JournalTOCs

Essays in Economic & Business History
Number of Followers: 3

This is an Open Access Journal

Open Access journal
ISSN (Print) 0896-226X
Published by Central Michigan University

[1 journal]

Major League Baseball and the Competition for Leisure Dollars in America,
1920-1941
- Authors: David George Surdam, Bryce E. Kanago, Kenneth H. Brown
  Pages: 1 - 16
  Abstract: Major League Baseball faced increased competition from radio broadcasts and improvements in motion pictures during the 1920s and 1930s. The “Roaring Twenties” were followed by the Great Depression. As social norms changed, some owners fought for the right to stage home games on Sundays. Owners put an increased emphasis on promoting home runs, eventually allowed radio broadcasts, and added lights to their stadiums. We include variables for these changes, to estimate the effects upon both home attendance and owners’ net income between 1920 and 1941. Team performance, home runs, number of Sundays a team had home games, the installation of lighting, and radio broadcasts of games, all raised attendance while increases in the unemployment rate reduced it. Of these, the number of Sundays on which a team had home games, radio broadcasts, and the unemployment rate had no effect on real net income. All the other variables that raised attendance also raised real net income.
  PubDate: 2022-01-30
  Issue No: Vol. 39 (2022)
Grassroots and Local Initiatives Versus the Architect’s Design During
China’s Reform and Opening Process
- Authors: Qing-Ping Ma
  Pages: 17 - 44
  Abstract: China’s rapid economic growth since 1978 has been mainly credited to the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), especially Deng Xiaoping, in the official narratives. This article examines key events before and during China’s reform and opening, and concludes that the enterprising spirit of ordinary Chinese people and grassroots initiatives are the real driving forces of China’s rapid growth. The main role of Deng and the CPC leadership was permissive to the grassroots initiatives. Deng Xiaoping’s “Uphold Four Cardinal Principles” has shut the door for political reform and kept state control of key economic sectors.
  PubDate: 2022-01-30
  Issue No: Vol. 39 (2022)
Accounting Controls at the Kelheim Brewery in the Seventeenth
Century–Single Entry Accounting as Fit for Purpose
- Authors: Martin Quinn, Gerhard Kristandl
  Pages: 45 - 71
  Abstract: Prior to the arguably superior double-entry system of accounting, single-entry accounting was used widely. Extant literature on single-entry accounting suggests it remained in use well after the advent of double-entry, with ease of use cited as a key reason. However, there may be other reasons which have not been revealed in the literature. This study explores how single-entry accounting was utilized at the Kelheim brewery in Bavaria, Germany during the seventeenth century. It finds an organizational field in which single-entry accounting was fit for purpose. Single-entry accounting provided sufficient information and accountability, implying the more sophisticated double-entry accounting system was not used although it was known in Germany at this time.
  PubDate: 2022-01-30
  Issue No: Vol. 39 (2022)
Recoveries from Financial Crises: The United States and Argentina in the
1890s
- Authors: Peter H. Bent
  Pages: 72 - 104
  Abstract: The United States and Argentina both experienced severe financial crises in the early 1890s. The causes of these crises have been studied in depth. Here, I analyze the recoveries from these crises, comparing the factors that propelled or hindered renewed economic growth, focusing on how changes in commodity prices and trade policies impacted post-crisis economic activity. Sustained recovery only occurred in the United States when wheat prices surged in 1897. Likewise, recovery was delayed after the Baring Crisis in Argentina in part because of decreased prices for agricultural exports, and renewed growth ultimately coincided with higher export prices. Increases in tariff rates also occurred during these recovery periods, though most consistently in the United States. However, the evidence suggests that higher commodity prices played more of a role in encouraging post-crisis economic growth than did trade policy changes in these countries over this period.
  PubDate: 2022-01-31
  Issue No: Vol. 39 (2022)
Governing the Enterprise: The Transition from Welfare Capitalism to Human
Relations in Post-World War Two Italian Business
- Authors: Valerio Varini
  Pages: 105 - 128
