Search

First published in 1905, this volume on the Cotton Industry emerged in the context of Joseph Chamberlain's proposed Tariff Reform and provided an academic perspective on the industry. The author, S.J. Chapman, was an established historian of Lancashire cotton and produced this volume as an elementary introduction to the economics of the industry and some of its issues. He discusses the raw material, industrial and commercial history, British trade and foreign tariffs, exploring the historical influence of tariffs on the cotton trade and including two articles reprinted from the Manchester Guardian. The newspaper was strongly affiliated with the Liberal Party who would win a landslide victory the following year based in part on their opposition to Tariff Reform.

This book includes every aspect of the cotton trade, starting with the history and background, its growth and production patterns. It goes on to examine the international trade itself, the key players, recent trends, and a look at cotton prices, forecasting, and the factors that affect the cotton price. The author looks at end uses for cotton by analysing the garment industry as a whole and the competition for cotton. This is related to cotton consumption and the global economics of this commodity. The final chapter looks to the future and attempts to forecast trends for the industry over the coming years.

What is a global market? How does it work? At a time when new crises in world markets cannot be satisfactorily resolved through old ideas, Market Threads presents a detailed analysis of the international cotton trade and argues for a novel and groundbreaking understanding of global markets. The book examines the arrangements, institutions, and power relations on which cotton trading and production depend, and provides an alternative approach to the analysis of pricing mechanisms. Drawing upon research from such diverse places as the New York Board of Trade and the Turkish and Egyptian countrysides, the book explores how market agents from peasants to global merchants negotiate, accept, reject, resist, reproduce, understand, and misunderstand a global market. The book demonstrates that policymakers and researchers must focus on the specific practices of market maintenance in order to know how they operate. Markets do not simply emerge as a relationship among self-interested buyers and sellers, governed by appropriate economic institutions. Nor are they just social networks embedded in wider economic social structures. Rather, global markets are maintained through daily interventions, the production of prosthetic prices, and the waging of struggles among those who produce and exchange commodities. The book illustrates the crucial consequences that these ideas have on economic reform projects and market studies. Spanning a variety of disciplines, Market Threads offers an original look at the world commodity trade and revises prevailing explanations for how markets work.

Mit ihrer 1912 in Tübingen abgeschlossenen Arbeit über »Welthandelsartikel und ihre Preise« war Clara Ratzka-Ernst (1872-1928) eine der ersten Frauen in Deutschland, die in den Fächern Staats- und Volkswirtschaft und Finanzwissenschaft promovierte. Später war die wissenschaftliche Pionierin vor allem als Autorin von Romanen, Gedichten und Reisestücken tätig. In ihrer Dissertation betrachtet Ratzka-Ernst zunächst aus historischer Perspektive die Frage, wie aus »drei der gebräuchlichsten Handelsartikel« Weltwaren werden konnten. Daraufhin untersucht sie jedes der drei Produkte in einem separaten Teil und ergründet die Einflüsse auf ihre Preisentwicklung und die Prozesse hinter ihrer Preisbildung.