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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2007‒06‒30
twenty-one papers chosen by |
| By: | Hubert BONIN (GREThA-GRES) |
| Abstract: | French banking expansion in China and South-East Asia had to respect the powerful influence of British banks there. From the 1860s French merchant and banking interests had been involved in Hong Kong business because of the colonial developments in Indochina and the links between this area and the Hong Kong centre. The growth of commercial links between the colony and China favoured further integration of banking and currency exchanges with Hong Kong, through the Banque de l’Indochine corporation, competing with Hsbc. It was itself committed to finance Asian-French commercial flows (silk, etc.) directly (Lyon, Bordeaux, Paris) or indirectly (London branch) took part to banking links with France. But Hong Kong also became a bridgehead for Banque de l’Indochine into southern China (Canton, etc.) from the1890s up to the 1930s and, in parallel with the Shanghai branch, its branch there asserted itself as a part of French expansion in the Far-East. |
| Keywords: | Imperialism, First Globalization, Bank, Overseas, China, Hong-Kong, Guangzhou |
| JEL: | G20 N25 |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grs:wpegrs:2007-15&r=his |
| By: | Batiz-Lazo, Bernardo |
| Abstract: | Through archival research we investigate the impact of the introduction of Automated Teller Machines (ATM) in British retail banking. Contrary to the experience in the US, in the UK the ATM has been largely neglected by historians and management scholars. Technologically, cash dispensers preceded ATM and were originally a British innovation but U.S. (e.g. IBM and NCR) and German manufacturers (e.g. Siemens) took the lead as the ATM became a global technology. The evolution of the ATM illustrates how banks adopted on-line, real-time computing for the entire branch network and highlights the role of network externalities in financial markets. From a business history perspective, the ATM epitomises a shift in bank strategy, namely how applications of computer technology moved from being potential sources of competitive advantage to being a minimum requirement for effective competition in retail finance. Research in this article traces the origins of this process of competitive change in British retail financial markets, by looking at the emergence of proprietary networks and their evolution into a single national network at the same time that cash dispensers transformed into ATM. |
| Keywords: | Automated Teller Machines; UK; clearing banks; network effects |
| JEL: | O33 N24 |
| Date: | 2007–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:3689&r=his |
| By: | Noguchi, Masayoshi; Batiz-Lazo, Bernardo |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this study is to explore how the audit of building societies changed in the late 1950s in a reversion of audit objective from ‘fraud detection’ to ‘statement verification’ (Chandler et al., 1993: 452). Of particular interest is the analysis of the extended negotiations between the ICAEW and the Treasury over the reform of the form of the auditors’ report for building societies, which was implemented through the enactment of the Building Societies Act 1960 (BSA60) We show how change implemented through the BSA60 relieved chartered accountants from ‘out of tune’ (T233/1652) practice established by nineteenth century legislation, but to do so required them to take an alternative duty to report on internal control. |
| Keywords: | building societies; the form of the auditors’ report; the auditors’ reporting duty on internal control; the ICAEW; Building Societies Act 1960 (BSA60) |
| JEL: | M42 N24 |
| Date: | 2007–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:3690&r=his |
| By: | O'Rourke, Kevin H; Rosés, Joan R.; Williamson, Jeffrey G |
| Abstract: | The endogenous growth literature has explored the transition from a Malthusian world where real wages, living standards and labour productivity are all linked to factor endowments, to one where (endogenous) productivity change embedded in modern industrial growth breaks that link. Recently, economic historians have presented evidence from England showing that the dramatic reversal in distributional trends – from a steep secular fall in wage-land rent ratios before 1800 to a steep secular rise thereafter – must be explained both by industrial revolutionary growth forces and by global forces that opened up the English economy to international trade. This paper explores whether and how the relationship was different for Spain, a country which had relatively poor productivity growth in agriculture and low living standards prior to 1800, was a late-comer to industrialization afterwards, and adopted very restrictive policies towards imports for much of the 19th century. The failure of Spanish wage-rental ratios to undergo a sustained rise after 1840 can be attributed to the delayed fall in relative agricultural prices (due to those protective policies) and to the decline in Spanish manufacturing productivity after 1898. |
| Keywords: | distribution; globalization; growth; Spain |
| JEL: | F1 N7 O4 |
| Date: | 2007–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6356&r=his |
| By: | Nathalie Le Bouteillec; Loïc Charles |
