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Global climate change and the war in Ukraine have put energy back on the agenda for Europe in a way that has not been seen since the oil crisis of the 1970s. But the economics and business of supplying energy to Europe has a long and rich history going back to the nineteenth century. This book explores changes in energy markets, strategies, firms and investments during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The primary focus is on manufactured gas—the gas that was initially produced from coal distillation until new ways of manufacturing gas emerged after the Second World War.The expert contributors to this volume draw on their extensive research and utilise primary sources to explore a wide range of issues, including technological adaptation, market regulation, energy investments (particularly the role of foreign capital), gas consumption and supply issues. The case studies are particularly drawn from Spain, France and Italy, but the authors provide a comparative and global perspective to consider the wider context. The volume closes with an epilogue that brings the story into the present day to consider current issues affecting gas markets in the EU, including war, geostrategy and pipelines.This book will be of interest to readers in economic history, business history, energy history, the history of public utilities and modern European history more broadly.

Incorporating political, economic, and environmental factors, this book explores the evolution of health and living standards in Brazil in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It draws on anthropometric data and an interdisciplinary approach to illuminate the profound socioeconomic transformations that unfolded in Brazil during this period.Through an analysis of archival military and passport records, the book reveals an increase in heights starting in the 1880s, predating the Vargas Era's economic growth and social reforms. It also offers novel insights into Brazil's regional development divide, showing that regional height differentials existed as early as the mid-nineteenth century (before industrialization began in earnest). Innovative methods, such as surname sorting to study immigration and merging anthropometric data with historical weather records to study the link between climate and health, are introduced. Qualitative evidence on municipal-level clean water and sewage interventions, along with data on malaria and hookworm disease, further corroborate the observed longitudinal trends and spatial patterns in stature.Scholars and students of historical anthropometrics, living standards, and Brazilian history will find this book essential, as will those with a broader interest in Latin American or economic history.

The roots of corporate governance are rarely looked for in the ancient history of countries. Literature pays not enough attention to the impact of the country's history on the relations between economic actors and owners, known today as corporate governance. Many countries are guided by centuries-old traditions and customs, which is especially true of Japan. Japan is of particular interest because history of its corporate governance is not widely known and because it has developed a unique corporate governance model. This book aims to diagnose and trace the causes and symptoms of this uniqueness, emphasizing that it is a lasting legacy of previous eras. It examines key political, social, cultural, and economic events in Japan from its dawn till the 17th century in a comprehensive way and in the cause-and-effect aspect, combining the history, economic history, and the history of corporate governance. It refers to little-known issues considered in the context of a very interesting and successful country and economy, which may arouse the desire to expand knowledge and learn about the roots of these successes. The innovative nature of the research goal and the simplicity of presentation are the advantages of this book.

How apprenticeship shaped the English economy Apprenticeship dominated training and skill formation in early modern Europe. Years spent learning from a skilled master were a nearly universal experience for young workers in crafts and trade. In England, when apprenticeship reached its peak, as many as a third of all teenage males would serve and learn as apprentices. In The Market for Skill, Patrick Wallis shows how apprenticeship helped reshape the English economy.Some historians see apprenticeship as a key ingredient in the industrial revolution; others agree with Adam Smith in seeing it as wasteful and conservative. Wallis shows that neither of these perspectives is entirely accurate. He offers a new account of apprenticeship and the market for skill in England, analyzing the records of hundreds of thousands of individual apprentices to tell the story of how apprenticeship worked and how it contributed to the transformation of England. Wallis details the activities of apprentices and masters, the strategies of ambitious parents, the interventions of guilds and the decisions of town officials. He shows how the system of early modern apprenticeship contributed to the growth of cities, the movement of workers from farms to manufacturing and the spread of new technologies and productive knowledge.In this groundbreaking study, Wallis argues that apprenticeship succeeded precisely because it was a flexible institution which allowed apprentices to change their minds and exit contracts early. Apprenticeship provided a vital channel for training that families could trust and that was accessible to most young people, whatever their background.

A provocative new theory of “the economy,” its history, and its politics that better unites history and economics What is the economy, really? Is it a “market sector,” a “general equilibrium,” or the “gross domestic product”? Economics today has become so preoccupied with methods that economists risk losing sight of the economy itself. Meanwhile, other disciplines, although often intent on criticizing the methods of economics, have failed to articulate an alternative vision of the economy. Before the ascent of postwar neoclassical economics, fierce debates raged, as many different visions of the economy circulated and competed with one another. In The Real Economy, Jonathan Levy returns to the spirit of this earlier era, which, in all its contentiousness, gave birth to the discipline of economics.Drawing inspiration particularly from Thorstein Veblen and John Maynard Keynes, Levy proposes a theory of the economy that is open to rich empirical and historical scrutiny, covering topics that include the emergence of capitalism, the notion of radical uncertainty, the meaning of demand, the primal desire for money, the history of corporations, and contemporary globalization. Writing for anyone interested in the study of the economy, Levy provides an invaluable provocation for a broader debate in the social sciences and humanities concerning what “the economy” is.

Dieses Buch beleuchtet das Werk von Werner Sombart, einem wichtigen Zeitgenossen von Max Weber, und zeigt, wie sein Denken die Grundlagen für Konzepte des modernen Kapitalismus legte. Obwohl der Begriff des „Geistes“ des modernen Kapitalismus am häufigsten mit Weber verbunden wird, war es Sombart, der diesen Ausdruck zuerst verwendete, während Weber sich hauptsächlich auf die Sozialökonomik konzentrierte, während Sombart seine Ideen zum modernen Kapitalismus weiterentwickelte. Dieses Buch analysiert kritisch Sombarts bahnbrechendes Werk „Der moderne Kapitalismus“ und andere Schriften, um zu zeigen, wie sie als ergänzende Alternative zu Weber gelesen werden können, und bietet eine detailliertere und umfassendere Darstellung der Entstehung und Natur des modernen Kapitalismus. Dieses Buch wird ein interessantes Werk für ein wissenschaftliches Publikum sein, einschließlich Studierenden und Forschern der Geschichte des wirtschaftlichen Denkens sowie in den Bereichen Soziologie, Politik und Politische Ökonomie.

