This major new book contains contributions by many of the leading historians of technology. The contributors argue that culture, institutions and learning either made the way for, or blocked technological and industrial transformation. Their essays include broad comparative frameworks between Europe and Asia, and Europe and America, and examine the specific experiences of Britain, France, Holland, Germany and Scandinavia. Themes addressed include cultures of invention and the learning economy, technological inertia and path dependence, patents and product innovation, and technology, institutions and boundaries.

This book discusses the case for socialism and the models of socialist planning. Through examining different countries, each chapter examines the successes and failures of contrasting socialist policies. The theories and techniques of socialist planning are discussed in relation to the Soviet Union and India, with additional attention given to Great Britain, Scandinavia, and the former Yugoslavia. Imperialism and Capitalism, Volume 2: Normative Perspectives aims to explore the alternatives to capitalism within different sectors and situations. The book is relevant to those interested in economics, development studies, international relations, and global politics.

We might think sustainable management is a new idea, created in the 1960s by enlightened modern scientists. We might think that it puts us on a new path, beyond what management was originally about. But this is not true. Sustainable management is as old as civilization and was a foundation stone of management science as it was formed in the first decade of the 20th century. Recovering this forgotten past provides deeper roots and greater traction to advance sustainable management in our own times. This book charts a history of sustainable management from premodern times, through the birth of management science as an offshoot of the conservation movement, to the present day. The authors argue that modern tools like Triple Bottom Line reporting and multiple Sustainable Development Goals may be less useful than a return to a more fundamental and holistic view of management.

This book is an edited collection by leading insurance historians, examining the historical role of reinsurance (the insurance of insurers) in the insurance markets of eight countries: USA, Netherlands, Sweden, France, Spain, Italy, Mexico and Japan. All the contributors are experts in their field and have widely published in insurance history, providing the reader with new insights into the insurance and economic history of these countries. In particular, this is the first book to explore the reinsurance markets in the USA, Netherlands, France, Italy and Mexico. This book will be of interest to economic and business historians, as well as insurance practitioners with an interest in the history of their industry.

Globalization and the Politics of Institutional Reform in Japan illuminates Japan's contemporary and historical struggle to adjust policy and the institutional architecture of government to an evolving global order. This focused and scholarly study identifies that key to this difficulty is a structural tendency towards central political command, which reduces the country's capacity to follow a more subtle allocation of authority that ensures political leadership remains robust and non-dictatorial. Thus, Motoshi Suzuki argues that it is essential for a globalizing state to incorporate opposition parties and transgovernmental networks into policy-making processes. Providing an in-depth analysis of the theories of institutional change, this book introduces readers to a wealth of perspectives and counterarguments concerning analysis of political decision-making and policy adjustment on both the national and international scale. Placing Japanese policy reform in the global context and relating policy reform to leadership's political strategies, the author gives a detailed chronological and analytical overview of Japan's challenging institutional, political and bureaucratic transformations since the Meiji Restoration of the late nineteenth century. Analysis of globalization and policy reform in a non-liberal state, and the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats from an international perspective is included. For those interested in historical and contemporary Japanese politics from a theoretical perspective, particularly the implications of globalization and the politician-bureaucrat relationship, this is an indispensable resource.

The political ideas that resulted from confronting the crisis of the Great Depression and the New Deal of the early 20th century reshaped America. This documentary history collects a range of primary sources to illuminate this critical period in U.S. history. This accessibly written work provides a wide range of primary documents, offering American history students and teachers alike a handy reference volume that examines all important aspects of the Great Depression and New Deal-a core curriculum topic. By modeling how an expert scholar interacts with primary sources, the book enables readers to pick apart and critically evaluate firsthand the key documents chronicling this major American movement. The book leads with an introductory essay that outlines the scope of the volume, explains how the primary documents were selected, and identifies thematic trends and controversies. Annotations by scholars translate difficult passages into language that is easily comprehensible to modern readers and compare key passages throughout, encouraging the reader to cross-reference documents within the volume and connect the dots between them. Readers will be able to interpret the flow of events during the Great Depression, assess the legislative and executive actions that attempted to deal with the economic crisis, and perceive the differences between the fiscal ideas of Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt. Presents documents illustrating the Great Depression crisis and the New Deal response that enables readers to witness the clash of conservatism and liberalism in a time of crisis Offers essays and notes that explain the documents-which include posters, articles, speeches, and court decisions-in the context of historical events Provides a timeline that creates a background setting for a documentary history Contrasts the ideas and actions of President Hoover against those of President Roosevelt

This book gathers several important texts to offer an overview of the institutionalist approach to money developed in France since the 1980s. This material highlights the specificities of the French monetary approaches and their main contributions to the understanding of monetary phenomena - not just in developed market economies but in other societies as well. By bringing these works to an English-speaking audience for the first time, this book will provide a much needed and valuable direct insight into this subject area and contribute to related post-Keynesian, neo-chartalist and sociological approaches to money. This book highlights the need for a global vision of money and for a clearer grasp of the link between money and the political sphere. It will appeal to students and researchers across various disciplines including but not limited to economics, anthropology, sociology, history and philosophy.

