The disclosure of information to workers can take several forms (company journal, meeting with shop stewards, etc). This paper is about a form rarely studied: the boss's speech at the work medal ceremony. These medals were created by the ministry of commerce in France in 1886. The success of...

This study investigates the impact of joint-stock banks on the rationalisation of the British interwar steel industry. A new panel data set of steel firm characteristics covering 1920 to 1938 is used to document rationalization and bank involvement, including interlocking directorships, with...

A model of semicollusion, where firms collude on prices and compete on capacities, is tailor-made to the characteristics of the Norwegian cement market and tested empirically on this particular market for the period 1927-1982. The results indicate that the rapid increase in capacity and thereby...

We explore the effectiveness of economic experimentation as a learning mechanism through a historical exploration of the early automobile industry. Our quantitative analysis suggests that economic experimentation was associated with success. We then leverage historical methods to understand if...

Since the global financial crisis, the East Asian countries’statuses in the global economy have improved, and the business environment for component and material industries has rapidly changed. In particular, interest in the specialization structure in component and material industries among...

Despite the Soviet government’s declarative efforts to engage foreign capital in rebuilding the economy during the 1920s, most concessions did not last long and were liquidated before the respective contracts expired. This article considers the conditions and key outcomes of concession...

This article investigates the contribution made by the cotton industry to the British war effort between 1914 and 1918. Its main conclusion is that the government failed to make the best use of the resources available to it in Lancashire, and permitted the cotton industry to hoard labour and to...

This paper focuses on the innovation system in the Benetton case: on the one hand, it puts in evidence the ability of the company in exploiting institutional conditions in order to develop a network organisation and a series of coordinated innovations; on the other hand, it investigates on the...