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The Rise Of Planning In Industrial America 1865 1914
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Book Synopsis The Rise of Planning in Industrial America, 1865-1914 by : Richard Adelstein
Download or read book The Rise of Planning in Industrial America, 1865-1914 written by Richard Adelstein and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-03-29 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Central economic planning is often associated with failed state socialism, and modern capitalism celebrated as its antithesis. This book shows that central planning is not always, or even primarily, a state enterprise, and that the giant industrial corporations that dominated the American economy through the twentieth century were, first and foremost, unprecedented examples of successful, consensual central planning at a very large scale.
Book Synopsis Natural Resources and Economic Growth by : Marc Badia-Miró
Download or read book Natural Resources and Economic Growth written by Marc Badia-Miró and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-05-22 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between natural capital and economic growth is an open debate in the field of economic development. Is an abundance of natural resources a blessing or a curse for economic performance? The field of Economic History offers an excellent vantage to explore the relevance of institutions, technical progress and supply-demand drivers. Natural Resources and Economic Growth contains theoretical and empirical articles by leading scholars who have studied this subject in different historical periods from the 19th century to the present day and in different parts of the world. Part I presents the theoretical issues and discusses the meaning of the "curse" and the relevance of the historical perspective. Part II captures the diversity of experiences, presenting thirteen independent case studies based on historical results from North and South America, Africa, Asia, Oceania and Europe. This book emphasizes that an abundance of natural resources is not a fixed situation. It is a process that reacts to changes in the structure of commodity prices and factor endowments, and progress requires capital, labour, technical change and appropriate institutional arrangements. This abundance is not a given, but is part of the evolution of the economic system. History shows that institutional quality is the key factor to deal with abundant natural resources and, especially, with the rents derived from their use and exploitation. This wide ranging volume will be of great relevance to all those with an interest in economic history, development, economic growth, natural resources, world history and institutional economics.
Book Synopsis Labour-Intensive Industrialization in Global History by : Gareth Austin
Download or read book Labour-Intensive Industrialization in Global History written by Gareth Austin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prevailing view of industrialization has focussed on technology, capital, entrepreneurship and the institutions that enabled them to be deployed. Labour was often equated with other factors of production, and assigned a relatively passive role. Yet it was labour absorption and the improvement of the quality of labour over the course of several centuries that underscored the timing, pace and quality of global industrialization. While science and technology developed in the West and whereas the use of fossil fuels, especially coal and oil, were vital to this process, the more recent history has been underpinned by the development of comparatively resource- and energy-saving technology, without which the diffusion of industrialization would not have been possible. The labour-intensive, resource-saving path, which emerged in East Asia under the influence of Western technology and institutions, and is diffusing across the world, suggests the most realistic route humans could take for a further diffusion of industrialization, which might respond to the rising expectations of living standards without catastrophic environmental degradation.
Book Synopsis Innovation and Technological Diffusion by : Harry Kitsikopoulos
Download or read book Innovation and Technological Diffusion written by Harry Kitsikopoulos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-23 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with two key aspects of the history of steam engines, a cornerstone of the Industrial Revolution, specifically the road that led to its discovery and the process of diffusion of the early steam engines. The first part of the volume outlines the technological and scientific developments which took place between the 16th and 18th centuries, proving critical for the invention of this strategic technology. The most important question addressed is why did England come up with this innovation first as opposed to other countries (e.g., France, Italy), which were more advanced in terms of knowledge pertinent to it. The second part of the volume traces the process of diffusion of the early steam engines, the Newcomen model, through to 1773, the year prior to the first commercial application of the second generation of steam engines (the Watt model). The process of diffusion is quantified on the basis of a novel method before proceeding with a discussion of the main determinants of this process. Kitsikopoulos pulls together a large amount of relevant evidence found in primary sources and more technically oriented literature which is often ignored by economic historians. This book will be of interest to economic historians and historians of technology.
