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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2006‒02‒26
eleven papers chosen by |
| By: | David W. Galenson |
| Abstract: | A survey of art history textbooks identifies and ranks the eight most important works of the 20th century. The most important painting of the century was Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, executed by Picasso at the age of 26, which began the development of Cubism. Among the other seven works, a collage, an earthwork, and a ready-made all represent new genres that had not existed at the start of the century. All eight works were made by conceptual artists, at a median age of just 32. The results underline the importance of young conceptual innovators, who made radical departures from existing conventions, in the advanced art of the century. Four of the eight works were made by Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, and this highlights the importance of the versatile conceptual innovators who became a prominent feature of twentieth-century art. |
| JEL: | J0 J4 |
| Date: | 2006–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12058&r=his |
| By: | Ian Nish; David Steeds |
| Abstract: | Steeds: David Davies, a young member of a prominent Welsh commercial/industrial family, spent the period between October 1904 and January 1905 in Japan, Korea and North China. His diary of the journey presents interesting background on conditions in Japan during what were crucial months in the Russo-Japanese war. Nish: SUEMATSU Kencho, a senior Japanese politician, was sent to Europe at the start of the Russo-Japanese war in order to improve the image of Japan in European countries and dispel the idea of the Yellow Peril. He became the main publicist for the Japanese war effort, lecturing, writing articles and publishing books. He stayed on after the Portsmouth Peace Treaty, returning to Japan in February 1906. |
| Keywords: | Davies, Russo-Japanese war, Korea, North China, Ainu, Dr Batchelor, Red Cross, Rendel, KOMURA Jutaro, Chefoo, Suematsu, Colonel Akashi, Yellow Peril, Kaneko, HAYASHI Tadasu, Japan Society of London, Takakusa, Tomoeda, TAKAHASHI Korekiyo, Prince Arisugawa, Stead. |
| Date: | 2005–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:stiisp:/2005/491&r=his |
| By: | Peter C. Mancall; Joshua Rosenbloom; Thomas Weiss |
| Abstract: | For the past generation scholars have emphasized that the Lower South was one of the most economically successful regions of British mainland North America, and perhaps the most successful. Planters, the primary economic actors, made extensive use of slave labor and created a successful staple-export sector, which by 1774 produced the highest levels of private wealth per capita in the colonies. Focusing on the rapid growth of the primary exports of the Lower South in the colonial period – rice and indigo – most scholars have concluded that standards of living for colonists in the region must have been rising rapidly. Elsewhere we have argued that the conventional view of the economy of the Lower South prior to 1800 is mistaken. Rather, per capita incomes were essentially stagnant from 1720 to 1770, and did not change appreciably between 1770 and 1800. Central to our interpretation is a revised understanding of the behavior of regional exports that indicates that they were much less important as a stimulus to economic growth than has heretofore been believed. This paper describes in greater detail our estimation of regional exports, and documents the reasons why they could not have been a stimulus to intensive growth within the region. |
| JEL: | N0 N1 N7 O1 O4 |
| Date: | 2006–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12045&r=his |
| By: | Howard Bodenhorn |
| Abstract: | Families are the core social institution and a growing body of research documents the costs of single parenthood for children in the twentieth century. This study documents racial differences in the incidence and costs of single parenthood in the mid-nineteenth century. Data from the urban South reveal two notable consequences of single parenthood. First, white children residing with single mothers left school earlier than children residing with two parents. Black children in single mother homes started school later and left school earlier. Single motherhood is therefore associated with less lifetime schooling for both races, but the consequences of living in a nontraditional home was larger for blacks. Second, single motherhood was associated with an increased incidence of labor force participation for white youth, but not for blacks. Single parenthood imposed costs, in terms of foregone human capital formation, on children in the mid-nineteenth century, but the consequences of single motherhood were mitigated by social norms toward childhood education. |
| JEL: | I2 J1 N3 |
| Date: | 2006–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12056&r=his |
| By: | Osamu Saito; Tokihiko Settsu |
| Abstract: | In the latter half of the Tokugawa period economic growth, however sluggish its pace was, took place in the form of rural industrialisation and the expansion of inter-regional trade. This paper addresses the following questions: how capital was mobilised for such rural-centred growth in production and commerce, and how the quasi-capital markets worked in both the Osaka economy and in the countryside, with special reference to trends in interest rates over time, in a pre-modern setting of market segmentation. The paper will argue that although Tokugawa Japan's formal institutions were far from ideal, the credit systems did function as quasi-capital markets reasonably well within each commercial network formed through relational contracting, and that for the Smithian process of early modern growth to work, inter-regional competition mattered more than institutional maturity of the nation's market environment. |
| Date: | 2006–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hst:hstdps:d05-139&r=his |
| By: | Michael D. Bordo; Peter L. Rousseau |
| Abstract: | Recent cross-country investigations of the role of institutional fundamentals such as the protection of property rights in promoting financial development have extended a literature that has for decades maintained that financial factors can affect real outcomes. In this paper we pursue this new direction by considering relationships between finance, growth, legal origin, and political environment in a historical cross-section of 17 countries covering the period from 1880 to 1997. We find that relationships between a county's legal origin (i.e., English, French, German, or Scandinavian) and financial development are roughly consistent with earlier findings but are not persistent. At the same time, political variables such as proportional representation election systems, frequent elections, universal female suffrage, and infrequent revolutions or coups seem linked to larger financial sectors and higher conditional rates of economic growth. Despite the explanatory power of some of our measures of the deeper "fundamentals," however, a significant part of the growth-enhancing role of financial development remains unexplained by them. |
