The Political Economy of Populism explores the interplay between identity, the economy and inequality to explain the dynamics of populist votes since the beginning of the 20th century. The book discusses the political and economic implications of populist governance using data on populist incumbencies and linking it to historical data on the macro economy and democracy. Chapters draw from the most recent political science, economics and other social science literature, as well as historical data, to explain the long-term causes and consequences of populism. Populism emerges and gains traction when political entrepreneurs exploit underlying identity conflicts for political gains. As the distributional consequences of both economic distress and economic growth typically favor the elite over the poor and the lower middle class, economic shocks usually sharpen the underlying identity conflicts between the groups. The book provides evidence of significant differences in the ways fiscal and monetary policies are conducted by incumbent populists in Latin America, Europe and the OECD. The work concludes by suggesting avenues through which a 21st century social consensus can be built, so that our society can avoid repeating the mistakes that led to wars and failed economic experiments in the 20th century. The Political Economy of Populism marks a significant contribution to the study of populism and is suited to students and scholars across the social sciences, including economics, political science and sociology.

This volume uses the extreme case of misers to examine interlocking categories that undergirded the emergence of modern British society, including new perspectives on charity, morality, and marriage; new representations of passion and sympathy; and new modes of saving, spending, and investment. Misers surveys this class of people-as invented and interpreted in sermons, poems, novels, and plays; analyzed by economists and philosophers; and profiled in obituaries and biographies-to explore how British attitudes about saving money shifted between 1700 and 1860. As opposed to the century before, the nineteenth century witnessed a new appreciation for misers, as economists credited them with adding to the nation's stock of capital and novelists newly imagined their capacity to empathize with fellow human beings. These characters shared the spotlight with real people who posthumously donned that label, populating into a cottage industry of miser biographies by the 1850s. By the time A Christmas Carol appeared in 1843, many Victorians had come to embrace misers as links that connected one generation's extreme saving with the next generation's virtuous spending. With a broad chronological period, this volume is useful for students and scholars interested in representation of misers in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain.

Drawing on a wide range of literature and adopting a macroeconomic approach, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the Italian economy during the Renaissance, focusing on the period between 1348, the year of the Black Death, and 1630. The Italian Renaissance played a crucial role in the formation of the modern world, with developments in culture, art, politics, philosophy, and science sitting alongside, and overlapping with, significant changes in production, forms of organization, trades, finance, agriculture, and population. Yet, it is usually argued that splendour in culture coexisted with economic depression and that the modernity of Renaissance culture coincided with an epoch of epidemics, famines, economic crisis, poverty, and destitution. This book examines both faces of the Italian economy during the Renaissance, showing that capital per worker was plentiful and productive capacity and incomes were relatively high. The endemic presence of the plague, curbing population growth, played an important role in this. It is also shown that the organization of production in industry and finance, consumerism, human capital, and mercantile rationality were the forerunners of modern-day capitalism. This book is an invaluable resource for scholars and students of the Renaissance and Italian economic history.

This shortform book presents key peer-reviewed research selected by expert series editors and contextualised by new analysis from each author on different forms of organising British industry. With contributions on the strengths and weaknesses of the holding company structure, government organisation of industry during war time, the effects of forms of organisation on innovation, and debates over the suitability of international comparisons, this volume provides an array of fascinating insights into industrial history. Of interest to business and economic historians, this shortform book also provides analysis and illustrative case-studies that will be valuable reading across the social sciences.

Drawing on an impressive range of archival material, this monograph delves into the careers of two businessmen who worked for Nordic chartered monopoly trading companies to illuminate individual entrepreneurship in the context of seventeenth-century long-distance trade. The study spans the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, examining global entanglements through personal interactions and daily trading activities between Europeans, Asian merchants and African brokers. It makes an important contribution to our understanding of the role of individuals and their networks within the great European trading companies of the early modern period. This unique book will be of interest to advanced students and researchers of economic history, business history, early modern global history and entrepreneurship.

Throughout the eighteenth century hundreds of thousands of men and women were cast into prison for failing to pay their debts. This apparently illogical system where debtors were kept away from their places of work remained popular with creditors into the nineteenth century even as Britain witnessed industrialisation, market growth, and the increasing sophistication of commerce, as the debtors' prisons proved surprisingly effective. Due to insufficient early modern currency, almost every exchange was reliant upon the use of credit based upon personal reputation rather than defined collateral, making the lives of traders inherently precarious as they struggled to extract payments based on little more than promises. This book shows how traders turned to debtors' prisons to give those promises defined consequences, the system functioning as a tool of coercive contract enforcement rather than oppression of the poor. Credit and Debt demonstrates for the first time the fundamental contribution of debt imprisonment to the early modern economy and reveals how traders made use of existing institutions to alleviate the instabilities of commerce in the context of unprecedented market growth. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers in economic history and early modern British history.