Book Synopsis Central Banking in a Democracy by : John H. Wood
Download or read book Central Banking in a Democracy written by John H. Wood and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-17 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Federal Reserve System, which has been Congress’s agent for the control of money since 1913, has a mixed reputation. Its errors have been huge. It was the principal cause of the Great Depression of the 1930s and the inflation of the 1970s, and participated in the massive bailouts of financial institutions at taxpayers' expense during the recent Great Recession. This book is a study of the causes of the Fed’s errors, with lessons for an improved monetary authority, beginning with an examination of the history of central banks, in which it is found that their performance depended on their incentives, as is to be expected of economic agents. An implication of these findings is that the Fed’s failings must be traced to its institutional independence, particularly of the public welfare. Consequently, its policies have been dictated by special interests: financial institutions who desire public support without meaningful regulation, as well as presidents and those portions of Congress desiring growing government financed by inflation. Monetary stability (which used to be thought the primary purpose of central banks) requires responsibility, meaning punishment for failure, instead of a remote and irresponsible (to the public) agency such as the Fed. It requires either private money motivated by profit or Congress disciplined by the electoral system as before 1913. Change involving the least disturbance to the system suggests the latter.
Book Synopsis Large Databases in Economic History by : Mark Casson
Download or read book Large Databases in Economic History written by Mark Casson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-20 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Big data’ is now readily available to economic historians, thanks to the digitisation of primary sources, collaborative research linking different data sets, and the publication of databases on the internet. Key economic indicators, such as the consumer price index, can be tracked over long periods, and qualitative information, such as land use, can be converted to a quantitative form. In order to fully exploit these innovations it is necessary to use sophisticated statistical techniques to reveal the patterns hidden in datasets, and this book shows how this can be done. A distinguished group of economic historians have teamed up with younger researchers to pilot the application of new techniques to ‘big data’. Topics addressed in this volume include prices and the standard of living, money supply, credit markets, land values and land use, transport, technological innovation, and business networks. The research spans the medieval, early modern and modern periods. Research methods include simultaneous equation systems, stochastic trends and discrete choice modelling. This book is essential reading for doctoral and post-doctoral researchers in business, economic and social history. The case studies will also appeal to historical geographers and applied econometricians.
Book Synopsis The History of Migration in Europe by : Francesca Fauri
Download or read book The History of Migration in Europe written by Francesca Fauri and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-03 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The History of Migration in Europe belies several myths by arguing, for example, that immobility has not been the "normal" condition of people before the modern era. Migration (far from being an income-maximizing choice taken by lone individuals) is often a household strategy, and local wages benefit from migration. This book shows how ssuccesses arise when governments liberalize and accompany the international movements of people with appropriate legislation, while failures take place when the legislation enacted is insufficient, belated or ill shaped. Part I of this book addresses mainly methodological issues. Past and present migration is basically defined as a cross-cultural movement; cultural boundaries need prolonged residence and active integrationist policies to allow cross-fertilization of cultures among migrants and non-migrants. Part II collects chapters that examine the role of public bodies with reference to migratory movements, depicting a series of successes and failures in the migration policies through examples drawn from the European Union or single countries. Part III deals with challenges immigrants face once they have settled in their new countries: Do immigrants seek "integration" in their host culture? Through which channels is such integration achieved, and what roles are played by citizenship and political participation? What is the "identity" of migrants and their children born in the host countries? This text's originality stems from the fact that it explains the complex nature of migratory movements by incorporating a variety of perspectives and using a multi-disciplinary approach, including economic, political and sociological contributions.
