Copper sheathing and the British slave trade

British slave traders were early and rapid adopters of the new technique of sheathing ships' hulls with copper. From the 1780s this innovation increased sailing speeds of British slave ships by about a sixth, prolonged the ships' lives by at least a half, and reduced the death rates of slaves on the middle passage by about half. It was, above all, the fall in death rates, and possibly the improved condition of surviving slaves, that made the investment so compelling. Copper sheathing may have paid for itself in a single voyage, even though it was usually good for several. By the 1790s few slave ships, even if making only a single voyage, were uncoppered. These results confirm that copper sheathing was one of the major improvements in shipping productivity before the use of iron and steam in the mid‐nineteenth century.     

Deskilling and decline in skill premium during the age of sail: Swedish and Finnish seamen, 1751–1913

The study examines the evolution of skill premium and share at industry level in shipping during the age of sail. We argue that the period from the 1750s to the 1910s represented deskilling for the seamen working in sailing ships. The growth of international trade and shipping during the first era of globalization increased the overall demand for sailors but decreased the relative demand for skilled labor in favor of less skilled ones. This deskilling was associated with a decline in wage inequality, as the premium for high skilled seamen fell relative to mean wages in the shipping industry. The decline in skill premium may have facilitated the growth of trade and shipping, as the relative costs of transport declined. This in turn might have hastened the first era of globalization.     

The development of stage coaching and the impact of turnpike roads, 1653–1840

This article uses newspaper advertisements to chart the changes in speeds and fares of stage coaches, identifying the main periods of increasing speeds among London coaches as the 1760s–80s and 1810s–20s, separated by a period when speeds declined. It then measures productivity growth. Fares of London coaches in 1835–6 were about 27 per cent of what they would have been but for improvements in horses, vehicles, and roads from 1750, and the two main periods of productivity growth correspond to those of rising speeds. Speeds and productivity of regional coaches increased more smoothly. The rising productivity firmly identifies road transport as one of the modernizing sectors of the economy. New figures are put forward for the growing number of London and regional coaches, indicating rapid growth in passenger miles. While turnpike trusts had little impact before the 1750s, their increasing effectiveness, together with the use of steel springs and improved horses, was crucial to the rising productivity of the 1760s–80s, and even more so to that of the 1810s–20s. The cross roads were apparently poorer than London roads in the late eighteenth century, but thereafter the gap narrowed.     

后三峡工程阶段库区游船转型发展研究

三峡黄金航道奠定了游船的主导地位,进入后三峡工程阶段,库区江面变宽,航行条件改善,三峡游船需要进行转型,谋求新的增长空间。文章探讨了长江三峡游船的地位和作用,回顾分析了三峡游船发展的历程,剖析了三峡游船现存的问题,认为后三峡工程阶段库区可重点开发豪华游船、普通游船、旅游快艇、高端游艇和滚装船等五大游船产品,最后就三峡游船公司经营、营销网路、线路编排、管理措施、岸线资源、品牌建设、游船活动、船岸联营和游船产品等提出了具体对策。     

Organization and incentives in the age of sail

The British Navy in the age of sail was the most successful bureaucracy of its time. Its organization and incentive structures differed importantly from contemporaneous private sailing ventures, but closely resembled those of today’s large corporations. To induce efficient effort, the navy used a hierarchical tournament, in which sailors competed for higher pay that came with promotions based on relative performance. Promotion probabilities, the option value of future promotions, and the higher effort required of men in higher ranks and on larger vessels, combined to yield a highly skewed pay structure.     