| Abstract: | Historians of Economics use two main types of approaches. The first one interprets history of economic thought in terms of doctrines – mercantilism, socialism, liberalism, to name a few. Since the publication of Schumpeter’s History of Economic Analysis, this axiomatic has lost importance to an approach that focused on theoretical analysis as the main agency in the history of economics. There are however episodes of history of economics that stand in-between these two types of axiomatic, and neither one nor the other seem to offer an appropriate frame to un-derstand them. The debate on labour market legislation for women that spread across European countries at the end of the 19th century fits into this category. Because it concerned a major as-pect of labour market, it was in the core of the main economic theories (classical political econ-omy, marxism, marginalism) and doctrines (liberalism VS socialism) from mid-19th century on. However, the frontier between partisans of legal restrictions for women access to labour market and free market contenders did not correspond with those of historians of economic thought. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:drm:wpaper:2007-6&r=his |
| By: | Magnus Gulbrandsen (Norwegian Institute for Studies in Research and Education - Centre for Innovation Research); Lars Nerdrum (Norwegian Institute for Studies in Research and Education - Centre for Innovation Research) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the historical role of public research organisations for industrial growth and innovation in Norway – and the changes in this role over time. Public research organisations include research institutes and higher education institutions, and we go back in time to the 19th century. Like many other countries, Norway has a large number research institutes involved in innovation, and these organisations have an equally long history as higher education institutions. Public sector research has co-evolved with the national industrial structure, and institutes and universities have played central roles in developing high technology sectors and activities as well as in modernisations of traditional industries. |
| Date: | 2007–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tik:inowpp:20070602&r=his |
| By: | Schulze, Max Stephan; Wolf, Nikolaus |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the emergence and dynamics of border effects over time. We exploit the unique historical setting of the multinational Habsburg Empire prior to the Great War to explore the hypothesis that border effects emerged as a result of persistent trade effects of ethno-linguistic networks within an overall integrating economy. While markets tended to integrate, the process was strongly asymmetric and shaped by a simultaneous rise in national consciousness and organisation among Austria-Hungary’s different ‘nationalities’. We find that the political borders which separated the empire’s successor states after the First World War became visible in the price dynamics of grain markets already 25-30 years before the First World War. This effect of a ‘border before a border’ cannot be explained by factors such as physical geography, changes in infrastructure or patterns of asymmetric integration with neighbouring regions outside of the Habsburg customs and monetary union. However, controlling for the changing ethno-linguistic composition of the population across the regional capital cities of the empire does explain most of the estimated border effects. |
| Keywords: | border effects; Habsburg Empire; market integration; networks; pre-1914 Europe |
| JEL: | F15 N13 Z13 |
| Date: | 2007–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6327&r=his |
| By: | Pier Angelo Toninelli (Department of Economics, University of Milan-Bicocca) |
| Abstract: | In the paper the development of economic history will be placed within the evolution of Western thought and culture. Therefore an analysis of the connections between economic history and contemporary epistemology will be carried out. In this perspective an analogy with the traditional division between analytic philosophy and continental philosophy would appear to be useful for economic history too: the first had long prevailed in Anglo-Saxon, the second in continental, culture. This partition evokes and embraces the antithesis between scientific and humanist culture, between logic and rhetoric, analysis and interpretation, conceptual clarification and visions of the world. The paper suggest that the opposition that loomed large over the post W.W.II decades between Anglo-American and European economic histories can also be conceived as a specific form of the wider opposition between ‘analytic style’ and ‘continental style’. |
| Keywords: | economic history, methodology, epistemology, cliometrics, business history, economic thought |
| JEL: | N01 A12 B41 |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mib:wpaper:112&r=his |
| By: | Olav Wicken (Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo) |
| Abstract: | R&D has played a central role in Norwegian public industrial policy for only a relatively short period. Before 1963, there was little interest in linking technological research policy to a wider national industrial strategy. During the mid 1960s, attempts were made to link public research more closely to industrial development, and the state became more engaged in funding industrial R&D. During the 1980s, governments increased public industrial R&D funding substantially, and for a short period of time research became a core element in national industrial policy. However, from the early 1990s the situation again changed. Public research policy lost its significance in wider national industrial strategies. |
