{"title":"Carbon technocracy: Energy regimes in modern East Asia. Victor Seow, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021. pp. 376. 25 figs. ISBN: 9780226826554. Pbk. $27.50)","authors":"Hiroki Shin","doi":"10.1111/ehr.13380","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13380","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"77 4","pages":"1541-1543"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142435832","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Public Interest and State Legitimation: Early Modern England, Japan, and China. , Wenkai He, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. pp. 320. ISBN 9781009334556. Pbk. £25.99)","authors":"Jared Rubin","doi":"10.1111/ehr.13367","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13367","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"77 3","pages":"1116-1117"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141536634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Soviet Union and the Construction of the Global Market: Energy and the Ascent of Finance in Cold War Europe 1964–1971. Oscar Sanchez-Sibony, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. pp. 290. 8 figs. ISBN 9781108834544 Hardback £85)","authors":"Helen Thompson","doi":"10.1111/ehr.13369","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13369","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"77 3","pages":"1120-1121"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141536629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Wealth of a Nation: Institutional Foundations of English Capitalism. Geoffrey Hodgson, (Princeton University Press, 2023. pp. 304. ISBN: 9780691247014, Hbk £35)","authors":"Graham Brownlow","doi":"10.1111/ehr.13364","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13364","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"77 3","pages":"1112-1113"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141536630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Rise and Fall of the Italian Economy. Carlo Bastasin and Gianni Toniolo, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. pp. 211. 29 figs. 4 tabs. ISBN 9781009235310, Pbk. £22.99)","authors":"Anna Missiaia","doi":"10.1111/ehr.13365","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13365","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"77 3","pages":"1114-1115"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141536631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Financial Markets of Roman Egypt: Risk and Return. Paul V. Kelly, (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2023. pp. vii + 221. 36 figs. 15 tabs. ISBN: 9781802078336, Hbk £76)","authors":"Gilles Bransbourg","doi":"10.1111/ehr.13368","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13368","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"77 3","pages":"1118-1119"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141536969","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Rise and Decline of England's Watchmaking Industry, 1550–1930. Alun Davies, (Routledge, 2024. pp. 414. 21 B/W images. ISBN 9781032131351, Pbk £39.99)","authors":"Pierre-Yves Donzé","doi":"10.1111/ehr.13366","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ehr.13366","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"77 3","pages":"1110-1111"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141109104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this paper we study 500 years of African economic history using traveller accounts. We systematically collected 2464 unique documents, of which 855 pass language and rigorous data quality requirements. Our final corpus of texts contains more than 230 000 pages. Analysing such a corpus is an insurmountable task for traditional historians and would probably take a lifetime's work. Applying modern day computational linguistic techniques such as a structural topic model approach (STM) in combination with domain knowledge of African economic history, we analyse how first-hand accounts (topics) evolve across space and time. Apart from obvious accounts of climate, geography, and zoology, we find topics around imperialism, diplomacy, conflict, trade/commerce, health/medicine, evangelization, and many more topics of interest to scholarship. We illustrate how this novel database and text analysis can be employed in three applications (1) What views are introduced by travellers as a result of their occupational background? (2) Did the adoption of quinine as treatment and prophylaxis against malaria facilitate European expansion into Africa? (3) When and how did the diffusion of New World crops alter the African economic landscape?
