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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2009‒06‒17
fourteen papers chosen by |
| By: | David Galenson |
| Abstract: | Art critics and scholars have acknowledged the breakdown of their explanations and narratives of contemporary art in the face of what they consider the incoherent era of "pluralism" or "postmodernism" that began in the late twentieth century. This failure is in fact a result of their inability to understand the nature of the development of advanced art throughout the entire twentieth century, and particularly the novel behavior of young conceptual innovators in a new market environment. The rise of a competitive market for advanced art in the late nineteenth century freed artists from the constraint of having to satisfy powerful patrons, and gave them unprecedented freedom to innovate. As the rewards for radical and conspicuous innovation increased, conceptual artists could respond to these incentives more quickly and decisively than their experimental counterparts. Early in the twentieth century, the young conceptual genius Pablo Picasso initiated two new practices, by alternating styles at will and inventing a new artistic genre, that became basic elements of the art of a series of later conceptual innovators. By the late twentieth century, extensions of these practices had led to the emergence of important individual artists whose work appeared to have no unified style, and to the balkanization of advanced art, as the dominance of painting gave way before novel uses of old genres and the creation of many new ones. Understanding not only contemporary art, but the art of the past century as a whole, will require art scholars to abandon their outmoded insistence on analyzing art in terms of style, and to recognize the many novel patterns of behavior that have been created over the course of the past century by young conceptual innovators. |
| JEL: | Z1 Z11 |
| Date: | 2009–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15073&r=his |
| By: | Tetsuji Okazaki (Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo) |
| Abstract: | This paper overviews the industrial organization in Japan in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. Using comprehensive plant-level data, I made clear the market structure of the manufacturing industry in 1902. It was found that the level of market concentration in Japan was substantially lower than that in the U.S., which Nutter (1951) clarified. One of the reasons of the low concentration is that Japan had comparative advantage in the industries where the capital-labor ratio was low and the minimum optimal scale was small. Another reason is that in Japan many of the modern industries emerged in the late nineteenth century and still before the phase of firm shake out. Indeed, in the cotton spinning industry, we confirmed that fierce shake out of firms took place after 1900. Meanwhile, in the Japanese manufacturing industry, cartels increased in the 1900s. We analyzed the role of the cartel in the cotton spinning industry to find that it gave a substantial impact on the supply function of the cotton yarn. |
| Date: | 2009–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tky:jseres:2009cj210&r=his |
| By: | Christian Morrisson; Fabrice Murtin |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a historical database on educational attainment in 74 countries for the period1870-2010, using perpetual inventory methods before 1960 and then the Cohen and Soto (2007)database. The correlation between the two sets of average years of schooling in 1960 is equal to 0.96.We use a measurement error framework to merge the two databases, while correcting for a systematicmeasurement bias in Cohen and Soto (2007) linked to differential mortality across educational groups.Descriptive statistics show a continuous spread of education that has accelerated in the second half ofthe twentieth century. We find evidence of fast convergence in years of schooling for a sub-sample ofadvanced countries during the 1870-1914 globalization period, and of modest convergence since1980. Less advanced countries have been excluded from the convergence club in both cases. |
| Keywords: | Inequality, human capital, economic history, copula function |
| JEL: | D31 E27 F02 N00 O40 |
| Date: | 2009–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp0934&r=his |
| By: | Arnaldo MAURI; Claudia Gabriela BAICU |
| Abstract: | EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF THE ROMANIA’S BANKING SYSTEM AND THE ROLE OF FOREIGN BANKS. The paper presents an historical synthesis of the rise and early growth of banking industry in Romania from mid-XIX century to the outbreak of World War I and concentrates on the last decades of this period. The idea of a single national bank of issue under the control of the government had been raised during the 1848 revolution, but it was for years just a topic for study and discussion without any concrete development. Therefore, the most significant step in building the foundations of a banking system was the establishment, in 1880, of the National Bank of Romania. Only one-third of its shares were subscribed by the Government whilst two thirds were in private hands, both domestic and foreign. Then, the study highlights the substantial input, both in terms of capital and know-how (modern operating standards in commercial banking and investment banking), provided by financial institutions of industrial advanced European countries to the establishment of domestic financial intermediaries and, by this way, to support the development process of Romanian banking system. The role of banks in promoting the growth of the Romanian economy in the turn of the century by gathering huge amounts of financial capital and by directing funds into the most promising investment projects has been widely recognized. The economic development of the country was, in fact, the result of capital inflows and of improvements in exploiting domestic natural resources. Finally, the paper examines the development of banking in Transylvania in the time when this region was under Austro-Hungarian rule. |
