On a beautiful spring day, March 25, 1911, workers were preparing to leave the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York's Greenwich Village when a fire started. Within minutes it consumed the building's upper three stories. Firemen who arrived at the scene were unable to rescue those trapped inside. The final toll was 146-123 of them women. It was the worst disaster in New York City history until September 11, 2001. Harrowing yet compulsively readable, Triangle is both a chronicle of the fire and a vibrant portrait of an entire age. Waves of Jewish and Italian immigrants inundated New York in the early years of the century, filling its slums and supplying its garment factories with cheap, mostly female labor. Protesting their Dickensian work conditions, forty thousand women bravely participated in a massive shirtwaist workers' strike that brought together an unlikely coalition of socialists, socialites, and suffragettes. Von Drehle orchestrates these events into a drama rich in suspense and filled with memorable characters. Most powerfully, he puts a human face on the men and women who died, and shows how the fire dramatically transformed politics and gave rise to urban liberalism.

This book explains inflation dynamic, using time series data from 1960 for 42 countries. These countries are different in every aspect, historically, culturally, socially, politically, institutionally, and economically. They are chosen on the basis of the data availability only and cover the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, Australasia, and the United States. Inflation reached double digits in the developed countries in the 1970s and 80s, and then central banks, successfully stabilized it by anchoring inflation expectations for decades, until now. Conditional on common and country-specific shocks such as oil price shocks, financial and banking and political crises, wars, pandemics, natural disasters etc., the book tests various theoretical models about the long and short run relationships between money and prices, money growth and inflation, money growth and real output, expected inflation; the output gap, fiscal policy, and inflation, using a number of parametric and non-parametric methods, and pays attention to specifications and estimations problems. In addition, it explains why policymakers in inflation - targeting countries, e.g. the U.S., failed to anticipate the recent sudden rise in inflation. And, it examines the fallibility of the Modern Monetary Theory's policy prescription to reduce inflation by raising taxes. This is a unique and innovative book, which will find an audience among students, academics, researchers, policy makers, analysts in corporations, private and central banks and international monetary institutions.

The first major volume to place U.S.-centered labor history in a transnational or U.S.-in-the-world focus, Workers Across the Americas collects the newest work of leading Canadianist, Caribbeanist, and Latin American specialists, as well as U.S. historians. As distinct from comparative histories built around the integrity of their nation-state subjects, these essays highlight both the supra- or sub-national aspect of selected topics without ignoring the power of nation-states themselves as historical forces. Indeed, the transnational focus opens new avenues for understanding changes in the concepts, policies and practice of states, their interactions with each other and their populations, and the ways in which the popular classes resist, react, and use both nation-state and non-state entities to advance their interests. What does this transnational turn encompass? And what are its likely perils as well as promise as a framework for research and analysis? To address these questions six eminent scholars (John French, Julie Greene, Neville Kirk, Aviva Chomsky, Dirk Hoerder, and Vic Satzewich) lead off the volume with their own critical commentaries on the very project of transnational labor history. Their responses effectively offer a tour of explanations, tensions, and cautions in the evolution of a new arena of research and writing. Thereafter, Workers Across the Americas groups fifteen research essays around themes of Labor and Empire, Indigenous Peoples and Labor Systems, International Feminism and Reproductive Labor, Labor Recruitment and Immigration Control, Transnational Labor Politics, and Labor Internationalism. Topics range from military labor in the British Empire to coffee workers on the Guatemalan/Mexican border to the Atlantic white slavery traffic to the role of the International Labor Organization in attempting to set common labor standards. Leading scholars-including Camille Guerin-Gonzalez, Alex Lichtenstein, Nelson Lichtenstein, Colleen O'Neill, Premilla Nadasen, and Bryan Palmer-introduce each section and also make recommendations for further reading.

This book has a dual purpose. First, it analyses the concept of economic crises within economic theory, showing the various theoretical foundations and controversies amongst different schools of economic thought. Second, it presents an empirical analysis of the Great Recession in Spain, addressing the growth period of 1995 to 2007-08, the subsequent depression until 2013-14 and the recovery that followed. It also shows the way in which the inner contradictions of capital manifests itself in an European peripheral economy under a real estate bubble, emphasizing the role of the Spanish economy in European capitalism. This theoretical and empirical heterodox approach will be of interest to students and scholars in political economy, and those with an interest in the Eurozone.

