In this essay I propose to explore what we can and cannot learn about the way economies evolve over time. The focus of the essay is on the dynamics of change--political, social, and of course economic; and therefore the key word is time. In section I I outline the process of economic change as I...

Prices of repudiated bonds are insightful but scarcely observed. Based on an original daily database, this paper compares the price evolution from January 6, 1916 to August 31, 1919 of a cross-listed (Paris and London) Tsarist bond repudiated by the Soviets on February 8, 1918. After its...

We examine trend economic developments in New Zealand and in each of Australia’s six states and two territories (i.e. nine regions) in order to inform issues regarding economic policy harmonisation across Australasia. Our focus is on trend developments in GDP, population, GDP per capita and...

Les avocats plaidaient et les comptables comptaient, les seconds, plus près des marchands dont les premiers se tenaient à distance. La révolution industrielle du 19ème n’ayant été possible que par l’instauration d’instruments juridiques nouveaux sont apparus entre le notariat, ange...

Some economists have argued that the process of disintegration of the world economy between the two World Wars led to income divergence between the countries. This is in keeping with the view that economic integration leads to income convergence. The paper shows that the view that the period...

In an earlier essay (North, 1981, Ch. 3) I developed a "Neo-Classical Theory of the State". This essay elaborates, extends and modifies that essay in three directions: 1. it incorporates time into the model; 2. it is explicitly concerned with the perceptions--the belief systems--that determine...

According to previous studies, the demand-liability feature of national bank notes did not present a problem for note-issuing banks because the nonbank public treated notes and other currency as perfect substitutes. However, that view, when combined with nonbindingness of the collateral...

In the first half of the 20th century France, consultants offered their services to big firms, sometimes successfully. In a somewhat cloudy economic context, some of them, like Bedaux or Perrin, elaborated more ambitious social projects, in order to cope with the economic disorders. All those...

It becomes apparent that growing disparity in China is highly associated with regional variation of productivity, and that productivity is significantly impacted by financial deepening process. After identifying and estimating the share of bank lending to non-state sector, this paper finds a...

Ireland's loan funds were a long lived, self-sustaining, large-scale microcredit organization that made millions of loans, without collateral, to the poor. We examine the life-cycle of this institution and show how the loan funds responded to their economic environment in ways that benefitted...