North American Capitalism Research Articles

The Influence of Airbnb Announcements on North American Capital Markets: Insights for Stakeholders

This research investigates the burgeoning peer-to-peer (P2P) economy, exemplified by platforms such as Airbnb, and its implications within the North American context. The study focuses on understanding the repercussions of Airbnb announcements on capital markets, concentrating specifically on the travel and tourism sector and the real estate sector. The findings unveil a discernible augmentation in index returns preceding the announcement’s publication in both sectors. However, a notable divergence manifests post-announcement: while the real estate sector sustains an upward trajectory in returns, the travel and tourism sector experiences a post-publication decline. These results underscore the strategic advantage available to investors with early access to Airbnb announcements, enabling them to capitalize on excess profits. Furthermore, the broader investor community can leverage the insights gleaned from Airbnb announcements for financial gains. A nuanced examination of regression results reveals the substantial impact of macroeconomic variables on index returns in both the travel and tourism sector and the real estate sector. These insights contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the intricate dynamics shaping these economic domains.

Lawyers as Trusted Agents in Nineteenth-Century American Commerce: The Influence of Fiduciary Law and Norms on Economic Development

The role of fiduciary law in the development of North American capitalism has been overlooked by institutional economists, who interpret fiduciary law as a form of contract and make the judicial enforcement of contract central to the transaction-cost theory of economic development. This article argues that the emergence of distinctive, equity-based fiduciary laws and norms significantly influenced the development and growth of early-nineteenth-century American markets. Our historical research identifies lawyers as important economic actors, who served as catalysts for the emergence of this governance culture. Lawyers adopted fiduciary principles that allowed them to become trusted intermediaries, thereby addressing the agency-cost problems inherent in complex economic exchange that vex the institutionalists’ contractual account of economic development.

Fiduciary Law and Economic Development: Attorneys As Trusted Agents in Nineteenth Century American Commerce

The role of fiduciary law in the development of North American capitalism has been overlooked by institutional economists, who interpret fiduciary law as a form of contract and make the judicial enforcement of contract central to the transaction-cost theory of economic development. This article argues that the emergence of distinctive, equity-based fiduciary laws and norms significantly influenced the development and growth of early nineteenth-century American markets. Our historical research identifies lawyers as important economic actors, who served as catalysts for the emergence of this governance culture. Lawyers adopted fiduciary principles that allowed them to become trusted intermediaries, thereby addressing the agency-cost problems inherent in complex economic exchange that vex the institutionalists’ contractual account of economic development.

Reciprocity as dispossession: a dialectical materialist analysis of the fur trade

ABSTRACTThe dispossession at the core of the fur trade is barely perceptible, especially when recounted as part of the genesis narrative of British North American capitalism and state-formation. By focusing on the exploitation of Indigenous peoples’ labour by company traders, I make this dispossession more conspicuous, revealing it as neither a direct nor a uniform process, but rather fragmented and driven by a host of legal, economic, and geopolitical factors. To achieve this, dialectical materialism is the preferred mode of analysis. Such a perspective brings into relief the uneven and combined nature of legal and economic transformation, disclosing the inner dimensions of dispossession that are the principal legacy of the fur trade and British North American settler-colonialism alike. At stake in this study is not only a comprehensive account of the processes of dispossession, but also a commentary on the insidiousness of these processes – that is, an inside look at how customary reciprocity was distorted through exploitative practices that served of dispossession.

Despoilment, Deportation and Confinement: The Fate of German Residents in Latin America During the Second World War

This article sheds light on the adventures of the Germans and citizens from other Axis countries resident in Latin America during the Second World War. Considered a threat to hemispheric security, and given the political, economic and diplomatic pressure exercised by the United States in the region, the Italians, Japanese, and especially the Germans were subject to expulsion, reclusion, and expropriation. This interference, aimed at aligning all the governments in a common struggle against the foreign enemy shed light on the fact that the Good Neighbour Policy, established by the northern power after the Great Depression to repair its relations with Latin America, in truth, was used during the war to exaggerate what a danger they were and, as such, combat –in an apparent framework of legality, and in law- competitors that hindered the expansion of North American capital. The article outlines the way in which deportations, Proclaimed Lists or blacklists, confinement in concentration camps, expropriations and the nationalization of the property of citizens for the Axis countries, especially Germans, were used to make it easier for people from the US to enter Latin America together with their industries and businesses. This occurred in the context of industrialisation that a number of countries were developing and in which the US was also interested as a way to expand its economic imperialism.

