Volume 64, Issue 2

Modern discussions of corporate governance have focused on convergence of «varieties of capitalism», particularly the recent «Americanisation» of laws and voluntary codes in Germany, Japan, and other civil law countries. However German and Japanese legal and business historians have suggested that corporate governance, accounting transparency or other favourable factors in their countries were historically a match for – or even superior to – those in the US. An alleged consequence was deeper penetration by the Berlin and Tokyo stock exchanges of their domestic economies than of the US by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), using measures such as market capitalization/GDP ratios. This paper reviews the classic Rajan and Zingales data on the sizes of stock exchanges. It concludes that the evidence for Japanese historical precocity relative to the US, after the necessary allowance is made for regional stock exchanges and corporate bond finance, stands up better to this closer examination than that for Germany. Many financial historians now agree that stock exchange development was not historically determined by legal origins («Anglo-Saxon» common vs Euro-Japanese civil law), though today it appears to be driven by legal rules protecting shareholders and/or bondholders and limiting directorial autocracy and information asymmetry. However, both today and historically in some cultures private order rules (voluntary codes, bourse listing requirements, bankers as trusted intermediaries, block-holder monitoring, etc) offered substitute protections, or at least complemented protective laws. This paper reviews the plausibility of these determinants of historical stock exchange sizes – and others that have been neglected – in Japan, Germany, and elsewhere, before 1950.

This article deals with a case study from competition policy and decartelization in West Germany in the early to mid 1950 s. Whereas much research has focused on the discussions about the German cartel law of 1958 and its long process of formation, this article takes a closer look at the possibilities that Ludwig Erhard and his Ministry of Economics already had under the Allied Laws of 1947 that remained in place until 1957. This is demonstrated by a case study about the soap cartel of 1954/55. While Erhard and most of his civil servants were aware that this cartel would not be able to solve the soap industry’s problems, they still decided to push the Allied authorities towards approving it to demonstrate the inadequacy of cartelization. Thereby, they dealt a blow to those leaders of industry associations arguing against a strict ban on cartels. One of Erhard’s most influential opponents, Fritz Berg, had praised the soap cartel, which allowed more internal competition than simple price fixing cartels, as a model for future cartels and an example proving the disadvantages of a flat-out cartel ban. By letting the cartel fail under the conditions of a rapidly modernizing market instead of banning it, Erhard dealt a major blow to Berg’s argument. This way, Berg and his allies could not blame the failure of the soap industry on decartelization.

For more than 30 years bank-industry relations have been one of the most important subjects of financial research and history. Despite all research we are still lacking results on this topic for several branches of German industry, e. g. shipbuilding and shipping. Therefore, the article tries to analyze the relations between financial institutions and some of the prominent enterprises of maritime industry in Hamburg – in the 19 th and 20 th century the most important financial center in Northern Germany as well as place for shipping and shipbuilding. Finally, the article compares the results to those of other studies on bank-industry-relations in Germany in order to show whether there were specific characteristics in financing shipbuilding and shipping. Additionally, the article wants to stimulate further intensive research on this subject.

This article focuses on the evolution of the rhetoric and practice of corporate offshoring in Switzerland from the post-war economic boom to the industrial crisis in the mid-seventies. The virtue of a historical perspective on the issue of offshoring is to show how recent controversies have their roots in previous decades, suggesting the need to reassess recent debates about structural change in light of earlier experiences. Relying on the cultural and narrative perspective in business history, the article shows the emergence of an unexpected consensus about the legitimacy of corporate offshoring between employers, Swiss authorities and even Swiss labour unions after 1945. The explanation for that counter-intuitive alliance is found in the actors’ representations and discourse about what they considered to be excessive economic circumstances. Indeed, during this golden age of considerable economic expansion, demand exceeded supply and the Swiss firms constantly complained of labour shortages. Offshoring was therefore seen as a cure for the lack of workers within Switzerland and allowed multinational companies to focus on the most lucrative production activities. Swiss workers and unions shared this view, preferring some low-skill activities to be done outside the country rather than seeing the arrival of more foreign workers, who tended to be less unionised and who were accused of aggravating the housing shortage. In response, the Swiss authorities supported the offshoring process by providing some tariff favours to allow textile firms in particular to relocate their production abroad and to reimport it to Switzerland without paying taxes. Finally, the article shows how the consensus broke down after the economic downturn of the mid-70 s and how changing historical circumstances induced new diverging narratives about the social desirability of the offshoring phenomenon.