| Keywords: | History of financial development, banking, Romania, Transylvania |
| JEL: | N23 G20 G21 |
| Date: | 2008–11–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mil:wpdepa:2008-35&r=his |
| By: | Arnaldo MAURI |
| Abstract: | The study is concerned with a crucial period of the banking history of Ethiopia, almost untouched so far by the specializing literature, in which the banking industry was affected by important changes. The paper describes and analyses the reconstruction process of the banking system and the reorganization of the monetary setting in Ethiopia started in 1941, when the Italian colonial rule came to an end and the country regained independence, during World War II. The terminal date of the study is the beginning of 1964, when a one-tier banking system, based on a state-owned financial institution, the State Bank of Ethiopia, gave way to a two-tiers banking system. The monetary banking reform in Ethiopia after liberation in 1941 was an event logical, inevitable and predictable. Different paths, however could had be followed at that moment. The choice in money matter was to establish a national monetary unit, the Ethiopian dollar, instead of keeping the country inside the East African shilling area. On the other hand, as far as concerns banking, it was opted for establishing a state-owned financial institution enjoying a monopolistic position in the credit market rather than for setting up a system of private banks, possibly expatriate. |
| Keywords: | Ethiopia, African Banking, Banking History, Monetary Reform |
| JEL: | E42 G21 N27 |
| Date: | 2008–05–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mil:wpdepa:2008-11&r=his |
| By: | Farley Grubb (Department of Economics,University of Delaware) |
| Abstract: | Victory in the War for Independence brought a vast amount of land within the grasp of the new American nation—territory stretching from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River between the southern shores of the Great Lakes and Spanish Florida. These lands were initially claimed by several states. Pressure from states without land claims led to these lands being transferred to the national government. The land so transferred was to be used to pay for the revolution. By 1802 this national public domain totaled roughly 220 million acres of saleable land that was worth about $215 million dollars at constant-dollar long-run equilibrium land prices. A public finance approach is used to explain the choices facing the government regarding how to use its lands to pay for the revolution. The first choice—directly swapping land for war debt—was superseded by the second choice, namely “backing” the national debt with its land assets and pledging future proceeds from land sales to be used by law only to redeem the principal of the national debt and nothing else. This land policy helped stabilize the national government’s financial position and put the U.S. on a sound credit footing by the mid-1790s. |
| Keywords: | land policy; national debt, national net worth, national public finance, land history, land prices, public domain, early U.S. republic. |
| JEL: | E61 E62 F34 G18 H60 H77 N21 N41 O13 O16 O23 |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dlw:wpaper:09-03.&r=his |
| By: | Tetsuji Okazaki (Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo) |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the flow of fund around the holding company (headquarters) of Mitsubishi Zaibatsu during the Second World War. From the late 1930s, the Mitsubishi holding company started to raise fund from the outside capital market through selling the shares of its affiliated companies, and invested the fund to other affiliated companies. In this sense, Mitsubishi Zaibatsu was no more a semi-closed internal capital market as it used to be. In 1940, the holding company took another step, namely, public offering of its own shares. After that, while raising fund more from the outside market, it invested to wider range of firms. From 1943, a new phase started, where the affiliated companies raised fund directly from the outside market, not through the holding company. |
| Date: | 2008–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tky:jseres:2008cj206&r=his |
| By: | Randall Morck; Bernard Yeung |
| Abstract: | Different economies at different times use different institutional arrangements to constrain the people entrusted with allocating the economy's capital and other resources. Comparative financial histories show these corporate governance regimes to be largely stable through time, but capable of occasional dramatic change in response to a severe crisis. Legal origin, language, culture, religion, accidents of history (path dependence), and other factors affect these changes because they affect how people and societies solve problems. |
| JEL: | G34 N2 P1 |
| Date: | 2009–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15042&r=his |
| By: | Farley Grubb |
| Abstract: | Victory in the War for Independence brought a vast amount of land within the grasp of the new American nation -- territory stretching from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River between the southern shores of the Great Lakes and Spanish Florida. These lands were initially claimed by several states. Pressure from states without land claims led to these lands being transferred to the national government. The land so transferred was to be used to pay for the revolution. By 1802 this national public domain totaled roughly 220 million acres of saleable land that was worth about $215 million dollars at constant-dollar long-run equilibrium land prices. A public finance approach is used to explain the choices facing the government regarding how to use its lands to pay for the revolution. The first choice -- directly swapping land for war debt -- was superseded by the second choice, namely "backing" the national debt with its land assets and pledging future proceeds from land sales to be used by law only to redeem the principal of the national debt and nothing else. This land policy helped stabilize the national government's financial position and put the U.S. on a sound credit footing by the mid-1790s. |