From the workings of financial markets to our response to the ecological crisis, economic theory shapes the world. But where do these ideas come from? Ricardo's Dream tells the fascinating story of David Ricardo, Adam Smith's only real rival as the ‘founder of economics'. The wealthiest stock trader of his day, Ricardo introduced the study of abstract models to economics. He also developed the theory of trade that underpinned globalization and hides, behind its mathematical facade, a history of power, empire, and slavery. Brimming with fresh ideas and stories, Ricardo's Dream shows how too many economists, from Ricardo's day to our own, have turned away from observing the real world and led us astray.

This open access book examines the formation and sustainability of private credit networks in past societies, gathering a global range of case studies from Europe and the Americas. The book represents a fi rst attempt to coordinate the work of different scholars working on credit networks and aims to explore the possibilities offered by social network analysis for the study of past fi nancial markets and networks. Each contribution offers new perspectives for the comprehension of past fi nancial networks, with a broad chronological and geographical scope. The chapters are arranged thematically and study both rural and urban networks, each employing a network perspective to facilitate an increased understanding of the relational dynamics of preindustrial credit transactions. This book models the various ways that SNA can be utilized by economic and fi nancial historians, as well as discusses its limitations and ways in which it can be combined with qualitative archival research. The book is of interest to a broad audience of scholars in the fi elds of economic, fi nancial and social history.

Mining finance houses were substantial public corporations with access to money markets in the City of London, the world's leading capital market for mining. These institutions became dominant at the inception of colonial rule and, in varying forms, remained so throughout the twentieth century.Drawing on a rich corpus of primary sources, this book analyses the Western colonial origins of the mining industry and its post-colonial legacies in the Central African Copperbelt. It provides insights into the operations of the global business of mining: in particular, how these processes took place, why they were considered desirable by various interest groups, and the impact that these processes continue to have on physical and human environments in parts of the world where they took place. It also turns its gaze to the City of London looking at who the financiers were and the nature of the power which they wielded. A long-term perspective on mining finance reveals that thus far the colonial governments have been the main focus in the history of imperialism in Central Africa, with little focus in many instances on the mining finance houses which have outlived them.The book is a significant contribution to the economic, financial and business history of mining and extractive industries, Central Africa, the City of London and early forms of financial capitalism.

This book investigates the impact of commercial banks in Kenya right through from their origins, to their role during the colonial period, the process of adaptation following independence, and up to their responses to new challenges and economic policies in the twenty-first century. The British colonisation of East Africa required the development of diverse political, social and economic institutions to advance and exercise control over the territories and their populations. Multinational commercial banks were among the first institutions, with the National Bank of India, Standard Bank of South Africa and Barclays Bank DCO all setting up business in Kenya, whilst continuing to maintain close relationships with the UK and other colonial actors. This book assesses the impact of commercial banks during the last years of colonial domination and the tools they used to adapt in the first decades of independence. The book concludes by considering how the colonial banking system has influenced the development of modern financial institutions in Kenya in the twenty-first century. This book argues that commercial banks are fundamental to understanding African colonies, and the foundations over which the financial system of contemporary Africa was constructed. It will be of interest to researchers of banking, economic history, the colonial period, and African studies.

Charts the emergence and development of capitalism across the world from a variety of perspectives, providing a deep understanding of how capitalism came to be the dominant economic force.This book re-examines the historical emergence and evolution of capitalism. Why did a radically new way of organizing economic life emerge in regions of the early modern world? Why did it eventually encompass the globe, tying the peoples of the world together in a common economic fate? These questions have been at the heart of historical and social-scientific inquiry since the nineteenth century. They are explored and answered anew by the scholars gathered together in this geographically and theoretically capacious volume. The chapters explore the emergence and development of capitalism in Africa, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, South Asia, East Asia, North America, and the Atlantic world, and they engage with many of the major intellectual approaches for understanding capitalism, from the New Institutional Economics to world-systems theory.The authors share a common commitment, but not a common approach, to understanding the historical development of capitalism. They believe that the emergence and evolution of capitalism must be understood by examining the concrete conditions of socioeconomic life in a particular country, empire, or region, and that such empirically and archivally driven historical analysis must be combined with theoretical discussion of the concepts and categories used to make sense of capitalism and its dynamics.This work offers different accounts of capitalist development across and within major regions of the world. It is a histories of, rather than a history of, capitalism. As such, it introduces readers to new historical research on capitalist development in different regional and national contexts and to several significant intellectual approaches for understanding what Max Weber called'the most fateful force of our modern life.'ROBERT G. INGRAM is Professor of Humanities at the University of Florida.JAMES M. VAUGHN is Assistant Instructional Professor in the Social Sciences Collegiate Division at the University of Chicago.Contributors:Gareth Austin, Ralph Austen, Peter Coclanis, Tracy Dennison, C. Alexander Evans, Emma Griffin, Robert G. Ingram, Anirban Karak, John Majewski, Mark Metzler, Kenneth Pomeranz, J. Mark Ramseyer, Tirthankar Roy and Horus T'an

The financial information provided to governments, creditors, investors etc. by businesses has been verified by auditors since ancient times. In its modern form, the independent public accounting profession has its roots in 19th century Scotland. A distinctive feature of this profession is that it consists of private for-profit businesses – operating as sole practitioners, partnerships, but mostly as large accounting firms. The question naturally arises – why should users of financial information provided by private for-profit firms place trust in the verification of that information by other private for-profit firms? This is the interesting and complex economic issue that underlies research in what has come to be called ‘the economics of auditing'. The author is one of the first researchers in this area. This book traces the development of this important stream of research that applies economic analysis to the study of financial statement audits by professional public accounting firms. It offers a narrative commentary, along with a series of previously unpublished papers that the author presented during the 1970's, at Accounting Research workshops at the University of Chicago, as part of his dissertation research, that ultimately led to one of the bedrock papers in the field. It provides an explanation and discussion of the economic, regulatory, and research environment at that time. The book concludes with a discussion of important but currently “unanswered questions” in the field that flow from the author's thesis research but remain unresolved. It will be of significant interest to advanced students and academics who are engaged in developing their own research programs, as well as to any researcher who is working in the area of the ‘economics of auditing'.

