Economic History Commons^™

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 …

Entrepreneurship Education Empowers Youth To Change Their Lives, Marianna Brashear, Jason Riddle

National Youth Advocacy & Resilience Conference

The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) aims at equipping Title 1 schools with free, hands-on, engaging materials that any teacher can facilitate either individually or in a classroom setting with no background in entrepreneurship necessary. These versatile lessons, courses, and workshops teach the entrepreneurial mindset optimizing opportunities for grades 8-12 students no matter which life/career path they choose.

The Purloined Letters: A Collection Of Mail Robbery Reports From Ohio Papers, 1841-1850, Marc Cibella

Nineteenth-Century Ohio Literature

Marc Cibella’s essay introduces and explains why nineteenth-century Americans got excited about newspaper reports of mail robbery.

The Symbolic U.S. Dollar: An Exploration Of Transforming Meanings, Dylann Ward

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The currency used in the United States (U.S.) is called the dollar. Repeatedly individuals holding lawful positions, within the U.S. government, have used their legal power to change the meanings attached to the U.S. dollar. This study was able to show how a U.S. dollar transforming event can be understood as action taken on the part of individuals holding lawful positions, within the U.S. government, to fundamentally change the meaning attached to the U.S. dollar in efforts to either maintain or elevate the position of the U.S. relative to other countries within the international field. Such was the case in …

The New American Slavery: Capitalism And The Ghettoization Of American Prisons As A Profitable Corporate Business, David A. Liburd

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The labor of enslaved Africans and Black Americans played a large part in the history of colonial America, with the American plantation being the epicenter for all that was to be produced. While the two have never been completely tied together, capitalism and modern day slavery have been linked with one another. Some analysis sees slavery as a remote form of capitalism, a substitute, to an antiquated form of labor in the modern world.

Slave plantations adopted a new concentration in size and management, referred to by W.E. DuBois as a change "from a family institution to an industrial system."1 …

Crafting Chaos: The Classification Of Unilateral Transfers Under The Current Account At Bretton Woods And Its Impact On Remittances To The Indian State Of Kerala, Anish Gawande

Undergraduate Economic Review

This essay aims to analyse the classification of unilateral transfers under the current account at Bretton Woods despite significant opposition from larger delegations of major Allied powers, bringing to the forefront the global liquidity of remittances in the post-War years permitted by their fully currency convertible nature. Using the example of the Indian State of Kerala, this paper charts the relevance of their sustained uninterrupted flow to their subsequent exponential growth in the last three decades, using the case study as a pivot to argue for better policy measures that maximise their multiplier effect.

The Relevance Of Economic, Institutional And Cultural Determinants For Venture Capital Investments. A Us-Europe Comparison., Nadja Benes

Master's Theses

This study analyzes the determinants of early-stage VC investments by identifying characteristics in the economic, institutional, as well as cultural framework that could explain the diverging levels of early-stage VC investments across countries. Data was assembled for 16 countries during the period from 1995 until 2013. The results indicate that countries that are more open to trade are associated with higher levels in early-stage venture capital. A higher unemployment rate negatively affects a country’s level of early-stage VC funds. Higher R&D expenditures as a proxy for the technological and innovation capacity in a country as well as a higher value …

El Modelo Médico, El Capitalismo Y La Acción Pública: Un Estudio Sobre Discapacidad Y Empleo En La Argentina / The Medical Model, Capitalism And Public Action:A Study Of Disability And Employment In Argentina, Zoe Zakin

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

People with disabilities are one of the largest “minority” groups in the world, accounting for approximately 15% of the global population. They are still, however, denied most of their basic rights in countries around the world. While movements have been made around access to education, transportation, and health systems, people with disabilities are still culturally thought of as incapable of being able to work. By being characterized this way, people with disabilities are denied a most basic human right. In Argentina, there has been greater effort in recent years to provide services for people with disabilities, which are a growing …

Trade, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Provides a historical overview of analysis of U.S. foreign trade policy during the early decades of the country's history. Examines bilateral U.S. trade relations with France and Great Britain, provides import and export statistics, details on commodities and products imports and exported, trade statistics, and information on the political and economic factors shaping U.S. trade during this period.

Revenue, U.S. Government, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Provides a historical overview of U.S. Government revenue receipts and spending during the early years of national history. Presents revenue generation statistics, information on revenue sources, and information on domestic and international political and economic factors affecting government revenue receipts.

New York Stock Exchange, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Provides a historical overview of the origins and early development of the New York Stock Exchange.

Export Controls: A Contemporary History, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides highlights of my recently published book Export Controls: A Contemporary History. Describes the roles played by multiple U.S. Government agencies and congressional oversight committees in this policymaking arena including the Commerce, Defense, State, and Treasury Departments. It also reviews the roles played by international government organizations such as the Missile Technology Control Regime, export oriented businesses, and research intensive universities.

Defense, U.S. Department Of, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Provides an overview of U.S. Department of Defense activities in the western U.S. including the military's increasing emphasis on Asia-Pacific strategic trends and developments.

