This book presents the lifelong and ongoing research of Lawrence H. Officer in a systematic way. The result is an authoritative treatment of such issues as market structure and economic efficiency where more than one characteristic of a commodity is priced, both in general and in application to shipping conferences; financing of the United Nations and International Monetary Fund; monetary history of the UK and US; and central-bank preferences between gold and dollars, The book first examines multidimensional pricing, defined as pricing when a commodity or service has several characteristics that are priced. The second part is concerned with country-group conflicts in the United Nations and International Monetary Fund. The book then takes a fresh look at historical experiences of monetary-standard upheavals and the final part considers a crucial time (1958-67), during which central-bank gold-dollar decisions were power-politically determined.

This book presents the lifelong and ongoing research of Lawrence H. Officer in a systematic way. The result is an authoritative treatment of such issues as market structure and economic efficiency where more than one characteristic of a commodity is priced, both in general and in application to shipping conferences; financing of the United Nations and International Monetary Fund; monetary history of the UK and US; and central-bank preferences between gold and dollars, The book first examines multidimensional pricing, defined as pricing when a commodity or service has several characteristics that are priced. The second part is concerned with country-group conflicts in the United Nations and International Monetary Fund. The book then takes a fresh look at historical experiences of monetary-standard upheavals and the final part considers a crucial time (1958-67), during which central-bank gold-dollar decisions were power-politically determined.

This pamphlet is adapted from Chapter 1 of Silent Revolution: The International Monetary Fund, 1979-89, by the same author. That book is full of history of the evolution of the Fund during 11 years in which the institution truly came of age as a participant in the international financial system.

This book is the culmination of and a collection of distinguished scholar Lawrence Officer’s principal research over 50 years of scholarly activity. The collection consists primarily of three topics on which the author has spent the major part of his research: purchasing power parity, standard of living, and monetary standards. There is also a unique chapter on economics and economic history in science fiction. This volume is ideal for academics, graduate and undergraduate students, and practitioners.

The world of finance is again undergoing crisis and transformation. This book provides a new perspective on finance through the prism of popular and formal culture and examines fascination and repulsion toward money, the role of governments and individuals in financial crises and how the Crisis of 2008, like others since 1720, repeat the same patterns of enthusiasm, greed, culpability, revulsion, reform and recovery. The book explores the political and socio-economic factors which determine fallibility and resilience in financial cultures, periods of crisis, transition and recovery based on cyclical rather than linear progression. Examining the roots of financial capitalism, in Europe and the United States and its corollary development in Asia, Russia and emerging markets proves that cultural and psychosocial reactions to financial success, endeavor and calamity transcend specific periods or events. The book allows the reader to discover parallel and intersecting reactions, controversies and resolutions in the cultural history of financial markets and institutions.

The essays in this book use the analytical tools and theoretical framework of economics to interpret quantitative historical evidence, offering new ways to approach historical issues and suggesting entirely new types of evidence outside conventional archives. Rosenbloom has gathered together seven essays from leading quantitative economic historians, illustrating the breadth of scope and continued importance of quantitative economic history. All of the chapters explore in one way or another the economic and social transformations associated with the emergence of an industrial and post-industrial economy, with most focusing on the transformations of the US economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the technological innovations that factored into this transformation and the relationship between industrialization and rising wealth inequality.

‘Big data’ is now readily available to economic historians, thanks to the digitisation of primary sources, collaborative research linking different data sets, and the publication of databases on the internet. Key economic indicators, such as the consumer price index, can be tracked over long periods, and qualitative information, such as land use, can be converted to a quantitative form. In order to fully exploit these innovations it is necessary to use sophisticated statistical techniques to reveal the patterns hidden in datasets, and this book shows how this can be done. A distinguished group of economic historians have teamed up with younger researchers to pilot the application of new techniques to ‘big data’. Topics addressed in this volume include prices and the standard of living, money supply, credit markets, land values and land use, transport, technological innovation, and business networks. The research spans the medieval, early modern and modern periods. Research methods include simultaneous equation systems, stochastic trends and discrete choice modelling. This book is essential reading for doctoral and post-doctoral researchers in business, economic and social history. The case studies will also appeal to historical geographers and applied econometricians.

This volume explores economic, social, and political dimensions of three catastrophic famines which struck mid-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Europe; the Irish Famine (An Gorta Mór ) of 1845–1850, the Finnish Famine (Suuret Nälkävuodet) of the 1860s and the Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor) of 1932/1933. In addition to providing new insights into these events on international, national and regional scales, this volume contributes to an increased comparative historiography in historical famine studies. The parallel studies presented in this book challenge and enhance established understandings of famine tragedies, including: famine causation and culpability; social and regional famine vulnerabilities; core–periphery relationships between nations and regions; degrees of national autonomy and self-sufficiency; as well as famine memory and identity. Famines in European Economic History advocates that the impact and long-term consequences of famine for a nation should be understood in the context of evolving geopolitical relations that extend beyond its borders. Furthermore, regional structures within a nation can lead to unevenness in both the severity of the immediate famine crisis and the post-famine recovery. This book will be of interest to those in the fields of economic history, European history and economic geography.