In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars Britain found itself faced with a stagnant economy. Economist David Ricardo believed that the full re-integration of Britain into the world market would allow for both capital accumulation and population growth, and used arguments that anticipate ideas entertained in modern contributions to the theory of economic growth and development. However, several of these arguments have not yet been translated into the language of modern classical economics. Ricardo's Theory of Growth and Accumulation seeks to overcome this striking lacuna. The latest entry in the Graz Schumpeter lecture series, this text explores and elaborates Ricardo's arguments and the models utilized by those who subsequently followed in support of his work. The Ricardian system is first examined through a one-sector economy, following Kaldor's model, and a two-sector economy, following Pasinetti's model. These building blocks are developed through the exploration of a small open economy, which allows an analysis of the impact of international trade in exceedingly simple circumstances. This discussion expands further by considering the world economy. More sophisticated variants of the two-sector model are presented, in which commodity prices are endogenously determined by the trading interplay amongst several countries. A final analysis makes Ricardo's case by introducing accumulation in the world economy. This book is of interest to students and scholars of Ricardo, classical economics, and - more broadly - growth theory, the theory of international economics, and globalization. The author was keen to render the analytical parts compelling to the historian and the historical parts compelling to the theorist.

Long before Deng Xiaoping's market-based reforms, commercial relationships bound the Chinese Communist Party to international capitalism and left lasting marks on China's trade and diplomacy. China today seems caught in a contradiction: a capitalist state led by a Communist party. But as Market Maoists shows, this seeming paradox is nothing new. Since the 1930s, before the Chinese Communist Party came to power, Communist traders and diplomats have sought deals with capitalists in an effort to fuel political transformation and the restoration of Chinese power. For as long as there have been Communists in China, they have been reconciling revolutionary aspirations at home with market realities abroad. Jason Kelly unearths this hidden history of global commerce, finding that even Mao Zedong saw no fundamental conflict between trading with capitalists and chasing revolution. China's ties to capitalism transformed under Mao but were never broken. And it was not just goods and currencies that changed hands. Sustained contact with foreign capitalists shaped the Chinese nation under Communism and left deep impressions on foreign policy. Deals demanded mutual intelligibility and cooperation. As a result, international transactions facilitated the exchange of ideas, habits, and beliefs, leaving subtle but lasting effects on the values and attitudes of individuals and institutions. Drawing from official and commercial archives around the world, including newly available internal Chinese Communist Party documents, Market Maoists recasts our understanding of China's relationship with global capitalism, revealing how these early accommodations laid the groundwork for China's embrace of capitalism in the 1980s and after.

This book traces the emergence of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) from 1955 to 1963 amid the broader reshaping of the institutional architecture of post-war Europe. It considers the ill-fated Free Trade Area (FTA) proposal, the subsequent creation of EFTA, and the resulting division of Western Europe into two distinct trading blocs. At its core, the book provides an international history of a formative moment of post-war and European integration history, and explores the intense technical discussions among European states as they grappled with the prospect of deeper economic and political unity. It thus provides the first detailed analysis combining the FTA and EFTA negotiations, considering both state and non-state actors. Drawing on archives from Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the US, as well as the records of the OEEC and EFTA, it examines the decision-making processes of those intimately involved as well as the institutional settings within which they were forced to reconcile their positions. At a key moment of contemporary European friction, the book offers a dialogue between the past and those trying to make sense of events that continue to shape Europe today.

"This book provides a systematic account of financial crisis in the developing world by exploring how Minsky's theory may be extended to countries at early stages of financial development, going beyond the parameters of the established "emerging market crisis" literature"--

This unique book, written in a question and answer style, brings to life the work of the world's foremost Marxian economist Thomas T. Sekine on the scientificity of Marx's project in Capital, its applicability to navigating world-historic change across capitalist stages of development and what Marxian economics teaches us about building viable future historical societies. Sekine, a student and follower of Marxist Kozo Uno, argues that capitalism neither constitutes the end of history nor does its overthrow await socialist revolution. Rather, based upon its own historical delimitations capitalism, following World War I and the Great Depression of the 1930s, has entered a period of disintegration. Grounded on a scathing critique of bourgeois economics in all its forms, Sekine exposes the futility of bourgeois policy interventions attempting to revive capitalism. This book will be of interest to economists in both the mainstream and heterodox schools, and those broadly interested in the history of economic thought.