  Abstract: Although company welfare has been discussed at great length in international historiography, only in recent years have works been published that analyze its persistence over time. Detailed research has concentrated on the decades following World War Two, which saw the radical modernization of European business culture under the influence of studies made in the USA. In Italy in particular, Human Relations had an impact on the concept of the company and became the subject of a broad debate, whose many participants included members of the government, trade unions, industrialists, and even the country’s leading companies. I examine how Human Relations was perceived and what it actually signified to the different participants in the debate. This is the first step towards evaluating its real impact on company welfare; it reveals the persistence and further expansion of company welfare, which nevertheless came into conflict with state welfare in the decades following the economic boom in the 1950s and 1960s. The singularity of the Italian situation on the persistence and development of company welfare requires a broad comparison with the international situation, which, in turn, requires study of important Italian cases.
  PubDate: 2022-01-31
  Issue No: Vol. 39 (2022)
The Dutch Sappanwood Trade in the Eighteenth Century
- Authors: Cameron J.G. Dodge
  Pages: 129 - 147
  Abstract: In the eighteenth century, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) traded sappanwood, a source of red dye for textiles, in both its Dutch-Asiatic and intra-Asian trade routes. The voyage and cargo records kept by the VOC's bookkeeper-general in Batavia reveal a small but convenient trade that complemented the Company's better-known dealings in spices and textiles. The VOC shipped Siamese and Indonesian sappanwood to the Dutch Republic and Asian markets regularly but in small quantities relative to other goods. Sappanwood was a useful ballast for VOC ships resulting in low-cost shipping for the commodity. In Europe, the VOC earned healthy margins by supplying a competitive red dyestuff to the continent's burgeoning textile industry. In Asia, sappanwood contributed to the VOC's intra-Asian trade system as a commodity useful in acquiring more lucrative goods, especially copper from Japan.
  PubDate: 2022-01-31
  Issue No: Vol. 39 (2022)
An Examination of Illinois Free Banks: Bank Ownership, Operations, and
Free Bank Failures
- Authors: Andrew Economopoulos
  Pages: 148 - 168
  Abstract: This article re-examines Illinois free banking from a new perspective: ownership structure. The claim that ownership influenced banking activity and noteholder losses is analyzed, and it is shown that ownership did not have a major impact on asset allocation and losses. Only Chicago residents who owned banks elsewhere appear to have used the banks for their interests. They neither issued loans to borrowers other than themselves or accepted deposits. Private bankers used free banks as a source of banknotes. A large proportion of the free banks had overlapping ownership, resulting in specie minimization. Private bankers, whether local or from Chicago, and local owners were more likely to operate as traditional banks. All free banks were impacted by the 1853 change in the tax code, leading to fewer loans, more loans to stockholders, and more deposits in other banks. Free banks owned by Chicago private bankers generally closed without noteholders suffering losses. For closed banks owned by other ownership groups noteholder losses depended on the nature of the bonds held by the bank.
  PubDate: 2022-02-04
  Issue No: Vol. 39 (2022)
War at Sea–Portugal, Navigation and Maritime Commerce during World
War One
- Authors: Miguel Castro Brandão
  Pages: 169 - 187
  Abstract: This article presents new research on the Portuguese Maritime Front during World War One, especially regarding the German submarine war off the Portuguese coast. One subject, in particular, has remained obscure for many contemporary Portuguese historians: the direct and indirect impacts of the German submarine war on the Portuguese economy. In this article, we correlate the material losses provoked by German submarines in the Portuguese Atlantic with fluctuations in maritime commerce during the Great War. This approach sheds new light on how the war at sea affected the economies of peripheral countries like Portugal.
  PubDate: 2022-02-06
  Issue No: Vol. 39 (2022)
Financialization, Financial Elites, and the Changing Genres of Financial
and Banking History
- Authors: Simon Mollan
  Pages: 188 - 205
