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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2011‒11‒21
fourteen papers chosen by |
| By: | Baten, Joerg; Julia, Muschallik |
| Abstract: | How many economic historians are there in the world? In which countries or world regions are they concentrated? Can we explain differences in the number of economic historians who are participating in world congresses, and which determinants encourage or limit participation propensity? Using an e-mail questionnaire, we analyse the global situation of this discipline. Overall 59 countries were available to be surveyed in this overview. We estimate the overall number of economic historians in the world to be around 10,400 scholars. |
| Keywords: | Economic history; world; survey |
| JEL: | N01 A11 |
| Date: | 2011–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:34704&r=his |
| By: | Jean-Claude Thoenig (DRM - Dauphine Recherches en Management - CNRS : UMR7088 - Université Paris Dauphine - Paris IX) |
| Abstract: | This chapter covers the evolution of institutional theory and its application to public adminsitrations in the last 20 years. It discusses the various streams, their reseach agendas and their contributions, but also their limits to add value to knowledge. |
| Keywords: | New institutional theories: historical, sociological, "new institutionalism", co-constructed local orders. |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00638348&r=his |
| By: | David Laidler (University of Western Ontario) |
| Abstract: | Irving Fisher's encounter with the Quantity theory of Money began in the 1890s, during the debate about bimetallism, and reached its high point in 1911 with the publication of The Purchasing Power of Money. His most important refinement of the theory, derived from his recognition of bank deposits as means of exchange, was to treat their out of equilibrium recursive interaction with inflation as integral to it. This treatment underlay both his 1920s work on the business cycle as a "dance of the dollar" and his advocacy of subjecting monetary policy to a legislated price stability rule, initially to be based on his "compensated dollar" scheme. Fisher's failure to recognize the onset of the Great Depression even as it was happening was directly related to his faith in the quantity theory's seeming implication that price level stability in and of itself guaranteed the continuation of prosperity, while his subsequent work on the debt deflation theory of great depressions initially failed to repair the damage that this failure did to his reputation, and to that of the quantity theory. In the 1930s Fisher nevertheless remained an active supporter of various schemes to reflate and then stabilize the price level. His subsequent influence on the quantity theory based Monetarist counter-revolution that began in the 1950s lay, directly, in its deployment of his analysis of expected inflation on nominal interest rates, and, indirectly, in its espousal of the case for subjecting monetary policy to a legislated rule. |
| Keywords: | Quantity theory; Price level; Inflation; Deflation; Business cycle; Depression; Money; Interest; Fisher effect |
| JEL: | B1 B2 B3 E3 E4 E5 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uwo:uwowop:20111&r=his |
| By: | Raimon Soler Becerro (Centre dEstudis Antoni de Capmany de la Universitat de Barcelona) (Universitat de Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | The paper aims to show the extent to which the wine production sector in the Penedes Denominacio dOrigen responded to the challenges posed both in terms of supply (consolidation and emergence of producing countries outside the traditional European sphere) and demand (fall in wine consumption and new consumer habits). It looks at the evolution of the sector in the region from the beginning of the 1940s up to present day. With the end of the 1936-1939 Civil War the sector had to deal with a fall-off in production, though it continued to take shape around the traditional wine trade. This situation changed when, at the end of the 1960s, demand increasingly turned towards higher quality bottled wines. From the legislative standpoint, the response centred on technological innovation and company restructuring. This period saw the introduction of new equipment and processes, such as stainless steel tanks and controlled- temperature fermentation, with bottled wines pushing out bulk wine and the large warehouses giving way to wineries and cellars. In addition, one of the main features of the 1970-1985 period was the formation of the big wine and cava business conglomerates. Spains entry into the European Union in 1986 accelerated this transformation process, leaving the sector made up of companies that produced both wines and cavas, introduced red and varietal wines into the range of products they offered, owned many hectares of vines and in many cases showed a clear intention to enter the international market. |
| Keywords: | exports, penedes, cava, production, catalonia, wine |
| JEL: | N64 L15 O33 L11 L66 N34 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bar:bedcje:2011266&r=his |
| By: | Frank A.G. den Butter (VU University Amsterdam); Harro B.J.B. Maas (Utrecht University) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the history of the shift from expert to model based monetary policy analysis at the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) in the postwar period up to the middle of the nineteen-eighties. For reasons that will become clear expert based reasoning at DNB was referred to as normative impulse analysis. Our focus is on two aspects of this shift: (i) from an expert based monetary analysis to a model based analysis of channels of monetary transmission, and (ii) from the top down way of monetary analysis where the president of DNB acted as the monetary expert that was in line with the hierarchical organisation of DNB to the bottom up modelling approach that was set up by a group of newly hired young academic outsiders and destabilized DNB's organisation. The resulting econometric model enabled DNB to regain some of its argumentative strength in the Dutch policy arena that had become dominated by the econometric model of the Dutch Planning Bureau (of wh ich Tinbergen was the first director), but also led to tensions within DNB's organisation. In spite of efforts to incorporate the main aspects of Holtrop's monetary analysis within the model, its concomitant new research group appeared difficult to integrate within the hierarchical organisation of DNB. The model analysis resulted in the MORKMON model which replaced Holtrop's analysis in the mid 1980s and was regularly used in policy analysis and forecasting of DNB until 2011, when the model was replaced by the DELFI model. |