| Date: | 2007–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tik:inowpp:20070603&r=his |
| By: | Albanesi, Stefania; Olivetti, Claudia |
| Abstract: | Until the early decades of the 20th century, women spent more than 60% of their prime-age years either pregnant or nursing. Since then, the introduction of infant formula reduced women's comparative advantage in infant care, by providing an effective breast milk substitute. In addition, improved medical knowledge and obstetric practices reduced the time cost associated with women's reproductive role. We explore the hypothesis that these developments enabled married women to increase their participation in the labour force, thus providing the incentive to invest in market skills, which in turn reduced their earnings differential with respect to men. We document these changes and develop a quantitative model that aims to capture their impact. Our results suggest that progress in medical technologies related to motherhood was essential to generate a significant rise in the participation of married women between 1920 and 1950, in particular those with young children. |
| Keywords: | female labour force participation; gender earnings gap; medical progress |
| JEL: | E24 J13 J16 J21 J22 J31 N3 |
| Date: | 2007–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6352&r=his |
| By: | Michaels, Guy |
| Abstract: | Since Adam Smith's time, the division of labour in production has increased significantly, while information processing has become an important part of work. This paper examines whether the need to coordinate an increasingly complex division of labour has raised the demand for clerical office workers, who process information that is used to coordinate production. In order to examine this question empirically, I introduce a measure of the complexity of an industry's division of labour that uses the Herfindahl index of occupations it employs, excluding clerks and managers. Using US data I find that throughout the 20th century more complex industries employed relatively more clerks, and recent Mexican data shows a similar relationship. The relative complexity of industries is persistent over time and correlated across these two countries. I further document the relationship between complexity and the employment of clerks using an early information technology (IT) revolution that took place around 1900, when telephones, typewriters, and improved filing techniques were introduced. This IT revolution raised the demand for clerks in all manufacturing industries, but significantly more so in industries with a more complex division of labour. Interestingly, recent reductions in the price of IT have enabled firms to substitute computers for clerks, and I find that more complex industries have substituted clerks more rapidly. |
| Keywords: | Division of Labour; Information Processing; Organization of Production.; Technological Change |
| JEL: | D73 J44 M54 O33 |
| Date: | 2007–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6358&r=his |
| By: | Simeon Djankov; Marta Reynal-Querol |
| Abstract: | The dominant hypothesis in the literature that studies conflict is that poverty is the main cause of civil wars. We instead analyze the effect of institutions on civil war, controlling for income per capita. In our set up, institutions are endogenous and colonial origins affect civil wars through their legacy on institutions. Our results indicate that institutions, proxied by the protection of property rights, rule of law and the efficiency of the legal system, are a fundamental cause of civil war. In particular, an improvement in institutions from the median value in the sample to the 75th percentile is associated with a 38 percentage points’ reduction in the incidence of civil wars. Moreover, once institutions are included as explaining civil wars, income does not have any effect on civil war, either directly or indirectly. |
| Keywords: | Institutions, Civil wars |
| Date: | 2007–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upf:upfgen:1038&r=his |
| By: | Gómez-Sorzano, Gustavo |
| Abstract: | I apply the Beveridge-Nelson business cycle decomposition method to the time series of murder in the state of New York. (1933-2005). Separating out “permanent” from “cyclical” murder, I hypothesize that the cyclical part coincides with documented waves of organized crime, internal tensions, breakdowns in social order, crime legislation, social, and political unrest, and recently with the periodic terrorist attacks in the state. The estimated cyclical terrorist murder component warns that terrorist attacks in the state of New York from 1962 to 2005, historically occur in the estimated turning point dates, of whether a declining, or ascending cycle, and so, it must be used in future research to construct a model for explaining the causal reasons for its movement across time, and for forecasting terrorist murder and attacks for New York. |
| Keywords: | A model of cyclical terrorist murder in Colombia; 1950-2004. Forecasts 2005-2019; the econometrics of violence; terrorism and scenarios for peace in Colombia from 1950 to 2019; scenarios for sustainable peace in Colombia by year 2019; decomposing violence: terrorist murder in the twentieth in the United States; using the Beveridge and Nelson decomposition of economic time series for pointing out the occurrence of terrorist attacks. |
| JEL: | H56 N42 K14 D74 K42 O51 C22 |
| Date: | 2006–12–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:3693&r=his |
