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237) Bourgeois virtues - Deirdre McCloskey

Deirdre McCloskey:
The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007)

The Bourgeois Virtues is certainly the most ambitious liberal academic project of the decade. McCloskey does not just want to argue that the market economy has made us more efficient people. She wants to defend the market economy has made us better people, more virtuous - and make this defense in a tome of 600 pages (supposedly the first in a series of four volumes) before an audience conditioned to throw rocks to the sound word of the bourgeoisie. McCloskey balances his Herculean effort with an essay style, conversational, without ever losing the scholarship. The scope of his work can hardly find a parallel between liberal economists, living or dead. To promote hope, faith, love, justice, courage, temperance and prudence, no other book this decade can more successfully defend the thesis that the market not only allows a man to gain the world, but can also help you not lose your soul.

Source: Survey of Free Order on the most important books for understanding and promoting freedom published in the last decade (00-09).

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236) Economic History Book Reviews: what is missing?

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EH.NET BOOK REVIEW Book Review EH.NET Dear Subscribers,

Below is a list of reviews forthcoming on EH.NET's Book Review list. If you know of a book that we should review which isn’t on the list and which we haven’t already reviewed, please let me know.

Thanks,
Robert

Robert Whaples
EH.NET Book Review Editor
whaples@wfu.edu

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Updated: March 12, 2010

Authors: Shigeru Akita and Nicholas J. White, editors
Title: The International Order of Asia in the 1930s and 1950s
Publisher: Ashgate

Author: J.L. Anderson
Title: Industrializing the Corn Belt: Agriculture, Technology, and Environment, 1945-1972
Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press

Authors: N. Aslanbeigui and G. Oakes, editors
Title: The Provocative Joan Robinson: The Making of a Cambridge Economist
Publisher: Duke University Press

Author: Peter Fibiger Bang
Title: The Roman Bazaar: A Comparative Study of Trade and Markets in a Tributary Empire
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Author: Ekaterina Brancato
Title: Markets versus Hierarchies: A Political Economy of Russia from the 10th Century to 2008
Publisher: Edward Elgar

Authors: Jose Luis Cardoso and Pedro Lains, editors
Title: Paying for the Liberal State: The Rise of Public Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Authors: Youssef Cassis and Philip L. Cottrell, editors
Title: The World of Private Banking
Publisher: Ashgate

Author: Jeffrey M. Chwieroth
Title: Capital Ideas: The IMF and the Rise of Financial Liberalization
Publisher: Princeton University Press

Authors: Karel-Peter Companje, Karel Veraghtert, Brigitte Widdershoven, editors
Title: Two Centuries of Solidarity: Social Health Insurance in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands 1770-2008
Publisher: Aksant Academic Publishers

Author: Gene Dattel
Title: Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Costs of Economic Power
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee

Author: Jennifer Delton
Title: Racial Integration in Corporate America, 1940–1990
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Author: Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson, editors
Title: Natural Experiments in History
Publisher: Harvard University Press

Author: Marc Egnal
Title: Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War
Publisher: Hill and Wang

Author: Penelope Francks
Title: The Japanese Consumer: An Alternative Economic History of Modern Japan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Author: Oscar Gelderblom, editor
Title: The Political Economy of the Dutch Republic
Publisher: Ashgate

Author: Tom Gjelten
Title: Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause
Publisher: Penguin

Author: Songho Ha
Title: The Rise and Fall of the American System: Nationalism and the Development of the American Economy, 1800-1837
Publisher: Pickering and Chatto

Author: Andrew Hamilton
Title: Trade and Empire in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Authors: William J. Hausman, Peter Hertner, and Mira Wilkins
Title: Global Electrification: Multinational Enterprise and International Finance in the History of Light and Power, 1879-2007
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Author: R.G. Healey
Title: The Pennsylvania Anthracite Coal Industry, 1860-1902: Economic Cycles, Business Decision-Making and Regional Dynamics
Publisher: University of Scranton Press

Author: Michael G. Heller
Title: Capitalism, Institutions, and Economic Development
Publisher: Routledge

Author: James L. Hunt
Title: Relationship Banker: Eugene W. Stetson, Wall Street, and American Business, 1916–1959
Publisher: Mercer University Press

Author: Geoffrey Jones
Title: Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Business
Publisher: Oxford University Press

Author: Alison Kay
Title: The Foundations of Female Entrepreneurship: Enterprise, Home and Household in London, c. 1800-1870
Publisher: Routledge

Author: Jane Kamensky
Title: The Exchange Artist: A Tale of High Flying Speculation and America’s First Banking Collapse
Publisher: Penguin