| JEL: | E44 F3 N1 N2 |
| Date: | 2006–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12035&r=his |
| By: | Sergio Godoy; Joseph Stiglitz |
| Abstract: | This paper examines alternative hypotheses concerning the determinants of success in the transition from Communism to the market. In particular, we look at whether speed of privatization, legal institutions or initial conditions are more important in explaining the growth of the transition countries in the years since the end of the Cold War. In the mid 90s a large empirical literature attempted to relate growth to policy measures. A standard conclusion of this literature was the faster countries privatized and liberalized, the better. We now have more data, so we can check whether these conclusions are still valid six years later. Furthermore, much of the earlier work was flawed since it did not adequately treat problems of endogeneity, confused issues of speed and level of privatization, and did not face up to the problems of multicollinearity. Our results suggest that, contrary to the earlier literature, the speed of privatization is negatively associated with growth, but is confirms the result of the few earlier studies that have found that legal institutions are very important. Other variables, which seemed to play a large role in the earlier literature, appear to have at most a marginal positive effect. |
| JEL: | P2 |
| Date: | 2006–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11992&r=his |
| By: | Kris Inwood (University of Guelph); Ian Keay (Queen's University) |
| Abstract: | A number of conceptually robust and empirically practical approaches are available to assess relative economic performance among producers who operate on either side of an international border. In this paper we discuss the impact that data compilation, methodological choice, and variable definitions may have on the quantitative and qualitative assessment of cross-border performance comparisons. As an illustrative example we use manuscript census data from 1870/71 to compare total factor productivity (TFP) among a sample of manufacturing establishments located along the Canada-US border. We briefly discuss issues associated with the preparation of manuscript census data for the measurement of cross-border TFP differentials and the establishment of industry selection criteria. We also review TFP measurement techniques, such as growth accounting calculations, cost and production function index number approaches, and econometric estimation. However, the central focus of the paper is an investigation of the impact that variable definitions have on our assessment of TFP performance. In particular, we probe the relationship between the size of cross-border TFP differentials and the reliance on a variety of common definitions for labour, capital, output, input weights, and prices. |
| Keywords: | Productivity Measurement, International Performance Comparisons, North American Industrialization |
| JEL: | N01 N61 O14 O47 |
| Date: | 2006–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qed:wpaper:1030&r=his |
| By: | Christian Rietsch (LEO - Laboratoire d'économie d'Orleans - http://www.univ-orleans.fr/DEG/LEO - CNRS : FRE2783 - Université d'Orléans); Bernard Haudeville (CEREFI - Centre d'Economie Régionale, de l'Emploi et des Firmes Internationales - Université Aix-Marseille III) |
| Abstract: | Au XIX e siècle, les journaux publient, jour après jour, le cours des rentes, puis dans la seconde moitié du siècle, de certaines actions ; à la fin de chaque année, on prend l'habitude d'indiquer à l'épargnant le cours le plus haut et le cours le plus bas pour chaque mois de l'année écoulée. Ces observations ont le grand avantage d'être assez facilement accessibles mais présentent toutefois quelques inconvénients sérieux.<br />Disposant de ces séries de cours le plus haut et le plus bas, de précision assez douteuse, ainsi que des observations exactes, nous nous sommes interrogés sur l'utilité d'un dépouillement soigneux des données. Il nous est apparu que ce travail gigantesque n'apportait, en dépit de sa rigueur, que des corrections relativement mineures et que les conclusions rejoignaient celles précédemment établies. Il s'ensuit qu'avec une procédure allégée, on pourrait, sans perte réelle en précision, éviter un travail particulièrement lourd de dépouillement.<br />La démonstration, d'ordre empirique, s'effectue en deux parties. La première utilise l'économétrie classique : la régression simple, la causalité-à-la-Granger et l'analyse de la saisonnalité. La seconde partie utilise d'autres techniques, la cointégration et le modèle à correction d'erreur. |
| Keywords: | rente 3% ; cours le plus haut ; cours le plus bas ; causalité-Granger ; cointégration ; modèle à correction d'erreur |
| Date: | 2006–02–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:papers:halshs-00009113_v1&r=his |
| By: | Philipee Aghion; Robin Burgess; Stephen Redding; Fabrizio Zilibotti |
| Abstract: | We study the effects of the progressive elimination of the system of industrial regulations on entry and production, known as the "license raj," on registered manufacturing output, employment, entry and investment across Indian states with different labor market regulations. The effects are found to be unequal depending on the institutional environment in which industries are embedded. In particular, following delicensing, industries located in states with pro-employer labor market institutions grew more quickly than those in pro-worker environments. |
| JEL: | L10 |
| Date: | 2006–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12031&r=his |
| By: | Oburai Prathap; Baker Michael J |
| Abstract: | The marketing discipline is evolving and so is its agenda with the advent of relationship marketing, networks and other related sub-fields. Till recently, business literature focused largely on competition, and cooperation, its counter part, has received insufficient attention. With a view to redress the situation, this research article investigates the phenomenon of customer supplier alliances and partnerships and aims to make fundamental theoretical contributions in the sub-field of business-to-business relations and cooperation. Eclectic and wide-ranging enquiry is a main research tool employed and hence the character of this research is interdisciplinary. An extensive literature review of a number of related disciplines is undertaken in order to capture the essence of relationship strategies and their implications. The ideas and alternative research processes were exposed to critical scrutiny by a few marketing scholars to increase feedback and validity of ideas. In addition, a qualitative exploratory survey was carried out in order to understand the strategic issues concerning alliances and partnerships. The research findings were combined with theoretical ideas to derive a Routines-Relationships-Resources (3Rs) model. This 3Rs model is made up of three cores that underlie all business strategies including those designed to generate competitive advantage through the route of cooperative alliances and partnerships. |
| Date: | 2006–02–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iim:iimawp:2006-02-05&r=his |