Bücher der Reihe Palgrave Studies in Economic History

Discovering a Global Perspective''Se mantiene de lavar'': The Laundry Business in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Mexico CityInvesting in Enterprise: Women Entrepreneurs in Colonial ''South Africa''A Mosaic of Entrepreneurship: Female Traders in Moscow, 1810s-1850sA Constant Presence: The Businesswomen of Paris, 1810-1880The Gendered Nature of the Atlantic World Marketplace: Female Entrepreneurs in the Nineteenth-Century American LowcountryOn Their Own in a ''Man''s World'': Widows in Business in Colonial New Zealand and AustraliaIn the Business of Piracy: Entrepreneurial Women among Chinese Pirates in the Mid-Nineteenth CenturyThe Business of Self-Endowment: Women Merchants, Wealth and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century LuandaMore Than Just Penny Capitalists: The Range of Female Entrepreneurship in Mid-Nineteenth-Century United States CitiesJapanese Female Entrepreneurs: Women in Kyoto Businesses in Tokugawa JapanFemale Entrepreneurship in England and Wales, 1851-1911 Skirting the Boundaries: Businesswomen in Colonial British Columbia, 1858-1914Mirror, Bridge or Stone? Female Owners of Firms in Spain During the Second Half of the Long Nineteenth CenturyGendered Innovation: Female Patent Activity and Market Development in Brazil, 1876-1906Not Such a ''Bad Speculation'': Women, Cookbooks and Entrepreneurship in Late-Nineteenth-Century AustraliaNineteenth-Century Female Entrepreneurship in TurkeyAfrican Women Farmers in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, 1875-1930: State Policies and Spiritual Vulnerabilities

The quality of life experienced by people in the past is one of the most important areas of historical enquiry, and the standard of living of populations is one of the leading measures of the economic performance of nations. Yet how accurate is the information on which these judgments are based? This collection of essays, written by renowned scholars in the fields of labour, wage and welfare history, cogently undermine the validity of the data that have for decades dominated the measurement of these phenomena in Britain, Europe and Asia, and provided the statistical backbone for countless descriptions and analyses of economic development, welfare and many other prime subjects in economic and social history.The contributors to this volume rigorously expose misapprehensions of long-run macroeconomic estimates of the real wage and provide a host of improved methods and data for revising and rejecting them. This volume is essential reading for anyone interested in economic and social history, economics and the application of statistical methods to historical evidence.

Without economic history, economics runs the risk of being too abstract or parochial, of failing to notice precedents, trends and cycles, of overlooking the long-run and thus misunderstanding 'how we got here'. Recent financial and economic crises illustrate spectacularly how the economics profession has not learnt from its past.This important and unique book addresses this problem by demonstrating the power of historical thinking in economic research. Concise chapters guide economics lecturers and their students through the field of economic history, demonstrating the use of historical thinking in economic research, and advising them on how they can actively engage with economic history in their teaching and learning.Blum and Colvin bring together important voices in the field to show readers how they can use their existing economics training to explore different facets of economic history. Each chapter introduces a question or topic, historical context or research method and explores how they can be used in economics scholarship and pedagogy. In a century characterised to date by economic uncertainty, bubbles and crashes, An Economist's Guide to Economic History is essential reading.For further information visit http://www.blumandcolvin.org

This book rejects the idea that natural resource industries are doomed to slow growth.

This book examines the role of experts and expertise in the dynamics of globalisation since the mid-nineteenth century.

Together with Mauritius, Botswana is often categorized as one of two growth miracles in sub-Saharan Africa. Due to its spectacular long-run economic performance and impressive social development, it has been termed both an economic success story and a developmental state. While there is uniqueness in the Botswana experience, several aspects of the country¿s opportunities and challenges are of a more general nature. Throughout its history, Botswana has been both blessed and hindered by its natural resource abundance and dependency, which have influenced growth periods, opportunities for economic diversification, strategies for sustainable economic and social development, and the distribution of incomes and opportunities.Through a political economy framework, Hillbom and Bolt provide an updated understanding of an African success story, covering the period from the mid-19th century, when the Tswana groups settled, to the present day. Understanding the interaction over time between geography and factor endowments on the one hand, and the development of economic and political institutions on the other, offers principle lessons from Botswanäs experience to other natural resource rich developing countries.

