Economic History Commons^™

Incentivized Learning And Libraries: A Comparative Study Of Summer Reading Programs In Connecticut, Andrew Morrison

Honors Scholar Theses

With digital forms of entertainment and media more inescapable than ever, it has become increasingly difficult to encourage children and teens to read. Simultaneously, despite an overwhelming amount of literature demonstrating the educational benefits of reading, especially as a necessity in the summer between academic years, library budgets are shrinking as federal funding nears its end. How do libraries promote summer reading amidst declining interest and decreased funding? Using data from public libraries across Connecticut, this paper investigates how libraries are adapting their children's summer reading programs to a changing landscape, how programs are designed to incentivize reading without eliminating …

The Impact Of American Economic Aid On Post-World War Ii Germany, Gabriella Barber, Emily T. Carlstrom

Senior Theses

This paper examines the state of Germany immediately after World War II, describing how the American government intervened in West German reconstruction. It analyzes three specific German companies that overcame hardship in the 1940s and 50s and have become powerhouses today. Additionally, an overview of the current German economy shows how the country is positioned as a world leader.

Research was conducted using literary print sources, scholarly internet databases, and a formal interview with Klaus Becker, Honorary Consul to Germany. He is a German-American businessman who has held roles in several non-political associations, including President of the Charlotte World Trade …

Pearls, People, And Power : Pearling And Indian Ocean Worlds, Pedro Machado, Steve Mullins, Joseph Christensen

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Pearls, People, and Power is the first book to examine the trade, distribution, production, and consumption of pearls and mother-of-pearl in the global Indian Ocean over more than five centuries. While scholars have long recognized the importance of pearling to the social, cultural, and economic practices of both coastal and inland areas, the overwhelming majority have confined themselves to highly localized or at best regional studies of the pearl trade. By contrast, this book stresses how pearling and the exchange in pearl shell were interconnected processes that brought the ports, islands, and coasts into close relation with one another, creating …

Against Monetary Functionalism: A Social Ontology Of Money, James Payne

Honors Program Theses

This paper explores the concepts of individualism and holism in social ontology through an analysis of the ontology of money by integrating insights from the Critical Realist tradition as well as the distinction between metaphysical grounds and anchors. In doing so it examines alternative explanations of money's ontology like the paradigmatic approach of John Searle. The results of the inquiry are then connected in relation to the models of social explanation in mainstream economics.

Economic Analysis Of Jewish Law, Keith Sharfman

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Blockchain Technology And The Future Of Video Games, Is Presence Still Relevant?, Stef Nicovich, Jessica Scheld

Atlantic Marketing Journal

BlockChain technology has grown exponentially over the last several decades. Early on, cryptocurrency presented a substitute for hard currency as a way to purchase goods and services. Recently, cryptocurrency has entered the video game world. How cryptocurrency, which has value outside of a video game, may impact the virtual reality world, is an open question. Presence, or the state of being in an environment, will be affected by the ability to escape within video games as cryptocurrencies are used. As video games often provide a place to escape the real world, bringing the real world into the game may have …

Trickle Down Nationalism: Interactions Between Liberal Nationalism And Colonialism In The Raj And Nigeria, Aaryaman Sheoran

CMC Senior Theses

The combination of nationalism and colonialism has remained understudied in academia, despite the important interaction between the two phenomena. European ideas bled over into their colonial empires and began to fill the power vacuum created by colonial enterprises. This study analyzes the impact of British colonialism on the development of national identity in British India and Nigeria.