Business Statistics of the United States is a comprehensive and practical collection of data from as early as 1913 that reflects the nation's economic performance. It provides several years of annual, quarterly, and monthly data in industrial and demographic detail including key indicators such as: gross domestic product, personal income, spending, saving, employment, unemployment, the capital stock, and more. Business Statistics of the United States is the best place to find historical perspectives on the U.S. economy. Of equal importance to the data are the introductory highlights, extensive notes, and figures for each chapter that help users to understand the data, use them appropriately, and, if desired, seek additional information from the source agencies. Business Statistics of the United States provides a rich and deep picture of the American economy and contains approximately 3,500 time series in all. The data are predominately from federal government sources including: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Bureau of Economic Analysis Bureau of Labor Statistics Census Bureau Employment and Training Administration Energy Information Administration Federal Housing Finance Agency U.S. Department of the Treasury

Capitalism has been a controversial concept. In the second half of the 20th century, many historians have either not used the concept at all, or only in passing. Many regarded the term as too broad, holistic and vague or too value-loaded, ideological and polemic. This volume brings together leading scholars to explore why the term has recently experienced a comeback and assess how useful the term can be in application to social and economic history. The contributors discuss whether and how the history of capitalism enables us to ask new questions, further explore unexhausted sources and discover new connections between previously unrelated phenomena. The chapters address case studies drawn from around the world, giving attention to Europe, Africa and beyond. This is a timely reassessment of a crucial concept, which will be of great interest to scholars and students of economic history.

Adam Smith, the founder of modern economics, believed that our actions stem from self-interest and the world turns because of financial gain. But every night Adam Smith's mother served him his dinner, not out of self-interest but out of love.Today, economics focuses on self-interest and excludes our other motivations. It disregards the unpaid work of mothering, caring, cleaning and cooking and its influence has spread from the market to how we shop, think and date. In this engaging takedown of the economics that has failed us, Katrine Marcal journeys from Adam Smith's dinner table to the recent financial crisis and shows us how different, how much better, things could be.

Italy is well known for its prominent economists, as well as for the typical public profile they have constantly revealed. But, when facing an illiberal and totalitarian regime, how closely did Italian economists collaborate with government in shaping its economic and political institutions, or work independently? This edited book completes a gap in the history of Italian economic thought by providing a complete work on the crucial link between economics and the Fascist regime, covering the history of political economy in Italy during the so-called "Ventennio" (1922-1943) with an institutional perspective. The approach is threefold: analysis of the academic and extra-academic scene, where economic science was elaborated and taught, the connection between economics, society and politics, and, dissemination of scientific debate. Special attention is given to the bias caused by the Fascist regime to economic debate and careers. This Volume I deals with the economics profession under Fascism, in particular in light of the political and institutional changes that the regime introduced, the restructuring of higher education, the restriction of freedom in teaching and of the press, and with respect to promoting its own strategies of political and ideological propaganda. Volume II (available separately) considers the public side of the economics profession, the "fascistisation" of culture and institutions, banishment and emigration of opponents, and post-WW2 purge of Fascist economists.

This book probes the materiality of Improvement in early 19th century rural Massachusetts. Improvement was a metaphor for human intervention in the dramatic changes taking place to the English speaking world in the 18th and 19th centuries as part of a transition to industrial capitalism. The meaning of Improvement vacillated between ideas of economic profit and human betterment, but in practice, Improvement relied on a broad assemblage of material things and spaces for coherence and enaction. Utilizing archaeological data from the home of a wealthy farmer in rural Western Massachusetts, as well as an analysis of early Republican agricultural publications, this book shows how Improvement's twin meanings of profit and betterment unfolded unevenly across early 19th century New England. The Improvement movement in Massachusetts emerged at a time of great social instability, and served to ameliorate growing tensions between urban and rural socioeconomic life through a rationalization of space. Alongside this rationalization, Improvement also served to reshape rural landscapes in keeping with the social and economic processes of a modernizing global capitalism. But the contradictions inherent in such processes spurred and buttressed wealth inequality, ecological distress, and social dislocation.

There is a standard belief that the modern theory of marginal utility originated in the UK with Jevons, Germany with Gossen, Austria with Menger and France with Walras. In this new book, John Chipman introduces new English translations of important writings from German economists such as Rau, Hildebrand, Roscher and Knies showing that the introduction of this concept originated with them. This ground breaking book comes with a long introduction from John Chipman analysing the theory.

Written by fifteen leading academics from the Japan Society for International Development (JASID), this book undertakes a review of Japan's economic development over the last 150 years, and seeks to clarify Japanese priorities in domestic and foreign policy for the coming decades.

