The general strike in Sweden 1909

Abstract

This book deals with the events leading up to the great Swedish labour conflict of 1909, which began in June of that year with an extensive lockout by the three national employers' associations led by the newly formed confederation of big industrial concerns, Svenska Arbetsgivare Förening (SAF), and was extended on 4 August by the Swedish Confederation of Trade Unions (Landsorganisationen or LO) into a general strike involving 300,000 workers. By 4 September the trade unions were compelled to look for a way of terminating the conflict. After the defeat they had consequently lost half their members by 1910. The employers' organisations were then able to ensure peace on the labour market right up to 1917. Nevertheless they accepted the principle of collective bargaining, although they did not achieve the basic general agreement with established negotiating procedure which had been their aim in the struggle of 1909.     

The geometry of community indifference curves

Summary While all of our proofs assumed only one or two residents, the following summary applies to the case of an N person community for any N> 0 and for many commodities. Community indifference curves will be non-intersecting and convex if we assume that the underlying individual indifference curves are convex and (i) there is only one resident of the economy or only one “dictator” who makes all consumption decisions or if (ii) the government continually redistributes income in order to reach the highest possible Bergsonian welfare contour (and the BWCs are convex with the individual utility functions concave) or if (iii) all residents have indifference curve maps which are identical and hamothetic or if (iv) all residents have homothetic preferences and incomes are always distributed in the same proportion between them, or if (v) they have identical indifference curve maps and incomes are always distributed evenly between them, or if (vi) all individuals have the same marginal propensity to consume any given good and in equilibrium all individuals consume all goods, or if (vii) value shares are characterized by PIGL and incomes are always distributed proportionately. If these curves are rationalized by (i), the community preference map will be identical to that of the individual or dictator and normative significance can be attached to it in that it represents his welfare. If rationalized by route (ii), these curves are the BWCs drawn with goods on the axes instead of utilities, i.e., the social indifference curves sO that again normative significance is automatically attached to them. In this case, the community indifference curve corresponding to a Bergsonian welfare level W*, when drawn with consumption of the two goods on the axes, is the envelope of the Scitovsky curves which permit the government to reach the Bergsonian welfare level W*. Also, when the Bergsonian welfare contours are right-angled, the community indifference curves are a consistent, non-intersecting family of Scitovsky indifference curves. If rationalized by (iii) or (v) the community indifference curve map will be identical to that of any individual with all dimensions multiplied by the community’s population and this will also be true of (vii) except that a different scale factor must be used. If rationalized by route (iv), the map is homothetic and correctly indicates Bergsonian welfare, provided that the Bergsonian welfare function is of the Cobb-Douglas type and that the distribution shares are the respective exponents of the welfare function. If rationalized by route (v), normative significance is automatically attached to it, for movement to a higher curve implies that every resident is better off. Finally, if rationalized by (vi), the community’s Engel curves are parallel to those of each individual and if rationalized by either (iii), (v) or (vi) each community indifference curve is a Scitovsky indifference curve and represents a contour of potential welfare. Finally, there is no normative significance attached to the community indifference curves in general if they are rationalized according to (iv) or (vii), for in these cases they simply serve to indicate the relative prices which will prevail as a function of the community’s stocks of goods.

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Zusammenfassung Die Geometrie der gesellschaftlichen Indifferenzkurven. — Die gesellschaftliche Indifferenzkurve wird vielfach benutzt, um Schlüsse hinsichtlich der Handelsgewinne und des optimalen Zollsatzes zu ziehen — beides wichtige Bestandteile der reinen Theorie des internationalen Handels. Deshalb ist eine Verst?ndigung darüber, was gesellschaftliche Indiflerenzkurven bedeuten, von Nutzen. Dieser Aufsatz verwendet Geometrie und Oberschul-Algebra, um zu untersuchen, wie gesellschaftliche Indifferenzkurven mit den individuellen Indifferenzkurven zusammenh?ngen, aus denen sie abgeleitet worden sind. Er beweist auch — ohne h?here Mathematik — S?tze von hinreichenden Bedingungen, unter denen individuelle Indifferenzkurven zu gesellschaftlichen Indifferenzkurven aggregiert werden k?nnen.

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Résumé La géométrie des courbes d’indifférence communautaires. — La courbe d’indifférence communautaire est largement utilisée pour dériver des conclusions sur les gains du commerce extérieur et sur le tarif optimum, qui sont des parties intégrantes de la théorie fondamentale du commerce international. C’est pourquoi une compréhension du sens des courbes d’indifférence communautaires est utile. Cet article utilise la géométrie et l’algèbre lycéene pour examiner les relations entre les courbes d’indifférence communautaires et les courbes d’indifférence individuelles desquelles elles sont dérivées. Nous démontrons aussi sans utiliser la théorie des ensembles ou des mathématiques avancées des séries de suppositions suffisantes pour des courbes d’indifférence individuelles d’être agrégées aux courbes d’indifférence communautaires.