The Growing Presence of Canadian Mining Companies in Mexico and the Dominance of Mexican Business Groups

This article examines the changes in the Mexican mining sector over the past 20 years resulting from the implementation of more than 19 economic agreements endorsed by the Mexican government. The analysis highlights how the protection that these instruments have provided to the movement of North American capital has facilitated the positioning of Canadian mining companies through direct investment or co‐investment projects with Mexican and foreign companies. Unlike in other Latin American countries with an important extractive industry and a clear dominance of foreign investment, since 1994, Mexican and Canadian capitals have been relatively complementary, although Mexican mining companies continue to dominate the mining industry. Finally, the article examines the 2013 constitutional energy reform and its effects on the mining activity.

Variegated Capitalism, Chinese Style: Regional Models, Multi-scalar Constructions

Zhang J. and Peck J. Variegated capitalism, Chinese style: regional models, multi-scalar constructions, Regional Studies. The paper explores tensions between the varieties of capitalism framework and the heterogeneous particularities of the Chinese case. Rather than forcing the Chinese model into analytical boxes derived, primarily, from analyses of European and North American capitalism, this complex formation more appropriately can be understood to exist in a ‘triangular’ relationship with the two conventional poles of varieties scholarship, the US-style ‘liberal market’ economy and the German-style ‘coordinated market’ economy. Furthermore, the substantial degree of internal (regional) heterogeneity evident in the Chinese case calls into question those models of capitalism that focus narrowly on institutional coherence at the national scale. Illustrating this point, a range of ‘sub-models’ of Chinese capitalism is examined: regional styles of capitalist development that remain distinct from one another, and deeply networked into a range of global production networks, and ‘offshore’ economies, just as they remain, to some degree, distinctively Chinese.

Mexico and Mexicans in the Making of the United States

The contributors to this timely volume reject political and public discourse, which too often characterizes Mexicans as invaders or as the Other. Rather, the authors argue that, historically and culturally, Mexico and Mexicans were key participants in the construction of the United States. Moving from the Hispanic capitalism of northern New Spain to the claims of superior “Yankee patriarchy” and finally to the murky state of race and the persistence of mestizaje in the twenty-first century, this collection offers engaging essays that emphasize an integrative history of the two countries.John Tutino provides a sweeping overview that links New Spain, Mexico, and the United States from the sixteenth century to the present. As Europeans, Mesoamericans, and Africans moved to northern New Spain, drawn by the promise of silver, farming, and grazing, what emerged was an ethnically complex and economically stable region. Even when the border moved south, Hispanic capitalism and Mexican migration continued north. Through wars and marriages, Anglo-Americans adopted New Spain’s northern capitalism and laid the foundation for a dynamic US West. At the same time, the United States was not the only beneficiary of this capitalist system. As David Montejano demonstrates, during the US Civil War Mexican teamsters and merchants like José San Román controlled the import and export of goods like “Mexican cotton” that were vital to the functioning of the trans-Mississippi Confederacy (p. 152). Rather than take this as evidence of Mexican sympathies with slavery or the Confederacy, Montejano argues that these entrepreneurs simply took successful advantage of economic opportunities. In the post– Civil War period, Mexico’s economic integration into the United States accelerated so that, as Tutino points out, “Mexicans increasingly engaged the world through the United States” (p. 68). Ties intensified further after World War II, when population growth and urbanization in Mexico prompted more Mexicans to migrate north. In the last few decades, sectors of the US economy have become dependent on poorly paid and exploitable Mexican workers. As Tutino states, “mutual dependence has become a symbiosis” (p. 23).Hispanic North American capitalism was adopted by Anglo-Americans who articulated a “superior Yankee patriarchy” (p. 32). Shelley Streeby examines how nineteenth-century wars, mass media, and popular literature reframed the United States’ relationship with Mexico. Mexican culture and Mexican men were problematized and portrayed as failed patriarchs and as exceptionally violent. Although President James Monroe envisioned the newly independent American republics as brothers, popular novels reimagined Mexico as a woman in need of saving. In this way, the “gendered power dynamics that figured the United States as a man and Mexico as a woman worked to naturalize US dominance and Mexican subordination” (p. 117). The United States was the heroic white male while Mexico was considered incapable of republicanism because it was too racially mixed and feminine. This gendered construction of Mexico, Streeby argues, helped build a powerful self-image of white “USAmericans” (p. 127).Katherine Benton-Cohen also examines the construction and fluidity of race by focusing on the copper-rich and racially complicated Cochise County, Arizona, from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Here, the defeat and removal of indigenous groups such as the Chiricahua Apaches and later the Chinese ended the camaraderie between Mexicans and Anglo-Americans. Racial categorization changed when Mexicans replaced Chinese and Indians at the bottom of labor and racial hierarchies. In this way, Mexicans were pushed further toward the margins to become “others” in a binary racialized world. At the same time, as Ramón Gutiérrez notes, rapid demographic transformations challenge binary racial understandings of white and nonwhite in the United States. In what Gutiérrez calls the “vibrant postnational spaces” (p. 264), “Mex-America” represents a place where “peoples, cultures, and ideas can move in complicated ways, defying linearity” (p. 281).This is a solid collection of essays that makes a convincing case that the past and present of Mexico and the United States are inseparable. As Tutino argues, Mexicans and Americans “are not long separate and ultimately different peoples struggling to merge; [they] are peoples emerging from long interactions, struggling with the separating claims of nations and nationalisms” (p. 77). As is often the case with collected essays, some chapters are more engaging than others. While the arguments presented are not necessarily new, the collection thoughtfully and critically examines not only the complex themes that link Mexico and the United States but also the concrete ways that Mexico and Mexicans constructed the economy and the national and racial identity of the United States. In that way, this collection represents an excellent contribution to the ongoing public and academic debate.