| Keywords: | Dutch monetarism; history of economic modelling; monetary policy |
| JEL: | B23 C52 E58 |
| Date: | 2011–11–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:uvatin:20110161&r=his |
| By: | Douglas A. Irwin |
| Abstract: | The Recession of 1937-38 is often cited as illustrating the dangers of withdrawing fiscal and monetary stimulus too early in a weak recovery. Yet our understanding of this severe downturn is incomplete: existing studies find that changes in fiscal policy were small in comparison to the magnitude of the downturn and that higher reserve requirements were not binding on banks. This paper focuses on a neglected change in monetary policy, the sterilization of gold inflows during 1937, and finds that it exerted a powerful contractionary force during this period. The transmission of this monetary shock to the real economy appears to have worked through lower asset (equity) prices and higher interest rates. |
| JEL: | E5 N12 |
| Date: | 2011–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17595&r=his |
| By: | Ilgmann, Cordelius |
| Abstract: | Given the renewed interest in negative interest rates as method for removing the floor to nominal interest rates, this article offers a concise review of Gesell's life, work and its place in the history of economic thought. It provides a brief biographical sketch of Gesell, demonstrating both his relative prominence as a social reformer during the interwar years as well as his close affiliation with anarchism. The article then gives a concise summary of Gesell's theory of effective demand and interest as expounded in the Natural Economic Order, the former being neglected by most scholars working on the subject. Finally, it is demonstrated that Keynes endorsement of Gesell as a strange, unduly neglected prophet is another piece of evidence for rejecting Hick's classic interpretation of the General Theory. If one takes Keynes extensive discussion of Gesell's theory of interest as a key for understanding the General Theory, Keynes main innovation of General Theory becomes a monetary theory of interest based on uncertainty that results in liquidity preference. The limited literature on Keynes' link to Gesell, published mainly in the 1940s, has however been widely ignored in the debate about the General Theory. -- |
| Keywords: | History of Economic Thought,Theory of Interest,Negative Interest Rates,John Maynard Keynes,Silvio Gesell |
| JEL: | B19 B22 B31 E49 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:cawmdp:23&r=his |
| By: | Jan Fagerberg (Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo); Koson Sapprasert (Creative Entrepreneurship Development Institute, Bangkok University) |
| Abstract: | The term ‘national innovation systems’ surfaced for the first time in print during the late 1980s and, in the years that followed, several important contributions on this topic appeared. This paper investigates the role that this new literature plays within innovation studies and the world of science more generally and discusses the sources for its emergence. With the help of expert assessments, the three most important contributions to the ‘national innovation systems’ literature are identified. Then the citations to these works in scholarly journals in the Web of Science are presented and the characteristics of the ‘national innovation systems’ literature, as compared with other areas of research, are analyzed. |
| Date: | 2011–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tik:inowpp:20111115&r=his |
| By: | Luca Fiorito |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to analyze American economists’ influence in the passing of the Clayton and Federal Trade Commission Acts (1914). Specifically, it is argued and documented that American economists were important in this process in two ways. Many economists exercised an “indirect” influence by discussing in academic journals and books problems concerning trusts, combinations, and the necessary measures to preserve the working of competitive markets. At least as importantly, if not more so, some economists took an active role in the reform movement both contributing to draft proposals for the amendment of existing antitrust legislation and providing help and advice during the Congressional debates which led to the passing of the FTC and Clayton Acts. Among these, we will focus primarily, albeit not exclusively, on the contribution of John Bates Clark. |
| JEL: | B13 B14 B15 K21 L41 L42 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usi:wpaper:623&r=his |
| By: | Monica Correa Lopez |
| Abstract: | This paper documents stylized facts of international medium-term business cycles by exploring the pattern of comovement between a catching-up economy, Spain, and each of the obvious candidate countries to technological leadership of the 1950-2007 period, the U.S., France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. A remarkable feature of the international medium-term business cycle is the strong, positive lead displayed by the U.S. technology and terms of trade cycles over Spain's macroeconomic aggregates. The corresponding evidence when the counterpart to Spain is a large European economy is weaker, particularly in the case of Europe's medium-term technology cycles. Nonparametric tests results suggest that, over the medium-term cycle, a shift towards more economic integration may not necessarily be associated with increased international comovement. |
| Keywords: | Medium-term business cycles; Stylized facts; International comovement; Technology diffusion |
| JEL: | E32 F41 O3 |