| By: | Munoz, Emanuel Salinas; Stephanou, Constantinos |
| Abstract: | The objective of this paper is to describe the evolution, composition, and determinants of financing to the nonfinancial private sector in Mexico between 2000 and 2005. Supported by the macroeconomic environment and financial system reforms, total financing to the private sector (particularly consumer credit) increased relative to GDP, while accessibility and affordability generally improved. Equity issuance did not play an important role during the period under consideration. Although the supply of financing shifted toward domestic nonbank providers, commercial banks remain the primary source of funding. Significant progress was made in cleaning up bank loan portfolios and in strengthening financial system soundness and infrastructure. The prospects for continued private sector financing growth remain very positive, but financing is not spread out evenly across all market segments. The authors conclude with some policy implications to further facilitate deeper and broader financing of the private sector. |
| Keywords: | Banks & Banking Reform,Financial Intermediation,Economic Theory & Research,Public Sector Economics & Finance,Financial Crisis Management & Restructuring |
| Date: | 2007–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4264&r=his |
| By: | Olav Wicken (Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo) |
| Abstract: | The national innovation system (NIS) of Norway is characterized by diversity. This paper examines the multiple and heterogeneous historical processes, each defined as a path, that have given rise to such diversity. Each of the paths has involved specific types of social groups, organizations, knowledge bases, and institutional set-ups, and for each path a specific type of innovation structure has been developed. We define three main historical paths emerging from three major industrial transformation processes in Western history defined as Industrial Revolutions (Bruland and Mowery 2004). Each of these transformations created new industrial paths constituting a new layer in the economy. The Norwegian NIS is therefore described as the historical outcome of three diverse paths and consisting of three distinct layers. The creation of a new path does not indicate that the old paths of the economy remain static. Rather each path historically has undergone radical transformation processes in order to remain competitive in changing environments. The main dynamics of the innovation system are therefore linked to path transformation and path creation processes. |
| Date: | 2007–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tik:inowpp:20070601&r=his |
| By: | Florian Hagn; Wolfgang Maennig (University of Hamburg) |
| Abstract: | This study demonstrates that the Football World Cup 1974 in Germany was not able to generate any short to long-term employment effects that were significantly different from zero. It is the first work to examine long-term employment effects of Football World Cup tournaments. It is also one of the first work to undertake a multivariate analysis of the employment effects of a major sporting event outside of the USA. In addition, this study does not arbitrarily determine the time period for the potential positive effects of a major sporting event but instead examines several alternative periods. Furthermore, the study tests for method sensitivity by analysing the data set in parallel with the approaches used in the studies of sporting events in the USA as well as in a fourth modifying estimation approach. In contrast to the conclusions reached in comparable studies, the results are not regarded as a clear refutation of the positive effects of major sporting events. |
| Keywords: | Labour market, regional economics, sports economics, World Cup, Stadium Impact |
| JEL: | L83 R53 R58 |
| Date: | 2007–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spe:wpaper:0721&r=his |
| By: | Michele FRATIANNI (Indiana University, Graduate School of Business Bloomington) |
| Abstract: | Karl Brunner (1916-1989) was, with Milton Friedman and Allan Meltzer, the leader of the monetarist revolution of the Sixties and the Seventies. His work on asset markets placed the credit market, along with the money market, at center stage and focused on monetary policy as a primary source of instability. With Allan Meltzer he challenged the validity of the Keynesian paradigm and proposed an alternative model of the economy where the transmission of monetary impulses to the economy did not depend exclusively on the interest sensitivity of the demand for money but on the relative interest elasticities of the asset markets as well on variations in wealth. An unexpected feature of the alternative model is that fiscal policy determines the price level. Brunner had a strong foundation in methodology and was an adherent of the empirical philosophy school. In addition to asset markets and macroeconomics, Krunner wrote extensively on the nature of man, the role of markets and institutions. Finally, Brunner launched and managed the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking , the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Konstanzer Seminar on Monetary Theory and Monetary Policy, the Interlaken Conference on Analysis and Ideology, the Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, and the Shadow Open Market Committee (the last two with Allan Meltzer). |
| Keywords: | IS-LM model, credit market, monetarism, money supply |
| JEL: | B22 B31 E44 E51 E58 |