British influences included large scale economic disruption, cultural reform through ‘westernizing’ the population and abolishing local customs, and creating a new set of institutions to replace traditional power centers. Inevitably, these factors created a nationalist surge across both the Raj and Nigeria, as …

The State And War On Poverty: British Welfare Development And Its Legacies For Malawi, 1930s-1983, Gift Wasambo Kayira

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation documents the struggles and dilemmas that the Malawian state endured as it attempted to achieve its developmental goals from the 1930s to 1983. It contributes to histories of development by focusing on the interventions both the colonial and postcolonial states made to improve the living standards of African rural communities, the ideas which shaped state programs, and the behavior of the state which such interventions reveal. Scholars typically argue that state policy in Malawi was necessarily destructive and limited the economic progress of the local communities. The state deliberately pursued land, market, and other agricultural policies that constrained …

Seeing Like A Citizen : Decolonization, Development, And The Making Of Kenya, 1945–1980, Kara Moskowitz

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

In Seeing Like a Citizen, Kara Moskowitz approaches Kenya’s late colonial and early postcolonial eras as a single period of political, economic, and social transition. In focusing on rural Kenyans—the vast majority of the populace and the main targets of development interventions—as they actively sought access to aid, she offers new insights into the texture of political life in decolonizing Kenya and the early postcolonial world.

Using multisited archival sources and oral histories focused on the western Rift Valley, Seeing Like a Citizen makes three fundamental contributions to our understanding of African and Kenyan history. First, it challenges the widely …

El Último Acuerdo Con El Fmi Durante El Gobierno De Mauricio Macri: El Impacto De La Deuda Externa En La Soberanía Según Los Actores Políticos Y Sociales De La Argentina / The Latest Agreement With The Imf Under The Government Of Mauricio Macri: The Impact Of Foreign Debt On The Sovereignty Of Argentina According To Social And Political Actors, Sarah Schubert

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Nobel laureate in economics, Simon Kuznets, allegedly commented “There are four kinds of countries in the world: developed countries, underdeveloped countries, Japan, and Argentina” (Reyes & Sawyer, 2019). Since the mid twentieth century, Argentina has stood out due to the complexity of its ever changing economic and political orientations. Initially recognized as a growing nation with a booming economy, Argentina soon fell victim to macroeconomic instability. Inflation, growing deficits and most notably the assumption of foreign debt have plagued the country’s economy. Known for their tumultuous relationship with the International Monetary Fund, Argentina came to declare the largest sovereign default …

Review Of The Promise And Peril Of Credit: What A Forgotten Legend About Jews And Finance Tells Us About The Making Of European Commercial Society, Jared Rubin

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

A review of The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society, by Francesca Trivellato, published by Princeton University Press.

Runaway: A History Of Postwar New York In Four Factories, Andy Battle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At midcentury, New York City was among the preeminent manufacturing centers in the United States. Within a generation, this manufacturing economy suffered an extraordinary collapse. Beginning in the 1950s, workers and their unions began to use the term “runaway” to describe factories that pulled up stakes in New York and set them back down in other climes. This dissertation explores the deindustrialization of New York City through case studies of “runaway” plants, or factories that left New York for the American South or abroad between the years 1945 and 1975.

In general, the manufacturers that remained in New York at …

Signals In The Black Stack / Geometyr Design Manual, Jason T. Scaglione

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The following white paper provides a critical accompaniment to my capstone project: the GEOMEtyr Design Manual. GEOMEtyr is a virtual reality to be made accessible as a mobile and web platform for the visualization of certain systemic elements of a utopic world that parallels our own planet’s geographies, polities, and climates. As such, the GEOMEtyr virtualization is designed to derive utopian space from the informational structures of our own world. The operations by which this may be accomplished are broadly described within the accompanying GEOMEtyr manual. The white paper, Signals in the Black Stack, elaborates vital world-building characteristics of informational …

Age Of Concrete : Housing And The Shape Of Aspiration In The Capital Of Mozambique, David Morton

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Age of Concrete is a history of the making of houses and homes in the subúrbios of Maputo (Lourenço Marques), Mozambique, from the late 1940s to the present. Often dismissed as undifferentiated, ahistorical “slums,” these neighborhoods are in fact an open-air archive that reveals some of people’s highest aspirations. At first people built in reeds. Then they built in wood and zinc panels. And finally, even when it was illegal, they risked building in concrete block, making permanent homes in a place where their presence was often excruciatingly precarious.

