Ronald Finlay,Rolf G. Henriksson,Hkan Lindgren & Mats Lundahl (eds), Eli Heckscher,International Trade and Economic History

Abstract

The great world economic and globalisation boom of the pre-First World War era was accompanied by great inequality in the distribution of income and wealth particularly during industrialisation, with the new world European settler economies being no exception. Canadian wealth inequality over the period 1870–1930 was also substantial and is examined using probated estates from the Eastern Judicial District of the province of Manitoba and Wentworth County, Ontario. However, wealth inequality is found to be less pronounced in frontier Manitoba relative to Ontario with higher and more dispersed rates of land ownership in the West as well as lower wealth levels and greater farm employment, as the key factors in this difference. This suggests that the farm economy of pre-First World War Canada was associated with greater equality of wealth. One of the inevitable effects of Canadian industrialisation and economic development was a rise in wealth inequality but the process of western settlement and associated free grants helped mitigate it. By extension, global economic inequality might also have been mitigated during this period by the presence of agricultural frontiers with subsidised land grants.     

企业规模、行业分类与财务比率的统计研究

加拿大是一个市场经济高度发达的资本主义国家 ,为了建立一个公平、有效和竞争的市场环境 ,加拿大政府非常重视竞争法的立法和修订工作 ,从 1889年第一次进行竞争立法以来 ,加拿大已建立了比较完善的、富有加拿大特色的竞争法律制度。本文在简单介绍加拿大竞争法律制度的特点     

HECKSHER-OHLIN IN CANADA: NEW ESTIMATES OF REGIONAL WAGES AND LAND PRICES

Many immigrant-receiving and land-abundant countries experienced a diminishing ratio of wages to land prices during the globalisation era from 1870 to 1910. Factor price evidence suggests that Canada does not fit the pattern. We present the first Canadian estimates of region-specific wages and land prices that span the period from 1871 to 1925. Our evidence indicates that while Canada as a nation looks like an anomaly in the era of convergence, this is largely an artefact of aggregating the experience of the labour-abundant eastern provinces with the late-settling and land-abundant western provinces.     

Scandinavian iron ore mining and the British steel industry 1870–1914

Abstract

Until the year 1856, when Bessemerpatented his new process for the easier and' cheaper manufacture of wrought iron, the production of iron in Great Britain in the form of cast and wrought iron had predominated over its conversion into steel. In the early 1850s only a very small percentage of the annual output of pig iron was converted into steel. Although in Bessemer's patent, only wrought iron was specified as the object of the new process, it was recognized that the real value of the process lay in its applicability to the conversion of pig iron into: steel in a single short operation. There was an inevitable lag in the widespread adoption of the new process for which a number of factors were responsible. Firstly, there were initial disappointments over the effectiveness of Bessemer's process: although Mushet's addition of spiegeleisen to the molten metal in the converter rescued Bessemerfrom failure,¹ several years of technical improvement and improvization were necessary before the generality of manufacturers were' ready to concentrate on Bessemer steel,² A second important cause of the delay in the widespread adoption of the Bessemer process lay in the susceptibility of the British iron and steel industry to severe cyclical fluctuations. By the middle 1860s, when the conservatism of steel manufacturers was beginning to thaw in the face of successful production by the early pioneers of the Bessemer process, a more general development of Bessemer steel seemed likely. These years, however, were years of the depression which reached its nadir in 1867–8. Only when recovery from this depression was well established at the end of the decade did Bessemer steel really come into its own. The real expansion of Bessemer steel production came, therefore, not in the few years after 1856, but in the few years after 1870. Steel rails accounted for a large part of this increase. In 1867, some 2,277 tons of Bessemer steel rails were made in Great Britain: by 1882 this figure had risen to 1,438,155 tons.³     

Dominion or Republic? Migrants to North America from the United Kingdom, 1870–1910

Late nineteenth–century Canada attracted a large number of immigrants from the UK, despite far lower average income per head there than in the US. While urban labour markets in the northern US were much larger than those in Canada, differences in outcomes between UK immigrants in Canadian and in northern US cities were small. Average annual real earnings by occupation group were only 10 to 15 per cent lower in Canadian cities. Individual–level census data indicate that the occupational distribution of UK immigrants in Canada was quite similar to that of their peers in the US.     

Study on American Iron and Steel Industry

This paper uses comparative advantage theory of international trades and related economical models to analyze American protection behavior on the iron and steel industry. And the studies show that the decline of American iron and steel industry is not resulted from the impact of steel imports, but the domestic reasons.     

