Cotton manufacturers as bankers: the textile trade and credit in spain, 1840-1913

[cat] La historiografia ha assenyalat que en el segle XIX el crèdit que els fabricants cotoners catalans oferien als seus clients era de caràcter informal i, per tant, impossible de ser transferit al sistema bancari. Això hauria tingut un efecte negatiu en la rendibilitat de les empreses cotoneres. A partir de l’anàlisi de diversos arxius empresarials, així com de fonts judicials i notarials, aquest treball confirma aquesta descripció dels fets però proposa una interpretació més optimista. Els fabricants feien de banquers dels seus clients perquè eren els millor situats per a exercir aquesta funció. Havien construït una bona estructura d’informació, gestionaven eficientment el risc creditici i obtenien beneficis d’aquesta activitat.[eng] Historians claim that in the nineteenth century Catalan cotton manufacturers were giving informal credit to their clients, and were therefore unable to transfer this credit to the banking system. Such circumstances would have had a detrimental effect on the profitability of the cotton firms. Based on an analysis of the archives of several firms, as well as judicial and notary sources, we can confirm this state of affairs, but present a more optimistic interpretation of the system. Manufacturers were, in fact, acting as their customers’ bankers because they were in the best position to perform this function. They built up a good information structure, managed the credit risk efficiently and earned money from this activity

Vertical integration or specialisation: producing and commercialising cotton goods (1815-1913)

This article describes the ways in which cotton goods were commercialised during the nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth. Several national cases are analysed: Britain, as the Workshop of the World; France, Germany, Switzerland and the US, as core economies; and Italy and Spain as countries on the European periphery. The main question that we address is why some cotton industries vertically integrated their production and commercialisation processes, but others did not. We present a model that combines industrial district size and product differentiation to explain why vertical integration was present in most cases and why there was vertical specialisation in Lancashire and Lowell.vertical specialisation, industrial revolution, commercialisation, vertical integration, industrial organization, cotton industry, transaction costs

Cotton manufacturers as bankers: the textile trade and credit in spain (1840-1913)

Historians claim that in the nineteenth century Catalan cotton manufacturers were giving informal credit to their clients, and were therefore unable to transfer this credit to the banking system. Such circumstances would have had a detrimental effect on the profitability of the cotton firms. Based on an analysis of the archives of several firms, as well as judicial and notary sources, we can confirm this state of affairs, but present a more optimistic interpretation of the system. Manufacturers were, in fact, acting as their customers bankers because they were in the best position to perform this function. They built up a good information structure, managed the credit risk efficiently and earned money from this activity.financial system, credit market, cotton industry, commercial network, information costs

Conductances between confined rough walls

Two- and three-dimensional creeping flows and diffusion transport through constricted and possibly rough surfaces are studied. Asymptotic expansions of conductances are derived as functions of the constriction local geometry. The validity range of the proposed theoretical approximations is explored through a comparison either with available exact results for specific two-dimensional aperture fields or with direct numerical computations for general three-dimensional geometries. The large validity range of the analytical expressions proposed for the hydraulic conductivity (and to a lesser extent for the electrical conductivity) opens up interesting perspectives for the simulation of flows in highly complicated geometries with a large number of constrictions

Averaged Reynolds Equation for Flows between Rough Surfaces in Sliding Motion

The flow between rough surfaces in sliding motion with contacts between these surfaces, is analyzed through the volume averaging method. Assuming a Reynolds (lubrication) approximation at the roughness scale, an average flow model is obtained combining spatial and time average. Time average, which is often omitted in previous works, is specially discussed. It is shown that the effective transport coefficients, traditionally termed ‘flow factors’ in the lubrication literature, that appear in the average equations can be obtained from the solution to two closure problems. This allows for the numerical determination of flow factors on firmer bases and sheds light on some arguments to the literature. Moreover, fluid flows through fractures form an important subset of problems embodied in the present analysis, for which macroscopisation is given

