Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Browse subjects
  3. History
  4. Economic history
  5. Content listing

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

27003 results in Economic history

Page 346 of 1351

  • 5 - Trans-Asian trade, or the Silk Road deconstructed (antiquity, middle ages)

  • Edited by Larry Neal, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Jeffrey G. Williamson, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Capitalism
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    23 January 2014, pp 101-124

  • Summary

    This chapter provides first a central Asian perspective on the trans-Asian trade. It then focuses on the silk trade, although comparisons are provided with the more regional trades, from which comparisons are drawn to evaluate the economic importance of these various trades. The concept of ortaq is extremely important to link the tributary and commercial aspects of the Silk Road. More often than not, in the long run, China had to buy peace from its northern nomadic neighbors by paying heavy tributes to them, generally in silk rolls. Additionally, the payment for the maintenance of Chinese armies in Central Asia was made by transferring rolls of silk. The sending of silk to the West by the Chinese army or the Chinese diplomacy at a cost paid by the state could only destroy the trading networks between inner China and central Asia. Conversely, it created opportunities for traders operating further west, from Chinese-controlled central Asia to the Middle and Near East.

  • 12 - The formation of states and transitions to modern economies:

  • Edited by Larry Neal, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Jeffrey G. Williamson, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Capitalism
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    23 January 2014, pp 357-402

  • Summary

    This chapter explores whether capitalism existed in ancient Greek between circa 800 BCE and the Common Era. Reintegrating the economies of the past, those of Babylon or those of classical antiquity, into the debate on capitalism presents a series of advantages. It is sufficient to justify the place of ancient Greece in a world history of capitalism, both for the comparative evidence it provides for later and more elaborate economic developments. Although figures or evaluation will be constantly an object of debate, the reality of growth is beyond doubt, and this totally changes the picture of a stagnant society of the old paradigm. Archaeological evidence points not only to population growth but also to growth of per capita production and consumption. By massively increasing the aggregate input of labor, slavery was one of the basic factors of accelerated economic growth in the classical and Hellenistic world.

  • 10 - Thevia italianato capitalism

  • Edited by Larry Neal, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Jeffrey G. Williamson, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Capitalism
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    23 January 2014, pp 267-313

  • Summary

    This is the introductory chapter of the book which determines what features of modern capitalism were present at each time and place, and why the various precursors of capitalism did not survive setbacks and then subsequently continue the growth of both population and per capita incomes from their earlier levels. The scholarly literature refers variously to agrarian capitalism, industrial capitalism, financial capitalism, monopoly capitalism, state capitalism, crony capitalism, and even creative capitalism. Each variant of capitalism has specific emphasis on private property rights; contracts enforceable by third parties; markets with responsive prices; and supportive governments. Beyond the basic elements of economic activity that are physically observable, the history of capitalism must also pay attention to the organizations such as guilds, corporations, governments, and legal systems that operate within and enforce the "rules of the game". A thoroughgoing market system is also necessarily embedded within broader political, cultural, and social systems.

  • 3 - Growth,specialization, and organization of world agriculture

  • Edited by Larry Neal, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Jeffrey G. Williamson, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Capitalism
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    23 January 2014, pp 47-81

  • Summary

    Agriculture has been the main source of livelihood for the overwhelming majority of the world's population for thousands of years, from the first production of crops some 8,000 years ago to the start of world wide industrialization in the nineteenth century. The acceleration in the rate of growth of the world population after World War ii was matched by an even sharper acceleration in the rate of growth of agricultural production, from about 1 percent per annum to over 2 percent. The increase of trade relative to output is strong evidence of a growing specialization of agricultural production. Since the beginning of the movement, credit cooperatives have established regional and national organizations for mutual support. In more recent times, these private organizations have been given formal guarantees by governments. Finally, the chapter focuses on extensive growth, modern property rights, intensive growth, consumer protection, competition policy, and the support given to scientific research.

  • 9 - Markets and coercion in medieval Europe

  • Edited by Larry Neal, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Jeffrey G. Williamson, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Capitalism
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    23 January 2014, pp 225-266

  • Summary

    Medieval Europe was literally built on the ruins left by the disintegrated Roman empire. But during that long period of recovery up to the early modern period Europe was transformed from an economic backwater into the most advanced region in the world. The medieval economy witnessed first the rise and then the decline of unfreedom, which is essentially the denial of the right of free contracting in markets. Serfdom was clearly associated with a concentration of ownership of land in the hands of the lay and ecclesiastical elites. The labor market had been growing continuously since the revival of the European economy and by the fourteenth century it was considerable. Money markets became increasingly well integrated over time. The medieval period was a period of slow productivity growth, but there is no evidence that productivity growth in the guild-run urban sector was slower than in the agrarian sector.

