Growth, profits and technological choice: The case of the Lancashire cotton textile industry

Using Lancashire textile industry company case studies and financial records, mainly from the period just before the First World War, the processes of growth and decline are re-examined. These are considered by reference to the nature of Lancashire entrepreneurship and the impact on technological choice. Capital accumulation, associated wealth distributions and the character of Lancashire business organisation were sybiotically linked to the success of the industry before 1914. However, the legacy of that accumulation in later decades, chronic overcapacity, formed a barrier to reconstruction and enhanced the preciptious decline of a once great industry

General Motors: A financialized account of corporate behaviour 1909–1940

This paper constructs an alternative account of resource stewardship at General Motors (GM) during the period 1909–1940. Alfred Chandler employed GM in his text ‘Strategy and Structure’ to explain the development of the modern corporation. This understanding can be employed to contrast an ‘old-economy’ with a ‘new-economy’ financialized corporate business model. In this paper we find that many elements of the financialized firm were present in the early history of GM’s development. Our analysis reveals the financialization of a non-financial corporation and how this influenced corporate behaviour and impacted on financial performance at GM during the period 1909–1940

Disarticulation and the Crisis of Neoliberalism in the United States

Neoliberal policies instituted since the 1980s have transformed the United States economy in ways that have produced serious structural distortions in the basic operation of capitalism. Using Samir Amin’s concept of disarticulation, previously applied exclusively to the periphery of the world economy, this article argues that the twin and mutually reinforcing features of neoliberalism – global corporate restructuring and financialization – have now generated disarticulation in the core nations. This disarticulated structure is responsible for the economic stagnation and sharply unequal income/wealth distributional outcomes that characterize contemporary U.S. capitalism

资本主义的多样性

法国、意大利、荷兰、中国、阿根廷——其贯穿于19世纪的资本主义制度的历史都有其迷人的特别之处，尽管在这篇短文中，我们关注的是英国、美国、德国和日本，这四个国家是有关“莱茵河与盎格鲁—萨克逊资本主义”争论的中心，在其所有简化形式上，这些争论却都涉及到了福利和经济效率的核心问题。回顾一下上个世纪，这些国家的演进到底意味着怎样一种模式呢？当全球化的压力无情地迫使很多国家放弃了深深地根植于其民族文化的习惯时，这是一种渐进的趋同么？这还不是事情的全部，既然可以证明日本和德国的制度与美国在20世纪20年代而不是今天的制度更加相似，那么，国家干预经济的信仰作为20世纪的一个主要的异端学说，这个思潮的起起落落（在不同的国家以不同的速度）会有良好的效果么？（20世纪60年代“混合经济”的观点仅仅是对苏维埃式的计划经济的苍白反思么？）回答几乎是否定的，因为日本经济的许多明显的特征与这个国家没有多大关系。要不，这向我们讲述了一种根深蒂固的文化保持顽固不化的故事么？回答也几乎是否定的，因为制度的演进（而且，在日本和德国还有巨大的制度飞跃）是所有这四个国家共有的一个特征。进而，它显示了一种盛衰变化律？在20世纪60年代，这些国家都有朝管理型资本主义发展的明显趋同，接着在20世纪80年代，当日益上升的自由市场的力量和机构投资者不断增加的权力产生了改革性的影响，一些国家——主要是在一些盎格鲁—萨克逊国家——的发展又重新分道扬镳。接下来到了20世纪90年代，随着市场的力量和投资者变得更具全球性，并且增加了对日本和德国的影响，趋同会再一次发生么？这是一个可能的解释。通过回顾这段具体的兴衰史，人们也许希望就趋同到底会达到什么程度得出一个合理的估计，因为这毕竟是下个世纪历史的一个关键的决定因素。我们确实没有得出一个有把握的预测，也许读者能够做到这一点。译者单位：东北财经大学经济学院（116025） 　　

Piketty's Calibration Economics: Inequality and the Dissolution of Solutions?

