consistent with Klein, Crawford and Alchian’s (1978) theory.
    Keywords: Bulgaria, contract enforcement, contract institutions, contract law,legal institutions
    JEL: P5 I22 K12
    Date: 2005
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dlw:wpaper:05-11&r=his
  7. By: Rémy Herrera (MATISSE)
    Abstract: This Working Paper deals with the progresses, but also with the deficiencies, of the Cuban revolution in the economic field, until the recent de-dollarization. It underlines its economic challenges at the beginning of the XXIst century, as well as its internal forces and external opportunities facing these challenges.
    Keywords: Development, socialism, revolution, growth, de-dollarization.
    JEL: J43 J71 N36 N40 O10 O13 O54 P16 P51
    Date: 2005–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mse:wpsorb:r05068&r=his
  8. By: Isa Mulaj (Integra Consulting, Prishtina)
    Abstract: In this paper we look at the specific features of the delayed privatization in Kosovo, emphasising in particular two stages: i) the events during 1990s, including the consequences of emergency measures, ii) the impact of an autonomous privatization in the early 1990s in a limited number of SOEs in the Gjakova region based on a survey of these enterprises, and iii) the critical assessment of the privatization proposals and the challenges in continuing the ongoing privatization process after the war.
    Keywords: SOEs, emergency measures, UNMIK, Kosovo Trust Agency, privatization
    JEL: K
    Date: 2005–11–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wpa:wuwple:0511001&r=his
  9. By: E.H.P. Frankema (Groningen Growth and Development Centre, Faculty of Economics, University of Groningen)
    Abstract: Recent literature has pointed out that the historical distribution of assets is crucial in explaining the observed rigidity in post-war income inequality levels. This paper explores the causes and consequences of historical land distribution employing new and existing estimates of land inequality in cross-country OLS regressions. The two central questions addressed are 1) what explains the cross-country variation in land inequality at the end of the colonial period? 2) how does initial land inequality relate to current income inequality? It is shown that land distribution is determined by (colonial) institutions responding to relative factor endowments and natural geographic conditions as the disease environment and the feasibility to grow particular food- or cash-crops. Local conditions and institutional responses differed largely from region to region. Whereas the direct relation between initial land inequality and income inequality appears to be weak, controlling for (colonial) institutional variables reveals a strong relation between initial land inequality and current (1990’s) income inequality. High levels of income inequality, specifically in Sub Saharan Africa and Latin America, are shown to have fundamentally different colonial origins.
    Keywords: Colonial institutions, geography, factor endowments, land distribution, income distribution
    JEL: N30 N50 O15 P51
    Date: 2005–10–21
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:got:iaidps:119&r=his
  10. By: L. Randall Wray
    Abstract: Social Security turned 70 on August 14, although no national celebration marked the occasion. Rather, our top policymakers in Washington continue to suggest that the system is "unsustainable." While our nation's most successful social program, and among its longest lived, has allowed generations of Americans to live with dignity in retirement, many think it is time to retire Social Security itself. They claim it is necessary to shift more responsibility to individuals and to scale back the promises made to the coming waves of retiring baby boomers.
    Date: 2005–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lev:levypn:05-6&r=his
  11. By: Kanning,A. (TILEC (Tilburg Law and Economics Center))
    Date: 2004
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:kubtil:200409&r=his
  12. By: Adrian Peralta-Alva (University of Miami)
    Abstract: A growing literature argues that the Information Technology rev- olution caused the stock market crash of 1973-1974, its subsequent stagnation and eventual recovery. This paper employs general equi- librium theory to test whether this good news hypothesis is consistent with the behavior of US equity prices and with the trends in corpo- rate output, investment and consumption. I …nd it is not. A model based exclusively on good news can make equity prices fall as much as in the data but it must also imply a strong economic expansion right when the US economy stagnated. However, when the observed productivity slowdown in old production methods is incorporated into the model consistency with major macroeconomic aggregates can be achieved and a 20% drop in equity values can be accounted for. (JEL E44, O33, O41)
    Keywords: Stock Market, Tobin's q Technological Change, Productivity Slowdown 1974, Information Technology Revolution
    JEL: O P
    Date: 2005–11–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wpa:wuwpdc:0511003&r=his
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