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ABSTRACT. This paper examines the development of a separate economic niche for black entrepreneurs in Chicago's ethnic beauty aids industry. It argues that this economic niche developed in response to advantages black entrepreneurs had in mobilizing ethnic resources in the black community. The paper's findings lend support to general theoretical arguments stating that ethnicity, race, and other symbols for identity function as low-cost screening devices for evaluating the likelihood that trading partners will honor economic contracts, particularly in a market setting where formal market mechanisms are not fully developed. The findings are based on a series of in-person interviews with Korean, Jewish and black distributors of ethnic beauty aids in Chicago. Although this paper focuses on a single market niche, its conclusions indicate that greater attention needs to be paid to the effects of social, political, economic and structural factors on minority business development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past empirical studies of local government fiscal performance have made extensive use of the median voter model Despite its analytical advantages, the model proceeds from a highly simplified conception of politics in which business firms play no direct role An alternative model is developed which permits statistical tests for business political influence on municipal budgeting and the estimation of local residents' net fiscal benefit from firms Firms' fiscal impact varies widely across municipalities, often entailing a negative net effect on residents Variations in these impacts indicate not only the presence of business influence hut also permit tests of alternative hypotheses of interest group politics The data used dealt with eighty-six San Francisco Bay area cities [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three main types of privatization are found in the United States: (1) lower proportion of Gross National Product preempted by the public sector, leaving correspondingly more for the private sector; (2) transferring present government enterprises to private organizations; and (3) contracting out the production and delivery of services financed by public funds. Most discussions of "contracting out," which come from the "public choice' school of economics and public administration, mainly emphasize theoretical economic advantages. They also suppose that the practice can eradicate political machinations In contrast, this evaluation takes into account the practices' intensely political environment. Many of the advantages attributed to contracting out often are not realized. The practice in many cases can save money. But successes are likely to be achieved only with projects meeting certain narrow specifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing countries, in constructing modern tax systems, would do well to adopt policies based on proven economic principles so that fiscal instruments do not perpetuate stagnant economies and underemployment of labor and resources. To achieve growth and jobs and ever higher levels of living, they should avoid the mistakes of the United States and many other industrially developed countries in burdening business-enterprise production-with heavy and obstrusive taxes. They, and developed countries as well which are committed to progressive change based on tax reform, like the United States, should use land values where possible to finance local governments so as to avoid taxing the other factors of production. And where necessary taxes should be levied on consumption, for taxes on business income misallocate resources and hamper market discipline in promoting output and efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four different models explaining the significance of the patterns of interlocking directorates in the American economy are delineated and examined to discover a few of the behavioral predictions inherent in each. Empirical tests are employed to examine the general pattern of replacement of interlocking relationships between the largest American firms when ended through the death of an outside director. Another test employed is to examine the stability of interlock patterns over time. From the results it is concluded that interlocking directorates do not generally represent evidence of close interconnections between specific corporations but do connect some stable, city-based groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a commonplace belief in the U.S. that the export of the free enterprise ideology should be made an integral part of United States foreign policy. This is in line with the American commitment to spread this mode of economic organization in the world. Thus, it is often proposed that foreign aid to less developed countries should be made conditional upon their acceptance of the free enterprise system for their national economic organization. The assumption is made that it is the best ideology for them to adopt, because it will achieve for them the economic affluence it has produced for the U.S. The adoption of the system of free enterprise by the less-developed countries is contingent, primarily, on two considerations. First, it must be more effective than a centrally controlled system of economic organization to achieve a speedy initiation and acceleration of the growth process. Throughout the world countries have adopted various systems of economic organization to promote their economic well-being. Growth patterns in these countries have been varied.

The article author focuses on the business community in the U.S., where the community has become friendly with the middle-class. He further writes that the hostility and suspicion that divided them during the "progressive era" of President Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and the "new deal" of Franklin Roosevelt has given way to mutual trust. One of the important factors in this outlook has been the recondition of the academicians and the business community. On the nation's campuses the major post-war innovation has been the soaring growth of the schools of business administration. Reference to Standard Oil Co., as major contributor to the corruption in moral values, is made in the article. Emergence of business historians has been an important part of this productive alliance. The article author feels that in the past the historians tended to a feminine idealism, and adds that revisionism is a new pragmatism. Great productive achievement of the industrial statesmen has been the first positive outcome of this doctrine. The author feels that corporations must share the applause with its creators. The article author concludes by saying that it is not a full review of the histories of Standard Oil Co. The excellent writing that emerges from their workers places all historians in their debt. The achievements of big businesses should no more blind one to its faults than these shortcomings should cause one to ignore its successes.

