This book demonstrates how finance is affected by key political and social forces and cultural norms, and shows how they have determined the progression, development, destruction and renewal of financial life in Europe, Russia and the United States

1. Introduction -- 2. Tin : the foundations of an industry -- 3. Tin and industrial capitalism, 1815-1918 -- 4. The problem with tin, 1919-1929 -- 5. The depression : initial responses, 1928-1930 -- 6. The formation of the International Tin Committee, 1927-1931 -- 7. Constructing the machinery...

chapter Introduction -- chapter 1 Dead gages, naked debentures -- chapter 2 Myths, stigmas and morality of “dirty sexy money” -- chapter 3 Metamorphosis: Materialism to capitalism -- chapter 4 World bankers: Ambivalences of modernity -- chapter 5 Capitalism is dead, long live capitalism? --...

British-German rivalry in Northern Europe revisited / Patrick Salmon -- Nordic trade cooperation in the 1930s / Sven-Olof Olsson -- why did Norwegian trade policy become more active in the interwar period? / Monica Vµrholm -- Effective protection, prices and GDP growth : tariffs in Finland...

This study is the first to explore long-run trends of numeracy for the period from 1820 to 1949 in 165 countries, and its contribution to growth. Estimates of the long-run numeracy development of most countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, America, and Europe are presented, using...

This paper examines wage adjustment in the late 19th and early 20th centuries using personnel records from the Union Bank of Australia and Williams Deacon's Bank (England). During the period of this study there was steep and prolonged deflation. Firm-specific and industry-specific demand shocks...

Though almost no postwar union contracts indexed wage rates to prices of the employer's products, union agreements linking wage rates to product prices, known as sliding scales, were common in some industries in the United States and Britain from the 1860s through the 1930s. This paper explains...

We analyze the impact of the original means-tested old-age assistance (OAA) programs on the health of the elderly prior to the first Social Security pension payments. Before 1935 a number of states had enacted their own OAA laws. After 1935 the federal government began offering matching grants...