How human institutions—markets, states, communities, religions, guilds and families—have helped both to control and to exacerbate epidemics throughout history.How do societies tackle epidemic disease? In Controlling Contagion, Sheilagh Ogilvie answers this question by exploring seven centuries of pandemics, from the Black Death to Covid-19. For most of history, infectious diseases have killed many more people than famine or war, and in 2019 they still caused one death in four. Today, we deal with epidemics more successfully than our ancestors managed plague, smallpox, cholera or influenza. But we use many of the same approaches. Long before scientific medicine, human societies coordinated and innovated in response to biological shocks—sometimes well, sometimes badly.Ogilvie uses historical epidemics to analyse how human societies deal with “externalities”—situations where my action creates costs or benefits for others beyond those that I myself incur. Social institutions—markets, states, communities, religions, guilds, and families—help us manage the negative externalities of contagion and the positive externalities of social distancing, sanitation, and immunization. Ogilvie shows how each institution enables us to coordinate, innovate and inspire each other to limit contagion. But each institution also has weaknesses that can make things worse. Markets shut down voluntarily during every epidemic in history—but they also brought people together, spreading contagion. States mandated quarantines, sanitation, and immunization—but they also waged war and censored information, exacerbating epidemics. Religions admonished us to avoid infecting our neighbours—but they also preached against science and medical innovations. What decided the outcome, Ogilvie argues, was a temperate state, an adaptable market, and a strong civil society where a diversity of institutions played to their own strengths and checked each other's flaws.

This book analyses the unprecedented economic and social challenges to human civilization from the perspective of Buddhist philosophy. It reviews singularities in a broad range of scientific experiments, including the theory of relativity, quantum physics, artificial intelligence, mRNA virology, stem cell biology, and neuroscience to evaluate catastrophic risks posed to the present global economic and environmental order. Through placing these discussions within the context of Buddhist philosophy, an alternative to traditional economic and science ideas is presented. The power of technological progress and associate risks is highlighted as a way of looking into and creating a more sustainable future. This book provides a fresh interpretation of fat-tail economics that draws ideas from the basic sciences. The book will be of much value to students and researchers who are keen to environmental economics, planetwide catastrophes, and Buddhist philosophy.

What was the role of economists and economics in the making of the European Union? This book sheds light on the activities of a particular type of economic experts: the macroeconomic modellers of the Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG II), who built multi-country macroeconomic models of the European Economic Community. These models aim at studying the macroeconomic interactions between national economies and at providing insights about the effects of coordinating (or not) national economic policies. The book documents the origins, challenges, and progress made by DG II's experts through building these models. This book provides insight into the influence of multi-country models on modern economics. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in the history of economic thought and the development of macroeconomic policy.

Nur im Museum ist es möglich, in wenigen Schritten Milliarden Jahre Evolution, Menschheits- oder Technikgeschichte hinter sich zu bringen. Auf dem Weg durch fast 14 Milliarden Jahre stellt dieses Buch auf kurzweilige Art Museen und das in ihnen präsentierte Wissen vor. In zwanzig Stationen geht es vom Urknall über die Entstehung der Erde und des Lebens, zur Gründung erster Königreiche, zu Kleopatra, Luther und den Menschenrechten, zu Napoleon, Computern und dem Klimawandel. Man erfährt, warum Kuh und Wal so nahe Verwandte sind, warum die Preußen schon lange vor dem Berliner Hauptstadt-Flughafen ruinöse Bauprojekte realisierten und ob wir Menschen die Chance haben, jemals eine Supernova mit bloßen Augen zu sehen. Auf dieser unterhaltsamen Reise durch Raum und Zeit geht es aber auch um die Museen selbst, ihre Entstehungsgeschichten und ihre oft exzentrischen Gründer – unter denen einer die Wildtiere kurzerhand selbst erschoss, die er ausstellen wollte, während ein andererkistenweise Landkarten und Bücher aus Japan stahl, bevor Stürme ihn zurück an die Küste warfen, oder jener dritte, der sich inmitten seiner Ausstellungsfläche begraben ließ und dort noch immer liegt. In diesem Buch vergehen (fast) 14 Milliarden Jahre wie im Flug.

This book focuses on worldwide historical experiences of monetary reforms and the reformist minds behind them: the money doctors. The process of doctoring is the process of listening to many pieces of information and sorting them in order to correctly diagnose the causes of the problem and derive the appropriate cure, if it exists. A money doctor is “a person who, helped by theoretical and practical knowledge, advises and/or proposes to act on how to build a stable monetary and financial system or to repair ongoing monetary turbulences.” Economists and policy makers are money doctors when their involvement includes the observation and diagnostic of the monetary and financial troubles and the proposition for a cure. Each contribution highlights the theoretical underpinning of the doctors, and the key factors for the success or failures of the reform they have promoted. We collect cases from Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania from the 16th to the 20th century anddiscuss their aims, strategies, and consequences to draw implications for today.

Land and labour provides the first full-length history of the Potters'Emigration Society, the controversial trade union scheme designed to solve the problems of surplus labour by changing workers into farmers on land acquired in frontier Wisconsin. The book is based on intensive research into British and American newspapers, passenger lists, census, manuscript, and genealogical sources. After tracing the scheme's industrial origins and founding in the Potteries, it examines the migration and settlement process, expansion to other trades and areas, and finally the circumstances that led to its demise in 1851. Despite the Society's failure, the history offers unique insight into working-class dreams of landed independence in the American West and into the complex and contingent character of nineteenth-century emigration.

