Weather forecast or rain-dance? On inter-war business barometers

In this paper, I use the materials of the debate on the reliability and the utility of “business barometers” of the Twenties in order to show that the theoretical reflexions of the time could be used by economic historians as a working hypothesis to analyze the influence exerted by circulating statistical data on the decisions of economic operators and institutions. I offer a short illustration of the origins and circulation of economic trends forecasting in the first decades of 20th century, paying particular attention to the critical attitude shown by Corrado Gini and Oskar Morgenstern and to the debate arisen inside the Harvard Committee for Economic Research on the inefficiency of its “index of economic conditions” during the 1929 crisis. I finally suggest that thorough research on the circulation and the influence exerted by the Harvard index on the business world, still after the slump in prices of New York Stock Exchange, could contribute to explain the behaviour of American businessmen and investors during the first Thirties, and the deepening of the crisis.Economic forecasts, 1930s crisis, US

Teaching urban history in Italian universities

This paper presents the situation of Urban History teaching in Italian universities, using the results of a web search and of an inquiry performed among Italian teachers by means of a form distribution and collection.urban history, teaching, Italy

Le tour du monde: les memoires de voyage d’un emigrant de Schio en Russie et au Canada au début du XXe siècle

This paper deals with the problem of family links among individuals when separated, using the memoirs of an Italian emigrant in Russia and Canada during the first decades of 20th century and his letters home.memoirs, emigration, family

Le système d’innovation de Benetton et ses limites

This paper focuses on the innovation system in the Benetton case: on the one hand, it puts in evidence the ability of the company in exploiting institutional conditions in order to develop a network organisation and a series of coordinated innovations; on the other hand, it investigates on the characteristics of the circulation of innovation among Benetton suppliers and distributors. The paper was presented at the conference Les systèmes d’innovations: multiplicité des échelles, diversité des espaces, Bordeaux, Maison de Sciences de l’Homme d’Aquitaine, November 16-17, 2006.Innovation, network firm, industrial policies.

Old and new ceramics: manufactures, products and markets in the Venetian Republic in the 17th and 18th centuries

This contribution aims to draw up a map of ceramics production sites in the Venetian area from 1600 to 1800, bearing particular attention to institutional and informal devices allowing local production to adapt to European markets trends and innovations. The paper investigates the logics of privileges allowance to pivate entrepreneurs outside of the guilds framework, conceived probably as a protection for offer more than for demand: they had to do with the exploitation of natural resources at a local level (water, raw materials), and of the services of a labor force accumulating specialized skills working in close contact with foreign invited artisans. The defence and seizure of industrial expertise was in fact the object of enduring court cases between manufacturers fighting to retain and attract highly qualified workers. These were the actual agents of innovation exchange among European, Italian and regional production centres. Continuous exchange and imitation allowed Venetian privileged firms to keep positions in econdary European markets providing most of the demand for local production.ceramics, guilds, privileged firms, Venetian Republic

The Becoming of the Past: an Exploration of Temporal Tension Enactments in a Historical Café

The uses of the past are the subject of a stream of research at the intersection of organization studies and business history, which highlights the importance of the past as a “tool” for organizations, but also acknowledges its potential being an “arena of struggle” among organizational actors. However, most contributions in this literature study the uses of the past quite statically, at a given moment in time. Adopting a temporality perspective - i.e. considering the past as constantly (re)negotiated in the present and in relation with the future -, and employing a retrospective study based on historical sources, this paper aims at understanding how the past becomes past and how it informs future outcomes. The empirical case used to explore this research question is the Caffè Pedrocchi, an historical café in Padua (Italy), which the founder’s heir left as a bequest to the Municipality, explicitly positing a past-future tension in the use of its past. We found out that in the history of the café there was no such thing as “the” past to be projected for the future, but four main forms that the same café’s past took (legacy, burden, constraint, enabler), varying along two dimensions: the past’s positive/negative value, and the active/passive role assigned to it. Also, every form of the past came with at least two possible future outcomes: continuous future (the maintenance of the status quo) and discontinuous future, occurring whenever some actor intervened influentially, also creating a new form of the past. By disentangling the role of the past beyond being just a tool or an arena of struggle, we provide a processual view on how the past shifts its forms according to the actors’ interventions and future outcomes

Accounting fraud, business failure and creative auditing: A microanalysis of the strange case of the Sunbeam Corporation

This article closely examines the Sunbeam Corporation's path to failure and explores the reasons for its singularity. From the analysis of US fraud cases included in the UCLA-LoPucki Bankruptcy Research Database, this corporate case appears as an outlier. For Sunbeam, the time-lapse between fraud disclosure and its final bankruptcy is the longest of the entire sample; it is unique because of its length. This article uses a historical microanalysis to evaluate different hypotheses about the Sunbeam Corporation's path to failure. The relationships between acquisitions and fraud, scapegoat dynamics' and creative auditing' are identified as the most relevant issues to be examined against a changing institutional context. The resulting reconstruction of the events provides unexpected insights and recommendations for future research on auditing and accounting fraud

Catalase-based modified graphite electrode for hydrogen peroxide detection in different beverages

A catalase-based (NAF/MWCNTs) nanocomposite film modified glassy carbon electrode for hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) detection was developed. The developed biosensor was characterized in terms of its bioelectrochemical properties. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) technique was employed to study the redox features of the enzyme in the absence and in the presence of nanomaterials dispersed in Nafion polymeric solution. The electron transfer coefficient, , and the electron transfer rate constant, , were found to be 0.42 and 1.71 s−1, at pH 7.0, respectively. Subsequently, the same modification steps were applied to mesoporous graphite screenprinted electrodes. Also, these electrodes were characterized in terms of their main electrochemical and kinetic parameters. The biosensor performances improved considerably after modification with nanomaterials. Moreover, the association of Nafion with carbon nanotubes retained the biological activity of the redox protein. The enzyme electrode response was linear in the range 2.5– 1150 mol L−1, with LOD of 0.83 mol L−1. From the experimental data, we can assess the possibility of using the modified biosensor as a useful tool for H2O2 determination in packaged beverages