Business returns from gold price fixing and bullion trading on the interwar London market

From September 1919, the world price of gold was ‘fixed’ daily in London by a small group of licensed traders. The arrangement was not ideal, as it advantaged the traders concerned, but it was seen by the Bank of England at the time as critical to British economy recovery and to the maintenance of London’s position as a world trading centre. This article examines the available archival evidence on whether direct knowledge of the workings of the mechanism enabled Mocatta and Goldsmid, traders central to the operations of the ‘gold fix’, to earn unusually high profits across the interwar period.     

Long memory and fractional integration in the housing price series of London and Paris

This article deals with the analysis of house price indexes from a long-range dependence viewpoint. In particular, it estimates the fractional differencing parameter in the London and Paris house price series recognizing in some cases the potential seasonality and allowing for breaks in the data. Moreover, it analyses the stability of the parameters across the sample period examined. It is concluded that the series are nonstationary but mean reverting in some cases and very persistent in others. Policy implications are derived.     

American institutionalism and its British connections

Abstract

This paper examines the connections between American institutionalists and a number of ‘non-Marshallian’ British economists and social scientists, several of whom were associated with the Fabian Society or the London School of Economics or both. Specifically, the links between institutionalists such as Walton Hamilton and Wesley Mitchell and British social scientists such as John A. Hobson, Henry Clay, R.A. Tawney, William Beveridge and Graham Wallas. It is argued that these connections were related to common views on the importance of institutions, compatible methodological views, common interest in questions of social value, shared policy concerns (particularly unemployment and the coal industry), shared interests in the development of new institutions for education and research in economics and shared connections with the funding activities of the Rockefeller Foundation. These connections were much more extensive than has usually been realized. Some reasons for this British group not to form into a movement similar to American institutionalism are explored.     

The Urban Unbound: London's Politics and the 2012 Olympic Games

Global events such as London's 2012 Olympic Games raise questions about the ways in which embedded political arrangements take their shape from relationships that stretch across and beyond urban boundaries. In this article, the urban politics that we wish to capture is not one that is merely located in the city, but rather one that has to constantly take into account the mediated demands folded (as it were) into the urban arena. In the first part of the article, the corporate politics of an Olympic‐related urban regeneration are outlined and then considered, first as a staged setting for interaction, a kind of placeless political engagement, and then as a more embedded spatial politics that takes into account the leverage of networked groups acting within and beyond the city. Following that, we explore the politics of regeneration when campaign groups and alternative coalitions of interest raise their own political demands by drawing on references outside of their immediate urban area and attempt to steer political dialogue in ways that extend the reach of urban politics. The urban politics at stake in this context, we argue, appears to work more through topology than a series of mapped connections; through actors registering their presence in ways that often dissolve the tension between inside and outside rather than define it in terms of separate political spaces.     

Estimating small-area demand of urban tourist for groceries: The case of Greater London

Tourist retail demand within urban areas brings both opportunities and challenges to the local economy. Taking Greater London as the study area, this paper integrates conventional statistics and survey datasets with novel crowdsourcing big data sources to identify and estimate four types of tourist grocery demand at the small-area scale: travellers staying with Airbnb, tourists using traditional commercial accommodation, guests staying with relatives or friends and day trip visitors. Based on this combined tourist retail demand layer we show the spatial variations at the small-area level and as an illustration of the demand uplift, we estimate additional grocery expenditure that is associated with this tourist demand. Thus, the paper indicates the neighbourhoods with significant grocery demand uplift from tourist stays. We argue that the new retail demand layer has tremendous potential to be used as an additional input to retail location modelling tools to support new store revenue estimation and store performance evaluation within the grocery retail sector.     

The Role of Traders and Small Businesses in Urban Social Movements: The Case of London's Workspace Struggles

This article focuses on the role of traders and small businesses in urban social movements by exploring three examples of opposition to commercial displacement in London. While the work of Castells, Lefebvre and the wider field of urban social movement research has radically expanded the terrain of struggle beyond the workplace to take in a wide range of community and grassroots groups and concerns, little attention has been paid to the potential role of traders and small businesses, particularly in the global North. The article focuses specifically on the mobilization of traders and small businesses in response to the threat of commercial displacement which, as one of the ways in which surplus value is extracted from cities, is a potentially significant site of urban contestation. Drawing on the author's research and involvement with one metropolitan and two local ‘workspace struggles’ in London, the article demonstrates that commercial displacement may mobilize threatened traders and small businesses to play a role in broader urban social movements with wide-ranging goals and concerns. Further research on workspace struggles has the potential to offer much-needed insights for radical urban politics and possibilities for developing alternatives by challenging and working across divides between economy and society.     

#ILoveLondon: An exploration of the declaration of love towards a destination on Instagram

Travellers increasingly use a combination of photographs, texts and hashtags to expressing their attitude towards tourism destinations (TDs). Existing destination branding literature has not yet investigated how consumers express their love towards TDs on social media. This study addresses this knowledge gap and explores how destination brand love (DBL) is expressed on Instagram using a mixed-methods approach. Study one consists of a qualitative visual content analysis of 700 user-generated photographs; while study two adopts text analytics with a sample of 48,783 posts. The findings show Instagram users’ declaration of DBL is expressed through photographs of some destination attributes (natural & architectural, people, public transportation, food, weather), accompanied by specific positive emotions (amazement, attractiveness, pleasure, preference, enchantment, nostalgia, belongingness, intimacy). The findings also illustrate how Instagram users express their love by providing emotional support when the destination goes through a crisis and that different stakeholders co-create the emotional capital of TDs.     

Policy making in London's transport planning

This article discusses several new traffic/environmental schemes proposed for London, and moves by feminist, consumer/worker and community groups to challenge conventional planning procedures. Continuous bus lanes, free or low public transport fares and pedestrianized areas are emphasized over private motoring, to result in lower traffic noise, congestion and accidents. The power of the UK's road lobby, the limitations of traditional professional planners and a lack of open debate are offered as explanations for the resistance of London's planners to enacting such schemes. The author concludes that central government policy of minimizing public transport subsidy and providing roads instead for private transport has led to hostility to more popular plans.     

Significant Issues for the Future of Product Innovation

What's happening in the world of product innovation? What are the tough issues that managers are facing? And what's going to happen in the remaining years of this decade? In this article, several members of the Editorial Board of The Journal of Product Innovation Management offer their ideas about where the important problems lie. This is the fodder for a good round table discussion and through the medium of this journal we'll engage in such a discussion in this and a subsequent issue.     

高端航运服务业的不同模式及对上海的启示

高端航运服务业可以分为两种模式,一种是以市场交易为特征的伦敦模式,另一种是正在形成中的以知识经济为主的新加坡、挪威模式。文章分析了两种模式的不同特点,认为伦敦模式更多地是航运业和金融业结合,新加坡、挪威模式更多地是航运业和先进制造业相结合。上海在发展高端航运服务业的过程中,除了学习伦敦模式,大力发展航运金融、海上保险等之外,还可以利用已有雄厚的制造业基础和技术创新能力,大力发展海洋研发,在海洋技术上占据制高点。