This book shows how inflation can disrupt politics and society. With no recent precedent, mild inflation spurred mass protests, myriad remedial schemes, and partisan political reversals between 1910 and 1914. Then wartime demand and inflationary fiscal policy doubled consumer prices from 1915 to 1920, triggering waves of strikes, food riots by immigrant housewives, class conflict, and elite fears of revolution. Middle-class households resented falling real incomes. Even more than today, food prices dominated consumer concerns. Yet farmers wanted high commodity prices. Accordingly, both sides blamed and attacked meatpackers, wholesalers, and retailers. Then as now, inflation hurt whichever party held the White House. Fumbling responses by Wilson's administration and the Federal Reserve led to hesitant price controls, punitive raids and prosecutions, and a now-familiar fallback—high interest rates in 1920 and subsequent recession. An epilogue traces continuing popular and politicalresponses to changes in the consumer price index down to 2020.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Welfare Rights Movement organized at both local and national levels, advocating for poor people's inclusion, dignity, and autonomy. We Are Each Other's Business examines Black women's leadership within the Chicago Welfare Rights Movement, recasting their consumer activism as a form of Black feminist technology.Nicole M. Brown calls for understanding the Black women of the Welfare Rights Movement as sophisticated strategists who engaged the tensions among capitalism, consumerism, and economic liberation. She analyzes Black women's engagement with consumer credit, tracing how they linked consumption with citizenship and critiqued the state's treatment of the poor. Brown offers a radical reframing of the struggle between Black women and the state as a battle of technologies, showing how Black women challenged “algorithmic assemblages of race, class, and gender” and “analog algorithms of poverty.” She also shows how racism, sexism, and classism stifled opportunities for alliances: although the Welfare Rights Movement converged with consumer and women's rights movements, white and middle-class activists were unwilling to recognize poor Black women as fellow political actors. Bringing together historical sociology, computational methods, and intersectional Black feminist theory, We Are Each Other's Business offers innovative and generative insights into Black women's struggle for political and economic equity.

In the early twentieth century, wage loans became a major source of cash for workers all over the United States. From Black washerwomen to white foremen, Illinois roomers to Georgia railroad men, workers turned to labor income as collateral for borrowing capital. Networks of companies started profiting from payday and property advances, exposing debtors to the grim prospects of garnishments of their wages and possessions in order to mitigate the risk of default. Progressive and later New Deal reformers sought to eradicate these practices, denouncing “loan sharks” and “financial slavery” as major threats to a new credit democracy. They proposed fair credit as a universal solution to move past industrial poverty and boost consumer freedom—but in doing so, reformers, lenders, and bankers limited credit access to the white middle-class constituencies seen as worthy of protection against extortion.Working for Debt explores how the fight against wage loans divided the American credit market along class, race, and gender lines. Simon Bittmann argues that the moral and political crusades of Progressive Era reformers helped create the exclusionary credit markets that favored white male breadwinners. The politics of credit expansion served to obscure the failures of U.S. capitalism, using the “loan shark” as a scapegoat for larger, deeper depredations. As credit became a core feature of U.S. capitalism, the association of legitimate borrowing with white middle-class households and the financial exclusion of others was entrenched. Blending economic sociology with business, labor, and social history, this book shows how social stratification shaped credit markets, with enduring consequences for class, race, and gender inequalities.

For a long time, everything revolved around bread. Providing more than half of people's daily calories, bread was the life-source of Europe for centuries. In the middle of 19th century, a third of household expenditure was spent on bread. Why, then, does it only account for 0.8% of expenditure and just 12% of daily calories today?In this book, Peter Scholliers delves into the history of bread to map out its defining moments and people. From the price revolution of the 1890s that led to affordable and pure white bread, to the taste revolution of the 1990s that ushered in healthy brown bread, he studies consumers, bakers and governments to explain how and why this food that once powered an entire continent has fallen by the wayside, and what this means for the modern age. From prices and consumption to legislation and technology, Scholliers shows how the history of bread has been shaped by subtle cultural shifts as well as top-down decisions from ruling bodies. From the small home baker to booming factories, he follows changes in agriculture, transport, production and policy since the 19th century to explain why bread, once the centre of everything, is not so today.

“The most important economics book of the year―and maybe of the decade.” —Paul Krugman, New York Times, on Capital in the Twenty-First Century A bestselling economist's history of inequality and guide to a more just, sustainable world, distilled into an engaging and accessible pocket-sized text.In this unique work, Thomas Piketty presents a synthesis of his historical and comparative research on inequality. He challenges the idea that there could be natural inequalities and shows that the march toward equality has always depended on political and social struggles, addressing diverse topics such as: education, inheritance, the climate crisis, the taxation of wealth, and gender disparities. Adapted from Piketty's 2022 lecture at the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Nature, Culture, and Inequality makes his important argument available to a wider audience for the first time. With a clear, conversational tone, he provides a strong foundation of data and concrete examples of how we can continue to level the playing field.

How Wall Street concocted a more volatile and dangerous capitalismThe Fall and Rise of American Finance traces the collapse and reconstitution of American financial power from the disintegration of robber baron J. P. Morgan's vast empire to the rise of finance behemoth BlackRock. Contrary to what is taken for common sense by figures from Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders, Maher and Aquanno insist that financialization did not imply the hollowing out of the “real” economy or the retreat of the state. Rather, it served to intensify competitive discipline to maximize efficiency, profits, and the exploitation of labor—with the support of an increasingly authoritarian state.