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Resumen La geometría de las curvas de indiferencia de la comunidad. — La curva de indiferencia de la comunidad es usada ampliamente para derivar conclusiones acerca de los beneficios del comercio y la tarifa óptima, que son partes integrales de la teoria del comercio internacional básica. Por lo tanto es útil comprender lo que las curvas de indiferencia de la comunidad representan. Este ensayo usa la geometría y la álgebra de humanidades para examinar cómo las curvas de indiferencia de la comunidad están relacionadas con las curvas de indiferencia individuales, de las cuales ellas se han derivado. También se prueban, sin usar la teoría establecida o matemáticas avanzadas, series de supuestos suficientes para curvas de indiferencia individuales que se incorporan en curvas de indiferencia de la comunidad.

     

Earldoms and baronies as economic enterprises in seventeenth century Finland

Abstract

In his comprehensive monograph of nearly eight hundred pages, the first volume of which was published as an academic dissertation six years ago, Professor Jokipii has undertaken to give an account of the brief history of Finnish earldoms and baronies. With two exceptions these twenty-nine large-scale fiefs lasted in all only a quarter of a century (the third quarter of the seventeenth century). Nevertheless, they made their mark on the later development of Finland.     

The reliability of the english port books

Abstract

Modem trade statistics start with the series of English customs ledgers from 1696 onwards. The French ledgers of imports and exports follow twenty years later, the Swedish series (including Finland) begins in 1738, and the Scottish one in the 1750s.1 For other European countries they are even more recent. This means that before 1700 we have to rely on the customs books of various individual ports, except in occasional cases where reliable (or unreliable) compilations for a particular year, a commodity or an area are preserved. Of the latter, a Scottish historian, T. C. Smout, has recently written: ‘Customs books are an invaluable source for the historian of trade. In them he may discover the commodities exported and imported, he may read the names of ships, skippers and merchants, he may learn where they were bound and whence they came, and from them he may perhaps judge which places within the realm had the greatest traffic with foreign parts. Given a sufficiently long and unbroken series of customs material, he may be tempted to cull statistics about these and other matters. This, however, is a dangerous practice, for the books of the seventeenth century were designed merely as a record of dues paid to the Crown, and were not meant, like modern Board of Trade returns, as a mirror of commercial trends or as a register of the volume and value of goods passing in and out of the country.’²     

Johannesburg’s implementation of the National Water Act, 1998 in Soweto,South Africa

ABSTRACT

The Guide to the National Water Act, 1998 (Act 36 of 1998) regards the availability of water as a basic human right. However, local governments seem to struggle to pay for the water they provide to their residents as prescribed in the Water Services Act, 1997 (Act 108 of 1997). This study focused on the domestic provision and consumption of water in Soweto, one of the largest townships in the Johannesburg area of South Africa. Surveys were conducted with 372 respondents from three different socio-economic suburbs in Soweto with the aim to establish their water use perceptions and practices. Study results indicate implementation of the National Water Act is still being resisted by Sowetan households more than two decades after its adoption, due to the difference in expectations of the municipality and the residents regarding rights to water access and responsible usage.     

Homelessness in Pretoria: Exploring the survival challenges of the homeless and their right to the city

ABSTRACT

This article documents the biographies of 60 homeless people from a range of different backgrounds in South Africa’s capital city of Pretoria. The article focuses on their right to the city and how the lack thereof affects their daily lives. It explores the challenges they face on a daily basis and the different strategies they implement in mitigating these challenges.     

A contribution to Norwegian urban history

Abstract

Norwegian historians have for decades concerned themselves with the study of problems pertaining to Norwegian towns in the middle ages, what needs they fulfilled, how extensive were their socio-economic functions.     

Serfdom in esthonia during the period of Swedish rule

Abstract

For quite some time after World War II peasant behavior in less developed countries was ‘unproblematic’. There was a general consensus that peasants were not ‘economic men’, in the sense that they tried to maximize profits as postulated by mainstream economic theory. Instead, their acts were assumed to be governed by ‘tradition’, or ‘conservatism’, which by and large had nothing to do with the type of maximizing or minimizing behavior which acquired prominence in economic theory not least by the central role that was conferred on it in Paul Samuelson's Foundations of Economic Analysis.¹ Their ambitions and horizons were thought to be limited in such a way as to render standard economic theory inapplicable in the study of peasant behavior. The discussion focused on the ‘inert’, or ‘lazy’, (satisficing) peasant.²     

The Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis and Air Pollution in Finland

Abstract

The historiography of mercantilism has been described as a series of disconnected still pictures which reflect the shifting viewpoints of economic thought.¹ However, historians have favoured different concepts of mercantilism not only in response to the shifts of economic science but also because they have held, explicitly or implicitly, different opinions on the problem of how economic ideas are formed and of the role they have played in historical development. The following reexamination of some of those ‘stills’ concentrate on such differences.²     

The economic and social position of peasant freeholders in late seventeenth-century Denmark

Abstract

The overwhelming majority of Danish peasants in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were tenants on crown or privately owned estates. Thus they were directly affected by the consolidation of a seigneurial system which had emerged well before the seventeenth century but had become more firmly entrenched when the absolute monarchy in Denmark, established in 1660, began the alienation of the crown estates. However, the small minority of peasants known as freeholders (selvejere or jordegne bønder) did not entirely disappear, although their position was becoming increasingly uncertain.1 It is the aim of this article to define this small group, assess the economic and social implications of their position, and attempt to clarify the nature of peasant ownership of land in Denmark in the late seventeenth century.     

Financing Technological Innovation: Evidence from Patent-Intensive Firms

ABSTRACT

Equityholders of firms with high debt loads have an incentive to underinvest, a distortion that can be most costly for firms with attractive growth options. Using a novel patent-based measure of a firm's growth options, we find that firms issue more equity and shy away from debt financing when they have larger investment opportunities sets. The results are more pronounced among firms in patent-intensive industries. The findings suggest the existence of conflicts of interest between debtholders and equityholders. Our results are consistent with the use of conservative debt policies by technology-intensive firms to mitigate the debt overhang associated with their future growth options.     

The growth of population in Norway 1735–1855

Abstract

The rapid growth of population in many underdeveloped countries during recent years has caused widespread concern. It has, not surprisingly, also helped to focus the attention of demographic historians upon the processes of population growth in western societies, during their pre-industrial and early industrial stages. Scandinavia has occupied a central place in the discussion; chiefly, because here, by a happy accident, the industrial revolution was preceded by an administrative revolution. As a result of this we have an unparalleled set of population statistics dating from the mid- eighteenth century. Sweden, in particular, has become something of a Mecca for demographic historians. Of all the nordic countries her statistics are the most comprehensive and through such studies as those of Swaine Thomas¹ Gille,² Heckscher³ and Utterström,⁴ the most thoroughly explored. Although less well known, the Danish, Norwegian, Finnish and Icelandic material is also of a very high order. Perhaps in the past some of it, in Norway at least, has been accepted too uncritically. Nevertheless, despite the one or two startling errors in the present Norwegian population statistics (they are discussed in the first part of this paper), Norway remains one of the few countries where it is possible to analyse pre-industrial population movements on a statistical basis.     

A study of commercial relations in eighteenth century Finland

Abstract

There has been a noticeable trend in recent research towards the use of private archives in the study of the commercial behaviour of and relations between individual businesses. Previously only public records have tended to be used, and attention has been focused on one aspect of an economy as a whole, or of a region, or a single important town. Even if, for example, the names of importers or exporters have been entered in customs records, official sources cannot provide an answer to anything like all the important questions. Many business histories have been published which have not contributed very much because they have generally not advanced beyond the narrative level, leaving untapped the incomparable material contained in accounts and ledgers. A pre-requisite for the study of private business firms is, of course, that documentary series should have been preserved unbroken for a fairly long period. Farmers did not keep account books, and only through the accounts of the merchants with whom they traded may we examine their businesses. Only a small proportion of merchants’ accounts in North Ostrobothnia from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been preserved; but entries may by even a single merchant in respect of goods bought from or sold to farmers add up over several decades to such an enormous material that some form of sampling is called for limiting him to the classification employed in the official statistics.     

Diverse family forms and quality-of-life in sub-Saharan African countries

ABSTRACT

Family is the foundation on which other institutions are built. Its quality has resultant effects on the quality of the society in its entirety. It is, therefore, expedient to examine the relationship between diverse family forms and quality-of-life in sub-Saharan African countries. Demographic and Health Surveys for four countries were used for the study. The study reveals a significant relationship between cohabitation, marriage and wealth status in all the four countries, while marriage remains significantly related with education in all the countries except Kenya. Poisson regression revealed a higher effect of education on diverse family forms except single parents in Mozambique and Nigeria, while with the adjusted data divorce/separated women in Kenya have a significantly higher coefficient (β?=??1.03, p-value = 0.000) compared with other countries in the study area The study concludes that family formation cannot be overlooked, as it relates to the wellbeing of women in sub-Saharan Africa.     