Unlike many histories of the built environment in African cities, Age …

Charleston And The Emergence Of Middle-Class Culture In The Revolutionary Era. By Jennifer L. Goloboy, Elizabeth White Nelson

History Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

The Farmers’ Federation: Regional Racial Mythologies As Agricultural Capital, Jama Mcmurtery Grove

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 1927, the Farmers’ Federation agricultural cooperative in Western North Carolina launched an organization to solicit funds from wealthy donors. The money raised through philanthropic campaigns enabled the cooperative to fund large-scale agricultural projects, which helped members navigate the dramatic agricultural transformations of the early twentieth century. Although the cooperative advocated a progressive program of business-minded, scientific farming, its leadership modified programs to reflect farmer members’ limited resources and the realities of mountain production. As a result, the co-op provided a crucial bridge between white farmers and new methods of agricultural production that reached deep into peoples’ familial and productive …

1st Place Contest Entry: Countering The Current: The Function Of Cinematic Waves In Communist Vs. Capitalist Societies, Maddie Gwinn

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize

This is Maddie Gwinn's submission for the 2019 Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize, which won first place. It contains her essay on using library resources, a three-page sample of her research project on how the Czech New Wave and New Hollywood cinema are defined by their agency in preserving and prescribing cultural meaning across their societies while being bound to their economic systems, and her works cited list.

Maddie is a senior at Chapman University, majoring in Film Production. Her faculty mentor is Dr. Carmichael Peters.

Yale Program On Financial Stability Lessons Learned: Scott Alvarez, Esq., Alec Buchholtz, Rosalind Z. Wiggins

Journal of Financial Crises

Alvarez, who was General Counsel of the Federal Reserve System, Board of Governors during 2007-2009, gives us his take on how best to prepare for future crises.

The Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy A: Overview, Rosalind Z. Wiggins, Thomas Piontek, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc., the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank, sought Chapter 11 protection, initiating the largest bankruptcy proceeding in U.S. history. The demise of the 164-year old firm was a seminal event in the global financial crisis. Under the direction of its long-time Chief Executive Officer Richard Fuld, Lehman had been very successful pursuing a high-leverage, high-risk business model that required it to daily raise billions of dollars to fund its operations. Beginning in 2006, Lehman began to invest aggressively in real-estate-related assets and soon had significant exposures to housing and subprime mortgages, just as these …

"I Think Of The Future": The Long 1850s And The Origins Of The Americanization Of The World, Joshua Taylor

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

While historians often point to the rise of the United States as a major global player and technological leader on the world stage in the 1890s and early 1900s, this study argues it was the 1850s, not the 1890s, that this transition occurred. It utilizes transnational methodologies to analyze European perceptions of the United States, American international businessmen, and new ways Americans thought and talked about their place in the world. During the 1850s, European travelers to the United States began to recognize the young nation was taking the lead in technological innovation, while American businessmen like Samuel Colt began …

A Tall Ship: The Rise Of The International Mercantile Marine, Jeffrey N. Brown

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Between 1890 and the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, nations on both sides of the Atlantic attempted to gain prestige by building the world's greatest steamships for their merchant marines. In 1901, the United States entered this competition with the advent of J.P. Morgan's International Mercantile Marine, which built on the previous work of shipping magnate Clement Griscom. This project will explore why and how Morgan built his monopoly and the implications and repercussions this project had for both Atlantic shipping and U.S. foreign relations. Moving beyond Morgan the man, it also tells the story of the key …