Looking at the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - the onset of modern economic growth - the book studies the relationship between agriculture and other economic sectors, exploring the use of resources (land, labour, capital) and the influence of institutional and technological factors in the long-run performance of agricultural activities.

and fourth that China's 'resilient authoritarianism' has been effective in ensuring the country's economic and political transformation. Yue argues that the China model is one of 'crony comprador capitalism' that has hindered the country's attempts at economic and political modernity.

This book explores the complex history of Catalonia in relation to Spain from an economic and political perspective. It begins in the Middle Ages and ends in the present day, analysing the intricate political problems of modern day Catalonia within a context of European integration and nationalism.

This book challenges the wide-ranging generalizations that dominate the literature on the impact of export-led growth upon Latin America during the first export era. The contributors to this volume contest conventional approaches, stemming from structuralism and dependency theory, which portray a rather negative view of the impact of nineteenth-century globalization upon Latin America. It has been considered that, as a result of the role of Latin American countries as providers of raw materials produced in enclaves dominated by foreign capital, their participation in the world economy has had adverse consequences for their long-term development. This volume addresses a representative sample of countries with varied initial conditions and resource endowments, a diverse productive specialization, as well as different degrees of integration to the world economy. This allows a direct comparison among the different experiences within the region, which in turn enables a more nuanced understanding of the contribution of exports to economic growth and economic modernization. Seven national case studies are presented ¿ Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Mexico and Bolivia ¿ which offer an insight into the successes of a region traditionally viewed as disadvantaged by globalization and export-led growth.Winner of the Vicens Vives prize for the best economic history book granted by the Spanish Economic History Association.

The 1930s, characterised by repercussions from World War I and the Great Depression, was an era of populism, nationalism, protectionism, government intervention and attempts to create planned economies. The perceived need for economic planning emerged in Sweden in part due to the increasing political strength of the Social Democrats and their evolution from a party hampered by Marxist fatalism to a pragmatic mass movement. The Swedish debate continued beyond World War II and is still relevant to today's economic crises, which have resulted in a demand for action coming from below (populism) and above (elitism).Carlson surveys the arguments for and against economic planning as they were put forward by leading Swedish economists in the 1930s, with a focus on the thoughts of Gustav Cassel, Eli Heckscher, Gösta Bagge, Gunnar Myrdal and Bertil Ohlin, among others. In so doing he provides a timely exploration of the debate on the necessary and desirable extent of state intervention in market economies.

This book examines the development of the Spanish patent system in the years 1826 to 1902, providing a fundamental reassessment of its evolution in an international context.

This book explores the way in which banks were regulated in the UK in the period from 1946 until 1971. It focuses upon a group of 11 banks known as the London clearing banks. These banks included the 'Big Five' - Barclays, Lloyds, Midland, National Provincial and Westminster - and were the equivalent to today's retail banks.The time period in question is an intriguing one in the history of banking and bank regulation in that the banking system was very stable, but the regulatory framework was less dependent upon codified forms of regulation than it is today. Having explored the nature of clearing bank regulation, Arch goes on to consider the rationale behind it, as well as its consequences. She concludes by reflecting upon the nature of bank regulation since the global financial crisis. This title is essential reading for academics with an interest in banking history and bank regulation, for practicing bank regulators and for regulatory policymakers.

History is an important part of Africa's economic development narrative, and Ocran investigates how the development outcomes between Africa and Western Europe became so divergent when in the early medieval period average income levels and economic development in the two regions differed only marginally.

This book examines failure in the urbanisation of Northwest China as a result of government industrial policies that have impacted on the economic development of the region. By looking at the under-researched provinces of Gansu, Qinghai and Inner Mongolia, which make up a quarter of China's territory, Zheng and Deng challenge the common story of China's miracle growth and reveal the dark side of the country's pursuit of modernity. Severe weather conditions, chronic drought, permanent lack of oxygen and unforgiving terrain in the Northwest make farming, manufacture and services difficult simply because people tend not to stay. Yet, China's current political system forces growth to take place even though basic conditions and prerequisites for market-based growth are missing. This volume analyses 'ghost cities' and social tension in the process of 'forced urbanisation' in which huge amount of resources are wasted, the local environment is systematically damaged and ordinary people's basic rights are brutally violated in the name of higher GDP and greater government glory.