This book explores G.D.H Cole's significant yet often overlooked role in the history of British Sociology from 1920-1960. Eager to achieve a sense of scientific legitimacy following its institutionalisation in the early 1900s, British sociology had no space for a scholar like Cole, who saw sociology as an innately normative and political project which, in his case, was dedicated to the development of socialism. Conceptualising Cole's relationship to sociology as one of semi-alienation - suggesting an openness to the principles of the discipline yet disagreement with the form it takes in the current day - Dawson shows how Cole made a number of important sociological contributions which were grounded in an early form of structuration theory, including the production of one of Britain's first sociology textbooks and an early monograph on the sociology of class. A passionate advocate for what sociology could be, Cole was a promoter of the sociological Marx and interrogator of Durkheim as part of his desire to develop sociology in Britain, including at his own institute of the University of Oxford. Cole also produced a distinctive corpus of public and creative sociology expressed in newspaper articles, poems and songs. Drawing on archival research Dawson reintegrates Cole into the history of British Sociology, and in so doing offers valuable insight into sociology's history and its contemporary form, emphasising a normative, critical and public form of the discipline.

During the final stages of Prohibition, the US government allowed the consumption and sale of “non-intoxicating” beer, which was at or below 3.2% alcohol-by-weight. Beer's return—permitted with an eye toward job creation during the Great Depression—was one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's earliest New Deal policies. In this book, economic historian Jason E. Taylor takes readers through the rapid resurgence of American breweries and shows how beer helped spark a sharp recovery in the spring of 1933. Taylor begins with stories of how the nation's 1,400 breweries were decimated by the onset of Prohibition in 1920. He then turns to the frothy debates that led Congress to declare 3.2 beer “non-intoxicating,” and hence allowable under Prohibition. While April 7th is now celebrated as “National Beer Day,” the original April 7th—when legal beer returned after more than 13 years away—brought raucous scenes that make today's Mardi Gras festivities seem tame by comparison. The Brew Deal shares stories of breweries, people, politics, perseverance, and the various roles that 3.2 beer has played in the evolving American beer scene.

This book, focusing on the Japanese economy mainly from the 1990s to the 2010s, examines the Japanese industrial and fiscal-monetary policies and evaluates its achievements and limits from a historical perspective. Although the period that was also referred to as the'lost decade (or two, three decades)'was marked by various policy discussions, there are still few studies that summarize them as a history. Another unique feature of this publication is that it includes the contributions not only from researchers, but also from those who are/were in a position close to the policy makers. By rethinking this era, many Japanese not just researchers and policy makers will be motivated to move toward a new era. Many of the chapters in the book are based on the primary sources not found elsewhere, including the interviews with policymakers and collection of policy documents, in addition to the authors'own analysis, views, and findings. They attempt to describe policymakers'struggles to exit from the long-term recession after the collapse of the bubble economy, seeking to get back on the trajectory for economic growth. The readers will gain new factual perceptions and discoveries from these historical contexts. The issues presented in this book will also contribute to the international understanding of policy efforts in Japan, which is facing a frontier with high uncertainty. Japan's experience and its challenges are common in many aspects to developed countries now and in the future.

This book presents the economic heartbeat and institutional details that shaped Athenian society during the Classical period (508-323 BCE), employing an innovative and outside-the-box approach to studying history. It answers questions about societal structure, the roles of women, foreigners, and slaves, the transformation of their economy from agrarian to maritime, and commercially-oriented. 28 short fictional stories enliven the narrative, each accompanied by rigorous academic analysis - revealing how banking, insurance, and the Athenian drachma, the internationally accepted currency of the times, shaped their world. Exploring the symbiotic relationship between democracy and economic evolution, the book examines the sophisticated economic institutions of ancient Athens -ranging from property rights protection to market-driven price determination, anti-profiteering measures, measures to protect the Athenian currency's trustworthiness from forgery, business and labor mentality and practices, international trade patterns, as well as the existence of a robust public sector related also to the provision of a series of public goods. In a comprehensive analysis, the book scrutinizes daily life, societal structures, and customs, addressing a variety of questions such as marriage, cuisine, attire, values, and entertainment. Employing New Institutional Economics as a methodology, the book puts together historical evidence with institutional analysis, offering an interdisciplinary lens through economics, political science, strategy, and behavioral theory. Richly supported by ancient sources, inscriptions, and a vast modern bibliography, this work not only explains ancient Athens but also proposes its socioeconomic pattern as a guide for modern societal challenges in economic governance and democracy.

Both in the popular mind and in many academic circles, it is said that Hayek and Keynes stood opposed; the one advocating markets, the other statism. But this image confuses the one-off of ‘Keynesianism'with Keynes's overall economic approach, and so sets up a false debate. The tragedy is the seemingly permanent dualism this has introduced into economics and practical economic affairs. In this brief study, this history is reviewed by introducing the ideas of Rudolf Steiner into the discussion in order, as it were, to rerun history from 1923 until now with a view to putting the last hundred years back on track so that we can catch up on lost time. ‘Beyond Gold'introduces Rudolf Steiner's little-known contribution to economic thought. Through that lens it revisits first ‘the Hayekian View', then Keynes's ‘unspoken mission'. The author's aim is to show that Hayek, Keynes and Steiner can be seen together on the one ‘true'page of modern economic development, each in their different ways pointing to the need for economic life to be grounded on its own logic, but a logic that takes its cues from accounting.

The world's largest market is that for foreign exchange with a turnover running into trillions per day. The mystery is why this market is dominated by trading in London when the US dollar is the main currency in use. What role is played by this market? To many it is a speculator's paradise, exposed to manipulation and contributing to currency volatility. For others it plays a central role in in the operation of the global banking system and a mechanism for maintaining currency stability. In Forex Forever, Ranald C. Michie seeks to provide answers to these and other questions by examining how the foreign exchange market has developed in the City of London over the past 150 years and uncovers its secret existence in London before the First World War. Michie explores how the City of London became the centre of the global foreign exchange market before 1914 through the international banking network, trading on the floor of the Stock Exchange, and the communications revolution that began with the telegraph. He investigates how that position was sufficient to make London the centre of a new foreign exchange market that emerged between the wars, survived the era of fixed exchange rates after the Second World War, and then flourished from 1970 onwards. This in-depth study helps to explain how and why the global monetary system has functioned since the middle of the nineteenth century.