| Date: | 2007–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anc:wpaper:287&r=his |
| By: | Bruno Van Pottelsberghe (Centre Emile Bernheim, Solvay Business School, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels); Nicolas van Zeebroeck (Centre Emile Bernheim, Solvay Business School, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels.) |
| Abstract: | The renewal of patents and their geographical scope for protection constitute two essential dimensions in a patent’s life, and probably the most frequently used patent value indicators. The intertwining of these dimensions (the geographical scope of protection may vary over time) makes their analysis complex, as any measure along one dimension requires an arbitrary choice on the second. This paper proposes a new indicator of patent value, the Scope-Year index, combining the two dimensions. The index is computed for patents filed at the EPO from 1980 to 1996 and validated in its member states. It shows that the average value of patent filings has increased in the early eighties but has constantly decreased from the mid-eighties until the mid nineties, despite the institutional expansion of the EPO. This result sheds a new and worrying light on the worldwide boom in patent filings. |
| Keywords: | Patent value, geographical scope, renewals, patent statistics, patent families. |
| JEL: | K1 L1 O34 O38 |
| Date: | 2007–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sol:wpaper:07-019&r=his |
| By: | Dirk Nabers (GIGA Institute of Asian Studies) |
| Abstract: | The paper tries to shed light on the conceptual link between international crises like the one following September 11, 2001, the Asian financial crisis of 1997/1998, the end of the Cold War or major international conflicts, and processes of change in the international system. It argues that cultural structures rest on their continuous instantiation through social practices, thereby making them coterminous with process. Process is constituted by meaningful acts of social agents, and can thus only be grasped by analysing meaning. Meaning is transmitted by language. Meaningful language is never reducible to individual speakers; it is a social act. In the paper, I call this process discourse. Linking Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with the theory of hegemony developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, I will finally be able to show how hegemonic discourses serve as the nexus between crises and cultural structures and how they make cultural change possible. |
| Keywords: | Crisis, change, discourse, poststructuralism, hegemony, international politics |
| Date: | 2007–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gig:wpaper:50&r=his |
| By: | Javier Alonso Meseguer,; J. Ignacio Conde-Ruiz |
| Abstract: | Existe una duda razonable de que los países de la OCDE puedan seguir pagando pensiones de una cuantía suficiente a los ciudadanos que se jubilen en las próximas décadas. La dinámica demográfica del envejecimiento de la población (con espectaculares aumentos en la esperanza de vida) y la baja tasa de crecimiento de las economías de la OECD amenazan la sostenibilidad financiera de los sistemas de pensiones implantados después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Muchos economistas y la mayoría de organizaciones internacionales han propuesto políticas de reforma del sistema para mejorar su sostenibilidad en el largo plazo. Sin embargo, pocas reformas importantes se han llevado a cabo en Europa en la última década (tal vez la única excepción sean Suecia e Italia) y tampoco se han llevado a cabo en España, donde, según las últimas proyecciones de la UE , el gasto aumentará hasta alcanzar el 15,7% del PIB en el 2050. El objetivo de este artículo es realizar un inventario de las principales reformas llevadas a cabo hasta la fecha en los países europeos, y cuáles pueden ser las lecciones derivadas para España. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fda:fdaddt:2007-18&r=his |
| By: | Huffman, Wallace |
| Abstract: | This paper provides an updated assessment of the changing demand for farm labor, including its components and relative use, as reflected in the capital-labor ratios for California and Florida, which are major coastal producers of fresh fruits and vegetables, and of Iowa and Texas, which are two major midland agricultural states. Iowa is known for the production of the field crops of corn and soybeans. Texas is a large state with diverse climates and agriculture, which produces wheat and cotton and significant fresh fruit and vegetables. In order to get a good overview of long-term trends, much of our analysis spans more than four decades; i.e., we take this long-term perspective so as to be able to see the “forest” and not be obscured by all of the “trees” that are in noise data. In particular, this paper spans fifteen additional years of data relative to the data in my paper of one year ago (Huffman 2006)—extending the data forward over 2000 to 2004, which is the most recent data available from the USDA-ERS, and also extending backwards by an additional decade, 1960-1969. Our ability to summarize and analyze trends in US farm labor by state have depended heavily upon data collected by the USDA, but the USDA has withdrawn its funding for its data on self-employed and unpaid family labor by state. Without this information, we will be missing one of the important components of the total farm labor and farm input picture. |
| Date: | 2007–06–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genres:12827&r=his |