© 2015 Taylor & Francis. Abstract: By popularising interest in inequality, Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century has made a significant contribution. It has helped to change the basic terms of debate regarding wealth and income. However, Capital exhibits several weaknesses. The overall statement of Piketty's 3 laws tends to confuse the reader by conflating capital with all forms of wealth, and capital with the current market valuation of wealth assets. The whole creates a form of empiricism by metrics or calibration. The aggregation also lends itself to data as history rather than as historically grounded explanation of evidence. Concomitantly, it lacks a theorisation of capitalism, of power, of the state, of social movements, and of social transformations. This affects the way in which possible solutions to inequality are conceived. However, it does provoke further grounds for ethical counterargument productive of more progressive solutions to the problems it highlights

Light smoking at base-line predicts a higher mortality risk to women than to men; evidence from a cohort with long follow-up

BACKGROUND: There is conflicting evidence as to whether smoking is more harmful to women than to men. The UK Cotton Workers’ Cohort was recruited in the 1960s and contained a high proportion of men and women smokers who were well matched in terms of age, job and length of time in job. The cohort has been followed up for 42 years. METHODS: Mortality in the cohort was analysed using an individual relative survival method and Cox regression. Whether smoking, ascertained at baseline in the 1960s, was more hazardous to women than to men was examined by estimating the relative risk ratio women to men, smokers to never smoked, for light (1–14), medium (15–24), heavy (25+ cigarettes per day) and former smoking. RESULTS: For all-cause mortality relative risk ratios were 1.35 for light smoking at baseline (95% CI 1.07-1.70), 1.15 for medium smoking (95% CI 0.89-1.49) and 1.00 for heavy smoking (95% CI 0.63-1.61). Relative risk ratios for light smoking at baseline for circulatory system disease was 1.42 (95% CI 1.01 to 1.98) and for respiratory disease was 1.89 (95% CI 0.99 to 3.63). Heights of participants provided no explanation for the gender difference. CONCLUSIONS: Light smoking at baseline was shown to be significantly more hazardous to women than to men but the effect decreased as consumption increased indicating a dose response relationship. Heavy smoking was equally hazardous to both genders. This result may help explain the conflicting evidence seen elsewhere. However gender differences in smoking cessation may provide an alternative explanation

Partnership, ownership and control: the impact of corporate governance on employment relations

Prevailing patterns of dispersed share ownership and rules of corporate governance for UK listed companies appear to constrain the ability of managers to make credible, long-term commitments to employees of the kind needed to foster effective labour-management partnerships. We present case study evidence which suggests that such partnerships can nevertheless emerge where product market conditions and the regulatory environment favour a stakeholder orientation. Proactive and mature partnerships may also be sustained where the board takes a strategic approach to mediating between the claims of different stakeholder groups, institutional investors are prepared to take a long-term view of their holdings, and strong and independent trade unions are in a position to facilitate organisational change

The effects of financialisation and financial development on investment: Evidence from firm-level data in Europe

In this paper we estimate the effects of financialization on physical investment in selected western European countries using panel data based on the balance-sheets of publicly listed non-financial companies (NFCs) supplied by Worldscope for the period 1995-2015. We find robust evidence of an adverse effect of both financial payments (interests and dividends) and financial incomes on investment in fixed assets by the NFCs. This finding is robust for both the pool of all Western European firms and single country estimations. The negative impacts of financial incomes are non-linear with respect to the companies’ size: financial incomes crowd-out investment in large companies, and have a positive effect on the investment of only small, relatively more credit-constrained companies. Moreover, we find that a higher degree of financial development is associated with a stronger negative effect of financial incomes on companies’ investment. This finding challenges the common wisdom on ‘finance-growth nexus’. Our findings support the ‘financialization thesis’ that the increasing orientation of the non-financial sector towards financial activities is ultimately leading to lower physical investment, hence to stagnant or fragile growth, as well as long term stagnation in productivity