This book offers a new interpretation of German law and politics during the era between the Thirty Years'War and the French Revolution. Liberal ideas of freedom and equality were prototyped in Germany in property law: through the free disposition of estates, freedom from taxation and other extractions, and free use of paper money. Civil liberty, ideas about equality, and restrictions on arbitrary state power were real, recognized, and meaningful. These freedoms were enjoyed by all classes of Germans. They were thought to have been built atop Germans'ancient heritage of freedom and a federalist imperial constitution which inspired Montesquieu and the American Founders. Driving these trends were ideas about political economy, enlightened reform, practical problem-solving, as well as forces of supply and demand in everything from the market for books to the market for justice. This book places the story of early modern German freedom close by the side of more familiar stories of England, North America, France, and the Netherlands.

Agents of European overseas empires involves contributors who specialise on often overlooked aspects of imperial endeavour: ‘private'European interests, companies, merchants or courtiers, who conducted their own activities both with and without the benediction of polities. The chapters adopt intra- as well as inter-imperial perspectives and transport the reader to colonial America, the West Indies, the Cape of Good Hope, Batavia, or Ceylon, through the Dutch, English, French and Spanish empires. Agents of European overseas empires offers crucial insight on how these actors acquired profits and power and, in turn, laid the platforms for European global empires.

Fashion is a research topic of increasing interest to economic and business historians as it points towards new understandings of economic growth and decline. This book explores the role of institutions and institutional change in the Italian fashion system from the 1940s to the 1980s. Starting from the premise that institutions play a central role in explaining the peculiarity and development of the Italian fashion system, this book analyses the diverse institutional entities involved in supporting and promoting Italian fashion. The objective is twofold: to highlight, with a comparative approach, the distinctly polycentric nature of Italian fashion and to explain the emergence of the stylist as the outcome of a lengthy process of institutional change. The book explores the role that institutions and institutional actors have played in making Italian fashion a key player into the world economy, enriching the existing interpretative framework through unique interdisciplinary analysis. This book will be of interest to researchers and students working in economic and business history, the history of fashion, and cultural studies.

Named One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of the YearA vivid account of the past, present, and future of economic growth, showing how and why we must continue to pursue it while responding to the challenges it creates.Over the past two centuries, economic growth has freed billions from the struggle for subsistence and made our lives far healthier and longer. Yet prosperity has come at a price: environmental destruction, desolation of local cultures, the rise of vast inequalities and destabilizing technologies. Faced with such damage, many now claim that the only way forward is through “degrowth,” deliberately shrinking our economic footprint. But to abandon humanity's progress would be folly. Instead, Daniel Susskind argues, we must keep growth but redirect it, making it better reflect what we truly value.In a sweeping analysis full of historical insight, Susskind shows how policymaking came to revolve around a single-minded quest for greater GDP. This is a surprisingly recent development: economic growth was barely discussed until the second half of the twentieth century. And our understanding of what drives it is more recent still. Only lately have we come to see how humankind emerged from its millennia of stagnation: through the sustained discovery of powerful and productive new ideas.This insight undermines the mantra that “we cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet,” for the world of ideas is infinitely vast. Yet growth's critics are right to insist that we can no longer focus on its upsides alone. We must confront the tradeoffs, Susskind contends: sometimes, societies will have to deliberately pursue less growth for the sake of other goals. These will be moral decisions, not simply economic ones, demanding the engagement not just of politicians and experts but of all citizens.

Where did modern banking come from—and how does this history help us understand financial crises?In the twelfth century, Pisa was a thriving metropolis, a powerhouse of global trade, and a city that stood at the center of medieval Europe. But Pisa had a problem: Money came in the form of coins, and they were becoming scarce. In the face of this financial and monetary crisis, the foundations of modern banking were laid.In Money and Promises, the distinguished banker, executive, and historian Paolo Zannoni examines the complex relationship between states and banks that has changed the world. Drawing on in-depth archival research, he explores seven case studies: the republic of Pisa, seventeenth-century Venice, the early years of the Bank of England, imperial Spain, the Kingdom of Naples, the nascent United States during the American Revolution, and Bolshevik Russia in 1917 through 1923. Zannoni also tells the story of how the Continental Congress established the first public bank in North America, exploring the roles of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton. Spanning many countries, political systems, and historical eras, this book shows that at the heart of these institutions is an intricate exchange of debts and promises that shaped the modern world as we know it.

ONE OF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2024 How inflation and deflation fears shape American democracy. Many foundational moments in American economic history—the establishment of paper money, wartime price controls, the rise of the modern Federal Reserve—occurred during financial panics as prices either inflated or deflated sharply. The government's decisions in these moments, intended to control price fluctuations, have produced both lasting effects and some of the most contentious debates in the nation's history. A sweeping history of the United States'economy and politics, Shock Values reveals how the American state has been shaped by a massive, ever-evolving effort to insulate its economy from the real and perceived dangers of price fluctuations. Carola Binder narrates how the pains of rising and falling prices have brought lasting changes for every generation of Americans. And with each brush with price instability, the United States has been reinvented—not as a more perfect union, but as a reflection of its most recent failures. Shock Values tells the untold story of prices and price stabilization in the United States. Expansive and enlightening, Binder recounts the interest-group politics, legal battles, and economic ideas that have shaped a nation from the dawn of the republic to the present.