The arguments over the economic policies of the Reagan Administration will continue until sufficient time has elapsed for a consensus to be possible. In the meantime, it is necessary for contemporary scholars to record their opinions as a base for the consensus. Campagna has recorded his conclusions based on considerable research on Reagan Administration policies. He begins by describing what was planned by the government. From there, he discusses what actually happened, and devotes the remainder of the work to his opinion of what has been left with which the future must deal. Campagna concludes that the Reagan economic policies failed. He establishes a position for others to attack or defend in their own publications in the continuing argument.

An insightful collection of essays focused on American men, women, and children from a range of economic classes and ethnic backgrounds during the Great Depression. Who were the people waiting in the bread lines and living in Hoovervilles? Who were the migrants heading North and West? Did anyone survive the Depression relatively unscathed? Giving a voice to stories often untold, Great Depression: People and Perspectives covers the full spectrum of American life, portraying the experiences of ordinary citizens during the worst economic crisis in the nation's history. Great Depression shows how specific groups coped with the traumatic upheaval of the times, including rural Americans, women, children, African Americans, and immigrants. In addition, it offers revealing chapters on the conflict between social scientists and policymakers responding to the crisis, the impact of the Depression on the health of U.S. citizens, and the roles that American technology and Hollywood movies played in helping the nation survive. 11 expert contributors, including well-established scholars who bring new perspectives to the study of the Great Depression A wide range of primary sources such as news articles, photographs, diaries, and letters that provide a deeper understanding of daily life during the Depression

This book brings together for the first time more than half a dozen proposals for an imperial paper currency in the mid-eighteenth century British Atlantic, to show how manage colonial currency and banking in the expanding empire. Existing studies have looked at the successes and failures of schemes in individual colonies. But some had grander ambitions, such as Benjamin Franklin, and offered proposals for 'imperial' or 'continental' paper currencies and monetary unions which would help knit together colonial territories throughout North America and even the Caribbean into a cohesive whole during a moment of imperial reform. This book brings together these proposals for the first time, including several never studied before, to show how thinkers and writers on empire, currency and finance drew on financial practices, precedents and principles from across the British Atlantic to present their own visions of monetary union and the future of empire. In doing so it makes an important and original contribution to the wider histories of monetary and financial thought and theory and the roots of American monetary policy, and the links between finance, empire, politics, reform and revolution. It will be of interest to academics working on the history of finance, banking and currency in the British Isles, North America and the Caribbean in the eighteenth century, as well as those working on the political economy of the British Empire, including mercantilism, trade, warfare and the politics of empire in the decades leading up to the American Revolution.

What were the consequences of the German occupation for the economy of occupied Europe? After Germany conquered major parts of the European continent, it was faced with a choice between plundering the suppressed countries and using their economies to produce what it needed. The decision made not only differed from country to country but also changed over the course of the war. Individual leaders; the economic needs of the Reich; the military situation; struggles between governors of occupied countries and Berlin officials, and finally racism all had an impact on the outcome. In the end, in Western Europe and the Czech Protectorate, emphasis was placed on production for German warfare, which kept these economies functioning. New research, presented for the first time in this book, shows that as a consequence the economic setback in these areas was limited, and therefore post-war recovery was relatively easy. However, plundering was characteristic in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, resulting in partisan activity, a collapse of normal society and a dramatic destruction not only of the economy but in some countries of a substantial proportion of the labour force. In these countries, post-war recovery was almost impossible.

This groundbreaking book provides the first comprehensive account of the "juridiction consulaire," ""or Merchant Court, of eighteenth-century Paris. Drawing on extensive archival research, Amalia D. Kessler reconstructs the workings of the court and the commercial law that it applied and uses these to shed new light on questions about the relationship between commerce and modernity that are of deep and abiding interest to lawyers, historians, and social scientists alike. Kessler shows how the merchants who were associated with the court--and not just elite thinkers and royal reformers--played a key role in reconceptualizing commerce as the credit-fueled private exchange necessary to sustain the social order. Deploying this modern conception of commerce in a variety of contexts, ranging from litigation over negotiable instruments to corporatist battles for status and jurisdiction, these merchants contributed (largely inadvertently and to their ultimate regret) to the demise of corporatism as both conceptual framework and institutional practice. In so doing, they helped bring about the social and political revolution of 1789. Highly readable and engaging, "A Revolution in Commerce" provides important new insights into the rise of commercial modernity by demonstrating the remarkable role played by the law in ideological and institutional transformation.

