This work examines a trade that covered the backs of sailors and soldiers, that shirted labouring men and skirted working women, that employed legions of needlewomen and supplied retailers with new consumer wares. Garments, once bought, returned again to the marketplace, circulating like a currency and bolstering demand. The agents in this trade included military contractors for clothing, female outworkers and dealers in used clothes. Each was affected by a changing demand for new-styled 'luxuries' and necessities in apparel.

Le Deal is a business adventure story involving raw entrepreneurship and high-level politics. It is the true story of Byrne Murphy, a businessman who abruptly moved to Paris with his wife and baby daughter in a quest to reignite his career and his fortunes. He quickly finds himself up against strange and powerful forces for which he is ill prepared.

From the mid-1880s a shopkeeper movement developed in Milan, centred around a shopkeeper newspaper, a federation of shopkeeper trade associations, and a shopkeeper bank. In 1904 shopkeeper representatives initiated a sequence of events that led to the fall of the first radical-socialist administration within the city. The author explains these events with reference to the business of shopkeeping itself. He analyses the trades, techniques, tax structure and topography of the Milanese retail sector, and traces the history of the contest between shops and cooperatives and the shopkeeper's changing relationship with his employees and with his clientele. The final chapter confronts the crucial question of why the Milanese shopkeepers were to be found on the political right in the years leading up to the Fascist takeover. This is the first book to deal with any aspect of the Italian petite bourgeoisie.

Do we need yet another textbook on business fundamentals when every publishing house has stacks of such books ready for sale? No, we do not need another standard textbook. What we need is a new kind of teaching tool that at once accommodates the modern-day classroom and exposes new century students to the contemporary world of global capitalism in which today's businesses operate. In primer form, Dr. Patrice Flynn clarifies the functional areas of business, a term used to describe what every businessperson needs to understand to be successful, from entrepreneurship to small business development, legal structure, going global, finance, big data, marketing, management, and more. This primer demonstrates how a master teacher teaches new century students, thus giving supremacy to pedagogy along with rigorous content. The primer can be used with both business students and the growing number of nonbusiness students interested in learning how business works before entering the world of work. Every student will come away not only with a sense of the business areas that pique their interest but also with a deeper understanding of business from which to craft next career steps.

This book attempts to shed light on why it is so difficult to develop and maintain successful businesses in the grocery e-commerce arena. Within the last five years, grocery e-commerce has experienced both consistent successes such as Tesco.com and irrevocable failures such as Webvan.com. Niels Kornum and Mogens Bjerre bring key researchers together to investigate the factors contributing to the success of grocery e-commerce, particularly in countries that had the earliest and most extensive experiences in this field: the USA, the UK and Scandinavia.The authors argue that grocery e-commerce is especially difficult to implement because it differs from other types of consumer sales in numerous aspects including low profit margins, low value density of products and high frequency purchases. As well as examining these unique characteristics, the authors present research on consumer behaviour, cross country comparisons and new empirical evidence in order to address the long-term prospects for the survival of grocery e-commerce. Recommendations as to how managers should respond to its challenges are also made. Academics, students and researchers focusing on marketing, consumer behaviour, logistics, e-commerce and business strategy will find this book to be a fascinating read.

Although mercers have long been recognised as one of the most influential trades in medieval London, this is the first book to offer a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the trade from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. The variety of mercery goods (linen, silk, worsted and small manufactured items including what is now called haberdashery) gave the mercers of London an edge over all competitors. The sources and production of all these commodities is traced throughout the period covered. It was as the major importers and distributors of linen in England that London mercers were able to take control of the Merchant Adventurers and the export of English cloth to the Low Countries. The development of the Adventurers' Company and its domination by London mercers is described from its first privileges of 1296 to after the fall of Antwerp. This book investigates the earliest itinerant mercers and the artisans who made and sold mercery goods (such as the silkwomen of London, so often mercers' wives), and their origins in counties like Norfolk, the source of linen and worsted. These diverse traders were united by the neighbourhood of the London Mercery on Cheapside and by their need for the privileges of the freedom of London. Extensive use of Netherlandish and French sources puts the London Mercery into the context of European Trade, and literary texts add a more personal image of the merchant and his preoccupation with his social status which rose from that of the despised pedlar to the advisor of princes. After a slow start, the Mercers' Company came to include some of the wealthiest and most powerful men of London and administer a wide range of charitable estates such as that of Richard Whittington. The story of how they survived the vicissitudes inflicted by the wars and religious changes of the sixteenth century concludes this fascinating and wide-ranging study.

This book, first published in 1913, examines in detail the Tariff Reform crisis of January 1913. The sudden abandonment of decades of established policy was one of the most surprising events in British domestic politics.

'One of the bookaEURO (TM)s several strong points are the amusing, often fascinating sketches of government officials and British merchants. This is a book of light touch and readable style but also of much information. Especially useful to the specialist are the examination of European-Chinese credit relationships and the use of merchant house archive material. The book will take its place among principal works on Malayan economic history and should, over the coming years, further promote its ongoing revival.'Asian-Pacific Economic LiteratureThis is the story of British enterprise in Singapore and Malaya from 1786 to 1920, when British vision, zeal and drive developed Penang, then Singapore and, finally, the peninsular Malay States.In the initial years, commerce and finance were paramount. The seeds of these commercial activities had been planted initially in the days of the East India Company but later, and more importantly, by individual merchant firms, supported by credit from London. These merchants were the driving force of British investment and development on the Malay Peninsula. While the contributions of the Malays, Indians and, especially, the Chinese to economic development should not be under-rated, in the period under review, their activities were steered and monitored by the British.This book presents an original and coherent account of British Enterprise in Singapore and Malaya in an important historical period and includes substantial new material from primary records of merchant firms and banks which will be of great interest to students, professionals as well as the general public.

