978 research outputs found

    The Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Sino-Japanese dispute

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    https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/eastbooks/1228/thumbnail.jp

    Currency devaluations and beggar-my-neighbour penalties: evidence from the 1930s

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    The currency devaluations of the 1930s facilitated a faster recovery from the Great Depression in the countries depreciating, but their unilateral manner provoked retaliatory and discriminatory commercial policies abroad. This article explores the importance of the retaliatory motive in the imposition of trade barriers by gold bloc countries during the 1930s and its effects on trade. Relying on new and existing datasets on the introduction of quotas, tariffs, and bilateral trade costs, the quantification of the discriminatory response suggests that these countries imposed significant beggar‐my‐neighbour penalties. The penalties reduced trade to a similar degree that modern regional trade agreements foster trade. Furthermore, the analysis of contemporary newspapers reveals that the devaluations of the early 1930s triggered an Anglo‐French trade conflict marked by tit‐for‐tat protectionist policies. With regards to global trade, the unilateral currency depreciations came at a high price in political and economic terms. These costs must have necessarily reduced their benefit to the world as a whole

    The diffusion and impact of the corporation in 1910

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    With new and comprehensive data on the international spread of listed and unlisted corporations before the First World War, this article shows the prominence of common law and Scandinavian civil law in the process. This association is interpreted as demonstrating the strong contribution of liberal (laissez-faire) industrial stances. The findings confirm an extended version of Rajan and Zingales's hypothesis that trade and capital openness are necessary for companies to flourish. Despite the possibilities that companies were created for fraud and exploitation, countries using the corporate form more extensively before 1914 had higher GDP per capita. Through this process, the benefit of imperialism extended to British dominions, but not much, if at all, to British dependent colonies

    Trade in the Shadow of Power : Japanese Industrial Exports in the Interwar years

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    During the interwar years, Japanese industrialisation accelerated alongside the expansion of industrial exports to regional markets. Trade blocs in the interwar years were used as an instrument of imperial power to foster exports and as a substitute for productivity to encourage industrial production. The historiography on Japanese industrialisation in the interwar years describes heavy industries' interests in obtaining access to wider markets to increase economies of scale and reduce unit costs. However, this literature provides no quantitative evidence that proves the success of those mechanisms in expanding exports. In this paper we scrutinise how Japan—a relatively poor country—used colonial as well as informal power interventions to expand regional markets for its exports, especially for the most intensive human capital sector of the industrializing economy
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