Book Synopsis The Political Economy of Mercantilism by : Lars Magnusson
Download or read book The Political Economy of Mercantilism written by Lars Magnusson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-12 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the days of Adam Smith, Mercantilism has been a hotly debated issue. Condemned at the end of the 18th century as a "false" system of economic thinking and political practice, it has returned paradoxically to the forefront in regard to issues such as the creation of economic growth in developing countries. This concept is often used in order to depict economic thinking and economic policy in early modern Europe; its meaning and content has been highly debated for over two hundred years. Following on from his 1994 volume Mercantilism – The Shaping of an Economic Language, this new book from Lars Magnusson presents a more synthetic interpretation of Mercantilism not only as a theoretical system, but also as a system of political economy. This book incorporates samples of material from the 1994 publication alongside new material, ordered in a new set of chapters and up-date discussions on mercantilism up to the present day. Tracing the development of a particular political economy of Mercantilism in a period of nascent state making in Western and Continental Europe from the 16th to the 18th century, the book describes how European rulers regarded foreign trade and industrialisation as a means to achieve power and influence amidst international competition over trades and markets. Returning to debates concerning whether Mercantilism was a system of power or of wealth, Magnusson argues that it is in fact was both, and that contemporaries almost without exception saw these goals as interconnected. He also emphasises that Mercantilism was an all-European issue in a time of trade wars and the struggle for international power and recognition. In examining these issues, this book offers an unrivalled modern synthesis of Mercantilist ideas and practices.
Book Synopsis Famines in European Economic History by : Declan Curran
Download or read book Famines in European Economic History written by Declan Curran and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-24 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores economic, social, and political dimensions of three catastrophic famines which struck mid-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Europe; the Irish Famine (An Gorta Mór ) of 1845–1850, the Finnish Famine (Suuret Nälkävuodet) of the 1860s and the Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor) of 1932/1933. In addition to providing new insights into these events on international, national and regional scales, this volume contributes to an increased comparative historiography in historical famine studies. The parallel studies presented in this book challenge and enhance established understandings of famine tragedies, including: famine causation and culpability; social and regional famine vulnerabilities; core–periphery relationships between nations and regions; degrees of national autonomy and self-sufficiency; as well as famine memory and identity. Famines in European Economic History advocates that the impact and long-term consequences of famine for a nation should be understood in the context of evolving geopolitical relations that extend beyond its borders. Furthermore, regional structures within a nation can lead to unevenness in both the severity of the immediate famine crisis and the post-famine recovery. This book will be of interest to those in the fields of economic history, European history and economic geography.
Book Synopsis The History of Bankruptcy by : Thomas Max Safley
Download or read book The History of Bankruptcy written by Thomas Max Safley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-17 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume takes up bankruptcy in early modern Europe, when its frequency made it not only an economic problem but a personal tragedy and a social evil. Using legal, business and personal records, the essays in this volume examine the impact of failure on business organizations and practices, capital formation and circulation, economic institutions and ethics, and human networks and relations in the so-called "transition" to modern society, from the early-sixteenth to the early-nineteenth century. One group of essays concentrates on the German-speaking world and shows a common concern for the microeconomics of bankruptcy, that is, for such issues as the structure of the firm, the nature of its capital, and the practices of its partners, especially their assessment of risk. Another group of essays shifts the focus from Central to Western and Northern Europe and away from the microeconomics of the early modern firm to an institutional consideration of bankruptcy. The final group of essays turns to Southern Europe, especially the Mediterranean basin, to assess bankruptcy not as an unfortunate result of crisis, but as an intentional response to crisis. All of the contributions are the result of original research; many of the scholars publish in English for the first time. All of the chapters are founded on close archival research, offering insights not only into business organization and practice but also into social and cultural aspects of economic life from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth century.
Book Synopsis Agricultural Transformation in a Global History Perspective by : Ellen Hillbom
Download or read book Agricultural Transformation in a Global History Perspective written by Ellen Hillbom and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book uses a global history approach in order to reach a greater understanding of the agricultural transformation process, using a wide number of comparisons over time and space. The book seeks to identify key factors for agricultural transformation, through the use of micro level case studies, and to assess their importance in a global perspective.
