Guilds and middle-class welfare, 1550–1800: provisions for burial, sickness, old age, and widowhood

Guilds provided for masters' and journeymen's burial, sickness, old age, and widowhood. Guild welfare was of importance to artisans, to the functioning of guilds, to the myriad of urban social relations, and to the political economy. However, it is an understated and neglected aspect of guild activities. This article looks at welfare provision by guilds, with the aim of addressing four questions. Firstly, for which risks did guild welfare arrangements exist in the Netherlands between 1550 and 1800, and what were the coverage, contributions, benefit levels, and conditions? Secondly, can guild welfare arrangements be regarded as insurance? Thirdly, to what extent and how did guilds overcome classic insurance problems such as adverse selection, moral hazards, and correlated risks? Finally, what was the position of guild provision in the Dutch political economy and vis‐à‐vis poor relief?     

International Trade,Entrepreneurship, and Monopolistic Competition： German Hidden Champions and Global Markets

The Chicago School of Monetarism dominates the debate on the competition models. In the last decades, the pendulum has swung back towards the German historical school of economics by List, Schnmpeter, Gutenberg, and Simon. The new trade theory by Paul Krugman is the standard in analysis of economies of scale and product differentiation in intra-industry trade. Chamberlin＇s product differentiation concept and monopolistic competition theory are included in Krugman＇s theory. Diversity matters in B2B-business in global markets. About 100,000 multinational corporations （MNCs） dominate the international trade of commodities worldwide but they need partners as suppliers of complementary products, services, and technologies, German hidden champions （HCs） that consist of over 1,300 mid-sized firms （Mittelstand） have revolutionizes the managerial economics. In terms of Peter Drucker, striving for leadership is the greatest gamble. Their success rate has been about 90% as Hermann Simon has reported. Their success recipe is the humble choice of markets segments, mainly B2B-industries, to make good business in any kind of goods and articles, not to follow trends or hit lists. The dilemma in EU-27-countries is that only Germany has succeeded to develop its own management doctrine initiated by Friedrich List and modified by Joseph Schumpeter. List argued that economic policy had to be adapted to the needs of specific nations to create the national system of innovation. Germany is the most diversified country worldwide. German small and medium-sized firms （Mittelstand） are globally oriented. Germany＇s family business is the unbelievable success story. Alfred Chandler has been a highly influential business writer. Because of Chandler＇s view, the personal capitalism was generally thought to be the old-fashioned model in comparison to the stock market capitalism. The Germany case is the strong evidence on the fact that Chandler＇s famous conclusion may be wrong. The family-ownership is perhaps the most sus     

The Sino-British Economic and Trade Relationship： Achievements, Problems and Prospects

I.TheDevelopmentofEconomicandTradeRelationsbetweenChinaandtheU.K.ShortlyafterthefoundingofthePeoplesRepublicofChinain1949,inordertopreserveitseconomicinterestsinChina,includingHongKong,andinthewholeareaofSoutheastAsia,theUnitedKingdominJanuary1950tooktheleadamongtheWesternpowersinrecognizingNewChina.Insodoing,itsprimaryconsiderationwasobviouslyitstradeandeconomicinterests.BritishinvestmentaccountedformorethanhalfoftheentireforeigninvestmentinChinawhenNewChinawasestablishedin1949.Thet…     

Stock Returns, Volatility, and Cointegration among Chinese Stock Markets

I. IntroductionA plethora of research has focused on therelationship between returns and volatility, andcointegration among major, well-established financial markets. It has been found that aninverse relationship exists between an individualfirm’s stock return volatility and itsstockprice. There are two popular explanations: the first one is related to the leverage effect. Itasserts that a decrease in afirm’s stock price increases the firm’s debt ratio (or decreasesthefirm’s equity ratio)…     

China, Asia, and the World Economy： The Implications of an Emerging Asian Core and Periphery

I. IntroductionThe effect of China’s rapid growth on other Asian economies is felt most directly through itsimpact on international trade and foreign investment. However, not only is the magnitude of this impact uncertain, even its direction is disputed. Some authors emphasize that China’s emergence as an economic power is applying intense competitive pressure to its neighbors. China’s immense reserves of cheap labor enable it to out-compete neighboring economies in the production of low-…     

Seigniorage,Dollarization and Public Debt: The Lebanese Civil War and Recovery Experience, 1982–97

The paper develops theoretical frameworks to explain the phenomena of seigniorage, dollarization, and public debt; and then applies them to the Lebanese macroeconomic situation over 1982–97. More specifically, it analyzes the implications of seigniorage and dollarization to see what extent they were responsible for the inflation and exchange rate depreciations during the civil war period. It also studies the sustainability of postwar debt. The conclusions that emerge from the analysis are that budget deficits were only one of the reasons behind the war inflation and depreciations, dollarization could still impose some problems for macroeconomic stability, and tax reforms are essential for fiscal balance.     

