What determines when states adopt war taxes to finance the cost of conflict? We address this question with a study of war taxes in the United States between 1789 and 2010. Using logit estimation of the determinants of war taxes, an analysis of roll-call votes on war tax legislation, and a historical case study of the Civil War, we provide evidence that partisan fiscal differences account whether the United States finances its conflicts through war taxes or opts for alternatives such as borrowing or expanding the money supply. Because the fiscal policies implemented to raise the revenues for war have considerable and often enduring redistributive impacts, war finance—in particular, war taxation—becomes a high-stakes political opportunity to advance the fiscal interests of core constituencies. Insofar as the alternatives to taxation shroud the actual costs of war, the findings have important implications for democratic accountability and the conduct of conflict. - Downloaded via iphone

Glaeser, Edward L, Rafael LaPorta, Florencio López-de-Silanes, and Andrei Shleifer. 2004. “Do Institutions Cause Growth?.” Journal of Economic Growth 9 (3): 271-303.

Abstract
Does democracy encourage free trade? It depends. Broadening the franchise involves transferring power from non-elected elites to the wider population, most of whom will be workers. The Hecksher-Ohlin-Stolper-Samuelson logic says that democratization should lead to more liberal trade policies in countries where workers stand to gain from free trade; and to more protectionist policies in countries where workers will benefit from the imposition of tariffs and quotas. We test and confirm these political economy implications of trade theory hypothesis using data on democracy, factor endowments, and protection in the late nineteenth century. -- published in MIT Press collection in honor of Jeffrey Williamson - The New Comparative Economics -- downloaded via iPhone to DBOX

Abstract
This paper analyses drivers of imports during the major world trade collapses of the Great Depression (1930s; 34 countries) and the Great Recession (1930s; 173 countries). The analysis deals with the first year of these episodes and develops a small empirical model that shows a significant impact of the development of GDP, the share of manufacturing goods in total imports and the political system. The analysis reveals substantial heterogeneity with respect to regional importance of these drivers. -- downloaded via iPhone to DBOX

A new working paper by James Bessen from Boston University finds that much of the rise in corporate profits since 2000 was caused by political rent seeking.

Affiliations World Bank and Harvard - What happens in the developing world when stringent regulations characterizing the investment climate meet weak government willingness or capability to enforce those regulations? How is business actually done? The Doing Business project surveys experts concerning the legally required time and costs of regulatory compliance for various aspects of private enterprise—starting a firm, dealing with construction permits, trading across borders, paying taxes, getting credit, enforcing contracts, and so on—around the world. The World Bank's firm-level Enterprise Surveys around the world ask managers at a wide array of firms about their business, including questions about how long it took to go through various processes like obtaining an operating license or a construction permit, or bringing in imports. This paper compares the results of three broadly comparable indicators from the Doing Business and Enterprise Surveys. Overall, we find that the estimate of legally required time for firms to complete a certain legal and regulatory process provided by the Doing Business survey does not summarize even modestly well the experience of firms as reported by the Enterprise Surveys. When strict de jure regulation and high rates of taxation meet weak governmental capabilities for implementation and enforcement, we argue that researchers and policymakers should stop thinking about regulations as creating "rules" to be followed, but rather as creating a space in which "deals" of various kinds are possible. -- downloaded pdf to Note

What constitutes economic expertise? Looking at how European politics has answered this question over the last four centuries, Werner Plumpe argues that, at any given time, economic expertise is judged according to its coincidence with the conjuncture. -- Original in German -- Translation by Samuel Willcocks -- First published in Merkur 9-10/2012 (German version); Eurozine (English version) -- quite amusing, but nice overview that isn't excessively Anglo oriented

Suzanne J. Konzelmann, Birkbeck College - Social Sciences, School of Management and Organizational Psychology; Cambridge - Social and Political Sciences -- Marc Fovargue-Davies, U of London - The London Centre for Corporate Governance & Ethics -- The return to economic liberalism in the Anglo-Saxon world was motivated by the apparent failure of Keynesian economic management to control the stagflation of the 1970s and early 1980s. In this context, the theories of economic liberalism, championed by Friederich von Hayek, Milton Friedman and the Chicago School economists, provided an alternative. However, the divergent experience of the US, UK, Canada and Australia reveals two distinct ‘varieties’ of economic liberalism: the ‘neo-classical’ incarnation, which describes American and British liberal capitalism, and the more ‘balanced’ economic liberalism that evolved in Canada and Australia. In large part, these were a product of the way that liberal economic theory was understood and translated into policy, which in turn shaped the evolving relationship between the state and the private sector and the relative position of the financial sector within the broader economic system. Together, these determined the nature and extent of financial market regulation and the system’s relative stability during the 2008 crisis. -- PDF File: 61 -- Keywords: Corporate governance, Regulation, Financial market instability, Liberal capitalism, Varieties of capitalism -- downloaded pdf to Note