This book extends current research on the political economy of modern China, with particular regard to agricultural development and its role in economic transition. It uses Neoclassical principles to re-interpret agricultural growth and technological change under complex market institutions with empirical studies on China and selected East Asian economies. The text also questions how technological advances in China contribute to the Great Divergence debate.Through a comparative analysis of agricultural technical changes in the planting of rice paddies in Japan, Taiwan and China, Du finds that different market institutions and structures have given rise to considerable diversity of agricultural change between different economies in terms of the nature, timing and duration of technological transition. Such diversification has, in turn, affected the trajectories of agricultural and wider economic growth.Here, Du reflects on the nature of contemporary Chinese economic development and extends observations on agricultural transition to the entirety of Asia, finding that the nature, timing, and time-span of agriculture technology transitions have varied considerably across different economies.

This book is the first complete survey of the evolution of monetary institutions and practices in Western countries from the Middle Ages to today. The book is ideal for researchers looking to better understand the evolution of the institutions that underlie the global economy.

This book pinpoints continuities and changes in U.S. foreign economic policy from the fixed exchange rate system of the 1960s through to the period between the two oil crises of the 1970s.

This book provides a historical economic analysis of two key issues relating to township and village enterprise (TVE) development in China.

This book is a study of New Zealand shaking off its quasi-colonial dependence on Britain. Hall analyses the three decades after World War II when changes in Britain, mainly as a consequence of that war, forced New Zealand to seek new markets for its exports, which were predominantly primary produce;

This book explores the historical roots of rapid economic growth in South Asia, with reference to politics, markets, resources, and the world economy.

By extending coverage up to the present, the book explains how one of the world's smallest nation-states achieved lasting economic development, quintupling its per capita income level since 1970, when many other postcolonial and advanced economies stagnated.

The period from 1945 to 1960, infamously labelled the Great Gloom (Grande Noirceur), was in fact a breaking point where the previous decades of relative decline were overturned - Geloso argues that this era should be considered the Great Convergence (Grand Rattrapage).

Lu provides a compelling narrative about the connection between inclusive political systems and open access economies, hypothesizing that entry into banking was firstly made upon partisan grounds before later becoming open access/free entry.

This book bringstogether leading experts to assess how and whether the Nazis were successful infostering collaboration to secure the resources they required during World WarII.

Aston challenges and reshapes the on-going debate concerning social status, economic opportunity, and gender roles in nineteenth-century society.

This volume documents recent efforts to track the transformation and trajectory of silver during the early modern period, from its origins in ores located on either side of the Atlantic to its use as currency in the financial centres of continental Europe.

In 2021 Coventry celebrates being the national City of Culture. Modern Coventry is a product of successive rounds of industrial, economic and social developments driven by regional, national and global forces. This book presents a timely opportunity to reflect on this rich, and often misunderstood, history.The book examines the development of industry, services, infrastructure and social transformation, and the role which globalising forces have played in influencing these, particularly since the 1950s. It looks at the experiences of the city of Coventry in responding to the challenges of socioeconomic change, technological advances, reconstruction and renewal.Issues of investment, economic decline, reconstruction, employment change and local and national governance are all considered in assessing the story of modern Coventry, a city influenced by new industries and development opportunities while still being shaped by its historical economic challenges.By focusing on the case of Coventry this book contributes to debates surrounding urban structural change, economic diversification and resilience from the perspective of a medium-sized city.

The first part addresses the progress of post-communist transition in comparative terms, including regional focus on Eastern and South Eastern Europe, CIS and Central Asia.

This book analyses the economic history of the nuclear program in Spain, from its inception in the 1950s to the nuclear moratorium in the early 1980s, and investigates the economic, financial and business origins of atomic energy in Spain.