| Date: | 2011–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bbv:wpaper:1132&r=his |
| By: | Julián Andrada-Félix (Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain); Fernando Fernández-Rodríguez (Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain); Simón Sosvilla-Rivero (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) |
| Abstract: | This paper tries to shed light on the historical analogies of the current crisis. To that end we compare the current sample distribution of Dow Jones Industrial Average Index returns for a 769-day period (from 15 September 2008, the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, to September 2011), with all historical sample distributions of returns computed with a moving window of 769 days in the 2 January 1900 to 12 September 2008 period. Using a Kolmogorov-Smirnov and a x2 homogeneity tests which have the null hypothesis of equal distribution we find that the stock market returns distribution during the current crisis would be similar to several past periods of severe financial crises that evolved into intense recessions, being the sub-sample from 28 May 1935 to 17 Jun 1938 the most analogous episode to the current situation. Furthermore, when applying the procedure proposed by Diebold, Gunther and Tay (1998) for comparing densities of sub-samples, we obtain additional support for our findings and discover a period from 10 September 1930 to 13 October 1933 where the severity of the crisis overcomes the current situation having sharper tail events. Finally, when comparing historical market risk with the current risk, we observe that the current market risk has only been exceeded at the beginning of the Great Depression. |
| Keywords: | Financial crisis, Great Recession, Great Depression |
| JEL: | E32 G15 |
| Date: | 2011–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aee:wpaper:1108&r=his |
| By: | Francesco Casarin (Department of Management, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia); Anna Moretti (Department of Management, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia) |
| Abstract: | Despite the effects of the crisis, several studies show that there has been an increase in cultural production in all the most important western countries over the last twenty years. Nevertheless, the dimensions of the flows of demand are changing: the lowering of the threshold of perceived accessibility to the cultural contents on offer is resulting in new population segments using them. The modalities of cultural product consumption are also changing, and are increasingly influenced by the direct involvement of the consumer in the creative processes. On the other side, the competition to conquer consumersÕ free time has intensified because more figures are now involved, both from the cultural industry and outside. The cultural offer has multiplied and become more differentiated. But while this consumption is changing dimensions and modality, a gap is emerging in the information and knowledge of cultural consumption behaviour, mainly due to a lack of innovative official statistical measurements. The present paper wants to understand how academic literature reacted to the need for information on cultural consumption, that became widespread during 2000. Our main objective is to offer an initial overview of scientific literature of the fist decade of the twenty-first century, while trying to understand the future research trends. The analysis showed that great attention is still dedicated to the segmentation of cultural demand, but the analysis of motivations underlying cultural consumption is significantly acquiring more importance. Moreover, we identified vast research areas in which cultural consumption has only been partially studied, such as: social consumption, studies on individual businesses, methodological triangulation, and the operative implications for business management. |
| Keywords: | Cultural consumption; Marketing research; Segmentation; Motivations |
| JEL: | M0 M30 M31 L82 |
| Date: | 2011–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:vnm:wpdman:12&r=his |
| By: | Gullermo Maya Muñoz |
| Abstract: | Nota Editorial |
| Date: | 2011–06–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000418:009120&r=his |
| By: | Inglehart, Ronald F. (University of MI and Higher School of Economics, Moscow); Norris, Pippa (Harvard University and University of Sydney) |
| Abstract: | Since the end of the Cold War, security studies have broadened to take into account a wide range of non-military threats ranging from poverty to environmental concerns rather than just national defense. Security scholars, backed by international organizations and a growing number of national governments, have developed the concept of Human Security, focusing on the welfare of ordinary people against a broad range of threats. This has aroused vigorous debate. Part I of this paper proposes an analytical model of Human Security. Part II argues that it is important to measure how ordinary people perceive risks, moving beyond state-centric notions of Human Security. We examine new evidence, drawing upon survey items specially designed to monitor perceptions of Human Security, included for the first time in the 6th wave of the World Values Survey (WVS), with fieldwork conducted in 2010-2012. Part III demonstrates that people distinguish three dimensions: national, community, and personal security and then explores some structural determinants driving these perceptions. Part IV discusses why perceptions of Human Security matter, in particular for explaining cultural values and value change around the world. The conclusion argues that the shift from a narrow focus on military security toward the broader concept of Human Security is a natural response to the changing challenges facing developed societies, in which the cost-benefit ratio concerning war has become negative and cultural changes have made war less acceptable. In this setting, valid measures of perceptions of Human Security have become essential, both to understand the determinants of Human Security among ordinary people, and to analyze their consequences. |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp11-039&r=his |