Book Synopsis Colonial Exploitation and Economic Development by : Ewout Frankema
Download or read book Colonial Exploitation and Economic Development written by Ewout Frankema and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-03-12 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since many countries in the world at present were European colonies in the not so distant past, the relationship between colonial institutions and development outcomes is a key topic of study across many disciplines. This edited volume, from a leading international group of scholars, discusses the comparative legacy of colonial rule in the Netherlands Indies and Belgian Congo during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Whereas the Indonesian economy progressed rapidly during the last three decades of the twentieth century and became a self-reliant and assertive world power, the Congo regressed into a state of political chaos and endemic violence. To which extent do the different legacies of Dutch and Belgian rule explain these different development outcomes, if they do at all? By discussing the comparative features and development of Dutch and Belgian rule, the book aims to 1) to contribute to a deeper understanding of the role of colonial institutional legacies in long run patterns of economic divergence in the modern era; 2) to fill in a huge gap in the comparative colonial historical literature, which focuses largely on the comparative evolution of the British, French, Spanish and Portuguese Empires; 3) to add a focused and well-motivated comparative case-study to the increasing strand of literature analyzing the marked differences in economic and political development in Asia and Africa during the postcolonial era. Covering such issues as agriculture, manufacturing and foreign investment, human capital, fiscal policy, labour coercion and mineral resource management, this book offers a highly original and scholarly contribution to the literature on colonial history and development economics.
Book Synopsis The State and Business in the Major Powers by : Robert Millward
Download or read book The State and Business in the Major Powers written by Robert Millward and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the state emerged as a major player in the economies of the Western World. This important new volume provides an economic history for the period 1815-1939 of state/business relations in the major powers: France, Germany, Japan, Russia, UK and the USA. The book challenges the traditional story that the scale of state intervention reflected the degree to which each country was ideologically committed to laissez-faire, and which also tended to assume that governments were interested in economic growth and raising average living standards. Robert Millward gives a rather different perspective, arguing that the scale of state intervention and the differences across countries were motivated more by considerations of external defence and internal unification than by any notions of promoting economic growth or adherence to laissez-faire. This book provides, for the first time, an integrated economic history of these state /business relations in the major powers in the period 1815-1939, and offers a completely new perspective on the links between tariff policies, state enterprise in manufacturing, the treatment of the peasantry, regulation of railways, taxation of the business sector, policies on cartels, trusts and competition.
Book Synopsis Privatization and Transition in Russia in the Early 1990s by : Carol Scott Leonard
Download or read book Privatization and Transition in Russia in the Early 1990s written by Carol Scott Leonard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-19 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few economic events have caused such controversy as the privatization process in Russia. Some see it as the foundation of political and economic freedom. For others it was economics gone wrong, and ended in "Russians stealing money from their own country". As Russia reasserts itself, and its new brand of capitalism, it is ever more important that policy makers and scholars understand the roots of the economic structure and governance of that country; what was decided, who made the decisions and why, what actually transpired, and what implications this has for the future of Russia. This work, written by two senior advisors to the Russian government, has unique access to documentation, tracking the decision making process in the Russian Mass Privatization process. By close reference to events, and supplemented by interviews with many of the key participants, it shows that the policies adopted were often influenced and shaped by different forces than those cited by current popular accounts. The book challenges the interpretation of Russian privatization by some of the West’s most eminent economists. It underlines that economists of all schools, who bring assumptions from the West to the analysis of Russia, may reach false or misleading conclusions. It is an essential guide for anyone interested in Russian economic reform, and anyone who seeks to understand this enigmatic country, and its actions today.