Immigration, Small Business And Assimilation: Three Stories Of Small-Time Capitalism On The Lower East Side, Marcus Hillman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Small businesses in New York City have often been a catalyst to assimilation for individual immigrants, their families and their communities. For this capstone project, I have recorded conversations with three small-time entrepreneurs on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and created a narrative audio piece that explores some of the important and study-worthy characteristics of New York City including economic opportunities in the city, immigration, assimilation and the ways that New Yorkers share space, just to name a few. These themes are threads that ran through all three of the conversations that I had and are crucial elements of …

Spanish California Missions: An Economic Success, Lynne Doti

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Starting in 1769, the Spanish established missions in Alta California. A small band of soldiers, Franciscan priests and volunteers walked from Baja California to San Francisco Bay through semi-arid, scarcely populated land stopping occasionally to establish a location for a religious community. Usually two priests, a few soldiers and a few Indians from Baja California settled at the spot. Their only resources for starting an economy were themselves, a few animals and a nearby source of water. They attracted the local Indians to join the community and perform the work necessary to create a strong economy. After only a few …

The Explosion Development Of Chinese Contemporary Art Market From 2000 To 2015, Yaning Wang

MA Theses

After Chinese Culture Revolution, the brand new chapter was approaching which opened for the modern Chinese art history; Chinese contemporary art has been deepened understanding by the art market. In the context of an emerging market, art is as much a matter of cultural economy as socio-politics. Thus the thesis will focus on the challenges facing the market and how tradition and economics providing the framework for the sustainability of art market. It will present a historical overview of emergence of Chinese contemporary art the period of 2000 to 2015 and expose the unbreakable bind between the development of its …

Money And The Downfall Of A Democracy Economic Crises And The Weimar Republic, Leshan Xiao

History - Master of Arts in Teaching

I. Synthesis Essay……………………………….2

II. Primary Documents and Headnotes……….32

III. Textbook Critique…………………………….45

IV. New Textbook Entry…………………………48

V. Bibliography…………………………………..54

The Spirit Is Willing, But The Flesh Is Weak: Contemporary Pan-Africanism And The Challenges To A United States Of Africa, Adesola Adeyemo

Master's Theses

Establishing a ‘United States of Africa’ to the average individual is deemed as a mythical idea in contemporary Africa, irrespective of the popularity of this idea several years ago. Today, the idea is idealized as overambitious – considering the balkanized state of the continent post-colonialization. Because of this, attempts made since then have favored enforcing regional integration over continental integration. Undeniably, this idea would not have come into being if it wasn’t for the concept of Pan-Africanism - which has for long guided the political and socio-economic policies created on the continent. The goal of this research is …

Working Paper No. 02, Marx On British Colonialism In India, Lauren Sweger-Hollingsworth

Working Papers in Economics

This inquiry seeks to establish that Karl Marx offers a penetrating understanding of British colonialism in India. Marx emphasizes that England essentially leveled the entire foundation of Indian society, separating India from its ancient traditions and history, destroying the basis for the regions agriculture, and undermining their manufacturing industries. The Court of Directors, under the authorization of the Crown, appointed the government of India. The administration allocated the country to the highest bidder, cost Indian citizens large sums of money each year, and perpetuated its abuses. Furthermore, the system of taxation was onerous and more oppressive than any other in …

The Socialist World In The Second Age Of Globalization: An Alternative History?, James M. Robertson

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

The history of the Second Age of Globalization (from 1945 through to the present) has traditionally been told through the lens of either the industrially advanced First World, or, more critically, the developing countries of the Third World. Less is known about the experience of globalization in the so-called “Second World”, the socialist states of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. The following review essay draws on recent work in the history of globalization to show that, contrary to long-held assumptions that socialism was an autarkic system that cut countries off from the wider world, post-war socialist countries …

The Evolution Of The International Corporate Tax Regime, 1920-2008, Richard Woodward

Books/Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Review Of Reading The Market: Genres Of Financial Capitalism In Gilded Age America, Lynne P. Doti

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Peter Knight's Reading the Market: Genres of Financial Capitalism in Gilded Age America.