Desarrollo, integración y dependencia en Centroamérica

This work summarizes the analysis of the period that began in 1944, which led to the Central American economic integration project and which is presented as the favorable alternative to constitute a new economic and institutional framework within which it is expected to revitalize the whole society. The most significant economic events are, for this period of time, the emergence of new export products (cotton, meat and sugar) that do not imply a substantial alteration in the structure of foreign trade; the decline of the banana industry and the modification of the conditions in which it operates in the foreign plantation; the emergence of North American capital in the rise of manufacturing industry and finally, a vigorous impulse in inter-Central American trade, which removed the idle capacity of traditional industry.

Visión y acción de Washington frente a la deuda externa latinoamericana

This paper does not offer a complete and detailed history of Latin American foreign debt. Rather, it is a matter of starting from its current volume, trends and perspectives, to locate it in the most concrete sphere of the reactions that the problem provokes in the international financial authorities that operate in the North American capital: the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. It also tries to reveal the point of view of the most important North American financial authorities: the Treasury and the Federal Reserve System. Finally, the vision of international private banking, in general, and of the United States in particular, is introduced, as it is the main creditor of the region, as well as the recent concerted efforts to face the difficulties posed by the huge foreign debt of the developing world, where Latin America stands out.

"Liberation Theology Does Not Yet Seem to be Easily Applicable in Britain"

In this paper I shall set out to show that although the former Archbishop of York, Dr. John Habgood's statement is consistent with the attitude of many leading members of the Church of England, it is an attitude that should be challenged. Liberation theology is never easily applicable, for liberation is never easy for those who are in positions of power. Although the Archbishop most probably had in mind the Latin American brand of liberation theology, with its focus on economic oppression and domination by North American capitalism, it shall be my contention that, in the Church of England, the lack of serious consideration over the past few decades, of Black theology, which is a liberation theology, has meant that many Black Anglicans have felt unwelcome. I shall suggest that this lack of a Black liberation theology has resulted in that Church losing a vital and vibrant addition to the life of that Church. Furthermore, I shall contend that such an addition is crucial if the Church is to have any significant relevance to society today, for it is the contribution of Black theology, a theology that teaches forgiveness and reconciliation, that will give a new meaning to a disordered nation.

State, pattern of development and agriculture: the brazilian case

This article analyzes transformations in Brazilian agriculture in the light of the relations between the rural sector and the Brazilian model of economic development during the last 50 years. The article aims to distinguish the period prior to the crisis of the 1980s with that prevailing in the last two decades, focusing on the State’s intervention in the rural context. Particular attention is given to the way in which the Brazilian State incorporated specific interests from different rural segments, both in the developmentalist phase and the subsequent period marked by fiscal crisis. The characterization of the pattern of development adopted by Latin American societies from the mid 1940’s to the early 1980’s has been denominated in the specialized literature the national-developmentalist project in an attempt to understand a common trajectory in the various national experiences. The term certainly embodies contradictions, particularly if one confronts its ECLA inspired theoretical matrix with the military-nationalist project, which was dominant in a good portion of these societies for considerable time. 1 Few countries maintained the national development project throughout the entire period considered. The international crises that shook the interventionist structures of European and North American capitalism during the 1970’s, also placed in check the Latin American recipe for industrialization, with the exceptions of Mexico and Brazil. The latter was able to maintain, in a certain form, the basic

Thomas Miller Klubock. Contested Communities: Class, Gender, and Politics in Chile's El Teniente Copper Mine, 1904–1951. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998.