With the spread of interest-based transactions, major problems such as inequality, poverty and debt-based slavery have emerged. Those who practiced professions such as usury have, despite the negative connotations attributed to them, contributed extensively to the construction of the conventional financial system in the global economy, suggesting that the core concepts in this practice need to be analyzed in greater depth and from a historical perspective. This book analyzes the evolution of interest-bearing debt transactions from ancient times to the era of Abrahamic religions. In modern times, interest is strictly prohibited by Islam, but this book demonstrates that it is a practice that has been condemned and legally and morally prohibited in other civilizations, long before Islam outlawed it. Exploring the roots of this prohibition and how interest has been justified as a viable practice in economic and financial transactions, the book offers deep insight into the current nature of finance and economics, and the distinctive features of Islamic finance in particular and enables researchers to further delve into a review of interest-free financing models. Islamic finance, or alternative financial methods, have become extremely popular particularly in the aftermath of global financial crises, suggesting that they will attract further interest in the future as well. The book is primarily aimed at undergraduate and graduate students but, as it avoids the use of technical jargon, it also speaks to a general readership. It will appeal to those who have an interest in financial history, particularly the history of debt as well.

This volume brings together important articles from the Cambridge historian A. G. Hopkins and reflect the enlargement and evolution of historical studies during the last half century. The essays cover four of the principal historiographical developments of the period: the extraordinary revolution that has led to the writing of non-Western indigenous history; the revitalization of new types of imperial history; the now ubiquitous engagement with global history, including a reinterpretation of American Empire, and the current revival of economic history after several decades of neglect.

Culture is a priceless inheritance and source of wellbeing that is of immense value to humankind. Cultural economics set out to examine the nature and social benefits of cultural products and phenomena as they exist in the market. This volume is the masterpiece of Li Yining, one of the best-known Chinese economists, active in devoting his attention to the role of culture in the economy since the 1950s. Considering the importance of culture in the development of socialism with Chinese characteristics, the author combines cultural history, economic history, and the history of economic thought to produce unique perspectives. This book not only introduces the central concepts of cultural economics and the culture industry, but proposes several groundbreaking views that greatly influenced the culture policies of China, including cultural adjustment, cultural confidence, and cultural checks and balances. Researchers and students of economics, cultural studies, and Chinese politics, as well as policy makers, will benefit from this volume.

It would be difficult to examine interest- free alternative fi nancial systems without reviewing the evolution of debt; thus, this book offers a chronological account of the development of interest- bearing debt and contributors offer their take on how the issue of interest has been addressed throughout medieval and modern civilizations. The Evolution of Interest and Debt provides a review of the impact of these interest-bearing debt and practices upon social relations and institutions, throughout the history of modern economics, observing the relative conditions of the time and, as such, will shed light on the ongoing problems as well. The authors assert that the development of the concept of interest can be traced through three historical periods. The first period covers measures from a more radical stance, as introduced by the Abrahamic religions, with the same foundations and principles at their core. The second period examines the arguments that justify interest-bearing debt, particularly how the stance of major religions has been translated into a basis of support for these transactions. The third and final part offers a chronological account of the development of interest-bearing debt transactions and their disruptive impacts throughout the history of modern economics from the medieval to the modern era. Initially, the book presents a conceptual framework of terms applicable to the discussions and then examines the consistency and reliability of the theological and philosophical arguments on the restrictions imposed upon the practice of interest and debt, including rigid prohibition. Each period presents its own dynamics and helps analysts better understand the history and roots of interest-bearing debt. While the book is grounded on research that relies heavily on historical sources, it offers a contribution to the literature on economics as well, since the historical findings are analyzed in the context of economic terms and theories. An interdisciplinary effort, the book will attract the attention of those who have an interest in fi nance, economics, history, religion and sociology.