Institutions for the taking: property rights and the settlement of the Cape Colony, 1652–1750

We examine the formation of property rights in land during the early settlement by the Dutch of the Cape Colony at the southern tip of Africa. After its founding in 1652 as a provisioning outpost for ships of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), the colonial government promoted settlement initially by granting land with well-specified and enforced property rights in restricted zones near Cape Town. By 1714 it transitioned to accommodate rapidly expanding settlement by creating a weaker form of property rights, the loan farm, which was imprecisely defined and had limited government enforcement. We develop a profit-maximizing monopsony model to explain the VOC's choice to transition from the better-specified land grant to the less well-specified loan farm. We conclude that the decline in the population size and ability of the Khoikhoi, the Cape's original inhabitants, to organize effective resistance to the Dutch invasion was critical to the transition, as it lowered the costs of private enforcement of settlers’ territorial claims. The choice of property rights thus enabled and encouraged the rapid taking by European settlers of the western Cape of Africa for the expansion of the Dutch colony's pastoral economy.     

South Carolina indigo,European textiles,and the British Atlantic economy in the eighteenth century

Europe's indigo imports grew rapidly from the 1720s, but the mid‐century wars (1739–48, 1756–63) had a devastating effect on the European textile industries and hence on the indigo trade. Britain's indigo market, however, boomed in wartime on the bases of prize indigo captured from France and Spain and of indigo imported from South Carolina. The rise of South Carolina's trade from the mid‐1740s was not caused, as the historiography claims, by its monopoly of the British market—such a monopoly never existed—but because the depression in South Carolina's major staple, rice, compelled a remodelling of the South Carolina plantation system, which produced an elastic supply of indigo. Carolina indigo was blighted by a poor reputation, not, as is usually argued, because British merchants maligned unfairly its quality, but because Carolina planters failed to achieve consistent production standards. Carolina indigo nevertheless succeeded in displacing French and Spanish indigo in the British and in some continental markets, reflecting the demand for cheap dyestuffs from manufacturers of low‐cost textiles, the fastest‐growing sectors of the European textile industries at the onset of industrialization.     

Dutch and Danish agricultural exports during the First World War

Abstract

The Danish agricultural sector continued to maintain agricultural exports to Great Britain during the First World War, even when higher prices ruled on the German market. Dutch agricultural exporters, 011 the other hand. continued to sell to the highest bidder; until, in 1916, British pressure forced them to do otherwise. It was not the Danish government but the Danish cooperatives who were responsible for Danish agricultural export policy, especially in the first years of the war. More than was the case with the Dutch exporters, the Danes were highly dependent on the British market. The strong Danish cooperatives (in contrast to the weaker Dutch agricultural organizations) forced the Danish government to support their strategy in order not to lose their suppliers to the newly establishedfirms who were exporting to Germany.     

Could a Resource Export Boom Reduce Workers’ Earnings? The Labour-Market Channel in Indonesia

For a decade from 2000, Indonesia underwent a natural-resource export boom. Aggregate income rose, but real labour earnings stagnated. Employment rose, too, but mainly in low-skill sectors with predominantly informal employment arrangements. In this article, we reveal causal connections from the aggregate phenomenon of Dutch disease to these labour-market outcomes. We first explain broad sectoral trends, and then, integrating data from several national surveys, investigate sources of variation in boom-era labour earnings. We use instrumental variables to address issues of endogeneity and selection in earnings equations. After controlling for individual and district features, we find that the intensity of palm oil production—palm oil having been a key booming resource export—robustly predicts diminished formal employment, and that lower formality, in turn, robustly predicts lower earnings. Our findings establish causal linkages absent from prior studies, and so provide a structural dimension to ongoing debates over persistent poverty, rising inequality, and the lack of educational progress in Indonesia.     

Sectoral Productivity Growth and R&D Spillovers in the Netherlands

This paper assesses empirically whether R&D spillovers are important and whether they originate from domestic or foreign activities. Data for eleven sectors are used to explain the impact on total factor productivity of R&D by the sector itself, by other Dutch sectors and by foreign sectors. We find that both domestic and foreign R&D are significant for the Dutch economy. The elasticity of total factor productivity with respect to R&D is approximately 37% for R&D by a sector, 15% for R&D by other Dutch sectors and 3% for R&D by foreign sectors. Our findings suggest moreover that more R&D speeds up the adoption of foreign technologies. Thus, even for a small open economy as the Netherlands, promoting investment in R&D is appropriate as it both stimulates adoption and generates spillovers.     