Looking at the precedents set by the panic of 1907 and the Great Depression in America, this book investigates the causes of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Pizzutto examines the effects of monetary policy, as well as of expanding and contracting financial cycles, in order to analyze the breakdown of the money market and capital market circuits. Not only exploring the impact of the Federal Reserve and central banking on monetary policy, he also analyzes the role of non-bank financial intermediaries. How can monetary policy resolve the instability of the US financial system? How can financial intermediation work effectively? This timely book highlights how historical lessons can be used to avoid the next financial crisis.

This edited volume analyzes land utilization data from farm surveys taken in China between 1929 and 1933. This data, which was the foundation for John Lossing Buck's seminal work Land Utilization in China (1937), was thought lost to history until rediscovered in 2000. The book presents the first modern analyses of agricultural economics in Republican China using Buck's micro-data, covering important topics such as nutritional poverty, tenancy issues, land productivity, surplus labor, workers' incomes, credit supply, and regional differences. Through using modern analytical methods, this book presents a more accurate picture of the agricultural economy in the Republican Era and will be of particular interest to agricultural economists, economic historians, and Chinese studies scholars.

In this book, Martin Bunton focuses on the way in which the Palestine Mandate was part of a broader British imperial administration - a fact often masked by Jewish immigration and land purchase in Palestine. His meticulous research reveals clear links to colonial practice in India, Sudan, and Cyprus amongst other places. He argues that land officials' views on sound land management were derived from their own experiences of rural England, and that this was far more influential on the shaping of land policies than the promise of a Jewish National Home.
Bunton reveals how the British were intent on preserving the status quo of Ottoman land law, which (when few Britons could read Ottoman or were well grounded in its legal codes) led to a series of translations, interpretations, and hence new applications of land law. The sense of importance the British attributed to their work surveying and registering properties and transactions, is captured in the efforts of British officials to microfilm all of their records at the height of the Second World War. Despite this however, land policies remained in flux.

This timely biography of the economist Wynne Godley (1926-2010) charts his long and often crisis-blown route to a new way of understanding whole economies. It shows how early frustrations as a policy-maker enabled him to glimpse the cliff-edges other macro-modellers missed, and re-arm 'Keynesian' theory against the orthodoxy that had tried to absorb it. Godley gained notoriety for his economic commentaries - foreseeing the malaise of the 1970s, the Reagan-Thatcher slump, the unsustainable 1980s and 1990s booms, and the crises in the Eurozone and world economies after 2008. This foresight arose from a series of advances in his understanding of national accounting, price-setting, the role of modern finance, and the use of economic data, especially to grasp the interlinkage of stocks and flows. This biography also gives due attention to Godley's life outside academic economics - including his chaotic childhood, truncated career as a professional oboist, equally brief stints as a sculptor's model and economist in industry, and a longer spell as as a Treasury adviser with a mystery gift for forecasting. This first full-length biography traces Wynne Godley's long career from professional musician to public servant, policymaker, tormentor of conventional macroeconomics and creator of a workable alternative - all after escaping a childhood of decaying mansions and draconian schools, and rescuing his private world from the legacy of two Freuds. Drawing on Godley's published and unpublished work and extensive interviews with those who knew him, the author explores Godley's improbable life and explains the lasting significance of his work.

Volume 39C of Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, features a symposium marking the 100th anniversary of the publication of Frank H. Knight's Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit. The symposium features contributions from Per Bylund, Richard E. Wagner, our own Carlos Eduardo Suprinyak and his co-author, Thiago Oliveira, as well as an essay from guest editor Ross B. Emmett. The Volume also includes general-research essays from David C. Coker, J. Patrick Higgins, and Charles R. McCann, Jr.

A systematic examination of Midwestern land tenancy, this book is based on extensive research in manuscript censuses and county records, including those which shed light on tenancy rates before the federal census began providing data in 1880.

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This book examines the work of Milton Friedman, which is amongst the most significant in modern economics and, equally, amongst the most contentious. Although Friedman became most famous for his views on money and monetary policy as well as his public writings, a large and important part of his work concerned other aspects of economics. All parts of Friedman's work are considered here, as is his account of his own life. By focussing on what Friedman wrote rather than what later authors have written about him, this volume seeks to analyse the character, qualities and development of the arguments he made. This text is important for anyone interested in this both celebrated and reviled figure in economics. James Forder clarifies messages in Friedman's writing that have otherwise so often been obscured by academic and public controversy.