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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2008‒01‒12
thirteen papers chosen by |
| By: | Bruce Champ |
| Abstract: | During the period of the National Banking System (1863–1913), national banks could issue bank notes backed by holdings of eligible U.S. government securities. This paper presents an overview of the legal and financial history of this period. It begins with the reasons the National Banking System was created. It also examines the rules of operation for national banks as established by the National Banking Act and its subsequent revisions. Furthermore, the paper serves as a brief financial history of the period, examining the various forces that shaped the environment in which national banks operated. |
| Keywords: | National banks (United States) |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwp:0723&r=his |
| By: | Timothy Guinnane (Economic Growth Center, Yale University); Ron Harris (Tel Aviv University); Naomi R. Lamoreaux (UCLA and NBER); Jean-Laurent Rosenthal (UCLA and NBER) |
| Abstract: | We use the history of private limited liability companies (PLLCs) to challenge two pervasive assumptions in the literature: (1) Anglo-American legal institutions were better for economic development than continental Europe’s civil-law institutions; and (2) the corporation was the superior form of business organization. Data on the number and types of firms organized in France, Germany, the UK, and the US show that that the PLLC became the form of choice for small- and medium-size enterprises wherever and whenever it was introduced. The PLLC’s key advantage was its flexible internal governance rules that allowed its users to limit the threat of untimely dissolution inherent in partnerships without taking on the full danger of minority oppression that the corporation entailed. The PLLC was first successfully introduced in Germany, a code country, in 1892. Great Britain, a common-law country followed in 1907, and France, a code country, in 1925. The laggard was the US, a common-law country whose courts had effectively killed earlier attempts to enact the form. |
| Keywords: | limited company, partnership, corporation, legal regime, common law, civil law |
| JEL: | N8 G3 O16 K22 |
| Date: | 2007–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egc:wpaper:959&r=his |
| By: | Svetlana Andrianova; Panicos Demetriades; Chenggang Xu |
| Abstract: | This paper contributes to the finance-growth literature by examining the political economy origins of some of the most successful financial markets in Europe and Asia. It provides historical evidence from London, Amsterdam and Hong Kong that highlights the essential role played by the government sector in kick-starting financial development. We show that the emergence of financial systems did not occur through laissez-faire approaches and that secure property rights alone were not sufficient for financial development. In the cases of London and Amsterdam, governments created large trade monopolies which were responsible for all the major financial innovations of the time. In the case of Hong Kong, where the financial developmentmodel was bank-based, large banking monopolies with close links to the state were created. We argue that the three examples are not special cases and the role of government in the early stages of financial development has been widespread world-wide. |
| Keywords: | Monopoly; politics; institutions; finance |
| JEL: | G18 N20 O16 |
| Date: | 2008–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lec:leecon:08/1&r=his |
| By: | Toms, Steven |
| Abstract: | The joint stock company, centred on Oldham, is a central narrative in Douglas Farnie’s seminal book, the English Cotton Industry and the World Market. Farnie was the first to highlight the idiosyncratic nature of these limited companies, including their highly democratic system of governance. Documenting the collapse of this system is a useful post-script to Farnie’s analysis. The chapter will extend Farnie’s contribution by examining new evidence in the pre-1896 period. It will then go on to document subsequent developments after 1896 and show that changes in governance had serious consequences for the industry. Cliques of mill owners, and the speculative stock market capitalism they engendered, promoted over-expansion of the industry and financial instability. The over-expansion of the 1907 boom was repeated with disastrous consequences in the re-capitalisation boom of 1919. It will be shown that the activities of networks local directors, which had been established pre 1914, not financial syndicates, banks, trade unions or government, were responsible for the collapse that precipitated the industry’s long decline. |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrc:ymswp1:30&r=his |
| By: | Bruce Champ |
| Abstract: | The era of the National Banking System (1863–1913) has been a puzzling one for monetary theorists and economic historians for well over a century. The puzzles associated with this period take various forms. Despite calculations of high profit rates on note issue for certain periods of the era, national banks never fully utilized their note-issuing powers. Relatedly, the behavior of interest rates during the period is also puzzling given the regime of bank note issuance put in place by the National Bank Acts. On the surface, it appears that an arbitrage condition is broken. The observed inelasticity in aggregate national bank note issue also is puzzling, particularly given the behavior of interest rates. This paper examines many of the puzzles of the national banking era and provides a summary of the current attempts to explain those puzzles. |
| Keywords: | National banks (United States) ; National bank notes |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwp:0722&r=his |
| By: | Kaivan Munshi; Nicholas Wilson |