The Norwegian market for British Shipbuilding, 1945–1967

Abstract

The British Shipbuilding industry experienced a process of both competitive and comparative decline during the period 1945 to 1967 — when the world market for ships was at its most vibrant. The present article seeks to analyse this decline through an examination of the loss of the industry's most important export market — Norway. It is argued that issues such as price, failure to meet delivery dates and to offer competitive credit terms, were all factors in British shipbuilding's loss of market share in Norway. Ultimately British shipbuilders retained a production oriented strategy in a market which was being revolutionised in both structural and technological terms. The failure to adopt a marketing oriented strategy, therefore, underpinned the failure of the British shipbuilding industry in the Norwegian market and would also account for its failure in the domestic market.     

Surprisingly gentle confinement: British treatment of Danish and Norwegian prisoners of war during the napoleonic wars

ABSTRACT

The Napoleonic Wars saw the British capture and incarcerate thousands of sailors in disused Royal Navy ships, the so-called prison hulks. Many Danes and Norwegians – navy personnel, privateers and merchant sailors – were thus interred. This article uses a new data source, the official record books kept in the National Archive at Kew, to test whether the prison hulks were as bad as popular perception might suggest. In doing so, we provide the first rigorous quantitative assessment of the Danish and Norwegian sailors’ prisoner experience. We find that death rates were surprisingly low, suggesting the quantity and quality of food and medical care was reasonable. Prison hulks were not ‘floating tombs’. The records also show which prisoners were released and exchanged, and when. Officers did well, reflecting the age old system of a gentleman’s honour. Privateers did worse than merchant sailors: those who took up arms were likely to serve longer as prisoners.     

青岛国际帆船周 “最青岛”的夏日盛宴

她是赛事的嘉年华,用激情的比赛给观众带来海上视觉盛宴;她是国际的平台,引领着世界帆船界的高端对话;她是文化的交流,用创意十足的视角反映着"帆船之都"的深意和内涵;她是狂欢的节日,一场集娱乐、休闲、美食、演出为一体的盛夏派对。她,年轻,却极具影响力,知名度直追青岛国际啤酒节;她,激情,更有着不容小觑的商业价值。她,就是青岛的国际帆船周——"最青岛"的夏日盛宴。为了传承奥帆文化遗产,在成功举办了2008奥帆赛之后,青岛开始打造国际帆船周,首届青岛国际帆船周于2009年举办,自此每年一届。可以说,承载着打造"帆船之都"城市品牌光荣与梦想的青岛国际帆船周,是青岛继2008年奥帆赛后着力打造和精心培育的节庆品牌,帆船产业也因此得到拓展和提升。     

你好,大海!

蔚蓝的海,无疑是青岛最亮丽的色彩。对于海,青岛人向往着她广阔和辽远的胸怀,感动于她博大和恢弘的气势,陶醉于她神秘莫测的风景,崇拜着她起伏跌宕的韵致,尤其是阳光下蔚蓝大海勾勒出的城市天际线,令人神往。在"后奥运时代",青岛帆船运动的普及,给喜欢海的人带来了更多的欢笑和快乐,也给这座城市带来了更多的激情和活力。迎着风,驾着船出海,蓝天碧海中,心随帆动,忍不住向着一望无际的蔚蓝问一声:你好,大海!     

Otto Mønsted and the early margarine industry:

Abstract

The story of the Danish margarine matador, Otto Mensied has not previously been researched in depth. This paper gives a short outline of the career of this international businessman. The main emphasis is on his involvement in the British market. The eclectic theory of foreign direct investment has recently been expanded to cover international networks or alliances. Using this framework we offer some explanation of the fact that Mensted's British operations for some time were a threat to the Dutch early movers, Gebr. Jurgens and Van den Bergh. Their first cooperation agreement of 1908 may be interpreted as a response to the threat of a superior alliance between Mensiea Ltd., its suppliers and its distribution channel.     

