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International audience; This article traces the history of Amélie de Dietrich in her role (1806 to 1855) as the head of one of the oldest family-owned businesses in Europe: the De Dietrich Company. Economic history has long given a very minor place to women entrepreneurs. Recent analyses nevertheless tend to show that women business leaders were not exceptions in the nineteenth century. This paper is a further attempt to bring women entrepreneurs – and their contribution to the industrial take-off – out of invisibility. Amélie de Dietrich took important strategic decisions to adapt the company to the new economic opportunities which arose in the first half of the nineteenth century. Her choices were decisive for the future of the company; what is more, she succeeded in restoring the familial ownership. Drawing on Amélie de Dietrich’s own unpublished correspondence, this contribution examines the factors that explain her success in imposing herself as a Maître des Forges.

Nineteenth-century businesswomen were almost entirely neglected, the historiography having adopted the hypothesis of the withdrawal of women from the business sphere after the eighteenth century. A growing body of literature is challenging this view, claiming that women did in fact actively contribute to the industrialization process and occupied key positions as investors and entrepreneurs, and revealing the constant and non-negligible presence of women at the head of businesses. This article reviews recent literature on women entrepreneurship in the nineteenth century. On the one hand, we analyze the reasons invoked by recent studies in order to explain why female entrepreneurship has so long remained ignored. The separate spheres ideology, the rise of industrialization, legal systems, the narrow definition of entrepreneurship and the issue of the sources might have contributed to maintain the idea that women would have withdrawn from business. On the other hand, we review the methods used in the recent revisionist literature in order to identify women entrepreneurs in the historical records and to assess the importance of their participation in entrepreneurial activities. Whereas some sources (tax rolls, censuses, directories, articles of association, etc.) help drawing general conclusions about female entrepreneurship supporting quantitative research, others (private family papers and objects, newspapers and advertisements, public and legal records) are particularly helpful for qualitative investigations permitting to draw in-depth portraits of these women. Une littérature récente remet en question le présupposé, dominant dans l’historiographie, selon lequel les femmes se seraient retirées du monde des affaires au XIXe siècle. Elle montre en effet que l’entrepreneuriat féminin n’a pas disparu au XIXe siècle. Les femmes ont activement contribué au processus d’industrialisation, à des postes clés, en tant qu’investisseurs et en tant qu’entrepreneurs. Cette revue de littérature fait, d’une part, le bilan des facteurs d’invisibilisation des femmes dans l’historiographie traditionnelle, tel qu’invoqués par les récents travaux. L’idéologie des sphères distinctes, le développement du capitalisme industriel, les droits nationaux, la définition restrictive de l’entrepreneuriat ou encore le problème des sources sont invoqués comme ayant contribué à entretenir l’idée que les femmes se seraient retirées du monde des affaires au XIXe siècle. Par ailleurs, afin de délivrer des pistes de recherche et des outils pour de futurs travaux, cette revue de littérature présente les sources et les méthodes utilisées dans les récentes études. Alors que certaines sources (rôles d’imposition, recensements, annuaires, actes de sociétés, etc.) permettent de dresser des conclusions générales sur les femmes en affaires et viennent plutôt soutenir des recherches quantitatives, d’autres (documents et objets privés, articles de journaux et publicités, documents publics et légaux) sont plutôt appropriées aux recherches qualitatives et permettent de dresser un portrait approfondi de ces femmes.

The aim of this entry is (I) to undertake a critical reading of the seminal contribution of Lucas’ work to construct a model which represents the complexity of the links between human capital and economic growth (II) to review the empirical assessments of its endogenous nature.

Human capital theory has suffered much criticism. The filter theory of education (Arrow 1973), the theory of education as a “signal” (Spence 1973) and the theory of “screening” (Stiglitz 1975), for instance, have seriously challenged it from within mainstream economics, and heavy criticism has also come from other paradigms, with Bailly (2016) recently documenting the critique from the radical school. Within this set of ideas that flourished in the post-WWII period and challenged human capital theory, John Kenneth Galbraith’s analysis of the dynamics of the education process is often neglected. In his original institutionalist and firm-based approach to the evolution of education, Galbraith placed great emphasis on the issue of the requirements of the planning system when he tackled the issue of human capital investment. More surprisingly – since he is unanimously recognized as the “founding father” of the “human capital revolution” – Theodore Schultz himself developed a substantial critique of human capital theory that shares some ground with Galbraith’s. The aim of this contribution is to provide new insights into the history of post-WWII ideas in the field of economics of education by reviewing Schultz’s and Galbraith’s respective analyses of education and highlighting their proximities. Both authors raise doubts regarding the idea that the aggregation of individual choices must be regarded as the relevant generative mechanism of the dynamic of education and the basis of the allocation of education resources. Consequently, both question the equivocal concept of student sovereignty.