国际钢铁业战略联盟发展及对中国的启示

近些年来,钢铁业所具有的特征使国际钢铁企业纷纷对企业竞争关系进行战略性调整,更多地以兼并、联合扩大产能等合作竞争方式来参与全球竞争。中国作为全球最大的钢铁生产国,其竞争力离钢铁强国还有较大差距。在全球化竞争背景下,中国钢铁企业必须从战略角度出发,在现有战略联盟实践的基础上,抓住全球钢铁业整合浪潮的机遇,通过各种有效的扩张方式,增强其国际竞争力。     

基于高铁竞争关系下民航的策略研究

全服务航空成立子品牌低成本型航空公司成为应对高铁竞争的有效策略之一。建立全服务航空、子公司低成本航空与高铁三者之间的竞争博弈模型,并通过数值分析研究不同策略下航空公司需求及收益情况,研究结果表明:全服务航空公司成立低成本航空有利于提高航空公司收益;航空公司之间采取合谋策略优于竞争策略。最后针对我国航空运输业的发展现状为民航部门及政府部门提出不同时期的发展建议。     

城市轨道交通控制系统的思考

近年来城市轨道交通快速发展,一些大中小城市相继建设地铁线路,极大的缓解了城市的交通压力,为市民的生活出行带来了极大的方便。地铁相比较于大铁来说具有运行间隔短、密度高、车站密度集中等特点,运用于地铁运营中的自动化系统也具有自身独特的特点。本文就结合现有地铁线路所采用的系统,从对道路和列车两个方面的控制角度出发,对城市轨道交通当中的控制系统做简单的分析。     

加拿大并购反垄断审查中的效率因素分析——以Hillsdown Holdings并购案为例

加拿大反垄断当局对并购进行反垄断控制的法律依据是《竞争法》和《并购实施指南》,其并购反垄断控制政策要求并购可能带来的效率在加拿大境内实现的部分能够补偿该项并购给加拿大生产者和消费者带来的福利净损失,并对能够纳入反垄断当局评估分析的效率因素进行详细界定。由于效率难以观察和证实,在早期的司法实践中,效率因素对于竞争管理局的并购评估审查判定影响有限。20世纪90年代以后,加拿大反垄断当局对于效率的态度逐步趋于友好,效率因素对于反垄断当局最终判定的影响越来越大。     

Real Wages in Australia and Canada, 1870–1913: Globalization versus Productivity

Australia's and Canada's real wage experiences between 1870 and 1913 were distinctive. Faster productivity growth underpinned Canada's overtaking of Australia's wage levels. The globalization forces of migration and trade also shaped their comparative wages, principally by reducing wage growth in Canada. Immigration increased slightly Australia's real wages, but reduced wage levels in Canada, and tempered there the beneficial effects of rising productivity and improving terms of trade. In contrast, wage earners' share of national income rose after 1890 in Australia, with the productivity slowdown hitting chiefly rents and profits. Distributional shifts favouring wage earners in Australia, and the depressing effects of mass immigration on wages in Canada, limited Canada's wage lead before 1914, despite her faster productivity growth.     

The role of R&D in high-technology trade: An empirical analysis

Conclusion This paper attempts to establish the relationship between the level of R&D activities of a country and its trade performance in high-technology products. Empirical evidence based on the limited data used in the paper shows that this relationship appears to be quite significant. An analysis of the implications of this relationship reveals that the low level of R&D in Canada is due to, among other factors, the prevalence of foreign ownership of Canadian manufacturing industries, and the resource-based characteristic of the Canadian economy. Given the nature of foreign-owned firms, the paper suggests that countries should not rely on them as a crucial instrument in the creation of an indigenous capacity to produce high-technology products which are competitive at the world level. Instead, domestic policies aimed at the development and nurturing of the countries' own scientific and technological skills are required. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author. They should not be construed as the official views of the Ministry of State for Science and Technology of the Government of Canada. Research assistance provided by Tom Wudwud and Penny Robinson is well appreciated. The author, however, is responsible for any omissions or errors that remain.     

国有企业与民营企业公平竞争指标体系的构建与评价

为多种所有制经济创造公平竞争的市场环境,既是坚持"两个毫不动摇"的需要,也是新时代完善社会主义市场经济体制的需要.针对国有企业与民营企业之间存在不公平竞争的争论,本文以2013-2019年A股上市公司为样本,从要素获得、竞争参与两个维度构建了企业公平竞争指标体系以分析竞争环境状况.实证研究表明,无论从单个指标还是综合水...     