{"title":"African time travellers: What can we learn from 500 years of written accounts?","authors":"Edward Kerby, Alexander Moradi, Hanjo Odendaal","doi":"10.1111/ehr.13344","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13344","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this paper we study 500 years of African economic history using traveller accounts. We systematically collected 2464 unique documents, of which 855 pass language and rigorous data quality requirements. Our final corpus of texts contains more than 230 000 pages. Analysing such a corpus is an insurmountable task for traditional historians and would probably take a lifetime's work. Applying modern day computational linguistic techniques such as a structural topic model approach (STM) in combination with domain knowledge of African economic history, we analyse how first-hand accounts (topics) evolve across space and time. Apart from obvious accounts of climate, geography, and zoology, we find topics around imperialism, diplomacy, conflict, trade/commerce, health/medicine, evangelization, and many more topics of interest to scholarship. We illustrate how this novel database and text analysis can be employed in three applications (1) What views are introduced by travellers as a result of their occupational background? (2) Did the adoption of quinine as treatment and prophylaxis against malaria facilitate European expansion into Africa? (3) When and how did the diffusion of New World crops alter the African economic landscape?</p>","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"78 1","pages":"295-332"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143119980","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper studies the economic impact of foreign aid on Italian firms. In particular, I study the different effects of three main forms of aid: Export–Import Bank loans, Marshall Plan European Recovery Program (ERP) ‘dollars’ loans and the Marshall Plan ERP ‘lire’ loans. In all programmes, the United States sent technologically advanced machinery to allow for a modernization of the technology of Italian firms, but the conditions of such loans differed. This paper tests how crucial such different features have been for the effectiveness of firm reconstruction aid. By creating a new dataset on recipient firms and linking it to a large comprehensive firm-level dataset (Imita.db), I compare the effects on the performance of firms. I find that the Export–Import Bank loan raised the long-run profitability of firms, but that firms which received more flexible forms of Marshall Plan aid (‘ERP-lire’) raised their performance much more than Export–Import Bank recipients. Recipients who only received funds provided with long delays (‘ERP-dollars’) did not benefit from them. This evidence suggests that rather than receiving foreign aid per se, the most crucial features of reconstruction aid in Italy have been obtaining the requested goods on time and adjusting requests to receive the most needed productive goods.
{"title":"It's not about the money: New evidence on U.S. reconstruction aid in Italy, 1947–68","authors":"Marco Martinez","doi":"10.1111/ehr.13349","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ehr.13349","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper studies the economic impact of foreign aid on Italian firms. In particular, I study the different effects of three main forms of aid: Export–Import Bank loans, Marshall Plan European Recovery Program (ERP) ‘dollars’ loans and the Marshall Plan ERP ‘lire’ loans. In all programmes, the United States sent technologically advanced machinery to allow for a modernization of the technology of Italian firms, but the conditions of such loans differed. This paper tests how crucial such different features have been for the effectiveness of firm reconstruction aid. By creating a new dataset on recipient firms and linking it to a large comprehensive firm-level dataset (Imita.db), I compare the effects on the performance of firms. I find that the Export–Import Bank loan raised the long-run profitability of firms, but that firms which received more flexible forms of Marshall Plan aid (‘ERP-lire’) raised their performance much more than Export–Import Bank recipients. Recipients who only received funds provided with long delays (‘ERP-dollars’) did not benefit from them. This evidence suggests that rather than receiving foreign aid per se, the most crucial features of reconstruction aid in Italy have been obtaining the requested goods on time and adjusting requests to receive the most needed productive goods.</p>","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"78 1","pages":"266-294"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ehr.13349","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140660065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Russia and Germany both industrialized later than England and the United States, and both countries retained authoritarian autocracies until World War I. On the basis of a large collection of firm-level balance sheets, this paper presents new evidence revealing the likely impact of these systematic disparities on emerging industry's access to capital. Contrary to the standard ‘economic backwardness’ and ‘law and finance’ literatures, we argue that differences in financing between Russian and German corporations were consistent with authoritarian control of corporate entry as well as Russia's agricultural economy and overall lower level of economic development.
{"title":"Finance capitalism in industrializing autocracies: Evidence from corporate balance sheets in imperial Germany and Russia","authors":"Caroline Fohlin, Amanda Gregg","doi":"10.1111/ehr.13342","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ehr.13342","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Russia and Germany both industrialized later than England and the United States, and both countries retained authoritarian autocracies until World War I. On the basis of a large collection of firm-level balance sheets, this paper presents new evidence revealing the likely impact of these systematic disparities on emerging industry's access to capital. Contrary to the standard ‘economic backwardness’ and ‘law and finance’ literatures, we argue that differences in financing between Russian and German corporations were consistent with authoritarian control of corporate entry as well as Russia's agricultural economy and overall lower level of economic development.</p>","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"78 1","pages":"235-265"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140675026","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}