Book Synopsis The Corporation and the Twentieth Century by : Richard N. Langlois
Download or read book The Corporation and the Twentieth Century written by Richard N. Langlois and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-06-27 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Over the course of most of the twentieth century, new technologies drove increasing diversification and specialization within the economy. Du Pont, for example, which invented nylon during the Depression, managed the complexity of widespread diversification by pioneering the decentralized multidivisional organizational structure, which was almost universally adopted in large American firms after World War II. Whereas in the nineteenth century there had been just a handful of employees at their Wilmington headquarters, by 1972 there were perhaps 10,000 managers inhabiting a vast complex at the same location. The conventional wisdom is that this huge trend withdrew large swaths of the American economy from the realm of the free market and entrusted them to a new class of professional managers who had at their disposal increasingly powerful scientific methods of accounting and forecasting. It was the superior ministrations of these managers, apparently, not relative prices, that equilibrated supply and demand and made sure that goods flowed smoothly from raw materials to the final consumer. Economic historian Richard Langlois argues that it wasn't so simple. The Corporation and the Twentieth Century is an accessible account of American business enterprise and administrative planning, looking at both the rise and demise of managerial coordination, and the history of antitrust policy in this context. Offering an authoritative counterpoint to Alfred Chandler's classic The Visible Hand, Langlois shows how historic events in the twentieth century came together to drastically change the organization of American businesses. Contrary to the beliefs of some business historians, he maintains that large managerial corporations arose not because of their superiority, but as a result of systematic technological changes and larger historic forces, and that post-war events such as the Vietnam War and the fall of Bretton Woods culminated in the resurgence of market coordination, in the institutional innovations of deregulation, and in the creation of decentralized new technology. Controversially, Langlois argues that those antitrust policies viewed as successes in the past are in fact failures, and holds that there was never a period during which antitrust kept size, concentration or monopoly at bay"--
Book Synopsis The Political Economy of Disaster by : Mats Lundahl
Download or read book The Political Economy of Disaster written by Mats Lundahl and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Haiti, one of the least developed and most vulnerable nations in the Western Hemisphere, made the international headlines in January 2010 when an earthquake destroyed the capital, Port-au-Prince. More than a year later, little reconstruction has taken place, in spite of a strong international funding commitment. Mats Lundahl has written several seminal works on Haiti, and this volume brings together the best of his past work on Haiti’s economic and political history, along with a comprehensive introduction and two new chapters which bring the story right up to the present day. Together, the volume provides both historical background and explanation as to why Haiti was so badly affected by the earthquake, and to why reconstruction efforts have been ineffective this far. Lundahl argues that the two main causes can found in the interaction between the growth of the population and the destruction of the arable soil on the one hand, and in the creation of a predatory state during the nineteenth century, which still exists to this day. This book provides a comprehensive analysis, which charts these themes from the time of the arrival of Columbus in the island in 1492, to the present day. The book also deals with contemporary market and policy failures, as well as the crucial recent elections, and considers the path ahead for this impoverished nation. This book will be of huge relevance and interest not only to students and researchers in economic history, but also for all those working on development economics, development studies and American and Caribbean Studies more generally.
Book Synopsis Regulating Competition by : Susanna Fellman
Download or read book Regulating Competition written by Susanna Fellman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cartels, trusts and agreements to reduce competition between firms have existed for centuries, but became particularly prevalent toward the end of the 19th century. In the mid-20th century governments began to use so called ‘cartel registers’ to monitor and regulate their behaviour. This book provides cases studies from more than a dozen countries to examine the emergence, application and eventual decline of this form of regulation. Beginning with a comparison of the attitudes to regulation that led to monitoring, rather than prohibiting cartels, this book examines the international studies on cartels undertaken by the League of Nations before World War II. This is followed by a series of studies on the context of the registers, including the international context of the European Union, and the importance of lobby groups in shaping regulatory outcomes, using Finland as an example. Section two provides a broad international comparison of several countries’ registers, with individual studies on Norway, Australia, Japan, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. After examining the impact of registration on business behaviour in the insurance industry, this book concludes with an overview of the lessons to be learnt from 20th century efforts to regulate competition. With a foreword by Harm Schroter, this book outlines the rise and fall of a system that allowed nations to tailor their approach to regulating competition to their individual circumstances whilst also responding to the pressures of globalisation that emerged after the Second World War. This book is suitable for those who are interested in and study economic history, international economics and business history.
