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Previous Newsletter Issues
A'Hearn, Brian
Economic Development, Growth, and Aggregate Productivity
Economywide Country Studies and Comparative History
Industry: Manufacturing and Construction
19th Century
20th Century: Pre WWII
Europe
Jul 9, 2012
Published by EH.Net (July 2012)
Stefano Fenoaltea, The Reinterpretation of Italian Economic History: From Unification to the Great War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. xxi + 296 pp. $85 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-521-19238-5. (First published in Italian as L’economia italiana dall’Unità alla Grande Guerra, 2006.)
Reviewed for EH.Net by Brian A'Hearn, Department of Economics, University of Oxford.
This book brings together four decades of research on Italian industrialization by Stefano Fenoaltea. The backbone of this research, and of the book, is the author’s well-known estimates of industrial value added. These are presented in Chapter 1, which details their construction and offers a...
Ferderer, J. Peter
Financial Markets, Financial Institutions, and Monetary History
20th Century: WWII and post-WWII
North America
Jul 5, 2012
Published by EH.Net (July 2012)
William A. Barnett, Getting It Wrong: How Faulty Monetary Statistics Undermine the Fed, the Financial System, and the Economy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. xxxiii + 322 pp. $35 (paperback), ISBN: 978-0-262-51688-4.
Reviewed for EH.Net by J. Peter Ferderer, Department of Economics, Macalester College.
It is widely agreed that excessive risk-taking led to the sub-prime financial crisis and the Great Recession. Mortgages without down payments, historically high leverage ratios, maturity mismatch, and the list goes on. What were people thinking? Was it mass hysteria? Was it greed gone wild?
In Getting It Wrong, William...
Prasch, Robert E.
History of Economic Thought; Methodology
19th Century
20th Century: Pre WWII
20th Century: WWII and post-WWII
General, International, or Comparative
Jul 3, 2012
Published by EH.Net (July 2012)
Sylvia Nasar, Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. xv + 559 pp. $35 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-684-87298-8.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Robert E. Prasch, Department of Economics, Middlebury College.
Sylvia Nasar, the author of A Beautiful Mind, has undertaken another ambitious project, this time a larger survey of economic thought. The result is a colorful and fast-moving narrative, brimming with fascinating characters and lively anecdotes. In a word, this book is a pleasure to read. Nasar’s experiences as a successful writer and professor of journalism enable her to bring a distinct talent for story-telling along with an...
Schuler, Kurt
Financial Markets, Financial Institutions, and Monetary History
General or Comparative
Asia
Jul 2, 2012
Published by EH.Net (July 2012)
Peng Xinwei, A Monetary History of China. Bellingham, WA: Center for East Asian Studies, University of Western Washington, 1994. (Translation by Edward H. Kaplan of Zhongguo huobi shi, third edition, Shanghai, 1965.) xlix + 929 pp. (2 volumes) $50 (paperback), ISBN: 0914584812.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Kurt Schuler, Center for Financial Stability.
Anyone who claims to know the history of civilization must know something of the history of China. Even so, Peng Xinwei’s monumental book, published almost half a century ago in Chinese and almost two decades ago in English translation, has remained obscure among economists. The translation, the only...
Sng, Tuan-Hwee
Economywide Country Studies and Comparative History
Government, Law and Regulation, Public Finance
Medieval
16th Century
17th Century
18th Century
19th Century
20th Century: Pre WWII
Asia
Europe
Jun 29, 2012
Published by EH.Net (June 2012)
Debin Ma and Jan Luiten van Zanden, editors, Law and Long-Term Economic Change: A Eurasian Perspective. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. xiv + 358 pp. $65 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0-8047-7273-0.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Tuan-Hwee Sng, Department of Economics, National University of Singapore.
Researchers have long recognized the relationship between secure property rights and economic growth. Discussion on the subject, however, has often fallen into an oversimplified dichotomy between a “progressive” West and a “corrupt” East. As the editors of this volume -- Debin Ma (London School of Economics) and Jan Luiten van Zanden (Utrecht University) -- point out, the need to...
Ploeckl, Florian
Industry: Manufacturing and Construction
20th Century: Pre WWII
General, International, or Comparative
Europe
North America
Jun 21, 2012
Published by EH.Net (June 2012)
Douglas A. Irwin, Trade Policy Disaster: Lessons from the 1930s. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011. xv + 195 pp. $25 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0-262-01671-1.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Florian Ploeckl, Department of Economics, University of Oxford
Occasionally we face a trilemma, a situation where we can only get two out of three choices and are forced to sacrifice one of them. The international finance literature has recently popularized the notion of an international finance trilemma, which describes a country’s choice between capital mobility, fixed exchange rates, and independent monetary policy and demonstrates that states have to sacrifice one -- they can`t have their cake and...
Tassava, Christopher
Economic Planning and Policy
Military and War
20th Century: WWII and post-WWII
North America
Jun 20, 2012
Published by EH.Net (June 2012)
Jim Lacey, Keep from All Thoughtful Men: How U.S. Economists Won World War II. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2011. v + 267 pp. $37 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-1-59114-491-5.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Christopher Tassava, Carleton College.
In Keep from All Thoughtful Men, Jim Lacey (Institute for Defense Analyses and Johns Hopkins University) analyzes a series of debates from 1940 to 1942 over American capacity to produce munitions for the approaching and then raging war. The book (which runs to just 136 pages of narrative plus 65 pages in eight appendices of primary materials) is a valuable addition to economic-history literatures on twentieth-century America, on...
Khan, B. Zorina
History of Technology, including Technological Change
19th Century
20th Century: Pre WWII
North America
Jun 13, 2012
Published by EH.Net (June 2012)
Catherine L. Fisk, Working Knowledge: Employee Innovation and the Rise of Corporate Intellectual Property, 1800-1930. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. x + 376 pp. $45 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-8078-3302-5.
Reviewed for EH.Net by B. Zorina Khan, Department of Economics, Bowdoin College
Economists promote the notion that specialization and the division of labor benefit society, but the marketplace of ideas places greater value on scholarship that transcends narrow disciplinary boundaries. Catherine Fisk, Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine, has produced a richly detailed and comprehensive study of property...
Brown, John Howard
Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Extractive Industries
Business History
Transport and Distribution, Energy, and Other Services
19th Century
North America
Jun 12, 2012
Published by EH.Net (June 2012)
Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America. New York: Norton, 2011. xxxix + 621 pp. $35 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-393-06126-0.
Reviewed for EH.Net by John Howard Brown, School of Economic Development, Georgia Southern University.
Richard White’s Railroaded is a professional tour de force. This book provides an overview of the development of railroads in United States west of the Missouri River. The timeframe covered is the last third of the nineteenth century. The volume invites reflection on how the nineteenth century experience is related to the travails of our twenty-first century market economy.
White’s thesis...
Sturtz, Linda L.
Markets and Institutions
Social and Cultural History, including Race, Ethnicity and Gender
18th Century
North America
Jun 7, 2012
Published by EH.Net (June 2012)
Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor, The Ties That Buy: Women and Commerce in Revolutionary America. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. iii + 253 pp. $20 (paperback), ISBN: 978-8122-2159-6.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Linda L. Sturtz, Department of History, Beloit College.
In The Ties That Buy, Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor explores women’s economic activities in Newport, RI, and Charleston, SC, during the Revolutionary and Early National periods. Building on the path-breaking work of Jeanne Boydston about the meaning accorded to women’s work, Hartigan-O’Connor analyzes changes in market transactions and how these influences affected the social...