This is the first comprehensive economic history of the Basotho people of Southern Africa (in colonial Basutoland, then Lesotho) and spans from the 1820s to the present day. The book documents what the Basotho have done on their own account, focusing on their systematic exclusion from trade and their political efforts to insert themselves into their country's commerce. Although the colonial and post-colonial periods were unfavourable to the Basotho, they have, before and after colonial rule, launched impressive commercial initiatives of their own, which bring hope for greater development and freedom in their struggle for economic independence.

China has undergone a remarkable transition over the past thirty years from a centrally-planned economy to a more market oriented one. The transformation of business in China has been correspondingly evident. This book gives an interdisciplinary analysis of the evolution of business development in China and the 'marketization' of industry during this period within a complex framework of legal, political, and economic reform aims.
The book includes twelve original business case studies to provide industry-specific analysis of the overarching macroeconomic and legal developments. It examines both domestic enterprise reform in China and the evolving treatment of foreign firms in the context of both corporate laws and economic policies, and how business is likely to evolve as economic and legal reforms rapidly increase during the twenty-first century, notably with regard to China's increasing global integration.

The Austrian Theory of Value and Capital provides a meticulous account of Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk's life, his theory of value, capital and interest within the context of 19th century German economic thought and the development of neoclassical economic theory.This book provides an insight into Bohm-Bawerk's intellectual development, his political leanings and personal background, including a wealth of previously unknown facts. The study also considers the development of economic thought in the 19th century in Germany and Austria. It critically analyses the work and contribution of Bohm-Bawerk and concludes that his analysis belongs to traditional 19th century German economic thought. Closely related to this is the clarification made by the author of what is genuinely 'Austrian' in the 'Austrian theory of value and distribution'. To complement the study of Bohm-Bawerk, the book also contains the first English translation of his letters to Knut Wicksell. This book will be of interest to economic theorists, those interested in Austrian economics and the history of economic thought and economic historians.

This book clarifies the challenges and outcomes of the Sunshine Project, a national project in Japan for developing new energy that was launched about 40 years ago at the time of the first oil crisis in the early 1970s and ended, as planned, in the early 2000s. The Sunshine Project was the government's national project for developing new energy technologies such as solar energy and other natural energy sources-what we call renewable energy today. The book considers why policies were successful in some areas but did not have the intended effect in other areas. It explains how technology innovation was employed to achieve energy policy goals and to tackle environmental issues. If we can present suggestions for how to structure national projects, it may also be possible to identify ways for industry, government, and academia to come together to find solutions not only to environmental energy problems, but also to other social problems. Herein lies the goal of this book. Although the development of new energy is the main subject of the book, the author also scrutinizes the governmental decision-making process involved in planning policy, the creative process, and the design of systems of collaboration between industry, government, and academia as well as cases where corporations have developed commercial versions of new energy products. The main part of the book consists of three case studies interspersed with two reflective chapters. The first case study describes the Sunshine Project from the perspective of project management based on the perspective of government. The second case study is a detailed examination of the routines in all organizations, whether industry, government, or academia, and of the autonomy of the project organization. The third case study increases the degree of detail to focus on the smallest unit of analysis, the intentions and motivations of key individuals participating in the project.

This book articulates a unified theory of capitalism as an attempt to provide a comprehensive scientific theory of this social system. A unified theory of capitalism is not the combination of the predominant economic theories-neoclassical, classical, and Keynesian-so as to make them compatible. It is not a composite economic theory. It is a new economic theory. Predictions of the theory's models were consistent with eight basic empirical regularities of capitalism dealing with economic growth, income inequality, employment level, and environment degradation. Therefore, the unified theory can be accepted as a good approximation of the real capitalist world. But the models were constructed at a high level of abstraction. Also problematic was the need to work out more fully the public policy implications of the theory. It is, therefore, no wonder that essays on the unified theory to answer these questions are a natural outcome of a new scientific endeavor attempting to reach a unity of knowledge in economics.

This book provides the first comprehensive study of the 'special relationship' between Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. While most studies approach this from the history of British and South African relations or the history of South African territorial expansion, this book offers new insights by examining Southern Rhodesia's relations with South Africa from the former's perspective. Exploring relations through the lens of settler colonialism, the book argues that settler colonialism in the region was marked by a competitive and antagonistic relationship between settler communities, particularly Afrikaner and English communities. The book explores the connections between these countries by examining (high) politics, economic links, and social and cultural ties, highlighting both instances of competition and cooperation. Above all, it argues that economic ties were the cornerstone of the relationship and that these shaped the rest of the ties between the two countries. Drawing on archival records from Britain, South Africa and Zimbabwe, as well as a number of secondary sources, it offers a much more nuanced perspective of this relationship than has been previously offered.