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In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the state emerged as a major player in the economies of the Western World. This important new volume provides an economic history for the period 1815-1939 of state/business relations in the major powers: France, Germany, Japan, Russia, UK and the USA. The book challenges the traditional story that the scale of state intervention reflected the degree to which each country was ideologically committed to laissez-faire, and which also tended to assume that governments were interested in economic growth and raising average living standards. Robert Millward gives a rather different perspective, arguing that the scale of state intervention and the differences across countries were motivated more by considerations of external defence and internal unification than by any notions of promoting economic growth or adherence to laissez-faire. This book provides, for the first time, an integrated economic history of these state /business relations in the major powers in the period 1815-1939, and offers a completely new perspective on the links between tariff policies, state enterprise in manufacturing, the treatment of the peasantry, regulation of railways, taxation of the business sector, policies on cartels, trusts and competition.

After a quarter century of almost general condemnation and rebuttal of the entire nationalization experience, it appears that there are second thoughts about governmental direct intervention in the economy. Reappraising State-Owned Enterprise deals with a topic often undervalued in the past decade but which now, with the crisis of 2008-2009, calls for greater attention: the direct intervention of the State as Entrepreneur.The collection of essays in this volume – prepared by some of the leading authorities in the field – offers a contribution to this debate by providing a balanced assessment of two of the most relevant experiences of mixed economies, the United Kingdom and Italy. In this respect, a comparison between these two countries is very much appropriate since in both nations the State played an important role as \"Entrepreneur\" starting in the early 20th century. In Great Britain and Italy, the heyday of the \"State as Entrepreneur\" was in the years right after WWII when it was used as a tool for promoting a modern society in which citizens acquired a stronger sense of belonging to their nations.The UK and Italy saw the State take on a too-pervasive role in the 70s; the two nations responded in different ways. In the 1980s Great Britain embarked on a harsh process of privatizations while Italians struggled on until finally submitting to privatizations in their nation in the following decade. The deep crisis of the final years of the 21st century forced both nations to reconsider State interventions as an appropriate tool in order to protect the wellbeing of the national economy.

After a quarter century of almost general condemnation and rebuttal of the entire nationalization experience, it appears that there are second thoughts about governmental direct intervention in the economy. Reappraising State-Owned Enterprise deals with a topic often undervalued in the past decade but which now, with the crisis of 2008-2009, calls for greater attention: the direct intervention of the State as Entrepreneur. The collection of essays in this volume - prepared by some of the leading authorities in the field - offers a contribution to this debate by providing a balanced assessment of two of the most relevant experiences of mixed economies, the United Kingdom and Italy. In this respect, a comparison between these two countries is very much appropriate since in both nations the State played an important role as \"Entrepreneur\" starting in the early 20th century. In Great Britain and Italy, the heyday of the \"State as Entrepreneur\" was in the years right after WWII when it was used as a tool for promoting a modern society in which citizens acquired a stronger sense of belonging to their nations. The UK and Italy saw the State take on a too-pervasive role in the 70s; the two nations responded in different ways. In the 1980s Great Britain embarked on a harsh process of privatizations while Italians struggled on until finally submitting to privatizations in their nation in the following decade. The deep crisis of the final years of the 21st century forced both nations to reconsider State interventions as an appropriate tool in order to protect the wellbeing of the national economy.

This article aims to account for the 1940s nationalizations and to develop a general theme which embraces the whole of British industry. It argues that natural monopoly and externalities go a long way towards explaining why transport and fuel were taken into public ownership and why manufacturing was not. The neo-marxist characterization of capitalist society plays only a limited role. Similarly the presence of a Labour government accounts for many of the institutional arrangements, but the shift to public ownership was ultimately determined by economic factors present throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Students gain a better understanding of war and economics when the variables come alive through stories, artifacts, and paintings. In this article, the author describes a short story about the fur trade which can generate lots of student questions about the fur economics, the Eastern Woodland Indians, trade artifacts, and war. The author also discusses how a beaver can start a war. (Contains 3 figures and 7 notes.)

In this article the economic organisation of the infrastructure industries of transport, communications and energy in the period 1840–1914 is analysed and the role of government evaluated. The article attempts to explain the differences in government involvement across mainly Western European countries: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Regulation via the concession system, municipal ownership, state guarantees of bond interest, profit sharing and nationalisation can all be found. In local networks for gas, electricity and tramways the pattern of regulation was determined by the structure and powers of local government and by fiscal considerations, such as the need to generate trading profits as a non-tax revenue for those town councils seeking funds for their mounting public health programmes. At the national level, central government objectives with respect to economic growth and political unification were pursued by the use of rate-of-return guarantees and subsidies to railway companies. State ownership was to be found only when speed in construction was paramount or when network segments were especially unprofitable or, and this applied also to telegraphs, when there was a very strong desire to control information and the flow of goods and persons. Neither a distrust of capitalism nor the advent of municipal socialism were motivating forces behind public ownership.

The years 1870-1914 saw the first serious attempts to grapple with the social and economic problems generated by industrialization and urbanization. Local councils operated with a limited tax base. Roads and water supply appear to have taken priority over public health and police. Income and wealth were major determinants of expenditure. The county boroughs were the most dynamic elements and used trading profits to support their spending levels. London was a high cost area but survived because of its high rateable values. Rural areas were badly served as a consequence of a poorly organized governmental framework.