Authors: Anne Laurence, Josephine Maltby and Janette Rutterford
Title: Women and Their Money, 1700-1950: Essays on Women and Finance
Publisher: Routledge

Author: Susan Ingalls Lewis
Title: Unexceptional Women: Female Proprietors in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Albany, New York, 1830-1885
Publisher: Ohio State University Press

Author: Ghislaine Lydon
Title: On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Western Africa
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Author: Christopher P. Magra
Title: The Fisherman’s Cause: Atlantic Commerce and Maritime Dimensions of the American Revolution
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Author: Uskali Maki, editor
Title: The Methodology of Positive Economics: Reflections on the Milton Friedman Legacy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Author: Steven G. Medema
Title: The Hesitant Hand: Taming Self-Interest in the History of Economic Ideas
Publisher: Princeton University Press

Author: Joel Mokyr
Title: The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700-1850
Publisher: Yale University Press

Authors: Verónica Montecinos, and John Markoff, editors
Title: Economists in the Americas
Publisher: Edward Elgar

Author: Anne L. Murphy
Title: The Origins of English Financial Markets: Investment and Speculation before the South Sea Bubble
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Author: Aldo Musacchio
Title: Experiments in Financial Democracy: Corporate Governance and Financial Developments in Brazil, 1882-1950
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Authors: Ronen Palan, Richard Murphy, and Christian Chavagneux
Title: Tax Havens: How Globalization Really Works
Publisher: Cornell University Press

Author: Steve Pincus
Title: 1688: The First Modern Revolution
Publisher: Yale University Press

Author: Yovanna Pineda
Title: Industrial Development in a Frontier Economy: The Industrialization of Argentina, 1890-1930
Publisher: Stanford University Press

Author: Noelle Plack
Title: Common Land, Wine and the French Revolution: Rural Society and Economy in Southern France, c. 1789-1820
Publisher: Ashgate

Author: Douglas J. Puffert
Title: Tracks across Continents, Paths through History: The Economic Dynamics of Standardization in Railway Gauge
Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Authors: J. Patrick Raines and Charles G. Leathers
Title: Debt, Innovations, and Deflation: The Theories of Veblen, Fisher, Schumpeter, and Minsky
Publisher: Edward Elgar

Authors: Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff
Title: This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly
Publisher: Princeton University Press

Author: Donald W. Rogers
Title: Making Safe Capitalism: Work Safety and Health Regulation in America, 1880-1940
Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Author: Simone Selva
Title: Integrating international and internal development. United States and Italy in the weapons programs of the Atlantic 1945-1955 block [Home International Economic Integration and Growth: The United States and Italy in the Western Bloc Programs Rearmament, 1945-1955]
Publisher: Carocci

Author: Robert E. Shalhope
Title: The Baltimore Bank Riot: Political Upheaval in Antebellum Maryland
Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Author: David Suisman
Title: Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music
Publisher: Harvard University Press

Author: Paul Michel Taillon
Title: Good, Reliable, White Men: Railroad Brotherhoods, 1877-1917
Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Author: Patricia Van Den Eeckhout, editor
Title: Supervision and Authority in Industry: Western European Experiences, 1830-1939
Publisher: Berghahn

Author: Quentin Van Doosselaere
Title: Commercial Agreements and Social Dynamics in Medieval Genoa
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Authors: Burton A. Weisbrod, Jeffrey P. Ballou, and Evelyn D. Asch
Title: Mission and Money: Understanding the University
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Author: Robert E. Wright, editor
Title: Bailouts: Public Money, Private Profits
Publisher: Columbia University Press

Author: Jeffrey T. Young, editor
Title: Elgar Companion to Adam Smith
Publisher: Edward Elgar
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235) Globalization, Then and Now

Book Review: ( Google Books )

Harold James:
The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalization Cycle
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. x + 325 pp. $20 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-674-03584-3)
Published by EH.NET (March 2010)

Reviewed for EH.NET by Sumner La Croix, Department of Economics, University of Hawaii-Manoa.

In this short, well written and carefully argued volume, Harold James “offers reflections on the phenomenon of globalization and its cyclical propensity to generate backlashes and collapses” (p. 6). His thoughtful analysis builds upon his earlier book, _The End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression_ (2001), which argued that the anti-globalization protests at the 1999 Seattle WTO meeting lacked the coherent alternative ideologies that galvanized international responses to the 1929-1933 financial crisis. This more recent volume, boldly published in early 2009 in the midst of the ongoing financial crisis, provides extensive comparisons with the 1929-1933 crisis, considers the limits and extents of the financial revolution of the 1990s and 2000s, and emphasizes how arguments for continued globalization are often trumped in downturns “by a political logic that looks for conflicts and competitive advantages” (p. 230).