This book explains the role of formal labour market institutions in keeping the labour utilisation in Central and Eastern Europe above the level characteristic for Western European states. It provides an innovative and enriching take on labour utilisation at large and how various formal labour market institutions can affect the ongoing trend in labour utilisation in a way that is not covered by the extant literature. The impact of labour market institutions on labour market outcomes is analysed throughout 12 chapters, both from a cross-country perspective and in detailed case-studies, by 21 labour market experts from various CEE countries. Most chapters are based on empirical methods yet are presented in an easy-to-follow way in order to make the book also accessible for a non-scientific audience. The volume explores three key questions: How can labour utilisation be increased by labour market institutions? Which CEE countries managed to create a labour market institutional framework beneficial for labour utilisation? How should the labour market institutions in CEE countries be reformed in order to increase labour utilisation? The book argues that the legacy of transition reforms and a centrally planned past is still relevant in explaining common patterns among CEE countries and concludes that increasing the stock of skills accumulated by the employed and improving utilisation of these skills seems to be the first-best solution to increase labour utilisation. The book will be of interest to post-graduate researchers and academics in the fields of labour economics, regional economics, and macroeconomics as well as scholars interested in adopting an institutional analysis approach. Additionally, due to the broader policy implications of the topic, the book will appeal to policymakers and experts interested in labour economics.

This groundbreaking series brings together a critical selection of key papers by the Nobel Memorial Laureates in Economics that have helped shape the development and present state of economics. The editors have organised this comprehensive series by theme and each volume focuses on those Laureates working in the same broad area of study. The careful selection of papers within each volume is set in context by an insightful introduction to the Laureates? careers and main published works. This landmark series will be an essential reference for scholars throughout the world.

In 2008 Ireland experienced one of the most dramatic economic crises of any economy in the world. It remains at the heart of the international crisis, sitting uneasily between the US and European economies. Not long ago, however, Ireland was celebrated as an example of successful market-led globalisation and economic growth. How can we explain the Irish crisis? What does it tell us about the causes of the international crisis? How should we rethink our understanding of contemporary economies and the workings of economic liberalism based on the Irish experience? This book combines economic sociology and comparative political economy to analyse the causes, dynamics and implications of Ireland's economic 'boom to bust'. It examines the interplay between the financial system, European integration and Irish national politics to show how financial speculation overwhelmed the economic and social development of the 1990s 'Celtic Tiger'.

This survey of the rise and decline of English watchmaking fills a gap in the historiography of British industry. Clerkenwell in London was supplied with 'rough movements' from Prescot, 200 miles away in Lancashire. Smaller watchmaking hubs later emerged in Coventry, Liverpool, and Birmingham. The English industry led European watchmaking in the late eighteenth century in output, and its lucrative export markets extended to the Ottoman Empire and China. It also made marine chronometers, the most complex of hand-crafted pre-industrial mechanisms, crucially important to the later hegemony of Britain's navy and merchant marine. Although Britain was the 'workshop of the world', its watchmaking industry declined. Why? First, because cheap Swiss watches were smuggled into British markets. Later, in the era of Free Trade, they were joined by machine-made watches from factories in America, enabled by the successful application to watch production of the 'American system' in Waltham, Massachusetts after 1858. The Swiss watch industry adapted itself appropriately, expanded, and reasserted its lead in the world's markets. English watchmaking did not: its trajectory foreshadowed and was later followed by other once-prominent British industries. Clerkenwell retained its pre-industrial production methods. Other modernization attempts in Britain had limited success or failed.

The second volume of The Cambridge History of Capitalism provides an authoritative reference on the spread and impact of capitalism across the world, and the varieties of responses to it. Employing a wide geographical coverage and strong comparative outlook, a team of leading scholars explore the global consequences that capitalism has had for industry, agriculture, and trade, along with the reactions by governments, firms, and markets. The authors consider how World War I halted the initial spread of capitalism, but global capitalism arose again by the close of the twentieth century. They explore how the responses of labor movements, compounded by the reactions by political regimes, whether defensive or proactive, led to diverse military and welfare consequences. Beneficial results eventually emerged, but the rise and spread of capitalism has not been easy or smooth. This definitive volume will have widespread appeal amongst historians, economists, and political scientists.

Peter M. Lichtenstein believes that any social-economic theory of capitalism must begin with a theory of value and price. Dismissing the neoclassical school, he turns to post-Keynesian and Marxian economics with their coherent and consistent theories of value and price based on concrete objective circumstances. The development of these theories in the author's aim because he believes that this approach comes much closer than neoclassical theory to capturing the essence of a capitalism economy. This book, first published in 1983, is addressed to economics students, especially to those studying microeconomics or the history of economic thought, and to economists seeking an overview of these issues.