A comprehensive study of the New Christian elite of Jewish origin—prominent traders, merchants, bankers and men of letters—between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuriesIn Strangers Within, Francisco Bethencourt provides the first comprehensive history of New Christians, the descendants of Jews forced to convert to Catholicism in late medieval Spain and Portugal. Bethencourt estimates that there were around 260,000 New Christians by 1500—more than half of Iberia's urban population. The majority stayed in Iberia but a significant number moved throughout Europe, Africa, the Middle East, coastal Asia and the New World. They established Sephardic communities in North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, Italy, Amsterdam, Hamburg and London. Bethencourt focuses on the elite of bankers, financiers and merchants from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries and the crucial role of this group in global trade and financial services. He analyses their impact on religion (for example, Teresa de Ávila), legal and political thought (Las Casas), science (Amatus Lusitanus), philosophy (Spinoza) and literature (Enríquez Gomez).Drawing on groundbreaking research in eighteen archives and library manuscript departments in six different countries, Bethencourt argues that the liminal position in which the New Christians found themselves explains their rise, economic prowess and cultural innovation. The New Christians created the first coherent legal case against the discrimination of a minority singled out for systematic judicial inquiry. Cumulative inquisitorial prosecution, coupled with structural changes in international trade, led to their decline and disappearance as a recognizable ethnicity by the mid-eighteenth century. Strangers Within tells an epic story of persecution, resistance and the making of Iberia through the oppression of one of the most powerful minorities in world history. Packed with genealogical information about families, their intercontinental networks, their power and their suffering, it is a landmark study.

This book presents a concise yet detailed analysis of China's agricultural economy and food security in historical perspective. The book begins with an overview of China's socialist economic transition and Deng Xiaoping's reforms, with an emphasis on agricultural economy and food production, before discussing China's food industry and security in more recent years. Combining accessible qualitative interpretations with a rich data set, the author analyses the transitions and evolving policies in China's agricultural production and shows how these are essential for understanding contemporary food security challenges in the country. Covering topics including food imports and supply, dietary changes, international trade policies and other geopolitical factors impacting food security, the book presents new insights into the interplay between domestic and international systems. Bridging gaps between historical understanding and contemporary policy relevance, this book will be useful reading for researchers in varied disciplines including economic history, agricultural economics, China's economy, and economic development.

This book provides a comprehensive study of land property rights and transaction systems in late imperial China, specifically during the period of 1560 – 1950. The book introduces the work of two key scholars working in Chinese economic history and land property history, synthesizing existing research with important new findings.The book traces the evolving nature of Chinese land property rights over time, discussing changing influences and contexts. It discusses the traditional role of small individual family farms and how these differed from the manor economy of early modern Europe, leading to a substantial middle class of peasant farmers with relative economic and social stability, as well as how this has uniquely shaped Chinese economic development in the long run. Chapters explore the different ways that private, corporate and state/publicly owned land co-existed in China during this period, with an in-depth examination of the impact of dian (conditional sale)and huomai (revocable sale) customs on the protection of smallholders in the face of advancing agricultural, technological and political reforms. The book also discusses the diversity of types of land transactions including sales, rent deposits, tenancies, and mortgages and how these changed in different dynasties, as well as the economic and political implications of the globalizing 20th-century and growth of the free market for Chinese property. Combining a long run perspective with highly detailed analysis of Chinese property customs, this book will be a valuable resource for economic historians, researchers of agricultural history, and those interested in the history of China.

This monograph puts a focus on the fundamental role of timber, in the European industrialization process. This ties into analyzing the early stages of globalization, which often solely revolves around the flow of capital. While this is also discussed in this book, the author paints a more complex picture of international trade, and particularly the relationships between the countries producing commodities and the consumer countries. Throughout the chapters, readers will get an understanding of the organization behind the timber value chain from the forests of Central Eastern Europe, the main Scandinavian countries, and Russia, to the main consumer markets in Western Europe. The examined time frame is between the end of the 17th century and World War 2. During that time, a fascinating nexus of economic, technological, and financial structures evolved, that tied the forests'areas to the consumption centres – with the help of Baltic merchants. It is a fascinating story that ties together historical information for readers interested in economic history and traditional use of forest products.

This edited volume celebrates a quarter-century's anniversary of the foundation of the Japan Association for Evolutionary Economics (JAFEE) and proposes the future perspectives of evolutionary economics on the grounds of its achievements in Japan. When JAFEE was founded in 1997, hundreds of ambitious non-neo-classical economists gathered in this forum to advance new directions of economic research. Succeeding in 2004, JAFEE launched an international academic journal, Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review (EIER), which is now published by Springer.Evolutionary economics found rich soil for growth in Japan, where non-orthodox directions in economic theory and historical interest in the past masters'works occupied a solid portion of economics academism. Evolutionary economics in Japan has grown with the collaboration of non-neoclassical economics including Marxian and post-Keynesian economics, agent-based modeling, complexity studies, comparative economic systems, and studies in industrial evolution. Combining the renovation of classical value theory as the micro-foundation of evolutionary economics is one of its most conspicuous achievements. Experimental methods are also used in the artificial domain, regional studies (community currencies), and other domains. Further, evolutionary ideas stimulated comparative analysis of national economies in the development and system transition. The variety of chapters in this volume reflects the broad perspective and the multiplicity of approaches to evolutionary economics in Japan, which thus stimulates its worldwide advance.

This book examines how European farmers responded to the economic and political challenges created by the First World War and the Great Depression. The difficulties of interwar Europe have been frequently explored, but rarely from the perspective of the agricultural sector, where two-fifths of the population earned their livelihood, mostly as small, family farmers. The traditional literature argues that the landed elites conspired to undermine many of Europe's young democracies after the Great War. This book shows instead that by the early 1920s most had either sold their land or seen it confiscated following the widespread land reforms of Eastern Europe, leaving the family farm as the dominant unit of production. The book advances several theories that place the family farmer at the heart of change and explores why some proved to be enthusiastic supporters of liberal democracy, while others preferred political ideologies as diverse as social democracy in Scandinavia or fascism in Germany and Italy. It explores the nuanced and evolving links between family farms and government interests, showing how this relationship varied in different countries and contexts across Western and Central Europe. The book discusses the impact of family farms on agricultural market trends, the influence of collective action on government policies, and the increasing politicization of farmers and rural populations more broadly. The book also sheds light on how agrarian problems and their solutions differed in industrial, agrarian, and transforming societies in interwar Europe. This book will be an illuminating read for scholars of economic history, comparative history and European history interested in agriculture and rural communities.

