Bøger i Palgrave Studies in Economic History serien

East Germany's economic history is typically told as a story of the unravelling of an inherently flawed system. Yet, while the system's inefficiency is undeniable, its economic history was much richer than its comparatively poor economic performance suggests. For many who lived there, it was a system that, over its forty years, was capable of achievements and generally functioned at bearable levels. This book combines the insights of behavioural economics with archival research to peel away layers of rhetoric and assumptions about the East German economy and explore aspects of that underlying functionality. Through a series of cases studies that examine the establishment of socialist workplaces, the searches for productivity growth and efficiency, and the emergence of financial crisis, the book considers the system from the perspective of the humans who operated it and made the decisions that made it work. Unencumbered by political preconceptions, it offers a more realistic understanding of East German economic history than that derived from stagnant debates about the clash of systems. The new perspectives and approaches presented demonstrate that, extracted from its Cold War context, East Germany's economic history can be analysed for what it was, rather than for what it symbolised.

This book deals with the economic impact of technological changes and the rise of passenger shipping on social relations on board and ashore in European shipping industries between c.1850 and 2000. The changes in motive power, communication techniques and positioning technologies and the rise of passenger shipping went together with the creation of new tasks and functions and the marginalization or disappearance of traditional jobs and skills. This book presents case-studies on changes in different maritime professions between the middle of the nineteenth century and the end of the twentieth century, covering the shipping industries of a variety of seafaring countries in Europe. The subjects include changes in maritime labour at large, changes in specific groups of deck, catering or engine room personnel, such as captains, cooks, catering personnel, engineers, or radio-operators. A number of chapters employ a prosopographical or micro-historical approach, while others applya spatial perspective, analyze business records, materials from professional associations or distil information from large sets of quantitative data. This book will be of interest to academics and students of economic history, maritime and labour history.

This book offers a novel explanation of the transformation of London¿s transport from a free market to a public corporation rooted in social and political legitimacy rather than economic rationality. To become a single corporation London Transport first had to gain a ¿social licence¿ to operate, and this book explains how and why. It considers how a revolution in data gathering during this period helped to justify the transition to a central, unified provider, while also investigating how reputational damage to key figures in the transport industry jeopardized the political and social legitimacy needed to manage public corporation on a large scale. The book combines archival research with academic insights from theories of legitimacy, statistical accounting and scientific management to explore how the employment of statistical information combined with skilful media repositioning allowed a new generation of figureheads in the transport business to emerge as honest, professional, and patriotic, making them suitable business leaders of a transport monopoly in London after 1933. This account of events combines the concepts of trust in numbers and trust in character to produce a wide-ranging, qualitative historical account of the creation a major public monopoly. It will be of interest to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including business and management history, transport policy, management and organization studies, public administration and public sector studies.

This book comprehensively examines the development of Brazilian agriculture by focusing on the crops which evolved from national products to international commodities on a massive scale. It traces the transformation of Brazil from a country with low-yield levels in 1950 to its current position as a leading world producer. The first section of the book examines the modernization of Brazilian agriculture through a government programme which transformed traditional agriculture through subsidized credit, guaranteed prices, stock purchases, land utilization laws, modern research, new technology and major support for exports. It also explores the changing structures of agricultural production and farm ownership over time, analysing national censuses from 1920 to 2017 to illustrate the increasing efficiency of Brazil¿s agricultural workers. The book then discusses the history and evolution of the major Brazilian crops in detail, starting with the newer export crops such as soybeans, maize and cotton, before focusing on the traditional sugar and coffee industries. The final section of the book examines two other major areas of agroindustry: forestry and the evolution of the pastoral industries, as well as the growth of a meat exporting sector. The authors also explore questions of sustainability in the context of today¿s climate challenges, and the role of Brazilian agriculture in the world market going forward. This wide-ranging study will be of interest to a range of academics, including those working in agricultural economics, economic history, the history of Latin America and the history of agriculture more broadly.

This book challenges conventional wisdom by revealing an extensive and heterogeneous community of foreign businesses in Australia before 1914. Multinational enterprise arrived predominantly from Britain, but other sender nations included the USA, France, Germany, New Zealand, and Japan. Their firms spread out across Australia from mining and pastoral communities, to portside industries and CBD precincts, and they operated broadly across mining, trading, shipping, insurance, finance, and manufacturing. They were a remarkably diverse population of firms by size, organisational form, and longevity.This is a rare study of the impact of multinationals on a host nation, particularly before World War One, and that focuses on a successful resource-based economy. Deploying a database of more than 600 firms, supported by contemporary archives and publications, the work reveals how multinational influence was contested by domestic enterprise, other foreign firms, and the strategic investments of governments in network industries. Nonetheless, foreign agency ¿ particularly investment, knowledge and entrepreneurship ¿ mattered in the economic development of Australia in the nineteenth as well as the twentieth centuries. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in Australian and international economic and business history, the history of economic growth and scholars of international business.

