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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2013‒09‒13
seven papers chosen by |
| By: | Olsson, Ulf (Department of Economic History, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University) |
| Abstract: | This working paper is about how a series of business history projects was launched in the second half of the twentieth century. In connection with the 1956 centenary of the Wallenberg’s bank, the family assembled the necessary expertise to document the first hundred years. In the 1960s the radical left was highly critical of the Wallenberg’s financial and industrial dynasty; the head of the family, Marcus Wallenberg, accordingly initiated an extensive programme of historical research to show what his family and its enterprises had actually done for Sweden’s economic development. The historian and archivist Gert Nylander was entrusted with the task of recruiting scholars for the various projects: biographies of the family’s successive heads and histories of the major companies in which the Wallenbergs had a controlling interest. The two dozen or so business histories are presented in this article along with their authors, of whom I am one. Marcus Wallenberg’s and Nylander’s mutual trust meant that besides being based on excellent access to the sources, these business histories could meet the standards that professional historians expect. Private industrialists’ interest in their own history is liable to clash with the aims of academic research. In my opinion, in this particular case and thanks to a number of circumstances, fruitful collaboration was achieved to the benefit of historical research into Swedish business. |
| Keywords: | Wallenberg; Banking History; Sweden; Financial History; Gert Nylander |
| JEL: | N24 N84 |
| Date: | 2013–09–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunhis:0016&r=his |
| By: | Spolaore, Enrico (Tufts University); Wacziarg, Romain (UCLA, NBER and CEPR) |
| Abstract: | What obstacles prevent the most productive technologies from spreading to less developed economies from the worlds technological frontier? In this paper, we seek to shed light on this question by quantifying the geographic and human barriers to the transmission of technologies. We argue that the intergenerational transmission of human traits, particularly culturally trans- mitted traits, has led to divergence between populations over the course of history. In turn, this divergence has introduced barriers to the di¤usion of technologies across societies. We provide measures of historical and genealogical distances between populations, and document how such distances, relative to the worlds technological frontier, act as barriers to the di¤usion of devel- opment and of speci c innovations. We provide an interpretation of these results in the context of an emerging literature seeking to understand variation in economic development as the result of factors rooted deep in history. |
| Keywords: | Long-run growth, genetic distance, intergenerational transmission, di¤usion of innovations. |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:warwcg:148&r=his |
| By: | Tetsuji Okazaki (Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo) |
| Abstract: | 　　 During the World War II, Japan occupied a large part of East and South East Asia, called "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" (Daitoa Kyoei Ken). This paper overviews what the Japanese military authorities and the government did to develop the occupied areas in the 1930s and the early 1940s. It is remarkable that different development policies and organizations were applied across occupied areas. In Manchuria, which Japan occupied earlier, after trial and error, a system of planning and control was introduced. By this system, more or less systematic development of industries was undertaken. Meanwhile, in China Proper, the Japanese military authorities and the government prepared the statutory holding companies as channels for investment from Japan, but industrial development was basically entrusted to those holding companies and individual companies affiliated to them. Finally in South East Asia, development was almost totally entrusted to existing Japanese firms. |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tky:fseres:2013cf900&r=his |
| By: | Edgardo Zablotsky |
| Abstract: | La actividad filantrópica de Barón Maurice de Hirsch está claramente signada por una característica distintiva: no proveer caridad sino intentar la rehabilitación económica de los beneficiarios. ¿Cómo propone lograrlo? Hirsch sugiere sistemáticamente que la educación y el entrenamiento profesional son la única forma de romper el círculo vicioso de la pobreza. En 1891, luego de descartar la posibilidad de mejorar la calidad de vida de los judíos en el Imperio Ruso mediante el establecimiento de un sistema educativo, en forma similar a lo que había realizado en otras sociedades, el Barón de Hirsch fundó la Jewish Colonization Association (J.C.A.) a través de la cual habría de conducir la inmigración de miles de personas desde el Imperio Ruso hacia nuestro país y su establecimiento en colonias agrícolas. Su norrmativa original confería a Hirsch total control sobre las actividades de la Asociación; por ello, este paper plantea la hipótesis que el accionar educativo de la Jewish en las colonias debería er en un todo consistente con la visión de Hirsch sobre la educación. Este paper demuestra históricamente que dicho supuesto describe adecuadamente la realidad pues, como señala en sus memorias Boris Garfunkel, “si bien a la Administración de la J.C.A. se le pueden censurar no pocas cosas, al mismo tiempo no faltan algunos motivos de alabanza. Entre ellos, sin dudas, el modo en que se encaró la educación de los hijos de los colonos.” |
| Keywords: | Barón de Hirsch, Jewish Colonization Association, educación, filantropía |
| JEL: | D64 |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cem:doctra:516&r=his |
| By: | Ignacio Zubizarreta |
| Abstract: | En el presente artículo me propongo explicar los aportes realizados por la historiografía argentina reciente en torno a una de las dos facciones políticas más determinantes de la primera mitad del siglo XIX, los unitarios. El objetivo principal es el de confeccionar un balance en relación a ella. Considero que, por diversas razones que se exponen a lo largo del trabajo, la renovación historiográfica producida en Argentina a partir del retorno de la democracia en 1983 ha logrado numerosos y exitosos aportes sobre el periodo que cubre la primera mitad del siglo XIX. No obstante, esos avances tangibles que se vislumbran en diversos objetos de estudio, no han corrido parejo en cuanto al volumen de producción referente a la facción unitaria. Por lo tanto, aquí mostraremos cuáles fueron los avances de esa producción, pero también los desafíos pendientes, y las posibles causas de la escasa atención que acapararon los unitarios entre las investigaciones más recientes. |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cem:doctra:518&r=his |
| By: | Boonman, Tjeerd M. (Groningen University) |
| Abstract: | Sovereign debt crises have regained attention since the recent crises in several European countries. This paper focuses on a particular aspect of the debt crisis literature: the impact of sovereign default on economic growth. Previous research agrees on the negative impact, but not on size and duration. We are particularly interested in the heterogeneity of crisis impacts: Why are some crises deeper and longer than others? And what is the role of business cycles? We analyze four Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico) for the period 1870-2012, covering 14 sovereign debt defaults. We find that most sovereign defaults start in recessions, and in unfavorable international circumstances. Economic growth is heavily affected in the year of the default and the year after. Then economic growth picks up, but recovery is far from smooth, including periods of recurrent negative growth. We observe strong heterogeneity in the impact, which we attribute to commodity price changes, economic growth and government expenditure in the run-up to the crisis. |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:rugsom:13010-eef&r=his |
| By: | Crafts, Nicholas (University of Warwick); Wolf, Nikolaus (Humboldt University) |
| Abstract: | We examine the geography of cotton textiles in Britain in 1838 to test claims about why the industry came to be so heavily concentrated in Lancashire. Our analysis considers both first and second nature aspects of geography including the availability of water power, humidity, coal prices, market access and sunk costs. We show that some of these characteristics have substantial explanatory power. Moreover, we exploit the change from water to steam power to show that the persistent effect of first nature characteristics on industry location can be explained by a combination of sunk costs and agglomeration effects. |
| Keywords: | agglomeration; cotton textiles; geography; industry location |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:warwcg:147&r=his |