Subsidies, Agricultural, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Provides historical and contemporary information on U.S. Government agricultural subsidies and how they affect agricultural policy in the Western U.S.

Struggling Recovery And Economic Policy Uncertainty: Testimony Before The Joint Revenue Hearing, House And Senate Ways And Means Committees, Massachusetts State House, Boston, Ma, Christian Weller

Public Policy and Public Affairs Faculty Publication Series

The U.S. economy is in the fourth year of a recovery that started in June 2009. The fact that the economy is in recovery, even modestly, is something of a miracle given how stacked the deck is against it.

This is absolutely unique in American economic history: There has never been a recovery without the housing market expanding substantially as well; There has never been a recovery with state and local governments shrinking for three years in a row; There has never been a recovery with households owing, on average, well more than 100 percent of their after-tax income in …

From Financing Social Insurance To Insuring Financial Markets: The Socialisation Of Risk And The Privatisation Of Profit In An Age Of Irresponsibility, Simon Lee, Richard Woodward

Books/Book Chapters

Commentaries on the financial meltdown that began with Lehman Brothers’ collapse in September 2008 trace its origins to greedy bankers exploiting lax regulatory practices to take excessive risks through exotic and arcane financial instruments. While not wishing to demur from this analysis this chapter takes issue with the frequent failure to acknowledge that this has come about as a consequence of the (mis)application of state power over the past 50 years (see Helleiner 1994). Starting with the tacit support for the development of the Euromarkets in the 1960s and culminating with the responses to the turmoil of 2008-2010 the chapter …

Introduction To The Symposium On 'Financial Risks And Economic Stability In Emerging Market Economies', Lucjan Orlowski

WCBT Faculty Publications

Developing resilience to contagion effects from global financial crises and economic recessions has been an ongoing crucial task for policymakers in emerging market economies. The recent global financial crisis of 2007-2009 has underscored the importance of pursuing disciplined macroeconomic policies and of devising sound macroprudential regulations that would strengthen the immunity of emerging markets and their institutions to various types of risks, including credit, default, sovereign, liquidity and market risks. The studies included in this symposium are not intended to provide a comprehensive overview of financial vulnerabilities in a broad spectrum of emerging markets. Rather, they share a common aim …

Friedrich Von Hayek: The Socialist-Calculation Debate, Knowledge Arguments, And Modern Economic Development, Cara A. Elliott

Gettysburg Economic Review

At the close of the nineteenth and the commencement of the twentieth century, socialism began to gain momentum as a large-scale movement in Europe and the United States. This popularity was supported by an increased influence of the working class in society, which put pressure for representation upon European parliaments and began to secure concrete improvements in labor protection laws. Moreover, socialist proponents looked hopefully towards the living example of the Soviet Union, which began its socialist experiment in 1917 following the success of the Bolshevik Revolution. Socialism, which found its economic grounding in the legacies of such men as …

Mountain Monitor-4th Quarter 2009, Mark Muro, Jonathan Rothwell

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

The Mountain West’s recovery from the Great Recession is spreading. Output is growing in every metropolitan area. Still, hiring remains elusive—a fact frustrating the entire nation, but perhaps more so in a region used to snapping, even roaring, back from recessions faster than the rest of the nation. Drawing on data covering the fourth quarter of 2009 (ending in December), this new Mountain Monitor—a companion product to Brookings’ national MetroMonitor and a quarterly resource produced by Brookings Mountain West, a partnership between Brookings and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas—surveys a region that is at once recovering and still …

See No Evil? Revisiting Early Visions Of The Social Responsibility Of Business: Adolf A. Berle’S Contribution To Contemporary Conversations, Erika George

Seattle University Law Review

Much corporate legal scholarship considers such fact patterns as beyond the scope of the discipline’s core concerns. Yet, increasingly, questions are asked concerning the scale and scope of modern corporate power. This Article will challenge the conventional understanding of what the core discipline of corporate law should encompass and argues that the failure to focus on precisely these sorts of factual scenarios involving allegations of corporate complicity in human rights violations and environmental degradation is misguided and short-sighted.

Neo-Brandeisianism And The New Deal: Adolf A. Berle, Jr., William O. Douglas, And The Problem Of Corporate Finance In The 1930s, Jessica Wang

Seattle University Law Review

This essay revisits Adolf A. Berle, Jr. and The Modern Corporation and Private Property by focusing on the triangle of Berle, Louis D. Brandeis, and William O. Douglas in order to examine some of the underlying assumptions about law, economics, and the nature of modern society behind securities regulation and corporate finance in the 1930s. I explore Douglas and Berle’s academic and political relationship, the conceptual underpinnings of Brandeis, Berle, and Douglas’s critiques of modern finance, and the ways in which the two younger men—Berle and Douglas—ultimately departed from their role model, Brandeis.