Anglo‐American trade costs during the first era of globalization: the contribution of a bilateral tariff series†

Previous scholarship has suggested that British trade was generally unaffected by foreign tariffs during the period from 1870 to 1913. This article focuses specifically on Anglo‐American trade, which was the largest bilateral flow of trade during the first era of globalization, and finds that tariffs were the sole intertemporal determinant of Anglo‐American trade costs. However, the determinacy of tariffs for Anglo‐American trade costs only becomes apparent when the tariff variable incorporates a measure of the bilateral American tariff toward Britain, which this article reconstructs. The article concludes by claiming that Anglo‐American trade represents a major qualification to any emerging consensus that foreign tariffs were of minor significance to the trade of late nineteenth‐century Britain.     

Collusion and combines in Canada, 1880–1890

ABSTRACT

It is a little-known fact that Canada adopted its own antitrust law one year before the landmark Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The Anti-Combines Act of 1889 (‘the Act’) was adopted after a decade in which ‘combines’ (the Canadian equivalent of ‘trusts’) had grown more numerous. From the combines’ numbers, Canadian historians, legal scholars, and economists have inferred that consumer welfare was hindered. However, price and output evidence has never been marshalled to provide even a first step towards assessing the veracity of this inference. This paper undertakes that task. I highlight the fact that the output from industries accused of collusion increased faster than national output in the decade before the passage of the Act and that their prices accordingly fell faster than the national price index. I argue that these findings militate for the position that the origins of Canada's Anti-Combines Act were partially rooted in rent-seeking processes similar to those that American scholars have found driving the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.     

An Empty Promise: Average Cost Savings and Scale Economies among Canadian and American Manufacturers, 1910-1988

During the debate that led up to the implementation of a bilateral free-trade agreement between Canada and the United States on January 1, 1989, much was made of economists' claims that both nations could expect significant welfare improvements as a result of the removal of tariffs on traded goods. The welfare gains were expected to flow from average cost savings associated with the exploitation of scale economies. In this article, I show that it was overly optimistic to predict substantive, permanent average cost convergence as a result of adjustments in the scale of production among Canadian or American manufacturing firms. I conclude that the formation of reasonable expectations regarding the effects of trade-induced output adjustments should consider global- and local scale economies and should employ data that are not dominated by a single cycle of macroeconomic volatility.     

论企业信用体系

完善企业产权制度以后,企业信用就有了基本的保证。建立健全企业信用体系的措施主要有:对企业的信用状况进行资信调查;促进企业信用体系法制化的进程;加强对诚信和信用评级行业的监管;积极推进企业职业道德建设。SA8000———企业社会责任标准体系将成为企业核心竞争力的一个     

The effects of foreign ownership on competition in the banking industry: The key role of financial reforms

This study examines the impact of foreign ownership on bank competition and discusses whether the relation changes with various proxies of financial reform. We contribute to the extant literature by using the bank-level ratio of foreign ownership and applying five individual sub-indices of financial reforms from 50 countries. Within the emerging Asia and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries, our findings show that a higher ratio of foreign ownership in a bank can enhance competition, whereas a liberalization policy on banking supervision instead mitigates this positive relation between foreign ownership and competition. Conversely, the liberalization on bank privatization in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries significantly increases competition. Thus, financial reforms do matter to the foreign ownership-bank competition nexus.     

Exchange Rate Cycles and Canada/US Manufacturing Prices

The paper examines the industry characteristics that are related to the shifts in competitiveness, measured as the relative common-currency price ratios between Canadian and US manufacturing prices. We find that relative input costs and relative productivity growth are the two most important factors influencing changes in relative Canada/US prices. Competitive pressures emanating from trade are important determinants of the extent to which relative productivity differences are passed through to cross-country relative prices. We also find that the magnitude of domestic market competition and export intensity affects the short-run relative price shifts over the cycle of exchange rate. JEL no. E30, F31, L60     

钢铁行业成本核算制度研究

为了解决钢铁行业普遍亏损、经营困难等问题，对当前钢铁行业成本核算面临的各种问题进行分析，相应的提出新制度实施的必要性。而后详细阐述了钢铁行业成本核算制度的基本步骤，且针对行业现有问题说明了新制度的优越性，提出可以选择性使用的作业成本法，最后阐释了新制度可能会对钢铁行业产生的影响和企业在面对新制度想要改善目前严峻形势必须用辩证的眼光看待这一现象，具体问题具体分析，对症下药才是关键。