James spends considerable space asking whether we can learn more about the 2000s financial crisis from the stock market collapse of 1929 or the widespread international bank failures of 1931. He rightly argues that a central bank could counter a 1929-style stock market crash by using conventional monetary policy to provide markets with additional liquidity and notes how the Greenspan “put” contained the effects of the 1987 and the 2000-2001 stock market crashes (p. 94). By contrast, a 1931-style event “is institutionally more complex and requires the reconstruction of whole banking systems” (p. 40). His analysis of 1931 emphasizes the inherent political difficulties of the German government in effectively and fairly bailing out its failing banks; this sets the stage for his analysis in the following chapter (“The weekends that made history”) of the events surrounding government bailouts (or the lack thereof) of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, and numerous large commercial banks.

James’s chapter on the extent and limit of the financial revolution of the last 30 years argues that politicians, regardless of their country, party, or the historical episode, tend to echo each other in their rhetoric as a financial crisis unfolds (“we must make the financial industry a servant of the economy rather than its master”) and their calls for more government control of banks. They also quickly find out “how difficult [this] is to accomplish when complex cross-border issues are involved” (p. 167). These difficulties were magnified during the 2000s financial crisis because of the financial deregulation of the late 1990s and the rapid innovation of complex financial instruments that were difficult to understand, not covered by existing regulations, or implemented outside the regulated boundaries of the bank. However, to respond to the financial crisis with extensive new bank regulation or outright government ownership of troubled banks is, James argues, always a highly problematic strategy. Government involvement in banks often doesn’t prevent them from taking excessive risks; it doesn’t solve the problem of banks innovating around regulations; and it can lead to pressures not just to reduce risk but also to restructure lending practices along a host of more political dimensions. In light of this discussion, it’s quite astonishing that James ends his discussion of bank regulation with a forecast that innovation in banking regulations may yet “solve” the industry’s periodic tendency to experience financial crises in which banks play central roles. In the future, “many banking functions can and will be handled by machines rather than by error-prone humans” (p. 172).

James’s conclusion to the volume is somewhat speculative, as it is based upon a relationship between the globalization cycle and changes in social values. He posits that for market institutions to function successfully in the long run, participants need to be guided by an external source of common values. The process of globalization tends to gradually erode these common values, and when the crisis comes, individuals become aware that resumption of the globalization cycle can only occur when society makes solid progress towards restoring its core values. In his view, “[r]egaining trust is a long and arduous process. That is why when globalization is broken, it is not easy to put together again” (p. 277).) Or, to paraphrase the great actress Bette Davis, “fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy decade!”

Sumner La Croix is co-author (with Christopher Edmonds and Yao Li) of “China Trade: Busting Gravity’s Bounds,” _Journal of Asian Economics_, November-December 2008, and co-editor (with Peter Petri) of _Challenges to the Global Trading System: Adjustment to Globalization in the Asia-Pacific Region_, New York: Routledge, 2007.

Copyright (c) 2010 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permission, please contact the EH.Net Administrator (administrator@eh.net). Published by EH.Net (March 2010). All EH.Net reviews are archived at http://www.eh.net/BookReview.

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234) International Economic Integration in Historical Perspective

Dennis M. O. McCarthy:
International Economic Integration in Historical Perspective
Routledge Explorations in Economic History
New York: Routledge, 2006, 254 p.

Introduction: International Economic Integration as economics, politics, and political economy, 1
1.Colonial empires, 8
2. Merchant Associations, 41
3. Religious empires, 71
4. Criminal empires, 91
5. Free trade áreas, 108
6. Customs unions, 134
7. Common markets, 164
Retrospective as prospective, 202
(1) International Economic Integration is an economic and a political process. But it also involves political economy
(2) Define and develop those interrelations between economics and politics that most strenghten your organization (exemple: Hanseatic League)
(3) History does not provide an infallible Road map for cross-border economic integration, but the ollverein is a good place to start. Lessons from Zollverein
L1: It helps to have a central motivating idea
L2: It helps to be able to draw on a powerful underlying force with deep emotional wellsprings
L3: It helps to have a vision
L4: It helps to have leaders, including a major figure, who can implement this vision
L5: It can help to see your organization overcoming hostile forces
L6: Align geography and economics
L7: Big things takes time
L8: Do not do too much at once
L9: Streamline goals (p. 204)

(4) International economic integration has many positives but it has a dark side: desintegration (never outsource your own security, p. 206)
(5) There is more than one path forward: Mercosur strives to become a common market, but apparently des not view legal standardization as a requirement to achieve this objective (p. 207)