Sliding lubricated anisotropic rough surfaces

The object of this paper is to study the effects of lubricant film flow, pressurized and sheared between two parallel rough surfaces in sliding motion. The influence of microscopic surface roughness on lubricant film flow macroscopic behavior is described through five nondimensional parameters called flow factors. These macroscopic transport parameters are related to the local geometry of apertures and surfaces. Short- and long-range-correlated surface roughnesses display very different macroscopic behaviors when surfaces are close to contact. These behaviors are related to underlying surface roughness parameters such as the correlation length and the self-affine Hurst exponent. The problem is numerically studied, and results are compared to some analytical asymptotic results

Nonuniversal conductivity exponents in continuum percolating Gaussian fractures

We study the electrical and hydraulic conductivity percolation exponents in a Gaussian fracture using the method proposed in Plouraboué et al. [Phys. Rev. E 73, 036305, 2006]. Nonuniversal conductivity percolation exponents are found: they differ from the theoretical predictions for infinite system size for frozen power-law distributions of local conductivities, as with their finite size corrections. In the hydraulic case, we also find that the probability density function of the conductivity follows a power-law distribution near the percolation threshold

How to make crusty or patchy efflorescence

We present an experimental study of drying in the presence of dissolved sodium chloride. The process is characterized by the formation of crystallized salt, referred to as efflorescence, at the evaporative surface of the porous medium. By varying the average size of the beads forming the porous medium, we show that the formation of the crystal layer does not affect significantly the drying process and can even enhance the drying rate when the beads are sufficiently large. By contrast the crystal layer can greatly affect the drying process and even blocks the evaporation process for sufficiently small beads. We therefore show the existence of a transition between the two regimes, namely the blocking regime and the enhanced drying rate regime. It is shown that the two regimes correspond to two different types of efflorescence, referred to as crusty and patchy respectively. Then by varying the initial salt concentration for a given bead size, we show that the interplay between drying and the efflorescence formation leads to a non-monotonous variation of the drying rate with the initial salt concentration when the efflorescence is patchy but not when the efflorescence is crusty

Discrete Salt Crystallization at the Surface of a Porous Medium

Efflorescence refers to crystallized salt structures that form at the surface of a porous medium. The challenge is to understand why these structures do not form everywhere at the surface of the porous medium but at some specific locations and why there exists an exclusion distance around an efflorescence where no new efflorescence forms. These are explained from a visualization experiment, pore-network simulations and a simple efflorescence growth model

Thin porous media: identification of specific properties and definition from a case study

We study numerically the process of quasi-static invasion of a fluid in thin porous layers from multiple inlet injection sources. This example clearly indicates that thin porous media can be considered as a distinct class of porous media. Our study also suggests that the fact that the transport properties depend on the thickness, thus are scale dependent, can be considered as a generic characteristic of thin systems. This will be well illustrated through the specific process considered. In this example, the behaviour of sufficiently thin porous media is distinct from that of thicker porous media. For example, the average number of breakthrough points varies as a function of the system thickness when the porous layer is sufficiently thin. By contrast this number becomes independent of the system thickness when the system is sufficiently thick. Our results also reveal that the behaviour of ultrathin systems is different from thicker thin systems. The number of breakthrough points varies according to a power law in a sufficiently thick, not too hydrophilic thin system whereas the variation is different for an ultrathin porous medium, slower than the power law scaling, and not described by a power law behaviour. The fact that the properties are scale dependent in a thin system is also well illustrated through the study of the defending phase transport properties. Contrary to what was generally assumed in many previous works, there is not a one-to-one relationship between the overall diffusive conductance and the mean saturation in a thin system. The diffusive conductance depends not only on the liquid saturation but also on the system thickness. These findings will be discussed in relation with the so-called water management problem in proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), e.g. [3],[5], [6], an object of great technological importance formed by several thin porous layers. Our study also indicates that pore network (PN) simulations are well adapted to the study of two-phase flow in thin porous media. They lead to physically better results than the classical continuum approach owing to the lack of length scale separation across the medium thickness, whereas being much less computational time consuming than direct simulations. In particular, the PN simulations permit to conduct statistical studies, e.g. [1], [2], that would be practically impossible to perform from direct simulations