The First Great Whale Extinction: The End of the Bowhead Whale in the Eastern Arctic

In this paper we argue that the bowhead whale stock resident off the east coast of Greenland was hunted to the brink of extinction by 1828 due to the rapid increase in British productivity levels after 1750. A delay-difference recruitment model is used to reconstruct the size of the whale population and establish the chronology of its demise. A simulation model is used to determine the role played by subsidy policies, climate change, and international competition in the extinction.     

Financial Integration in the 1920s: A Cointegration Approach

Financial Integration in the 1920s: A Cointegration Approach. - This paper applies the concept of cointegration to analyze the foreign exchange market during the 1920s. The data set consists of daily spot and forward exchange rates for the U. S. dollar, French franc, Belgian franc, Italian lira and German mark, each quoted with respect to the British pound. The authors find that the future spot and forward exchange rates for the U.S., France, Belgium, and Italy are cointegrated. Using a multivariate test for cointegration, they find no evidence of cointegration across markets. There is weak evidence of cointegration among the two neighboring economies of France and Belgium.     

Exploring 200 years of U.S. commodity market integration: A structural time series model approach

This paper uses a structural time series model to explore U.S. commodity market convergence, efficiency, and intertemporal smoothing from 1750–1949. I find near-continuous convergence that is largely concentrated in the frontier, broad antebellum efficiency gains, and intertemporal smoothing from the 1880s onward among the most perishable goods. The results reveal new periods of integration across all three metrics and underscore the rapid rate of integration on the frontier.     

The British ‘failure’ that never was? The Anglo‐American ‘productivity gap’ in large‐scale interwar retailing—evidence from the department store sector1

Interwar British retailing has been characterized as having lower productivity, less developed managerial hierarchies and methods, and weaker scale economies than its US counterpart. This article examines comparative productivity for one major segment of large‐scale retailing in both countries—the department store sector. Drawing on exceptionally detailed contemporary survey data, we show that British department stores in fact achieved superior performance in terms of operating costs, margins, profits, and stock‐turn. While smaller British stores had lower labour productivity than US stores of equivalent size, TFP was generally higher for British stores, which also enjoyed stronger scale economies. We also examine the reasons behind Britain's surprisingly strong relative performance, using surviving original returns from the British surveys. Contrary to arguments that British retailers faced major barriers to the development of large‐scale enterprises, that could reap economies of scale and scope and invest in machinery and marketing to support the growth of their primary sales functions, we find that British department stores enthusiastically embraced the retail ‘managerial revolution’—and reaped substantial benefits from this investment.     

Opinions on the Tax Deductibility of Mortgages and the Consensus Effect

Summary We present the results of a survey-experiment – using a representative sample of the Dutch population – in which we relate respondents’ opinion about a restriction of the tax deductibility of mortgages to their estimates about other people’s opinions. We find a strong consensus effect; meaning that respondents’ estimates of others’ opinions are related to their own opinion. Furthermore, we find that the size of the effect is not affected by the ambiguity of the question posed. The provision of arguments pro and contra the tax provision and monetary incentives for accuracy reduce the consensus effect, but only so in conjunction. Finally, we find that house owners display a significantly stronger consensus effect. Our results suggest that both cognitive and motivational factors are responsible for the consensus effect. Aside from the consensus effect, our survey gives interesting insights into people’s opinion on tax deductibility of mortgages. A majority consider a general restriction to be unfair, but a proposal to restrict only mortgages as of a certain size meets with much more approval. We thank Marcel Das and Corrie Vis of CentERdata for their excellent support in conducting the survey-experiment and two referees of this journal and Dirk Engelmann for helpful comments. Financial support from the Faculty of Economics and Business administration is gratefully acknowledged.