The question of diplomatic identity has rarely seen study from a specifically historical perspective rooted in the long term. This analysis explores the role and self-perceptions of an unknown and, yet, central actor in the French economic diplomacy: the commercial counsellor. It offers new and stimulating ideas on the entangled links between State and the business sphere in France. The fundamental ambivalence of the commercial counsellor’s identity illuminates the atypical nature of French commercial diplomacy from 1918 to the 2000s. Through assimilation into the Ministry of Economy and in a Janus-like role facing both the Quai d’Orsay and French companies, French commercial counsellors have had to endure a complicated situation whilst remaining the Cinderella of the diplomatic sphere. Deploying an historical analysis to enrich the contemporary debate on the state of diplomacy, this study explores the impact of interventions by non-state actors at the heart of the diplomatic machinery. Far from being an innovation of the 1990s, this intervention was a recurring theme throughout the twentieth century, and its examination sheds new light on the persistence of the neo-corporatist practice of commercial diplomacy in France. -- paywall

Edited by Kerstin Martens, Alessandra Rusconi, Kathrin Leuze -- How and to what extent is education becoming a field of international and market governance? Traditionally, education policy making has been viewed as the responsibility of the nation state, falling within the realm of domestic politics. But recent years have witnessed the transformation of the state. Globalization has introduced new actors and led to the internationalization and marketization of education. This volume provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date account of these new arenas of education governance, examining the impact of international organizations and the role of the market in policymaking. It demonstrates how education policy is formulated at international levels and what the consequences for national policy making will be. -- excerpt = TOC, Introduction and index -- downloaded pdf to Note

Harvard University - Harvard Business School *--* A long-standing ideology in business education has been that a corporation is run for the sole interest of its shareholders. I present an alternative view where increasing concentration of economic activity and power in the world’s largest corporations, the Global 1000, has opened the way for managers to consider the interests of a broader set of stakeholders rather than only shareholders. Having documented that this alternative view better fits actual corporate conduct, I discuss opportunities for future research. Specifically, I call for research on the materiality of environmental and social issues for the future financial performance of corporations, the design of incentive and control systems to guide strategy execution, corporate reporting, and the role of investors in this new paradigm. -- Pages in PDF File: 27 -- Keywords: corporate performance, corporate size, sustainability, corporate social responsibility, accounting -- downloaded pdf to Note

3 leading scholars in the fields of business, economic, and social history review the current state of these disciplines and reflect on their future trajectory. Jones reviews the development of business history since its birth at HBS during the 1920s. He notes the discipline's unique record as a pioneer of the scholarly study of entrepreneurship, multinationals, and the relationship between strategy and structure in corporations, as well as its more recent accomplishments, including exploring new domains such as family business, networks and business groups, and retaining an open architecture and inter-disciplinary approach. Yet Jones also notes that the discipline has struggled to achieve a wider impact, in part because of methodological under-development. He discusses 3 alternative futures for the discipline. (1) which he rejects, is a continuing growth of research domains to create a diffuse "business history of everything." (2) is a re-integration with the sister discipline of economic history, which has strongly recovered from its near-extinction 2 decades ago through a renewed attention to globalization and the Great Divergence between the West and the Rest. (3) which he supports, is that business historians retain a distinct identity by building on their proud tradition of deep engagement with empirical evidence by raising the bar in methodology and focusing on big issues for which many scholars, practitioners and students seek answers. He identifies 4 such big issues related to debates on entrepreneurship, globalization, business and the natural environment, and the social and political responsibility of business.

Princeton University Press, 2014. ix + 399 pp., ISBN: 978-0-691-15944-7. -- Donald E. Frey, Department of Economics, Wake Forest University, author of America’s Economic Moralists: A History of Rival Ethics and Economics (SUNY Press, 2009). -- Gabriel Abend argues that a range of cultural beliefs and thought patterns provide an influential “moral background” as context for the more obvious everyday morality. Most of his book looks at business ethics during the period from the 1850s through the 1930s through the lens of the moral background concept. (..) In my own work on economic moralists, something like a “moral background” appeared to be enlightening. My thesis was that economic moralities (yes, two competing moralities, just as Abend deals with two competing business ethics) drew support from alternative economic theories (again differing economic theories, just as Abend has different moral backgrounds). Perhaps economic theory is a much narrower kind of “moral background” than Abend envisions, but it is a reasonable proxy for a moral background. It is a distinct body of thought, often familiar — in one form or another — to much of the population. And economic theory can indeed support or undermine some kinds of moralities (for example, if economic outcomes are viewed as the efficient work of impersonal markets, moral concerns for equity are put on the defensive). I think Abend might have described a convincing moral foundation in Chapter 6, perhaps by linking the Standards school to antecedents such as Benjamin Franklin (briefly noted in Chapter 2), and to ideas that were abroad in economics. Abend, I think, has a good concept, and is at least partially successful.