| JEL: | E61 E62 F34 G18 H60 H77 N21 N41 O13 O16 O23 |
| Date: | 2009–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15028&r=his |
| By: | Ryan L. Lampe; Petra Moser |
| Abstract: | Members of a patent pool agree to use a set of patents as if they were jointly owned by all members and license them as a package to other firms. Regulators favor pools as a means to encourage innovation: Pools are expected to reduce litigation risks for their members and lower license fees and transactions costs for other firms. This paper uses the example of the first patent pool in U.S. history, the Sewing Machine Combination (1856-1877) to perform the first empirical test of the effects of a patent pool on innovation. Contrary to theoretical predictions, the sewing machine pool appears to have discouraged patenting and innovation, in particular for the members of the pool. Data on stitches per minute, as an objectively quantifiable measure of innovation, confirm these findings. Innovation for both members and outside firms slowed as soon as the pool had been established and resumed only after it had dissolved. |
| JEL: | D02 K0 K21 L2 L24 L4 N11 N4 N7 O3 O31 O32 O34 O38 |
| Date: | 2009–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15061&r=his |
| By: | Joshua L. Rosenbloom; William A. Sundstrom |
| Abstract: | In much economic analysis it is a convenient fiction to suppose that changes over time in wages and employment are determined by shifts in supply or demand within a more or less competitive market framework Indeed, this framework has been effectively deployed to understand many episodes in American economic history. We argue here, however, that by minimizing the role of labor-market institutions such an approach is incomplete. Drawing on the history of American labor markets over two centuries, we argue that institutions--by which we mean both formal and informal rules that constrain the choices of economic agents--have played a significant role in the determination of wages, employment and other market outcomes over time. The historical evolution of American labor markets can best be characterized as a sequence of relatively stable arrangements punctuated by shifts in institutional regimes. Our narrative emphasizes the importance of understanding the historically contingent role of institutional regimes in conditioning the operation of supply and demand in empirical and policy analysis of the labor market. |
| JEL: | J0 J18 N3 N31 N32 N4 N41 N42 |
| Date: | 2009–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15055&r=his |
| By: | Martine Mariotti |
| Abstract: | Conventional wisdom holds that international political pressure and domestic civil unrest in the mid-1970s and 1980s brought an end to apartheid in South Africa. I show that, prior to these events, labor market pressure in the late 1960s/early 1970s caused a dramatic unraveling of apartheid in the workplace. Increased educational attainment among whites reduced resistance to opening semi-skilled jobs to Africans. This institutional change reflected white economic preferences rather than a relaxation of attitudes toward apartheid. I show that whites benefited from the relaxation of job reservation rules and that this is the primary cause of black occupational advancement. |
| JEL: | N37 J71 |
| Date: | 2009–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:acb:cbeeco:2009-503&r=his |
| By: | Roberta BON |
| Abstract: | The Italian stock Exchange: a market on a human scale. This paper aims to draw a survey about the structure and models of the Stock Exchanges in Italy, underlining all the particular features of these institutes: the first result is that the Italian characteristics do not allow a comparison with the big foreigner Exchanges in terms of activities. Starting from the historical evolution of the Italian Stock Exchange, then we define the actual situation through two significant case studies: the Stock Exchange of Milan and the Borsa Merci Telematica Italiana S.c.p.a..Finally we analyse the situation on the most important foreigners markets for the cereals: the Chicago Board of Trade, the Kansas City Board of Trade and the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange |
| Keywords: | Stock Exchange, Floor, Contract future, Contract spot |
| JEL: | F10 N12 N24 |
| Date: | 2007–10–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mil:wpdepa:2007-37&r=his |
| By: | Remo ARDUINI |
| Abstract: | Since the early seventies up to the late eighties the total health expenses, as to the GDP (Gross domestic product), of the European Community countries increased then grew steady or decreased. In Spain, the public health expenses as to the GDP have notably increased, redoubling from the early sixties up to the end of the eighties. The Spanish health model comes from the Bismarck’s one, even if it was adopted sixty years later its establishment in Germany. Besides, it was only for not qualified industrial low-waged workers. Afterwards, in 1967, with the new law on Social Security we see a first attempt to universalise the National Health. The subsequent scheme provisions was directed towards an increase and rationalization of the system through integrating different structures and central and local competences. Since the beginning the Spanish National Health has been featured by a political and administrative decentralization where regions have maintained an important role. On the 25th of April 1986 the General law of health established two levels of welfare: the general practitioner and the specialistic assistance. The law provides that the doctor shall be free to choose in the primary assistance and it created an integrated network of public hospitals. Moreover, it recognized the right for a free practical of the medical profession, and of free enterprise in the sanitary sector. Finally, funding has been achieved through national and regional tax burden, and tickets have been introduced in order to control requests. |
| Keywords: | Spanish National Health |
| JEL: | I18 |
| Date: | 2008–03–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mil:wpdepa:2008-06&r=his |