Legal institutions,social norms,and entrepreneurship in Britain (c.1890–c.1939)1

This article analyses the functioning of debt‐discharge procedures in England and Wales in the light of the debate on entrepreneurial failure in the years between the late Victorian age and the interwar period. Using an original dataset and an empirical approach, it is argued that social norms, cultural elements, and class considerations influenced the outcome of decisions in a way that could have reduced the incentives for economic agents to engage with productive activity. Results show that over the entire period judges paid disproportionate attention to moral issues, and often gave lighter sentences to members of the elite who went into bankruptcy for personal reasons, and tougher ones to entrepreneurs who failed because of engagement with economic activity.     

Villeinage in England: a regional case study,c.1250–c.13491

Between 1200 and 1349, villeinage was not prominent in Suffolk, and, even in those places where it was locally significant, many of its exactions were lightly enforced. The gap between the theory and practice of villeinage was maintained by custom, although this article emphasizes both the importance of regional custom and its mutability. The relative insignificance of villeinage here has two main implications: first, villeinage cannot have caused any crisis of agrarian productivity before the Black Death; and second, its subsequent dissolution cannot have been the prime mover behind the transformation of the landholding structure and the emergence of agrarian capitalism.     

Social capital and trade associations in America,c. 1860–1914: a microhistory approach1

This microhistory explores the activities of one of the many trade associations created in the nineteenth century in the US. Qualitative evidence is used to engage with the concepts of competition, cooperation, and social capital. This article explores the reasons why cooperation emerged between competing economic agents, as an intended outcome of associational activity. It is argued that trade associations are forms of voluntary association consciously established to achieve economic aims and create networks of sociability. These, in turn, generated social capital used by economic agents to avoid ruinous competition and to capture political, economic, and social resources.     

A soft touch? British industry,empire markets,and the self‐governing dominions,c.1870–1914

The belief that Britain's empire markets were soft is well entrenched in the literature. It is, however, a belief that has been largely untested. Indeed, the literature does not even offer an explicit definition of softness. This article attempts to fill this gap by discussing the meaning of the term and then posing the question whether between 1870 and 1914 Britain's fastest growing markets—Australasia and Canada—can in fact reasonably be labelled soft, as has often been assumed. The article concludes that the demand for British imports in these markets was driven more by considerations of income and price than by colonial sentiment or preference.     

European integration and corporate restructuring: the strategy of Unilever,c.1957–c.19901

European integration and corporate restructuring: the strategy of Unilever, c.1957‐c.1990. While much has been written about the politics of European integration, discussion about the role of business in this process has been largely confined to lobbying activities. This article focuses on the business reaction to European integration. It highlights the constraints facing one of Europe's largest firms in building a regional detergents business. These included divergences in market demand and political obstacles to rationalization, but more serious was a corporate culture based around local decision making and consensus. The study demonstrates that a full understanding of the European integration process must incorporate a firm‐level analysis of how Europe‐wide businesses were built after 1957.     

Hours and Wages in the Depression: British Engineering, 1926–1938

On their intensive margins, firms in the British engineering industry adjusted to the severe falls in demand during the 1930s Depression by cutting hours of work. This provided an important means of reducing labor input and marginal labor costs through movements from overtime to short-time schedules. Nominal basic wage rates dropped relatively modestly while their real wage equivalents continued to rise throughout the trough years of the recession. This paper provides detailed labor market and empirical analysis of the hours and wage adjustment processes. Quantitative work is based on cell data from a panel of 28 local labor markets for the period 1926–38.