Thomas Klubock's case study of labor struggles, gender politics, and the making of community in Chile's El Teniente copper mines makes an important contribution to labor history, Latin American history, and gender studies. Drawing on rich archival data and oral histories, Klubock examines the interplay of North American capitalism, Chilean state formation, and the construction of gender ideologies and relations in the creation of a militant working-class community of mining men and women in El Teniente.

Formación y consolidación de las organizaciones obreras en Baja California, 1920-1930

The article examines the various ways in which labor organizations began to form in Baja California. Because of the nature of the Porfirian political economy, which led to the preeminence of North American capital and the introduction of Chinese laborers, particularly in the Mexicali Valley, the first efforts of Mexican workers were directed against foreigners. This did not prevent them, however, from establishing ties with groups in southern California, principally in the Imperial Valley and in Mexicali. In Ensenada, where conditions were quite different, the stevedores organized to control the loading and unloading activities of the port. The Confederación Regional de Obreros Mexicanos, an official organization during the administrations of Alvaro Obregón and Plutarco Elías Calles, operated throughout the district. Indeed, the confederation's activities determined, to a great degree, the nature of worker demands in the region.

Old Paradigms & New Openings in Latin America

Old Paradigms & New Openings in Latin America Enrique Krauze (bio) Latin American history has long been dominated by four grand and enduring paradigms: militarism, Marxism (both revolutionary and academic), demagogic populism, and the closed economy. For different reasons, all four have entered into a common and definitive crisis. Let us consider each in turn. Scarcely 40 years ago, all of Latin America seemed hopelessly trapped in a tyrannical backwater of the nineteenth century. In 1950, the distinguished Mexican historian and man of letters Daniel Cosío Villegas estimated that of the 20 countries commonly regarded as forming Latin America, seven (Nicaragua, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic) "lived under regimes of unquestionable tyranny," while nine (El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, and Haiti) had political systems so fragile that the slightest push could tumble them into despotism. Only four nations (Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba, and Uruguay) had viable civic orders, said Cosfo Villegas, and even these were far from immune to the traditional Latin American political maladies. Latin America continued to be the domain par excellence of dictators and dictatorships. A succession of "gorillas" (the local parlance for military rulers), often supported by the United States, tended to look on their countries as a form of personal property. The phenomenon persisted [End Page 15] until just a short while ago, ending with the fall of two of the most sinister dictators in the history of Latin America: General Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay (a throwback to a nineteenth-century brand of caudillismo) and General Augusto Pinochet of Chile (an apt student of the methods used by totalitarians in our own century). Soon after Fidel Castro seized control of Cuba in early 1959, a wave of intense revolutionary messianism swept over the entire region. At the outset, both liberal and conservative Latin Americans saw the Cuban Revolution as a fresh departure that promised to combine the continent-spanning destiny projected by Simón Bolívar and José Martí with the prophecies of Karl Marx in a surprising new way. Over time, the prestige of Castro's revolution would wane sharply, but not before making a deep impression on two generations of Latin university students, who then sought incessantly to replicate it elsewhere in the region. Few were mindful of the harsh truths that lay behind the ideological wall (higher and thicker than the one in Berlin) that divided the West from the "socialist countries": police states, labor camps, millions of peasants sacrificed to agricultural collectivization, and economic catastrophe beyond measure. All the Latin American students and much of the younger political class "knew"—and all they thought they needed to know—was that this socialist world was the polar opposite of North American capitalism. Nothing else mattered. Even the Soviet Union's brutal extinguishment of the Hungarian revolution in 1956 and the Prague Spring in 1968 was not enough to stir serious doubt. When Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago appeared in 1973, it was dismissed as a long-winded reactionary pamphlet. Instead, the 1970s were a time of revolutionary action in Latin America, as young admirers of Ché Guevara, Trotsky, and Mao threw themselves into urban and rural guerrilla warfare. In Argentina and Uruguay, this upsurge of leftist violence helped to revive military dictatorships, as generals in both countries used the threat of revolutionary violence to justify the overthrow of civilian governments. Something similar happened in Chile, the only place in the area where a left-wing government won power through elections. The generation of the 1970s—peaceful radicals and violent revolutionaries alike—ended up being sacrificed in a holocaust of assassination, torture, and exile. The revolution triumphed only in Nicaragua, where the Sandinista comandantes consciously modeled themselves on Castro and boldly proclaimed their plans to make their country "the second liberated territory of Latin America." A third historical paradigm—populism—came back stronger than ever in the 1970s. One rubbed unbelieving eyes at the spectacle of Juan Perón, now nearly 80 years old, returning to an Argentina completely entranced by myths left over from the 1940s. In Venezuela, meanwhile, President Carlos Andrés Pérez outdid himself in paroxysms of "Third World" bombast. In Mexico...