This handbook is a milestone in the field of historical economics and econometric history through its emphasis on the concrete contribution of cliometrics to our knowledge in economics and history. The articles in the handbook authored by the leading scholars in the fields, stress the usefulness of cliometrics for economists, historians and social scientists in general. The handbook offers a comprehensive coverage of topics with each article providing an overview of the contributions of cliometrics to a particular topic. The handbook has set a new standard of quality in the field by offering a world-wide forum of discussion in cliometrics. This updated and extended third edition of the handbook of cliometrics offers a substantially enlarged collection of articles and thus stresses its unique position as authoritative reference work in this field.

A landmark history of the world economic order, exploring how developing countries have fought to escape impoverishment Over the past two decades, experiments in neoliberal economics have opened up a chasm of inequality between the Global South and the West. Development advice from richer nations has led to social upheaval, political unrest, environmental degradation—and even the creation of a new underclass. Brutal extremes of wealth and poverty are now commonplace. Ali A. Allawi traces the evolution of the world economic order from the late imperial era to the present day. Shedding light on continuing controversies, Allawi shows how the process of development has been hindered at every turn, from poor leadership and lost opportunities to widespread corruption. In doing so, he argues that the current neoliberal consensus is only the most recent of a series of failed policy imperatives. Covering issues in the Global South as well as failures in the West, this definitive account offers an impassioned and authoritative call for change.

Globalization: A Key Idea for Business and Society analyzes today's process of global integration. Globalization is seen as a complex phenomenon, the drivers of which are of a technological, institutional, cultural and, not least, political nature.The book includes a historical analysis of the rise, and fall, of the “first globalization” wave which took place between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the Great War. The chapters focus on the measurement of the global integration process, on the in-depth analysis of the above mentioned “drivers”, and on some of the actors playing a relevant role in the process itself – multinational companies and governments as owners of global companies. The conclusion of the book provides a perspective on the current “globalization backlash”, its determinants and possible future alternative scenarios.This book is an ideal resource for students and practitioners interested in past, present and future globalization.

This book reviews China's strategic pathway over the last 1000 years and considers its prospects for ascending to high-income status by the end of the 21st century. It analyzes why, although China's chances of joining the global core are sound, they are not outstanding; in addition, it faces mounting challenges, internal and external alike. The argument is presented in the framework of dynamic-strategy theory, which is expounded here in novel form. This exposition includes a wide ranging survey of global history, with a focus on the development of the industrialisation paths of the major economies of today, including a detailed study of Japan's long-run strategic pathway. The book's closing section presents a scenario-based discussion of China's potential place in the world in 2100. The analysis implies that China's zenith is likely to be reached slightly before mid-century, after which its relative economic scale will likely decline. Beyond that generalfinding, the scenarios investigate the wide range of plausible outcomes that China may experience: a range that the author contends is much wider for China than for nations under-pinned by less complex political-economies. Given its scope, the book will appeal to scholars of history, economics, geopolitics and sinology, and to anyone interested in learning about China's economic prospects at a time of increasingly heated ideological and empirical debates.

The objective of this book is to answer the calls from front-line managers, entrepreneurs, and scholarly researchers to reconstruct the theories of economics and business. Their request is for new theories to be more relevant to real life than the now-prevalent ones. To provide that answer, the book proposes to develop elementary postulates at the level of the four natural endowments of a business firm or an individual: self-awareness, imagination, conscience, and free will. Then, conclusions based on these postulates can be established through logical reasoning. On this realistic footing, the book employs the concepts, methodology, and logical reasoning of systems science to answer a full list of theoretically and practically important questions. Those queries involve such topics as rationality, the meanings of optima and choices of optimization methods, the relationship between micro- and macro-phenomena, consumption preferences, and utility representations. The target audience of the book includes graduate students and scholarly researchers, particularly those who look for opportunities to develop new territories in the world of economic and business knowledge. The book also aims at front-line decision-making managers and entrepreneurs who seek sounder theories than the commonly available ones on which to base their critical decisions. By competently employing the systemic intuition–yoyo model, graduate students, scholarly researchers, decision-making managers, and entrepreneurs can attain new conclusions. In addition, they will gain insightful understanding of market signals without unnecessarily expending other resources of limited availability.

This book brings together the work of Maria Cristina Marcuzzo and highlights her investigations into the history of economic thought and her quest for an alternative economic thinking. Following an extended introduction that contextualised her ideas and highlights consistent themes throughout the volume, it discusses the theoretical and methodological approaches that have come to define the history of economic thought as a discipline. The work of David Ricardo is then debated, alongside ideas of money and monetary systems. Finally, the impact of the Cambridge economists is presented, with a particular focus on Luigi Pasinetti, Joan Robinson, Piero Sraffa, and John Maynard Keynes.This book combines theoretical discussions with historical analysis, biographical narratives, and original archival researcher to provide rich insights into the history and impact of economics. It will be of interest to students and researchers working within the political economy and the history of economic thought.

Through a meticulous analysis of various historical sources, the authors of this book have uncovered a wealth of information on the trade of salt and tobacco in Guizhou province, southwest of China, in the 1930s and 1940s. Their findings not only shed light on how commercial networks and the flow of these commodities formed and transformed with the development of wartime state monopoly, but also offer a more comprehensive perspective on the role of merchants and entrepreneurs in regulated commodity chains to go beyond the dichotomous state-market perspective of socioeconomic analysis.

The role of psychology in investment decisions has been amply debated during the past few decades, following the evolution of behavioural finance. This book shows that, although behavioural finance concepts were coined/systemised since the 1980s, their first traces are identified in Joseph de la Vega's Confusion of Confusions, written in 1688, over 300 years ago. To that end, the book provides the first comprehensive assessment of Confusion of Confusions from the perspective of the behavioural finance paradigm. Offering also a detailed discussion of behavioural finance itself and the historical context of Vega and his time, it demonstrates that Confusion of Confusions constitutes the precursor to behavioural finance. This book should be of interest to finance researchers and students, particularly those focusing on behavioural finance and financial history. The book's educational value for investors further renders it relevant to regulators and policy makers, who can consider including it in financial education curricula.