This working paper examines the evolution of concepts of the responsibility of business in a historical and global perspective. It shows that from the nineteenth century American, European, Japanese, Indian and other business leaders discussed the responsibilities of business beyond making profits, although until recently such views have not been mainstream. There was also a wide variation concerning the nature of this responsibility. This paper argues that four factors drove such beliefs: spirituality; self-interest; fears of government intervention; and the belief that governments were incapable of addressing major social issues.

Keywords: Rachel Carson; Sustainability; Local Food; Operations Management; Supply Chain; Business And Society; Business Ethics; Business History; Corporate Philanthropy; Corporate Social Responsibility; Corporate Social Responsibility And Impact; Environmentalism; Environmental Entrepreneurship; Environmental And Social Sustainability; Ethics; Globalization; History; Religion; Consumer Products Industry; Chemical Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Energy Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Forest Products Industry; Green Technology Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Asia; Europe; Latin America; Middle East; North and Central America; Africa

Georgia State University College of Law -- Georgia State University Law Review, Vol. 26, No. 4, p. 1147, 2010 -- The article examines major developments in the statutes, regulations and Supreme Court cases that have regulated consumer financial services since 1969. Major victories and defeats in the battle for laws protecting consumers are described. Consumer protection law is analyzed within the context of consumerism and its role as a movement for social change and law reform. The article describes the development of a permanent organizational structure for engaging in consumer law reform. This development has resulted in the institutionalization of consumerism and its values have become embedded in society’s values, better ensuring its survival. Finally, the article explores the prospects of the continued development of strong consumer protection law and the perils it faces in the future. -- Number of Pages in PDF File: 64 - Keywords: consumer protection, consumers, financial services, consumer protection law, consumerism, social change, reform, consumer law, legal history. -- didn't download

Social theory is experiencing something of a revival within economics. Critical analyses of the particular nature of the subject matter of social studies and of the types of method, categories and modes of explanation that can legitimately be endorsed for the scientific study of social objects, are re-emerging. Economists are again addressing such issues as the relationship between agency and structure, between the economy and the rest of society, and between inquirer and the object of inquiry. There is renewed interest in elaborating basic categories such as causation, competition, culture, discrimination,evolution, money, need, order, organisation, power, probability, process, rationality, technology, time, truth, uncertainty and value, etc. The objective for this series is to facilitate this revival further. In contemporary economics the label `theory' has been appropriated by a group that confines itself to largely a-social, a-historical, mathematical `modelling'. Economics as Social Theory thus reclaims the `theory' label, offering a platform for alternative, rigorous, but broader and more critical conceptions of theorising.

Paper read at the annual meeting of the History of Economics Society. Fairfax, Virginia. 1-2 June (1992). pp. 1-75. -- This essay deals with the relationship between stagflation and the process of restructuring. The literature dealing with the interaction of stagnation and inflation is invariably based on some explicit or implicit assumptions about economic structure, but there are very few writings which concentrate specifically on the link between the macroeconomic phenomenon of stagflation and the process of structural change. Of the few who dealt with this issue, we have chosen to focus mainly on two important contributors – Mancur Olson and Thorstein Veblen. The first based his theory on neoclassical principles, attempting to demonstrate their universality across time and place. The second was influenced by the historical school and concentrated specifically on the institutional features of modern capitalism. Despite the fundamental differences in their respective frameworks, both writers arrive at a similar conclusion, namely, that the phenomenon of stagflation is inherent in the dynamic evolution of collective economic action, particularly in the rise and consolidation of 'distributional coalitions.' -- Keywords: absentee ownership, intangible assets, big business, bonds, capital, accumulation, capitalism, collective action, collusion, corporation, credit, degree of monopoly, distributional coalitions, excess capacity, finance, immaterial wealth, income distribution, industry, inflation, institutions, interest, labour, liabilities, machine process, material wealth, neoclassical economics, normal rate of return, power, price, profit, productivity, property, sabotage, scarcity, stagnation, stagflation, stocks, tangible assets, technology, United States, value

The relationship between sabotage and redistribution is inherently nonlinear. This research note illustrates aspects of this nolinearity in the case of the United States. 5 pages - Web page has links to small Excel sheet and 5 jpegs of the graphs. -- Keywords: sabotage redistribution United States-- Subjects: BN Conflict & Violence, BN Data & Statistics, BN Methodology, BN Resistance, BN Power, BN Region - North America, BN Capital & Accumulation, BN Business Enterprise -- downloaded pdf to Note