| Abstract: | This paper documents the presence of non-economic career motivations in the U.S. labor market, explores reasons why such motivations could arise, and provides an explanation for why they might have persisted across many generations. The analysis links ethnic (migrant) labor market networks in the American Midwest when it was first being settled, the local identity or attachment to place that emerged endogenously to maintain the integrity of these networks, and occupational choice today. While fractionalization may adversely affect the performance of secular institutions, ethnic competition in the labor market could at the same time have strengthened within-group loyalty and parochial institutions. These values and their complementary institutions, notably the church, could have mutually reinforced each other over many overlapping generations, long after the networks themselves had ceased to be salient. Counties with greater ethnic fractionalization in 1860 are indeed associated with steadily increasing participation in select religious denominations historically dominated by the migrants all the way through the twentieth century. Complementing this result, individuals born in high fractionalization counties are significantly less likely to select into geographically mobile professional occupations and, hence, to migrate out of their county of birth, despite the fact that these counties are indistinguishable from low fractionalization counties in terms of local public good provision and economic activity today. |
| JEL: | J24 J61 N11 R23 |
| Date: | 2008–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13717&r=his |
| By: | Matthias Doepke (University of California, Los Angeles, CEPR, NBER and IZA); Moshe Hazan (Hebrew University and CEPR); Yishay D. Maoz (University of Haifa) |
| Abstract: | We argue that one major cause of the U.S. postwar baby boom was the increased demand for female labor during World War II. We develop a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous fertility and female labor-force participation decisions. We use the model to assess the long-term implications of a one-time demand shock for female labor, such as the one experienced by American women during wartime mobilization. For the war generation, the shock leads to a persistent increase in female labor supply due to the accumulation of work experience. In contrast, younger women who turn adult after the war face increased labor-market competition, which impels them to exit the labor market and start having children earlier. In our calibrated model, this general-equilibrium effect generates a substantial baby boom followed by a baby bust, as well as patterns for age-specific laborforce participation and fertility rates that are consistent with U.S. data. |
| Keywords: | fertility, baby boom, World War II, female labor-force participation |
| JEL: | D58 E24 J13 J20 |
| Date: | 2007–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3253&r=his |
| By: | Maltby, Josephine |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrc:ymswp1:32&r=his |
| By: | Higgins, David; Toms, Steven; Filatotchev, Igor |
| Abstract: | The paper reinterprets Keynes’s analysis of the crisis in the Lancashire cotton industry in the 1920s. It presents empirical evidence showing that syndicates of local shareholders, but not the banks, were an important brake on firms exiting, at a time when exit barriers were otherwise unproblematic in this competitive industry. Moreover, syndicates milked firms of any profits through dividends, thereby limiting reinvestment and re-equipment possibilities. The case shows that where laissez-faire fails in response to a crisis, the associated response may need to assess both ownership structure and its relationship to competitive industry structure. |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrc:ymswp1:29&r=his |
| By: | Antcliff, V.; Higgins, David; Toms, Steven; Wilson, J.F. |
| Abstract: | There has been considerable and ongoing debate about the performance of the British economy since 1945. Empirical studies have concentrated on aggregate or industry level indicators. Few have examined individual firms’ financial performance. This study takes a sample of c.3000 firms in 19 industries and identifies Britain’s best performing companies over a period of 35 years. Successful companies are defined as a) those that survive as independent entities, b) that outperform peer group average return to capital for that industry, and c) that outperform other firms in the economy according to return on capital relative to industry average. Results are presented as league tables of success and some tentative explanations offered concerning the common strategies of successful firms. A broader research agenda for British business history is suggested. |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrc:ymswp1:36&r=his |
| By: | Hans-Jürgen Krupp |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp75&r=his |
| By: | Qi Li (University College Dublin); Patrick Paul Walsh (University College Dublin and IZA); Ciara Whelan (University College Dublin) |
| Abstract: | We document the nature of structural changes in employment to understand “jobless” growth in Irish Manufacturing in the aftermath of EEC/EU membership, 1972-2003. By 1972, forty years of protectionism and fifteen years of export promotion induced the coexistence of large exporting plants with import competing plants within 4-digit industries. During trade liberalisation we document persistent horizontal waves of creative destruction, a decline in traditional import competing plants and an expansion in exporting plants, within each sector. This coexisted with rapid vertical waves of creative destruction in small non-exporting plants which supported exporting growth through forward vertical linkages within each sector. |
| Keywords: | manufacturing employment, structural change, trade liberalisation |
| JEL: | O30 L20 |
| Date: | 2007–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3211&r=his |
| By: | Haynes, Kathryn |
| Abstract: | Purpose – The paper critiques recent research on gender and accounting to explore how feminist methodology can move on and radicalise the gender agenda in the accounting context. Design/methodology/approach – After examining current research on gender and accounting, the paper explores the nature of feminist methodology and its relation to epistemology. It explores three inter-related tenets of feminist methodology in detail: Power and Politics, Subjectivity and Reflexivity. Findings – The paper suggests that much research in the accounting is concerned with gender-as-a-variable, rather than being distinctly feminist, thus missing the opportunity to radicalise the agenda. It makes suggestions for how a feminist approach to methodology could be applied to the accounting context. Originality/value – The paper calls for a wider application of a feminist approach to accounting research and where this might be applied. Keywords – feminism, methodology, epistemology, gender, accounting, power, reflexivity, subjectivity Paper type – conceptual paper |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrc:ymswp1:27&r=his |