  • 16 - British and European industrialization

  • Edited by Larry Neal, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Jeffrey G. Williamson, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Capitalism
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    23 January 2014, pp 491-532

  • Summary

    Any general account of capitalism in India needs to be mindful of two characteristics of the region. First, Indians have been doing business with the outside world for millennia. Second, there was an extraordinary degree of regional diversity within the Indian subcontinent. Capitalism tends to enter comparative economic history in three different ways: as a mode of production in orthodox Marxism; as international trade in the world systems analysis; and as institutions in current discourses on international development. A quick glance at the map of the Indian subcontinent shows that its topography would have presented any long-distance trader living before the age of steam with a great advantage and a great disadvantage at the same time. In the 1990s, contributions on new institutional economic history emphasized the importance of social norms, and suggested that the formation of a bureaucratic state and social norms could lead to different, sometimes alternative, frameworks of regulation and in turn of capitalism.

  • 7 - Enterprisemodels:

  • Edited by Larry Neal, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Jeffrey G. Williamson, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Capitalism
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    23 January 2014, pp 201-229

  • Summary

    Business enterprises are organized very differently in different countries, and neoclassical economics is built around only one such model. Both historically and across modern economies, business groups are usually organized as pyramids. A family firm controls a first tier of listed companies by holding a dominant equity block in each. Business groups figure prominently in economic history, especially in late industrializers. Japan, an industrial power by the 1920s, was the first non-Western country to industrialize successfully. Large family-controlled business groups may well possess a genuine economic advantage over freestanding professionally run firms in low-income economies. Large pyramidal business groups persist in some highly developed economies. Their controlling families strive to be seen as good citizens, and are often keen to cooperate with popular governments. A high-income economy's Big Push commencement exercise can be traumatic for the graduating class of business group controlling shareholders.

  • 1 - Introduction

  • Edited by Larry Neal, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Jeffrey G. Williamson, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Capitalism
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    23 January 2014, pp 1-23

  • Summary

    This is the introductory chapter of the book which determines what features of modern capitalism were present at each time and place, and why the various precursors of capitalism did not survive setbacks and then subsequently continue the growth of both population and per capita incomes from their earlier levels. The scholarly literature refers variously to agrarian capitalism, industrial capitalism, financial capitalism, monopoly capitalism, state capitalism, crony capitalism, and even creative capitalism. Each variant of capitalism has specific emphasis on private property rights; contracts enforceable by third parties; markets with responsive prices; and supportive governments. Beyond the basic elements of economic activity that are physically observable, the history of capitalism must also pay attention to the organizations such as guilds, corporations, governments, and legal systems that operate within and enforce the "rules of the game". A thoroughgoing market system is also necessarily embedded within broader political, cultural, and social systems.

  • 2 - The spreadof manufacturing

  • Edited by Larry Neal, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Jeffrey G. Williamson, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Capitalism
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    23 January 2014, pp 22-46

  • Summary

    Before the industrial revolution, most of the world's manufacturing production took place in China and India. While the traditional manufacturing centers declined in the nineteenth century, other centers developed and, indeed, joined Britain to form the "industrial West". On the eve of the industrial revolution, British GDP per head was considerably above the world average. Economic growth was driven by the expansion of international trade, but the policies of the British state were at some variance with the prescriptions of Adam Smith. This chapter discusses colonialism, economic development, and standard model in Europe, Mexico, Russia, Latin America, Egypt and Japan. It then focuses on Big Push industrialization in Japan, China and Soviet Union. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Standard Model was bearing fruit in the United States and Western Europe. China was not successful in building its own fertilizer plants in the 1960s, and in 1973-1974 the country contracted with foreign firms to build thirteen ammonia factories.

  • 1 - Introduction:

  • Edited by Larry Neal, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Jeffrey G. Williamson, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Capitalism
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    23 January 2014, pp 1-21

  • Summary

    This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in this book. The book deals with capitalism's evolution within Western Europe and its offshoots, and its spread to the rest of the world after 1848. The spread of global capitalism has two dimensions, and they can be distinguished by means of an analogy. The increased globalization across the nineteenth century was due to a combination of factors, especially the new transportation and information technologies. Late-twentieth-century growth rates by the East Asian tigers and then China have set a modern standard of 'growth miracles' hard to beat, making impressive growth spurts in the past look pretty modest. During the few decades between about 1820 and the mid nineteenth century, global migrations changed dramatically. Emigration policies changed, from restricting outflows before, to adopting laissez-faire policies thereafter. The late nineteenth century also saw a large increase in the integration of international capital markets, and in the volume of international capital flows.

  • 16 - The futureof capitalism

  • Edited by Larry Neal, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Jeffrey G. Williamson, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Capitalism
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    23 January 2014, pp 530-546

  • Summary

    Through a combination of external forces and its inner dynamics financial capitalism has been transformed over the last 250 years. Central to financial capitalism is financial innovation. It is through innovation that financial capitalism responds to external challenges and opportunities while generating its inner dynamics. The most important organizational innovation in finance was the bank. A bank is a financial intermediary whereas a moneylender is a capitalist. Almost from the inception of financial innovation in products, markets, and organization, attempts were made to minimize the risks that they posed for all users. Regulatory innovation was also found in financial markets, though much again was left to the reputation of the participants. Evidence certainly exists to suggest there is a strong correlation between a country's per capita income and financial sector development, judged by such measures as bank deposits and holding of securities.

Page 346 of 1351