This book takes a comparative approach to economic history to offer ways to increase our understanding of the divergence between South America and Scandinavia. In particular, the book aims to deepen our understanding of why the two groups of countries have set out on radically different pathways with regard to industrialisation, long-term economic growth and income distribution. The book draws together the results of two separate projects focusing on this comparison. The first of these projects focuses on two of the so-called settler societies of South America, namely Uruguay and Argentina, sometimes called the Pampas region. Australia and New Zealand, two other settler societies, are also considered, adding a further contrasting effect. These settler societies are compared with Scandinavia, in its broad terms, including Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. The second of these projects focuses on comparisons between Brazil and Sweden. Together, the two projects have engaged the minds of economic historians from Brazil, Uruguay and Sweden. This book will be of interest to researchers and students in economic history and economic development more broadly.

This book outlines the origins of Danish Capitalism and prosperity, from a poor and devastated minor state in the 19th century to a consolidated universal mixed economy welfare state at the end of the 20th century. The book argues that firm-based innovation drove Danish prosperity and redistributive capacity. It is a comprehensive but manageable examination of the institutions and choices that shaped a highly innovative and wealthy nation. The book relies on history and economic theory, presents commonly accepted narratives and theories, and contributes new explanations. Therefore, the book also traces both antecedents and the current state of 20th-century capitalism in Denmark and particular outcomes and critical institutions such as firm age, the labor market, and pension schemes. The book will be of interest to academics in business history and economic policy, as well as policymakers and all those interested in mixed economy studies.

This edited collection explores the pivotal role of the hotel industry in building Western Europe¿s tourism economy during the 20th century.The book brings together ten contributions focused on the same period, 1900-1970, to offer comparative perspectives from across the region including Italy, Switzerland, France, Spain and Britain. Drawing on historical case studies, chapters illuminate the different factors linking hotels and the broader tourism system including interventions of the public authorities and the State, the importance of private involvement, commercial strategies, the medium-term development of private hotels, hotel entrepreneurship, and the impact of economic crises and wars. By placing differing national approaches taken to the growth of the hotel industry in comparison, the book aims to fill a gap in the historiography of European hospitality and shed light on the wider impact of hotels and tourism on economic development at both a national and regional level. It will be of interest to a range of scholars, including in economic and business history, tourism studies, the history of tourism management, and social history.

This book exposes, for the first time in modern scholarship, the role that the rise of the Carry Trade played in British financial crises between 1825 and 1866, how in reaction the Bank of England improved its management of monetary policy after 1866 and how those lessons have been forgotten since the 1970s. Britain is one of the few major capitalist economies in the world to have avoided policy-induced systemic financial crises for more than 100 years of its history¿between 1866 and 1973. Beforehand, it suffered a series of serious banking panics, in 1825, 1837, 1847, 1857-58 and 1866. Since the 1970s banking instability has returned again, with the global financial crisis of 2007-09 hitting Britain hard. Economists and policymakers have asked what can be learnt from Britain¿s experience of the disappearance and reappearance of crises to help efforts to prevent future ones. This book answers that question with a major reassessment of Britain¿s financial history over the past two centuries. It does so by applying the long-neglected ideas of the British Banking School to explain how crises can occur because of the Carry Trade. This book is essential reading for economists and historians of modern Britain, practitioners and policymakers, as well as anyone who is affected by financial crises and their consequences.

This book analyzes the economic impact of the early development of railways in different Asian countries, linking the inlands with port cities and with a global network of connections. This is looked at in the context of the rise of imperialism in the last decades of the 19th century and the redistribution of spheres of influence in Asia. The book considers the increase of exports of plantation economies in the context of the global market and the importance of China, and the struggle between the great powers for the economic penetration in the Chinese empire. Its comparative approach provides an original contribution to global economic history and will be valuable reading for students and researchers of economic history, transport economics, and Asian history more broadly.

This book comprehensively investigates the position of Chinäs working class between the 1980s and 2010s and considers the consequences of economic reforms in historical perspective. It argues the case that, far from the illusion during the Maoist period that a new society had been established where the working classes held greater political and economic autonomy, economic reforms in the post-Mao era have led to the return of traditional Marxist proletariats in China. The book demonstrates how the reforms of Deng Xiaoping have led to increased economic efficiency at the expense of economic equality through an extensive case study of an SOE (state-owned enterprise) in Sichuan Province as well as wider discussions of the emergence of state capitalism on both a micro and macroeconomic level. The book also discusses workers¿ protests during these periods of economic reform to reflect the reformation of class consciousness in post-Mao China, drawing on Marx¿s concept of a transition from äclass-in-itself' to a ¿class-for-itself¿. It will be valuable reading for students and scholars of Chinese economic and social history, as well as political economy, sociology, and politics.