The grass-roots approach allows for a better understanding of religion as it shows how it encompassed all spheres of daily life. By exploring how pastoral care took shape at the local levels of society, the volume is useful in showing how the ideal of leading everybody to salvation was a central element of Carolingian culture. This will be useful for all students and scholars who are interested in the ecclesiastical history of Europe in the Carolingian period. The various sections on the roles of the priest, such as priests as experts, shows how well-educated local priests did not only know how to baptise and preach, but could also advise on matters concerning health, legal procedure and even the future, which provides a more detailed and nuanced view of the role of the priest in this period.

The grass-roots approach allows for a better understanding of religion as it shows how it encompassed all spheres of daily life. By exploring how pastoral care took shape at the local levels of society, the volume is useful in showing how the ideal of leading everybody to salvation was a central element of Carolingian culture. This will be useful for all students and scholars who are interested in the ecclesiastical history of Europe in the Carolingian period. The various sections on the roles of the priest, such as priests as experts, shows how well-educated local priests did not only know how to baptise and preach, but could also advise on matters concerning health, legal procedure and even the future, which provides a more detailed and nuanced view of the role of the priest in this period.

First published in 1986, Denmark seeks to show the way in which modern Denmark, with its high standard of living, its sense of an orderly society, and its tolerance, had emerged and been shaped since the beginning of the 19th century. It traces its political history, the emergence of political parties and the protracted struggle for parliamentary democracy in the face of a king determined to appoint his own ministers. It looks at the determination of the Danes after the financial repercussions of the Napoleonic wars and the territorial and economic losses resulting from the Schleswig-Holstein debacle in 1864 to win through and recoup their losses. Social changes are described in some detail, particularly in the twentieth century and attention is paid to the workings of the Danish welfare state. Appendices trace in broad outline the historical relationship between Denmark and its former colonies of Greenland and Faroe Islands, now both self-governing territories. This book will be of interest to students of history, geography, political science, sociology and cultural studies.

First published in 1961, The Miners in Crisis and War: A History of Miners' Federation of Great Britain from 1930 Onwards tells the story of two sharply contrasting periods, of world crisis and of world war. The story begins with the Minders' Federation fallen upon evil days, diminished in numbers, shorn of its former powers of national wage negotiation, divided in counsel and almost whelmed beneath the seismic waves of world economic crisis. Unemployment prevailed, greater than at any time before. The sudden collapse of the cabinet, the formation of the four-party coalition, and the rout of the Labour Party in 1931 shattered these hopes. The climb from the economic abyss of the early thirties is made against a sombre background of the spread of fascism and the approach of war. Then, during the war, the British coal industry and its workers encounter a series of rapid changes, both for better and for worse. The whole main purpose of their trade unions, to maintain and improve the standard of life, is conditioned by the six-year war to such an extent that all come to be merged in a single national union a few months before victory. Thus, in circumstances utterly unforeseen, the old Miners' Federation, now once more built up in its numbers and in its powers comes to an end after an existence of fifty-five years. This book will be of interest to students of history, sociology, economics and political science.

The modern global economy and discipline of economics place mathematical calculation above human concern. However, a re-reading of Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy can positively highlight the contrast in values and spirit of the early medieval European world with our own scientific age. This book discusses the historical and cultural contexts that influenced Boethius' writing and explores how Consolation offers a radically different understanding of economic concepts: wealth from inner happiness and virtues, poverty from hoarding outer possessions, self-sufficiency in the greater whole, enlightenment through misfortune, and development as fruition from the Good. These economic considerations resonate with a range of heterodox economic perspectives, such as Ecological and Buddhist Economics. The fundamental revaluations gained through Boethius pose a critique of mainstream neoclassical and neoliberal economics: to consumerism, avarice, growth and technology fetishism, and market rationality. These economic foundations resonate into a time when global crises raise the question of fundamental human priorities, offering alternatives to an ever-expanding industrial market economy designed for profit, and helping to avoid irrevocable socio-ecological disasters. The issues raised and questioned in this book will be of significant interest to readers with concern for pluralist approaches to economics, philosophy, classics, ancient history and theology.