Job Opportunity, Organizational Commitment and Turnover Intention

This paper explores the turnover intention and its determinants in terms of job opportunity and organizational commitments etc.. Using a sample of 196 respondents from self-report questionnaires which were randomly selected among workers in one firm, the hypotheses were tested. Job opportunity has significant positive influence on turnover intention. Affective commitment has significant negative influence on turnover intention, but continuous commitment does not.     

Urban Self-organization, Urban Management and Urban Harmony

Making Wuli-Shili-Renli systems methodology as stand, this paper puts forward an integrated framework with methodological significance to meet needs of urban science research, namely Urban Systems Engineering （USE）. USE regards the whole urban as research object, with urban system, regards urban logic and urban institution as research dimensions, and regards evolution, control and game as research techniques. In the framework of USE, three topics including urban self-organization, urban management and urban harmony are in turn probed by adopting methods of multi-agent simulation, system evaluation, and game analysis of institution. The current and anticipative results will contribute to deeper understanding of evolution of urban space, optimization of urban management and betterment of urban institution, and will offer effective decision support to harmonious city construction as well.     

Public Goods, Environmental Protection,and the Development Paradigm in Rural China

I. IntroductionIn order to industrialize, China has adopted a development strategy of Urban-RuralDivergence for a long time. A striking consequence of this is that a large amount of ruralresources have flown into urban areas through a variety of institutional arrangements.What came next are such public problems as the extreme imbalance between the urban andthe rural economy, extreme deficiencies of rural public goods, and the serious destructionof the ecological environment. Its fair to say …     

Inflation,expectations and qualitative government policy in Ecuador, 1970–1982

A model of constrained money demand for a dominated domestic currency is specified. It is found that the model traces the evolution of the course of inflation when applied to the experience of Ecuador and provides an interpretation for the differing statistical relationship between money and prices during the estimation period.     

Growth,employment and income distribution in Egyptian agriculture, 1964–1979

This paper is a study of the aggregate behavior of crop production in Egypt. We find that the output growth rate declined in the 1970s but there were some signs of recovery towards the end of the decade. This trend cannot be explained by the observed-cyclical movements in profitability and in the real price of aggregate output. On the other hand, investment in infrastructure goes a long way towards explaining the trends both in aggregate output and in land profitability. Increased investment in agriculture infrastructure tends to raise the growth rate of the sector and, at the same time, to increase labor's share in production at the cost of property share. Our observations also suggest that the demand for agricultural labor is rather inelastic with respect to the wage rate. Therefore, using the agricultural sector as an absorbent of employment shocks in the rest of the economy may lead to significant variability in income distribution.     

Coal exports and British shipping, 1850–1913

We export of British coal was a major feature of late 19th-century ocean shipping. It has often been argued that British coal was key to the success of British shipping, but close examination raises doubts. Most British coal went to European ports where British ships carried a smaller proportion of the trade than they did in more distant trades. Shared costs between outward and homeward freights created an important relationship between coal freight rates and the freight rates on imports into northwestern Europe. In general, however, there seems to be little connection between Britain's shipping success and the export of coal.     

Chinese Vegetable Safety Administration Problems, Causes and Countermeasures

From the perspective of the entire vegetables supply chain, i.e. ＂from field to table＂, this paper systematically analyzes the main causes to affect vegetable safety of China. The gap between Chinese vegetable safety administration and that of developed countries is then described. Based on the experiences of vegetable safety administration the developed countries, countermeasures are forwarded to facilitate Chinese vegetable safety administration.     

Macroeconomic Policy, Exchange Rate Regimes and Economic Growth

China has been keeping high economic growth rate since it carried out managed floating exchange rate regimes in 1994, while now begins to face retrenchment pressure brought by the depression of internal and external economy. The establishment of RMB exchange rate regime should take account of the validity of macroeconomic policy, macroeconomic growth and the regional internationalization of RMB.     

Motor Vehicle Output and GDP, 1968–2007

In this paper, we assess the performance of the BEA series “value of motor vehicle output” as an indicator of the business cycle over the period 1968–2007. We statistically assess the causal relationship between real motor vehicle output (RMVO) and real gross domestic product (RGDP). This is accomplished by standard estimation and statistical methods used to assess vector autoregressive models. This assessment represents the initial results of a more encompassing research project, the intent of which is to determine the dynamic interaction of the transport sector with the overall economy. It’s a start to a more comprehensive assessment of how transport and economic activity interrelate.