Respecifying Marx’s Value Categories: A Theoretical and Empirical Reconsideration of the “Law of the Falling Rate of Profit”

Despite the much-touted prosperity (read, positive annual growth rates) of the US and Canadian economies between 1983 and 1989, the argument can be made that North American capitalism has experienced a long-term malaise over the past twenty years, a malaise which shows little sign of lifting any time soon. Slow growth rates, high unemployment levels, three severe recessions, burgeoning debt and the decline of the traditional rust-belt industries have been prominent features of what has been described as a structural crisis of North American capitalism.

Business Imperialism and British Enterprise in Brazil: The St. John d'el Rey Mining Company, Limited, 1830-1960*

OREIGN entrepreneurs have played a highly visible and controversial role in Latin American history since the voyages of Columbus in the fifteenth century. Throughout the colonial period, monarchs and bureaucrats periodically debated the role non-Iberian entrepreneurs should play in the New World empires. The wars of independence in the nineteenth century opened Latin American nations to a massive influx of British, and later, North American capital, raising new questions about the role of the foreigner in national affairs. With the emergence of strong cultural and economic nationalism in the twentieth century, politicians and scholars have focused increasingly on the role of foreign investors and foreign enterprise in the development process. Most of the scholarly literature during the past three decades has concentrated on the national and international arenas, ranging over such issues as capital flows, foreign control of vital national industries and resources, multinational corporations, and theories of dependency and imperialism.' The macroeconomic perspective has dominated the literature, while few scholars have analyzed the operations and evolution of individual foreign companies. Thus, despite the longstanding and controversial role of foreign business in Latin America, we know very

Reflections on Colonialism and Modernisation

The Third World today is the historic product of the overseas expansion of European and North American capitalism. Prior to the rise of modern capitalism, the world had been pluralistic. Different centres of civilisation had developed independently. Between them there had been cultural and commercial intercourse. Two historic missions were completed by European capitalism: firstly, the conquest of the world, and in its wake, colonial plunderings; secondly, the integration of the isolated and the peripheric regions into a unified world system.

Technological Dependence and Underdevelopment

A major cornerstone of the structural analysis of underdevelopment is the character and form of technology available to the UDCs, and their implica¬tion for economic growth. It has long been recognized that growth in the underdeveloped countries (UDCs) of today differs in substantial ways from that of the early stages of capitalist development experienced in western Europe. The significant technological achievements of European and North American capitalism have contributed vastly to our stock of technical and scientific know¬ledge. At first glance this technical revolution seems to hold the torch in the path of the fight against poverty and underdevelopment. It is argued that this knowledge can be shared profitably by all UDCs, who can thus 'skip' techno¬logical stages given will power, good common sense and efficient management of resources.

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:Aggregate Theory and Policy; Monetary Economics—Readings on Current Issues. By William Gibson and George Kaufman.Monetary Theory: Inflation, Interest, and Growth in the World Economy. By Robert A. Mundell.Business Finance and Investments; Utility Regulation During Inflation. Edited by Joseph E. Haring and Joseph F. Humphrey.Financial Management of Foreign Exchange. By Bernard A. Lietaer.The Corporate Economy. Robin Marris and Adrian Wood, Eds.Cash Management and the Demand for Money. By Daniel Orr.Risk, Return, and Equilibrium: A General Single‐Period Theory of Asset Selection and Capital‐Market Equilibrium. By Bernell K. Stone.Financial Institutions and Markets; Credit Rationing and the Commercial Loan Market. By Dwight M. Jaffee.A History of Financial Intermediaries. By Herman E. Krooss and Martin R. Blyn.International Finance; Canada's Experience with Fixed and Flexible Exchange Rates in a North American Capital Market. By Robert M. Dunn. Jr.Capital Transfers and Economic Policy: Canada, 1951–1962. By Richard E. Caves and Grant L. Reuber with Robert W. Baguley, John M. Curtis, Raymond Lubitz.Public Finance; Indirect Taxation in Developing Countries. By John F. Due.Tax Incentives and Capital Spending. Edited with commentary by Gary Fromm.Modern Public Finance: The Study of Public Sector Economics. Second Edition. By Bernard P. Herber.State and Local Finance. Edited by William E. Mitchell and Ingo Walter.