  Abstract: This article undertakes a critical comparison of two books–Private Banking in Europe: Rise, Retreat, and Resurgence by Youssef Cassis and Philip Cottrell, and Financial Elites and European Banking: Historical Perspectives, edited by Youssef Cassis and Giuseppe Telesca–to explore how different genres of financial history and banking history have been written, and how the nature of financial history appears to be changing in relation to the rise of research on financialization and the social studies or finance/critical financial studies. The article argues that these genre differences are reflective of different methodological practices, theoretical and ethical concerns, and aesthetic preferences. The article concludes by arguing for greater engagement between financial history (especially that which intersects with business history) and the emerging research that embraces the social studies of finance.
  PubDate: 2022-01-31
  Issue No: Vol. 39 (2022)
The New History of Capitalism and the Methodologies of Economic History
- Authors: Vincent Geloso, Judge Glock
  Pages: 206 - 221
  Abstract: The rise of the “New History of Capitalism” as a subfield of historical studies has magnified differences between economists and historians which started to grow during the 1970s. We describe what is and what is not new about the New History of Capitalism and explain how the different methodologies of economists and historians often cause confusion about their fields’ respective advantages. We also emphasize that these different methodologies allow ample room for collaboration between the disciplines.
  PubDate: 2022-01-31
  Issue No: Vol. 39 (2022)
The Empirics of Finance: Comments on Mollan (2021) and Geloso and Glock
(2021) in this volume
- Authors: Susie J. Pak
  Pages: 222 - 225
  Abstract: This article comments on the papers by Mollan (2021) and Geloso and Glock (2021) appearing in this volume.
  PubDate: 2022-01-31
  Issue No: Vol. 39 (2022)
Book Review: Making a Modern Central Bank: The Bank of England 1979-2003,
by Harold James, Cambridge University Press 2020, 543 pages.
- Authors: William A. Allen
  Pages: 226 - 235
  Abstract: Writers about the past fall into two categories. Historians like Harold James, the latest official historian of the Bank of England, are, if you like, members of the jury at the court of history. They have access to all the evidence that endures, above all written records. This reviewer, by contrast, was a witness to some of the events, having worked for the Bank of England throughout the period that the book chronicles. Readers should bear in mind that witnesses suffer from memory failures and prejudices; however they may remember things that weren’t recorded, and they have generally had a long time to think about what happened. This review is mainly about what I observed and remember. There is a lot in the book that I didn’t know, which supports James’ contention that internal communication in the Bank of England was not always extensive.
  PubDate: 2022-01-31
  Issue No: Vol. 39 (2022)
Quinn, William, and John D. Turner. Boom and Bust: A Global History of
Financial Bubbles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
- Authors: Youssef Cassis
  Pages: 236 - 237
  Abstract: none
  PubDate: 2022-01-31
  Issue No: Vol. 39 (2022)
Şimşek, Erhan. Creating Realities: Business as a Motif in American
Fiction, 1865-1929. New York: Transcript Publishing, 2019.
- Authors: Ranjit Dighe
  Pages: 238 - 239
  Abstract: none
  PubDate: 2022-01-31
  Issue No: Vol. 39 (2022)
Harris, Ron. Going the Distance: Eurasian Trade and the Rise of the
Business Corporation, 1400-1700. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2020.
- Authors: Rodrigo da Costa Dominguez
  Pages: 240 - 241
  Abstract: none
  PubDate: 2022-01-31
  Issue No: Vol. 39 (2022)
Hansen, Mary Eschelbach, and Bradley A. Hansen, Bankrupt in America: A
History of Debtors, Their Creditors, and Law in the Twentieth Century.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020.
- Authors: Judge Glock
  Pages: 242 - 243
  Abstract: none
  PubDate: 2022-01-31
  Issue No: Vol. 39 (2022)
Mitchell, Matthew David. The Prince of Slavers: Humphry Morice and the
Transformation of Britain’s Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1698-1732. Cham,
Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan, 2020. 317 Pp.
- Authors: Abigail Swingen
  Pages: 244 - 245
  Abstract: none
  PubDate: 2022-02-03
  Issue No: Vol. 39 (2022)
Janigan, Mary. The Art of Sharing: The Richer versus the Poorer Provinces
since Confederation. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020.
- Authors: Trevor Tombe
  Pages: 246 - 247
  Abstract: none
  PubDate: 2022-01-31
  Issue No: Vol. 39 (2022)