During the hundred-year period from about 1320 to about 1420, the Florentine woollen cloth industry underwent two closely connected crises. The first crisis was the consequence, direct and indirect, of the ravages of warfare and falling population, afflicting the entire Mediterranean basin and...

A recurrent and indeed persistent problem in European economic history – a veritable deus ex machina -- from medieval to modern times, is Europe’s supposed ‘balance of payments’ problem in trade with the ‘East’. This supposed problem has often been couched in Mercantilist overtones:...

This study is a much revised and extended version of two previously issued working papers on the production, sale, and consumption of woollen textiles in England and the Low Countries, from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. It focuses on the hey-day of the production and international...

The Anti-Red Shift -- to the Dark Side: Changes in the Colour Patterns and Market Values of Flemish Luxury Woollens, 1300 - 1550 This study documents, though it cannot fully explain, the striking shift in the spectrum of colour patterns in woollen textiles, from those of the Black Death era in...

If mankind’s three basic necessities have always been food, clothing, and shelter, whose production, trade, and consumption have rightly been a primary focus of economists and economic historians for many generations, we may ask this vital question: how do they distinguish between necessities...

The theory of established-outsider figurations developed by Norbert Elias is a use-ful tool for examining deprived neighbourhoods. The case of this paper is Dort-mund Nordstadt in Germany, an old inner-city neighbourhood which from its early days has housed the newly arrived immigrants. Elias...

The behaviour of urban populations is compared with the systems directing behaviour in individuals. This is both a metaphor and a mechanistic parallel. The biological model draws upon recent developments in brain research and psychological and cultural anthropology. The development and operation...

This paper addresses the potential tension between two broadly stated policy objectives: the preservation of distinctive cultural traditions, often through the mechanism of formal legal rights, and the fostering of civic virtue, a sense of local community and the advancement of common civic...

This paper aims to enrich the standard toolbox for measuring diversity in economics. In so doing, we compare the indicators of diversity used by economists with those used by biologists and ecologists. Ecologists and biologists are concerned about biodiversity: the diversity of organisms that...

This paper addresses the role of dialogical communication in acculturation efforts within organizations and regions, especially during periods of transition, mergers, technological innovations, and globalization. This optimal communication mode can be achieved through a “dialogue process”...