A theory of the pre-modern British aristocracy

Between c. 1550 –c. 1880, a small group of individuals ruled England and oversaw her transformation from a small country to the British Empire—and in the process they became exceedingly wealthy. Known as aristocrats, their unusual lifestyles were the antithesis of modern secular values. Today aristocrats are often viewed as a hindrance to pre-modern growth and development because they appeared to operate so inefficiently. This paper argues that the aristocrats efficiently provided the valuable service of “trustworthy servant”, by investing their wealth in hostage capital. This theory explains terms of entry and exit out of the aristocracy, the strict family settlement, their education patterns, extravagant lifestyle, and their ultimate voluntary retreat from power.     

Modern theories of regulation: An old story. Danish gasworks in the nineteenth century

Abstract

The Great Northern Telegraph Company was established in 1869 and enjoyed a very successful era thanks to a de-facto monopoly on the telegraph lines from Northern Europe to the Far East. After 1945 the Company changed its focus from telegraphy to wireless communication and electronic equipment. This article presents an analysis of the dramatic developments in the decades following the Second World War.

The relationship between the changing strategies and the established structure is analysed using Alfred D.Chandler Jr's well-known Strategy and Structure concept. After 40 years this concept still seems relevant to the understanding of the peculiar capacity for survival and growth demonstrated by old, well-established firms. In the conclusion it is argued that the post-war growth of the Great Northern Telegraph Company was based on several factors. These were the fortune originating from the Company's golden age in the 1910s and the 1920s, the industry investment strategy during and after the Second World War and finally, the changes of the organisational structure in the 1970s, which created the vital correspondence between strategy and structure.     

A Price-Earnings Index for the Danish Stock Market

Abstract

Price-earnings ratios are part of the toolkit used for assessing the valuation of individual firms on the stock market as well as the entire market itself. This paper presents consistent P/E series for the liquid Danish shares adjusted for share buy-backs. The results show that over the period from 1969 to 2003, the average (trailing) P/E equals 13.5. The P/E reaches its lowest level in 1980, which is likely to be due to a soaring oil price, high wage increases and interest rates approaching 20 per cent. Notwithstanding optimistic equity pricing also in Denmark in the late 1990s, the upturn in Danish valuations was more moderate than in the USA. The subsequent correction that set in reversed essentially the gains in the Danish P/E in the 1990s.     

A 1735 Danish tract on economic policy

Abstract

About 1720 nearly all Western European countries experienced a monetary expansion which manifested itself most strongly in John Law's banking in France and the English ‘South Sea Bubble’. The same trend was in evidence in the Danish Monarchy; during the last years of the Northern War bank notes (‘kurantsedler’) equivalent to about one million rix-dollars were issued to meet the substantial military expenses.     

The changing fortunes of an aristocracy? Determinants of wages and conditions of employment in Kenya

This article examines the functioning of the labour market in the modern sector in Kenya and, in particular, considers the determinants of wages and other conditions of employment. An analysis of negotiated wages from collective agreements signed during 1974–75 suggests that measures of an ‘ability to pay’ characteristic of industries with limited competition in the product market and realizing above-average labour productivity are the best predictors of inter-industry wage differences. Locational and ownership variables are also found to be significant. Size of labour force is only significant for clerical wage rates. Four case studies suggest superior conditions of employment are positively associated with higher than average wages.     

Research into the distribution of prosperity. A Danish comment on some Swedish contributions

Abstract

Economic historians studying the very recent past have in the 19505 and 1960s to a large extent chosen to deal with problems connected with economic growth. This is doubtless explained by the pattem of development in Westem economies where govemments showed themselves capable of bringing productive capacity and demand so closely into balance that unemployment was reduced to a fraction of its interwar level. The whole problem of distribution—who should bear how much of the consequences of unemployment and of the other defects of society—accordingly became a secondary consideration in economic and political debate. In its place there was growing interest in how rapidly productive capacity could be raised, and the total amount of goods and services available to the public thus increased. This interest was undoubtedly stimulated by the successful industrialisation of the Soviet Union in the 1930s, the liberation of the colonies after the Second World War, and the growth of intemational communications, all emphasising the problem of what determines vigorous and widespread expansion in national production. Many economic historians in Scandinavia and elsewhere were influenced by economists such as Harrod and Demar, Cobb and Douglas, Kaldor, Solow and Rostow who attempted to answer the question. In both economics and economic history an increasing proportion of the available research capacity was devoted to projects connected with economic growth.     

The scope and structure of the Danish negro slave trade

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine the scope and structure of the Danish negro slave trade in the second half of the eighteenth century. This, it will be shown, did not consist merely of a Danish triangular slave trade within a closed Danish mercantilist colonial system: it was based upon extensive cooperation with other slave trading nations both in Africa and the West Indies. The Danish slave trade embraced three branches: slaves imported into St. Croix for employment, a transit slave trade at St. Thomas and a triangular slave trade. The present paper examines these largely independent aspects of the Danish slave trade, surveys the economic background and attempts to elucidate the edict of 16 March 1792, abolishing the trade.     

