Food consumption in the pre-industrial Nordic societies

Abstract

The article reviews different measures as to when the change from a survival society to a consumer society took place in the Nordic countries, and summarizes the results of earlier research. Among the measures used are foodstuff consumption, real wage levels, demographic development, and changes in human stature. The consumer revolution most likely started in Denmark before 1800 and in Norway and Sweden at the beginning of the nineteenth century, whereas in Finland and Iceland such change did not take place until after 1850.     

Restructuring the automotive industry in the English West Midlands

This paper investigates the changes taking places in the automotive industry in the English West Midlands. For over a century this region has been the heartland of car production in the UK, but over recent decades the volume side of the trade has been in serious decline, leading to increasing dependence on the luxury side of the industry. The implications are that the supply side of the industry will be forced to move into new technologies if the auto cluster is to prosper in future. Finally, the paper looks at the attempts made by bodies such as Advantage West Midlands and the industry itself to effect change.     

Geographical mobility of population in pre-industrial times

Abstract

Since 1821, the starting-point for Rosenberg's study, more or less complete series of information about migrants have been preserved in the parishes of the county of Uusimaa (Nyland), in the form of lists of persons moving out of or into the parish or change-of-domicile certificates filed by the migrants in the registry office of the parish to which they moved. It ends at roughly the time when publication of official migration statistics began in Finland (1878). The later years of the period coincide with the industrial take-off, so that the study deals almost exclusively with the pre-industrial period. Very little attention has been paid in previous research to the migratory movement of that period, one reason being the illusion that the migratory movement was caused by industrialisation and, accordingly, that the scale of migration was very small before the take-off. The main reason, however, must surely be the absence of accessible statistics. The primary material is dispersed in hundreds of church archives from which the researcher must himself select the emigrants and immigrants case by case. This is tedious, but it has the advantage of enabling him to classify the migrants in the manner best suited to his study without limiting him to the classification employed in the official statistics.     

‘Whatever is,is right’? Economic institutions in pre-industrial Europe1

Institutions—the structures of rules and norms governing economic transactions—are widely assigned a central role in economic development. Yet economic history is still dominated by the belief that institutions arise and survive because they are economically efficient. This article shows that alternative explanations of institutions, particularly those incorporating distributional effects, are consistent with economic theory and supported by empirical findings. Distributional conflicts provide a better explanation than efficiency for the core economic institutions of pre-industrial Europe: serfdom, the community, the craft guild, and the merchant guild. The article concludes by proposing four desiderata for any economic theory of institutions.     

Testing the demand approach to reconstruct pre-industrial agricultural output

A common method to reconstruct historical national accounts is the demand approach, which calculates agricultural consumption from the development of wages and prices of agricultural and non-agricultural products assuming constant income, own price and cross price elasticities of demand. This study uses agricultural data for Sweden 1802–1950, which is more reliable than for other countries, to put the approach to test. Time series analysis shows that the demand approach could be modelled as a cointegrating relationship between per capita demand and the deflated wage. Income elasticity is estimated to +0.4. Using the estimated parameters to extrapolate Swedish agricultural consumption back to the Middle Ages accords quite well with other indicators. However, out-of-sampling shows that the 90% confidence interval is as large as ±0.15–0.25 natural logarithms.     

论诚信在振兴东北老工业基地中的作用

在向市场经济转轨过程中,诚信缺失已经成为制约我国市场经济健康发展的障碍,振兴东北老工业基地重新构建市场经济的诚信伦理已经成为当务之急.为此,必须形成有效的博弈规则和法律法规,加强诚信道德教育.     

个人信用体系在消费信贷中的应用

消费信贷在我国发展至今,虽已取得一定的成绩,但是与西方发达国家水平相差甚远,其中的问题主要在于我国个人信用评价研究起步晚,缺乏国内统一的个人信用信息库以及完善的信用评价体系。消费信贷的发展是对国家经济有着巨大推动能力的,为使我国经济快速稳定的增长,构建适合我国国情的个人信用信息库和个人信用评价体系便成为当务之急。     

压缩房地产贷款背景下的信贷风险及防范对策分析

进入2008年以来,中央继续对房地产贷款进行压缩控制,而在房地产信贷业中存在着各种风险,甚至可能导致金融危机。本文从房地产信贷业发展的现状出发,分析目前房地产信贷业存在的风险,并提出规避风险、促进房地产信贷业健康发展的对策。     

Labor income inequality in pre-industrial Mediterranean Spain: The city of Murcia in the 18th century

Information about the income distribution in pre-industrial societies is sparse. We analyze labor income inequality in 18th century Murcia, a city in Mediterranean Spain. The historical income distribution of this region is relatively unknown, despite it having on of the highest urbanization rates in Europe in the pre-industrial era. We first use a census conducted in the 1750s which collected information on income and occupation. We then use this income information to conduct analyses of the income distribution in the 1730s and 1780s using censuses with information about the occupational distribution. We find large changes in the distribution of occupations across the censuses. We show that our results on inequality are sensitive to assumptions regarding household composition and within-occupation distribution of income, but not to the definition of household income.     

