Usury laws and private credit in Lima,Peru. Evidence from notarized records

I examine the impact of usury laws on the Peruvian credit market between 1825 and 1852. Using a new data set of nearly 2,000 loans from archival sources, I show that the repeal of colonial anti-usury laws in early 1833 had an important effect on the allocation of credit in Lima. It increased interest rates and promoted access to credit. Furthermore, lenders made loans with greater maturities after the repeal of usury laws.     

Gold, credit, and mortality: distinguishing deflationary pressures on the late medieval English economy

This article uses national and local records of debt and evidence from coins, prices, and wages to discuss the economic effects of the gold coinage that was introduced into England in 1344. It distinguishes between the deflationary effects of gold and those of the falling population on prices and credit, and shows that a coinage dominated by gold reduced the volume of credit and transactions far more than the mortality rate and the total circulation of coin would indicate was likely. It relates these findings to the economic and social changes of the fifteenth century.     

Risk,success, and failure: female entrepreneurship in late Victorian and Edwardian England

This article analyses female entrepreneurship in late Victorian and Edwardian England. Traditional views on female entrepreneurship in nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century England point towards a decline in the number and relevance of women as business owners in comparison to the eighteenth century, and their retreat into a ‘separate sphere’ away from the world of trade and production. Recent studies, however, have deeply challenged this view, suggesting that women still played an important role as entrepreneurs during industrialization and beyond. Nevertheless, a number of questions remain unanswered with regard to the features of female entrepreneurship during these phases of British history, and issues such as scale of operation, attitude to risk, credit structure, and managerial styles are still widely debated. Using original sources, this article provides a novel view on these issues, analysing female entrepreneurship from the perspective of bankruptcy. Analysing statistics on women's bankruptcy derived from Board of Trade reports, as well as a sample of archival cases, this article argues that overall female business owners traded in ways similar to their male counterparts in terms of business size, risk‐taking, and, eventually, success.     

Gold options,an attractive investment instrument for the non-U.S. investor — the case of the Belgian and Dutch investor

Summary Gold has always been an investment instrument whose popularity is closely linked to economic and political instability. Since gold transactions occur in U.S. dollars any investor with a non-U.S. dollar base currency will therefore assume exchange risk exposure. Empirical evidence is given that the gold price has historically varied inversely with the strength of the U.S. dollar. The investor whose base currency is not the dollar, i.e. the Belgian franc or Dutch guilder, incurs less risk when investing in gold than his dollar counterpart.     

对新疆农村高利贷现象的调查与分析

农村高利贷活动由来已久，且是农民之间自发的融资行为，具有地缘性、隐蔽性和分散性的特点，说明高利贷在民间确有其生存的空间和条件。然而，农村高利贷有它严重的社会危害性，它加重了借债人的负担，导致农村贫富差距的进一步扩大；它干扰和破坏了农村正常的经济、金融秩序，增加了农村社会不稳定因素；它给农村基层组织的工作带来一定压力。为了解新疆农村高利贷现状，本文在深入调查的基础上，提出了遏止高利贷势头发展的对策建议。     

Finance and credit in the strategy for the economic development and structured investment policy of the Russian Federation

The article discusses the role and place of finance and credit in the structured investment policy and substantiates possible directions of measures in the sphere of money and finance aimed at accelerating economic growth in Russia.     

Illuminations and distortions: Gregory King's Scheme calculated for the year 1688 and the social structure of later Stuart England1

This critique of King's well‐known Scheme of the social order in 1688 examines his purposes, the Scheme's evolutionary process, and the taxation data (hearth, poll, window, and marriage duty) that King used to construct it, before contrasting his conclusions with recent research. His social hierarchy emerges as a rather crude and backward‐looking stereotype based on too many intelligent guesses, with his treatment of the poorer families being least satisfactory. Overall, King's population totals appear sound, his national income estimate low, and various mean household sizes and family and children's totals unreliable.     

反垄断：中美法制对比

8月23日,商务部、国资委、国税总局、国家工商总局、证监会、国家外管局六部门联合颁布《关于外国投资者并购境内企业的规定》(以下简称《规定》),其中“反垄断审查”的内容单列一章,将于9月8日起正式实施。     

Working‐class consumer credit in the UK, 1925–60: the role of the check trader1

This article provides fresh insights into working‐class credit by examining the history of check trading. It explains the system's origins, and its dependence on a series of relationships involving check traders and their agents, retailers, and customers. Data from the market leader— Provident Clothing and Supply Co. Ltd—is analysed to explore the scale and scope of the sector, and to examine its history from the early 1920s to the 1960s. Check trading was both an important and controversial supplier of credit to working‐class families, and the article explores criticisms of the system, and the reason for its popularity.     

US pressure on China: Silver flows, deflation, and the 1934 Shanghai credit crunch

US pressure for Chinese currency appreciation in the face of a weakening dollar was initially resisted in the post-2003 period. No such option was available in the 1930s, however, when dollar weakness was accompanied by silver purchases that automatically drove up the value of China's old silver-based currency. New empirical evidence suggests a significant link between the policy-induced driving up of US silver prices and Chinese exchange rate appreciation and price deflation. Moreover, the reversal of the silver flow into Shanghai as large-scale US purchases began in 1934 appears to have been met by a credit crunch in that city—as evidenced by bank failures, and real estate and stock market declines. The silver flow from the interior to Shanghai had previously insulated the financial center from the credit shortages faced elsewhere in China after deflation first emerged in 1932–1933.     

Food, nutrition, and substitution in the late nineteenth century

Economic historians hypothesize that households in the nineteenth century substituted away from carbohydrates and fiber and towards protein and fat as their incomes rose. Anthropometric historians assert that there was increased nutrient intake without any nutritional substitution. I test these hypotheses using the 1888 Cost of Living Survey. I fail to reject the hypothesis that the income elasticity of fiber is greater than or equal to the income elasticities of protein, fat, or sugar—contrary to the nutritional substitution posited by economic historians. A food modified Engel curve reveals that the shares of carbohydrates, fat, and sugar in the diet vary with household income, but the shares of protein and fiber do not. I do find, however, that the share of protein from animal sources increases with household income. I also find that the diets of late nineteenth century industrial workers were surprisingly balanced by modern standards.     

Stuart London's standard of living: re‐examining the Settlement of Tithes of 1638 for rents,income, and poverty

The Settlement of Tithes of 1638 can be tested for biases in its London rents. Even so, it proves to be a relatively good source for seventeenth‐century London, and for calculating associated median and mean rents, as well as a Gini coefficient of inequality for the distribution of resources. Through other evidence in the Settlement, rent/income ratios for London can be approximated, and from them estimates made of London's median income. Median rents and income also allow estimates of the percentage of Londoners in poverty. Though the last is inevitably disputable, the estimate holds up well to testing by other evidence.