Introduction to the special issue on ‘global trading system and protectionism: China,the United States and Europe’

ABSTRACT

In this Introduction to our Special Issue, we provide detailed and critical comments and summaries of the excellent papers. The papers are important contributions to the China-U.S. and China-Europe economic and trade issues in the context of the global trading environment, as shaped by the current unorthodox policies of the Trump Administration. The wonderful papers dealt with relevant issues related to international trade, investment, national security, trade laws, intellectual property rights laws, political science, business, etc. They constitute a must-read for academics, policy and business researchers, think tank fellows, experts in international organizations, as well as government-related researchers in various national capitals. The three Co-editors are all experienced and accomplished academics with vast experiences in public policies. As academics, they may hold different views but their unique and diverse perspectives provide an important background to the Special Issue. They jointly contributed major efforts to this timely and important Special Issue.     

The role of corrosive internalisation and denial of responsibility in stabilising inequality in South Africa

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how capabilities inequality is stabilised through its consequences on those at both ends of the distribution. It outlines the development of the balance model, which is argued to help highlight these consequences. Specifically, how adverse environments associated with lack of access to resources and poor treatment can lead to internal consequences which further corrode capabilities. At the same time, denial of this corrosion or its importance is critical for those who benefit from the inequality. To avoid moral constraints being triggered it is important, necessary even, for them to see those who suffer as outside of their moral universe, or their suffering to be in no way associated with their advantage. Corrosion and denial work to stabilise the system. For those in the middle of the distribution, they may work to do so in combination. Appreciating these internalised consequences is key to addressing inequality in South Africa.     

Policy Choices and Resilience to International Monetary Shocks

Abstract

The well-known trilemma theory states that the nominal exchange rate regime plays a crucial role in a country's ability to pursue monetary policy that is for its domestic objectives independent from other countries' influences. In particular, a flexible exchange rate is required for an independent monetary policy. Capital controls may help a country with a fixed exchange rate to gain some policy space but the effect of capital controls is leaky and often short-lived. We revisit these conventional wisdoms and find no strong evidence supporting them in practice. In particular, a flexible exchange rate does not reliably deliver monetary policy independence, but capital controls do. This is consistent with the view that most (developing) countries dislike either depreciation or appreciation of their currencies, and therefore would choose to follow US monetary policy moves even if they are on a flexible exchange rate regime. In other words, to build resilience to international monetary policy shocks, capital controls are a necessarily component.     

The Global Financial Crisis Revisited: Competition and Regulation

Abstract

Using data of the systematic banking crises from 1981 to 2008, we examine how competition and regulation are related to the crises. We find that countries with higher concentration and/or higher market power of the banking industry are less prone to crises. Further, they are more likely to have weathered the 2008 global financial crisis. However, regulatory and institutional factors play little role and the estimation results are shown to be sensitive to measures of the degree of competition or severity of the crisis, as well as the coverage of the crises.     

Denmark in China 1839–65: A pawn in a British game

Abstract

Denmark's trading connections with China date back to the seventeenth century, but it was not until the establishment of Asiatisk Kompagni (the Danish Asiatic Company) in 1732 that they became at all regular. In the period between the Company's foundation and the outbreak of war with England in 1807, 124 ships were sent to China; imported Chinese products were the basis of the trade, and of course the Danish market was too small to absorb such a volume of business. The China trade was therefore primarily a transit trade with Copenhagen as the entrepôt: conditions for this were particularly favourable during periods of war between the European great powers when, by virtue of their neutrality, Danish ships were able to take over a major share in supplying the north-west European market. The war of 1807–14 with England, however, entirely changed both the external political and the internal economic conditions for the continuation of this traffic. Thus the exceptionally large-scale and, by Danish standards, profitable operations of Asiatisk Kompagni in the eighteenth century were emphatically a passing phenomenon produced by the peculiar business conditions of the time.¹     

Institutional arrangements of outgrower sugarcane production in Southern Africa

ABSTRACT

Management models are needed that empower local communities to produce biofuel feedstock in a manner that drives rural development. Much can be learnt through the accumulated experiences of sugarcane outgrower schemes in southern Africa. Early schemes provided limited empowerment, but protected outgrowers from the risks of volatile sugar value chains. In later schemes, processing plants were responsible for all operations and simply paid dividends to participating farmers. More recent schemes offer full ownership, which comes with greater rewards and empowerment, but also exposure to risks. The underlying institutional structures of outgrower schemes largely dictate their performance, and thus the factors that affect their viability or collapse. To understand the different institutional arrangements of sugarcane outgrower schemes we undertake a comparative analysis of 13 schemes in southern Africa employing a political economy framework that uses the three key questions: ‘who owns what’, ‘who does what’, and ‘who gets what’.