Economic History Review最新文献

To what extent was the summer of 1931 a financial crisis in Britain? Previous research has shown how London merchant banks were affected, but it remains unclear to what extent the largest commercial banks of London – the clearing banks – were under threat. Monthly balance sheets reported by clearing banks do not fully reflect the day-to-day liquidity in financial crisis, possibly overstating available liquidity. This article does not rely on what clearing banks reported, but what the largest five London clearing banks actually did on a daily basis during the summer of 1931. I find that the London clearing banks were not seriously under threat. This is because large-scale asset purchases by the Bank of England stabilized the liquidity of the London clearing banks. This intervention is consistent with previous crisis situations during the nineteenth century and at the outset of the First World War.

The Victorian Factories and Shops Act of 1896, the second minimum wage law in the world, empowered administrative agencies (‘Special Boards’) to set trade-specific minimum rates on the basis of age, sex, and occupation. Some Victorian supporters of minimum wages looked to end sweating and protect women and children, while others sought to use the law to protect adult men. Opponents argued that they would disrupt labour markets, increasing employers’ costs and creating unintended consequences for workers. Evidence from actual minimum wages suggests that boards were loosely constrained by market factors, but also that they had some discretion. Some Special Boards essentially followed the market for their trades while others set rates that were binding for some workers. To the extent that minimum rates were binding, they tended to reduce inequality among adult male workers, particularly after a 1907 federal law established a living wage covering employers with operations in multiple states. However, they also increased inequality across groups, increasing wages of adult men relative to those of women and youths. The act formally institutionalized gender-based pay differences, a practice that continued in Australian minimum wage setting for more than 70 years.

Using a novel, hand-collected dataset of U.S. life insurance companies during the influenza pandemic of 1918–9, we show that high-exposure life insurers charged higher prices on new policies vis-à-vis less exposed firms. Although the disease surprisingly increased the mortality rates among younger adults, it also increased awareness of the importance of life insurance. We argue that price increases were a crucial risk management tool. Coupled with a surge in demand and coverage, it prevented further financial distress. Although devastating for public health, the influenza pandemic was not too severe for the life insurance industry.

Was there any redistribution of resources in the Caribbean societies after emancipation from slavery? What were formerly enslaved persons’ prospects to improve their socio-economic status like after emancipation? To shed some light on these questions, this paper provides unique empirical evidence on patterns of wealth inequality before and after emancipation for the island of St. Croix, a typical slavery-based sugar island in the Caribbean. Our findings suggest that there was no decrease in inequality following the institutional break of emancipation. A key explanation, we argue, rests on factor endowments and more specifically on the restrictive land–labour ratios that prevailed on several Caribbean islands such as St. Croix. Due to these factor endowments, formerly enslaved persons remained unable to accumulate any substantial amounts of wealth for decades after emancipation.

We draw upon an extensive database of investors in colonial Australian mining, during the 1850s–80s, to provide the first historical analysis of the nature of women's share investing in Australia. Women were a minority of investors by number and value of holdings and faced a series of obstacles, yet their presence grew throughout the period. Most women invested independently neither drawing on male relatives nor other women. Many opted for only a single investment in this high-risk industry, but a small minority built significant portfolios. We reveal that women managed these risks differently from men, taking account of their attitudes towards company characteristics, investor location, portfolio diversification, and the cyclical trends in mining.

Matringe, N., ‘Early inventory management practices in the foreign exchange market: Insights from sixteenth-century Lyon’, Economic History Society, 75 (2022), pp. 739−778. https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13112

Correction to Table 5, p. 764:

At the bottom of the last column, “Datini, late fifteenth century” should be replaced by “Datini, late fourteenth–early fifteenth century”.

We apologize for this error.