The Danish trading companies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Abstract

The great trading companies form one of the characteristic features of the economic history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This is true of Europe generally, and of Denmark in particular. The charter for the first Danish trading company, the East India Company, was issued by king Christian IV on 17 March 1616. And on 21 March 1792, king Christian VII appended his signature to the last company charter, that for the Asiatic Company. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries thus form a well-defined period with regard to the trading companies as far as Denmark is concerned. There were simply no companies prior to 1600. And when the Asiatic Company was wound up in 1843 after a death struggle which had lasted for more than a generation, the last of the companies vanished. But within this 200-year period there had existed at least twenty Danish trading companies - depending on how trading companies are defined and how their founding and reconstruction are interpreted. At all events the number of them is large by European standards. In fact the concentration of companies in Denmark is even more pronounced, for of the twenty companies, eighteen were founded within a period of only 125 years, between 1656 and 1782. A comparison with the concentration of companies in other European countries during this period is not easy. The literature is diffuse, and the problems of classifying the individual companies as solely or predominantly trading companies are great. But there is scarcely any doubt that Denmark would occupy a high position on any comparative list during this 125-year period — and it is not unlikely that this marginal region of the European economy might come highest on the list.     

Price formation in the Danish stock market in the 1890s

Abstract

Trading¹ in stocks has a fairly long history in Denmark. It dates back to the end of the 17th century at least, as evidenced by M?glemes Articler from 1684, where one can find information about brokerage fees for sales and purchases of shares of the East Asian, West Asian and other chartered trading companies. In the beginning of the 18th century, newspapers started carrying information about transactions in stocks. Stock exchange price quotes were listed in the newspapers fairly regularly from around 1760.     

现行废旧物资税收政策的弊端及解决对策

大力推进废旧物资的回收利用，是实现循环经济的关键环节；国家现行废旧物资税收政策在积极促进该行业发展的同时，也存在着一些不客忽视的问题。从现行废旧物资税收政策实施过程中引发的矛盾入手，论述了现行税收政策改革的必要性，并提出了初步的解决对幕。     

The Danish cattle trade during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Abstract

Danish production and exports of oxen have been the subject of frequent investigation from various points of view. Historians have chiefly tended to stress the social lop-sidedness of the trade and the dependence of these exports on the vicissitudes of the international market. While the dominant political position of the Danish nobles enabled them to monopolize the production of oxen, their economic prosperity depended on the successful maintenance of the exports.¹ Against this interpretation, however, some historians have argued that the cattle production was not only of fundamental importance to Danish agriculture but that it also made a significant contribution to the European supply. According to Erik Arup, oxen provided Denmark in the fifteenth century with an export commodity of high quality, and Astrid Friis has stressed the fundamental importance of oxen exports to the economic development of sixteenthcentury Denmark. Both interpretations, however, maintain that the production and export of oxen provided a solid economic foundation for the aristocratic rule of Denmark.²     

“老有所养”何其难

《化解国家资产负债中长期风险》报告预测,到2013年,中国养老金的缺口将达到18.3万亿元! 其实,不用细算便可知道,《化解国家资产负债中长期风险》的估算多荒诞。中国的老龄人口总数毕竟就1.4亿。难道个人年的养老金缺口会高达十多万元,每人每月的缺口超过1万元?……     

Dutch and Danish agricultural exports during the First World War

Abstract

The Danish agricultural sector continued to maintain agricultural exports to Great Britain during the First World War, even when higher prices ruled on the German market. Dutch agricultural exporters, 011 the other hand. continued to sell to the highest bidder; until, in 1916, British pressure forced them to do otherwise. It was not the Danish government but the Danish cooperatives who were responsible for Danish agricultural export policy, especially in the first years of the war. More than was the case with the Dutch exporters, the Danes were highly dependent on the British market. The strong Danish cooperatives (in contrast to the weaker Dutch agricultural organizations) forced the Danish government to support their strategy in order not to lose their suppliers to the newly establishedfirms who were exporting to Germany.     

广东银行研究

中国境内第一家外国银行，以往学术界一致认为是鸦片战争以后的1845年进入中国的英商丽如银行。本文从新发现的1819年广东一家外商银行发行的银票，对前此一致的看法提出质疑。文章从两个方面进行论证：首先从银票印刷的技术方面，鉴定银票之真实，并非伪造；其次列举四个可能的银票发行者，一一加以辨析，然后认定是东印度公司以外的私商，即经营东印度-中国贸易的帕栖商人。最后提出外国在华银行发展的四个阶段。文章论证谨严，资料充实。全部内容、在国内尚属首例。     

“丹麦童话”的中国演绎

提到丹麦,安徒生童话显然是一个无论如何也无法被绕过去的话题.然而今天的丹麦却向世界展示出一则新的童话——资料显示,世界自然基金会曾对清洁能源技术产值占国内生产总值(GDP)的比例进行统计,丹麦清洁能源技术产值为94亿美元,占GDP的3.1％,位居世界第一.近20多年来,丹麦的GDP增长累计超过78％,而能源消费与1980年基本持平,单位GDP能耗之低,世界排名第二.早在2010年,丹麦政府发布报告表示,到2050年,丹麦将完全摆脱化石能源,走上一条不依赖石油、天然气、煤炭和核能的发展之路.     

那些消失了的老房子

济南是一个地理风貌独特的老城,泉水院落、名士豪杰、寺庙衙署、开埠经商等各种要素汇集在一起,塑造出其城市建筑的多彩风格。随便指着一座老房子,老济南人就能为你讲出一长串的故事。前些年是剪子巷、司里街、所里街、近几年是后营坊、泉城路、高都司巷、县西巷、经一路、卫巷……伴随着历史