Subcontracting and vertical integration in the Spanish cotton industry1

This paper examines changes in the organization of the Spanish cotton industry from 1736 to 1860 in its core region of Catalonia. As the Spanish cotton industry adopted the most modern technology available and experienced the transition to the factory system, cotton spinning and weaving mills became increasingly vertically integrated. Asset specificity, more than other factors, explains this tendency towards vertical integration. The probability of a firm being vertically integrated was higher among firms located in districts with high concentration ratios, and rose with size and the use of modern machinery. At the same time, subcontracting predominated in other phases of production and distribution, where transaction costs appear to be less important.     

Credit Access,the Costs of Credit and Credit Market Discrimination

Since the early 1990s, credit expanded relative to income, especially after 2001. It is hypothesized that traditionally uneven credit access and gaps in the costs of credit by demographic characteristics shrank during this period. Relying on data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finance, this study looks at financial constraints, the costs of credit and a number of contributions to the costs of credit, including sources and types of loans. The results indicate that taste-based discrimination and structural discrimination may have persisted and possibly increased over time. Gaps in credit access and costs of credit have widened by race, remained high by income, but shrank by ethnicity. Part of the overall differences in credit access was a varying reliance on professional information when making decisions on debt.

诚信缺失与建立企业诚信体系

诚信体系作为市场经济的神经，是经济交往主体之间的联系纽带。诚信已成为中国经济增长的一个重要决定因素。没有诚信，市场经济秩序就难以得到保证。只有诚信体系健全，才能保证市场经济的健康发展。要建设企业诚信体系，一是建设一个好的市场环境；二是强化企业信用管理的功能；三是强化建立企业信用管理体系；四是加强商业伦理修养，树立企业家个人诚信；五是建设完备的失信惩罚机制。     

English county populations in the later eighteenth century1

When directing the first English census John Rickman was intent not only on discovering the size of the population in 1801 but also on tracing past trends both nationally and for individual counties. He returned to the latter investigation on several later occasions, notably in the 1830s. There have been many subsequent attempts to improve upon his national estimates, but his estimates of county totals have continued to be used extensively, either unchanged or slightly modified. Rickman was aware that his estimates were subject to wide margins of error. For the later eighteenth century it is possible to produce new estimates which are probably substantially more accurate, taking advantage of the fact that after Hardwicke’s Act (1753) the registration of marriages in Anglican parish registers, unlike that of baptisms and burials, was virtually complete. They show that the contrast between population growth rates in ‘industrial’ counties and those in which agriculture continued to predominate were significantly more marked than suggested by Rickman’s estimates. The same exercise that produces county estimates also yields hundredal totals, which will in future allow a more refined account of relative growth and stagnation to be made.     

信用公示与中小企业信用缺失问题研究

信用缺失是我国广大中小企业健康发展的重大阻因之一,也是制约经济社会改革、发展顺利推进的重要“瓶颈”。文章认为,信用信息难公开、传播渠道不通畅所导致的失信成本过低是中小企业信用行为失范的最深层原因。文章最后提出,设立中小企业信用档案、健全中小企业信用度测评体系、建立企业投资者和经营管理者的信用信息库、畅通信用公示渠道以及加强信用公示立法是构建中小企业信用公示体系、促进中小企业诚实守信的基本路径。     

The determinants of competitive success in the interwar British radio industry1

This article discusses the sources of competitive advantage in the interwar British radio industry. Specifically, it examines why sections of the industry that reaped substantial monopoly rents from the downstream value chain failed to dominate the industry. During the 1920s Marconi (which controlled the fundamental UK patents) had a key cost advantage, as had other members of the ‘Big Six’ electrical engineering firms which formed the BBC and were granted preferential royalties. Meanwhile the valve manufacturers' cartel was also able to extract high rents from set manufacturers. The vertical integration literature suggests that input monopolists have incentives to control downstream production. Yet—in contrast to the gramophone industry, which became concentrated into two huge companies following market saturation in the 1930s—radio retained a much more competitive structure. The Big Six failed to capitalize fully on their initial cost advantages owing to logistical weaknesses in supplying markets subject to rapid technical and design obsolescence. Subsequently, during the 1930s, marketing innovations are shown to have played a key role in allowing several independents to establish successful brands. This gave them sufficient scale to provide strong bargaining positions with input suppliers, negating most of their initial cost disadvantage.     

健全信用法制，启动信用消费

建立健全我国信用法制,更加有效地启动消费市场是当务之急。我们要用“信用法制”来开发“信用消费”和保障“企业信用”,要用“行政信用”和“道德信用”来推进“法制信用”。