William H. Becker

American Wholesale Hardware Trade Associations, 1870–1900

Hardware wholesalers organized trade associations in the late nineteenth century in an effort to achieve stability and uniformity in prices and profit margins. These organizations, like those of manufacturers in the same industry, met with some success.

American Manufacturers and Foreign Markets, 1870-1900: Business Historians and the "New Economic Determinists"

Recent diplomatic historians have explained much of American expansionism at the end of the nineteenth century as the product of domestic industrial overcapacity and the resulting need to seek foreign markets. Evidence of business behavior, however, indicates that overseas expansion and exports were not a very important avenue through which U.S. businessmen sought to control prices and output. Indeed, in most of the industries which did engage in significant foreign activities, their expansion was usually the result of genuine competitive advantages rather than a sign of economic ill health.

Corporation Nation by Robert E. Wright (review)

11 shows the extent to which the 1914 fi nancial crisis was a global event, affecting not just allies and belligerents but also countries across the globe that were connected through trade, international fi nance, and the gold standard. Roberts shows that countries implemented surprisingly similar policies without any prior coordination. These included a moratorium on debt payment, the suspension of convertibility of notes into gold, issuing emergency currency notes, and raising of interest rates. The fi nal chapter briefl y explains why the 1914 fi nancial crisis has received so little attention, making the case that it should no longer remain an unknown crisis. By writing so engagingly, Saving the City conveys this forgotten part of London’s fi nancial history to a wide audience.

The Market, the State, and the Export-Import Bank of the United States, 1934–2000: Cold War and the Needs of a New Era, 1948–1961

This is the first history of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im) based on archival sources. As the government’s export credit agency, Ex-Im promotes exports through loans, guarantees, and insurance and has had an unusual history as a public institution shaped by market principles. Congress mandated that the Bank only provide credit with a reasonable assurance of repayment. But the rules of the market and the needs of the state conflicted at times. Ex-Im has played a part in all the major events that marked the growing involvement of the United States in the international economy. In the last two decades, the Bank has carried on its congressionally mandated mission in an increasingly complicated environment brought on by changes in private capital markets; congressional constraints on its budgets; major financial crises in Latin America and Southeast Asia; fast-moving developments in communications and information technology; and the demands of nongovernmental organizations devoted to environmental protection.