The author has virtually incomparable experience in both providing trade policy advice to more than 25 countries on behalf of the World Bank and also publishing quality journal articles in most of those cases. In this volume, he focuses on his work on: (i) trade policies for countries making the transition from planned to market economies; (ii) his trade policy guideline papers for the World Bank on trade policies for poverty alleviation, uniform tariff policy, adjustment costs of trade liberalization, exchange rate overvaluation, globalization and technology transfer and rules of thumb on regional trade policies; (iii) multilateral, dynamic and environmental issues in trade policy using computable general equilibrium models; (iv) trade policy of the United States in the auto and steel industries; and (v) mathematical methods for modeling. The papers show an unusual combination of policy relevance, advice and impact, with rigor and international trade theory insights.The papers in this volume have appeared in many of the economics profession's more prestigious journals, including Econometrica, Review of Economic Studies, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Economic Journal, the Journal of International Economics, International Economic Review, European Economic Review, Canadian Journal of Economics, Economic Inquiry, the Journal of Comparative Economic, Review of International Economics, World Economy, the Southern Economic Journal, the World Bank Economic Review, the Japanese Economic Review and the Latin American Journal of Economics. In this book, the author elaborates on the articles by discussing some of the policy contexts for the requests for the work from developing and transition countries to the World Bank, the key trade theory or policy insights, policy recommendations and conclusions and the policy impacts.

The Retail and Food Services sectors play an important role in Singapore. They add to the vibrancy of the economy and contribute to the social well-being of Singaporeans. At the same time, they are often highlighted and scrutinised for their low productivity performance and high reliance on manpower. There is to date a lack of local literature that addresses the issues faced by the two sectors at the enterprise and worker levels.This timely book includes major topics in services productivity in the Singapore context, with emphasis on Retail and Food Services. Topics covered include the key productivity levers of the services sectors: holistic productivity measurement framework, effective entrepreneurship, manpower management, promotion by social media, marketing, costing process and accounting sophistication. These areas are explored through literature reviews and in-depth interviews with companies and consumers. The chapters also include recommendations for policy makers and industry stakeholders. Written in a simple and accessible manner, this book will serve as an insightful guide to researchers, policy-makers, industry practitioners and enterprises and those who are keen to learn from the Singapore experience.

First Published in 1972. The London Discount Market is unique, and its existence has contributed more than any other single factor to the elaboration of what may legitimately be called the Anglo-Saxon tradition in Central Banking technique. The bill of exchange has existed for centuries in its classical late Victorian form by many decades. This book assesses how in no other country in the world did the same relationships evolve between the Central institution and the Money Market.

A cantankerously funny view of books and the people who love them. It does take all kinds and through the misanthropic eyes of a very grumpy bookseller, we see them all--from the "Person Who Doesn't Know What They Want (But Thinks It Might Have a Blue Cover)" to the "Parents Secretly After Free Childcare." From behind the counter, Shaun Bythell catalogs the customers who roam his shop in Wigtown, Scotland. There's the Expert (divided into subspecies from the Bore to the Helpful Person), the Young Family (ranging from the Exhausted to the Aspirational), Occultists (from Conspiracy Theorist to Craft Woman). Then there's the Loiterer (including the Erotica Browser and the Self-Published Author), the Bearded Pensioner (including the Lyrca Clad), and the The Not-So-Silent Traveller (the Whistler, Sniffer, Hummer, Farter, and Tutter). Two bonus sections include Staff and, finally, Perfect Customer--all add up to one of the funniest book about books you'll ever find. Shaun Bythell (author of Confessions of a Bookseller) and his mordantly unique observational eye make this perfect for anyone who loves books and bookshops. "Bythell is having fun and it's infectious."--Scotsman "Virtuosic venting ... misanthropy with bursts of sweetness." Guardian "All the ingredients for a gentle human comedy are here, as soothing as a bag of boiled sweets and just as tempting to dip into."--Literary Review "Any reader finding this book in their stocking on Christmas morning should feel lucky...contains plenty to amuse--an excellent diversion"--Bookmunch

"A cut above most workplace histories. Looking at the separate but sometimes overlapping development of European and African-American hairdressing from the early twentieth century to the present, Willett shows how race shaped different trajectories for black and white salons."
--"Lingua Franca"

"Offers an unusually comprehensive look at a significant twentieth-century industry and female preoccupation"
--"American Historical Review"

"Refreshing to read a history so firmly historicized and grounded in working-class and Afro-American history"
-- "Journal of Social History"

"Carefully nuanced and [a] compelling history."
-- Nan Enstad, "The Journal of American History"

Throughout the twentieth century, beauty shops have been places where women could enjoy the company of other women, exchange information, and share secrets. The female equivalent of barbershops, they have been institutions vital to community formation and social change.

But while the beauty shop created community, it also reflected the racial segregation that has so profoundly shaped American society. Links between style, race, and identity were so intertwined that for much of the beauty shop's history, black and white hairdressing industries were largely separate entities with separate concerns. While African American hair-care workers embraced the chance to be independent from white control, negotiated the meanings of hair straightening, and joined in larger political struggles that challenged Jim Crow, white female hairdressers were embroiled in struggles over self-definition and opposition to their industry's emphasis on male achievement. Yet despite their differences, black and whitehairdressers shared common stakes as battles were waged over issues of work, skill, and professionalism unique to women's service work.

Permanent Waves traces the development of the American beauty shop, from its largely separate racial origins, through white recognition of the "ethnic market," to the present day.

This book is a key example of the emergence of public choice theory by an economist who was to become one of its major exponents. It combines a detailed, critical study of the Monopolies Commission, with an analysis of the economic issues involved in monopoly supervision and control.