International audience; Following previous causality analysis (Diebolt & Jaoul, 2004), this paper aims to study the role and the importance of military expenditures in the economic history of Japan before World War 2. We use a triple database drawn from the works of Ohkawa et al. (1957, 1974), Taeuber (1958) and Diebolt (2003). Our paper shows that military expenditures played a central role at both the economic and social levels and can be considered as one of the driving forces of the economic growth process of the country. Historical events affect first the military sector and then influence the rest of the economy and especially the education sector.; Suite à notre précédente analyse en termes de causalité (Diebolt et Jaoul, 2004), cet article vise à étudier le rôle et l'importance des dépenses militaires dans l’histoire économique du Japon avant la seconde guerre mondiale. Nous utilisons une triple base de données issue des travaux d'Ohkawa et al. (1957, 1974), Taeuber (1958) et Diebolt (2003). Nous montrons que les dépenses militaires ont joué un rôle central au niveau économique et social et peuvent être considérées comme un moteur de la croissance économique du pays. Les événements historiques affectent d'abord le secteur militaire et influencent ensuite le reste de l'économie et plus particulièrement le secteur de l'éducation.

Following previous causality analysis (Diebolt & Jaoul, 2004), this paper aims to study the role and the importance of military expenditures in the economic history of Japan before World War 2. We use a triple database drawn from the works of Ohkawa et al. (1957, 1974), Taeuber (1958) and Diebolt (2003). Our paper shows that military expenditures played a central role at both the economic and social levels and can be considered as one of the driving forces of the economic growth process of the country. Historical events affect first the military sector and then influence the rest of the economy and especially the education sector., Suite à notre précédente analyse en termes de causalité (Diebolt et Jaoul, 2004), cet article vise à étudier le rôle et l'importance des dépenses militaires dans l’histoire économique du Japon avant la seconde guerre mondiale. Nous utilisons une triple base de données issue des travaux d'Ohkawa et al. (1957, 1974), Taeuber (1958) et Diebolt (2003). Nous montrons que les dépenses militaires ont joué un rôle central au niveau économique et social et peuvent être considérées comme un moteur de la croissance économique du pays. Les événements historiques affectent d'abord le secteur militaire et influencent ensuite le reste de l'économie et plus particulièrement le secteur de l'éducation.

This paper explores the economic effect of the rapid increase of modern and vocational programmes of education experienced in France and Prussia at the end of the 19th century. Our analysis depicts the dramatic increase in enrollments in post elementary education experienced by France and Prussia at the end of the 19th century that appeared mainly in the new modern and vocational programmes of education closely linked with economic and industrial area. Our approach stresses on the economical stakes related to the rise of modern and vocational paths of education. On the ground of the perceived positive economic role of modern and vocational programmes of education, we try to test, in a second part, the hypothesis that seems to have motivated the French and German reformers at the end of the19th century. Hence we use times series analysis in order to appraise if the rise of modern and vocational education has contributed to economic growth in France and Prussia from the 1880s to the beginning of the First World War., Dans cet article, nous proposons une analyse cliométrique de la contribution de l’essor des enseignements pratiques et modernes à la croissance économique en France et en Prusse de 1870 à la veille de la première guerre mondiale. Dans une perspective historique et institutionnelle, notre approche met en exergue les enjeux de nature économique qui ont motivé le développement de filières pratiques et modernes d’enseignement. Partant de cette analyse, nous testons au niveau empirique l’hypothèse d’une contribution significative de l’essor de cette nouvelle scolarisation en France et en Prusse sur le taux de croissance respectif des deux économies. Notre étude tend alors à remettre en question l’intuition d’une contribution supérieure de ces enseignements, par rapport aux enseignements généraux, sur la croissance des économies française et prussienne de 1870 à la veille de la première guerre mondiale.

National audience