The article begins with "the problem of a large corporation" which was confronted by the American people in a time of deep economic depression. Several writings had focused on large corporation's weaknesses, structural defects, and general financial shortcomings in an economy which had moved rapidly from a condition of nearly full employment and hectic financial activity into a state of vast unemployment and financial desuetude. These writings deal with the problems of large corporates which they had faced twenty five year hence. Legislation passed in this regard are also mentioned. The article author says that too much competition is one of the basic reasons for the same. There is no evidence to indicate that the spreading popularity of investment in the junior equities of large corporations has been accompanied by increasing willingness on the part of stockholders to take an active interest in or to assume much responsibility for the general policies of "their" corporations or for the conduct of their affairs. The article further discusses the role of students of the modern large business corporation, who need to realize that the exercise of responsibilities of ownership by institutions or individuals is not going to occur through the formal apparatus of share voting, cumulative or otherwise. He concludes with the view that as common stock prices go higher and higher it becomes more likely that they will eventually suffer a severe decline with heavy losses and disillusionment to many people and institutions.

The article focuses on various aspects of free enterprise in the United States. The common conception is that business should be free to develop without government interference. The United States in its early history as an independent republic developed under numerous kinds of governmental restrictions and aid, and had in effect a laissez-faire economy for only about three quarters of the nineteenth century. American enterprise has never been completely on its own. The government has continually regulated and assisted business. The ultimate fate of free enterprise depends upon various factors and assumptions. There is the everlasting international crisis associated with the cold war and economic warfare. The planned economic structures of many countries in Europe and Asia, lying intermediate between the United States and the Soviet Union affect the long-term outlook for free enterprise. Free enterprise can have many ever-changing meanings. A rigid interpretation would automatically exclude any bright future, for in a dynamic world change is to be expected. A flexible interpretation provides a more assured outlook for adapted changes in our economic system.

The article reports that in the early part of the nineteenth century, the U.S. often appeared as the poor man's Utopia. The flight of talent from England to America at this time has been fully described: Frances Wright to Tennessee, Birkbeck and Flower to Illinois, Robert Owen to Indiana, were three of many would-be architects of a new world, who found in America a chance of translating their theories into practice. But what is not so often stressed, is the current which flowed in the reverse direction, carrying enterprising Americans to England. Son of Captain Nathaniel Dyer of the Rhode Island Navy, he was born at Stonington Point on November 15, 1780. His mother died from the hardships caused by Benedict Arnold's burning of New London. He showed early promise of mechanical aptitude, by building and sailing an unsinkable lifeboat while still a boy. In 1796, when he was sixteen, he entered the counting house of P.J.G. Nancrede, the Frenchman who had come over to fight with Rochambeau, and who stayed on to teach at Harvard. Nancrede, seven years earlier, had founded a shortlived newspaper called Le Courier de Boston, together with Samuel Hall.

The article focuses on self-destructiveness of businessmen, namely such as is due to weakness, but to a weakness resulting from an attitude that had once been harmless or even a source of strength. Thus the daemonic provided the key note, as one might express it. Self-destruction through weakness pure and simple has not been studied because it does not fall into the realm of the daemonic. Dishonesty in business, for example, is such a weakness. It has a long history, which would be fascinating, but unpleasant to write. The often-described predatory aspect of business, and especially of American business, has not been treated either, for it also is a genuine defect. But depredation on natural and human resources may have a quasi-daemonic element at its root: lumbering without reforestation is, of course, depredation, although it may be good business in the short run, and in the end destroys lumbering as an enterprise unless other agencies step in. But if they do, they are bound to dispense with the traditional lumbermen when it comes to harvesting.

This article examines the effect of peddling upon industrialization and economic development and the evolution of institutional arrangements in marketing in the Antebellum period. After 1840 peddling in America was undertaken, to an increasing extent, by newly arrived immigrants from Germany who displaced the traditional "Yankees" from the trade. The relationship between peddling and the development of entrepreneurship is explored, along with the special opportunities that peddling provided for economic and occupational mobility in the American milieu. The frequency with which individuals who started careers as peddlers rose to prominence in the fields of merchandising and finance points to the importance of the "schooling" function of this institution for newly arrived immigrants in American folkways, business practices, and commercial possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]