Foreword: In Berle’S Footsteps, Charles R.T. O'Kelley

Seattle University Law Review

On the weekend of November 6–8, 2009, scholars from around the world gathered in Seattle for a symposium—In Berle’s Footsteps—celebrating the launch of the Adolf A. Berle, Jr. Center on Corporations, Law and Society. As founding director of the Berle Center, I described our undertaking: “It is with a profound sense of obligation to the legacy that has been entrusted to my care, that I announce the launching of the Adolf A. Berle, Jr. Center on Corporations, Law and Society. It is a privilege to follow in Berle’s footsteps.”

Opening Remarks, Chancellor William B. Chandler Iii

Seattle University Law Review

Law is, in many ways, a backwards-looking field. We litigate over facts that have already occurred, challenge deals that have already been signed, and apply rules of decision based on previously-established precedent or statutes already enacted. To the extent that this Center and the symposium reflect on Berle’s work, they too are an exercise in looking back. Indeed, some might say the establishment of a Center named in Berle’s honor is a monument to the past.

Revisiting Berle And Rethinking The Corporate Structure, Kelli A. Alces

Seattle University Law Review

Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means painted what remains a defining portrait of corporate law. The separation of ownership and control they described and the agency costs it causes are still a central concern of the law of corporate governance. For that reason, Berle’s work is relevant nearly eighty years after its publication. Seemingly forgotten, however, is that Berle’s enduring description of the corporate structure was published before most of today’s corporate law was in place. His work preceded the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and even preceded the dominance of Delaware common law in …

Power Without Property, Still: Unger, Berle, And The Derivatives Revolution, Cristie Ford, Carol Liao

Seattle University Law Review

We are in a time when the notion of property is in flux. The derivatives revolution has shattered the “atom of property” well beyond what was originally imagined in 1932 by Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means. This disaggregation has had fascinating, and often adverse, effects on corporate law and securities regulation. Moreover, the phenomenon has had the unexpected effect of permitting some parties that already possess considerable social, economic, and political power to accumulate even more.

The New Financial Assets: Separating Ownership From Control, Tamar Frankel

Seattle University Law Review

In The Modern Corporation and Private Property, Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner Means wrote about the separation of ownership from control in corporations. They noted that the interests of the controlling directors and managers can diverge from those of the shareholder owners of the firm. . . . There are those who consider such a decoupling beneficial. Others express the same concern that Berle and Means have expressed. And depending on what one focuses on in viewing the pluses and minuses of these separations, one could reach different conclusions. I reach a number of conclusions. First, the separation of …

Then And Now: Professor Berle And The Unpredictable Shareholder, Jennifer G. Hill

Seattle University Law Review

Shareholders, and the relationship between shareholders and management, lay at the heart of Professor Berle’s scholarship. The goal of this Article is to compare the image of shareholders emerging from The Modern Corporation and Private Property and the Berle/Dodd debate with a range of contemporary visions of the shareholder that underpin some international regulatory responses to recent financial debacles, from Enron to the current global financial crisis. As the Article dis- cusses, these recent developments in the era of financial crises have prompted a reevaluation of the traditional image of the shareholder—and the role of the shareholder in the modern …

Berle And The Entrepreneur, Charles R.T. O'Kelley

Seattle University Law Review

In the first and last four chapters (“the Five Chapters”) of The Modern Corporation and Private Property, Adolf Berle, Jr. describes in sweeping terms a fundamental transformation of the American economy. . . . Writing more than ten years before Berle, another seminal scholar, Frank Knight . . . developed a theory of the entrepreneur as part of his larger effort to more carefully explain the theoretical underpinnings of a free-market economy. . . . Given Knight’s prominence and the fact that Knight apparently reached dramatically different conclusions than did Berle concerning the consequences flowing from separation of ownership …

The Birth Of Corporate Governance, Harwell Wells

Seattle University Law Review

Part I of this Article briefly examines the concept of “corporate governance” and argues for dating the concept’s origins to the debates of the 1920s. Part II then moves on to examine early scholarly and popular discussions of the separation of ownership and control. After surveying the historical developments that produced the recognizably modern corporate economy around the turn of the century, it examines early scholarly and popular discussions of the separation of ownership and control, focusing on three major thinkers, Louis D. Brandeis, Walter Lippmann, and Thorstein Veblen. It argues that, while each of these authors examined the separation …

Monitoring To Reduce Agency Costs: Examining The Behavior Of Independent And Non-Independent Boards, Anita Anand, Frank Milne, Lynnette Purda

Seattle University Law Review

Berle and Means’s analysis of the corporation—in particular, their view that those in control are not the owners of the corporation—raises questions about actions that corporations take to counter concerns regarding management’s influence. What mechanisms, if any, do corporations implement to balance the distribution of power in the corporation? To address this question, we analyze boards of directors’ propensity to voluntarily adopt recommended corporate governance practices. Because board independence is one way to enhance shareholders’ ability to monitor management, we probe whether firms with independent boards of directors (which we define as boards with either an independent chair or a …