This volume narrates the financial history of the United States during a period of great upheaval in the early part of the 21st century. It is divided into three chronological sections: the first section describes the recovery of financial markets after the Great Recession. It begins with an overview of the state of the economy at the start of the new decade, including some of the political storms affecting the economy and financial markets. It explores the uneven nature of the recovery and volatility in the Treasury during these years. The second section sets forth regulatory responses to the Financial Crisis of 2008, including the massive fines imposed on large banks by a swarm of regulators. It examines the "too big to jail" prosecution model, cases involving Libor and foreign exchange manipulation and the impact of rogue traders. It also looks at the developments in payment systems, rise of crowdfunding as a source of capital, and high-frequency trading. The third section describes the rules adopted under the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 that broadly affected financial markets. It also recounts the Trump trade wars and ends with an account of the financial and economic turmoil that occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The volume will be an essential addition to academic and public libraries with readers drawn from business schools, departments of economics and finance, and historians.

What is Pan-Americanism? People have been struggling with that problem for over a century. Pan-Americanism is (and has been) an amalgam of diplomatic, political, economic, and cultural projects under the umbrella of hemispheric cooperation and housed institutionally in the Pan-American Union, and later the Organization of American States. But what made Pan-Americanism exceptional? The chapters in this volume suggest that Pan-Americanism played a central and lasting role in structuring inter-American relations, because of the ways in which the movement was reinvented over time, and because the actors who shaped it often redefined and redeployed the term. Through the twentieth century, new appropriations of Pan-Americanism structured, restructured, and redefined inter-American relations. Taken together, these chapters underscore two exciting new shifts in how scholars and others have come to understand Pan-Americanism and inter-American relations. First, Pan-Americanism is increasingly understood not simply as a diplomatic, commercial, and economic forum, but a movement that has included cultural exchange. Second, researchers, political leaders, and the media in several countries have traditionally conceived of Pan-Americanism as a mechanism of US expansionism. This volume reimagines Pan-Americanism as a movement built by actors from all corners of the Americas.

This interdisciplinary book brings together eleven original contributions by scholars in the United Kingdom, continental Europe, America and Japan which represent innovative and important research on the relationship between cities and their hinterlands. They discuss the factors which determined the changing nature of port-hinterland relations in particular, and highlight the ways in which port-cities have interacted and intersected with their different hinterlands as a result of both in- and out-migration, cultural exchange and the wider flow of goods, services and information. Historically, maritime commerce was a powerful driving force behind urbanisation and by 1850 seaports accounted for a significant proportion of the world's great cities. Ports acted as nodal points for the flow of population and the dissemination of goods and services, but their role as growth poles also affected the economic transformation of both their hinterlands and forelands. In fact, most ports, irrespective of their size, had a series of overlapping hinterlands whose shifting importance reflected changes in trading relations (political frameworks), migration patterns, family networks and cultural exchange. Urban historians have been criticised for being concerned primarily with self-contained processes which operate within the boundaries of individual towns and cities and as a result, the key relationships between cities and their hinterlands have often been neglected. The chapters in this work focus primarily on the determinants of port-hinterland linkages and analyse these as distinct, but interrelated, fields of interaction. Marking a significant contribution to the literature in this field, Port-Cities and their Hinterlands provides essential reading for students and scholars of the history of economics.

Drawing in particular on the work of Sraffa, Smith, Ricardo and Marx, the essays in this volume explore the characteristic features of the Classical economists' approach to economic problems, and the renewal of interest in that approach in modern times. In recent years, new material has been made available on both Sraffa and Marx which have made new insights and interpretations possible. The release of Sraffa's hitherto unpublished papers and correspondence has led to reconsideration of doctrinal questions such as to what extent Sraffa built upon, or deviated from the analyses of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and other representatives of the classical British school and Karl Marx. A major theme is also to what extent we can today, equipped with Sraffa's insights and analytical tools, re-interpret and develop ideas of classical authors, which they could present only in primitive forms, on technological progress, exhaustible resources and other contemporary issues. On Marx, the publication of the MEGA2 edition of the works, papers and correspondence of Marx and Engels also gives rise to a reconsideration of this relationship, given Marx's disenchantment with some of his own work and return to ideas advocated by Ricardo, especially as regards the long-term tendency of the rate of profits. Finally, the classical notion of competition and monopoly deserve to be scrutinized carefully again and frequent misinterpretations in the literature refuted. This volume is vital reading for scholars of classical economics, Marx and Sraffa, and the history of economic thought more broadly. It also deals with issues in the areas of machinery and technical progress, joint production, and economic development and growth.