Wholesale Merchants Research Articles

The Consequences of Ukraine-Russia Crisis: The Case of International Trade and Prices’ Behavior in Egypt

This research aims to measure the impact of the Ukraine-Russia conflicts on the international trade and thus on the prices’ behavior in Egypt. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and observe prices’ behavior during the ongoing crisis. The literature review defined the real determinant of prices and what are the factors affecting prices in the market. This research is quantitative research with a descriptive then correlational research design and the type of investigation is non-contrived research. Observational method and questionnaire are used in data collection gathering a number of quantitative data. The questionnaires are to be directed to expert respondents whether consumers or wholesale merchants via emails or online questionnaire. The questionnaire focuses on the defining the prices’ behavior and level before, after and during the war crisis. The measuring scale used is ratio scale. The IBM SPSS Statistics 26 software was used to analyze the questionnaire responses collected from respondents. Descriptive analysis section of all questionnaire responses, followed by hypothesis testing performed to answer the research questions.This paper shows that the anticipated shortage of supply in strategic goods and Ukraine-Russia War significantly affect prices behavior. In addition, the Ukraine-Russia war has a moderating effect on the prices’ behavior in Egypt in relation to the fear of supply shortage.Future researches are recommended to analyze the macro and micro effects of the Russia-Ukraine war over longer time horizons; the increase in pricing in the Egyptian market is thought to be caused by a wide range of factors that are not all covered in this study. It is also advised that future researchers employ a large sample size for sake of generalization.

Venetian 15th Century bookkeeping as taught by Marino De Raphaeli

This paper presents an overview of the only known Venetian manual on double entry bookkeeping that predates Pacioli’s Particularis de Computis et Scripturis: de Raphaeli’s La Riegola de Libro, or The Rules of Bookkeeping. Written in 1475, it was lost until 1989, escaping the attention of Fabio Besta, Vincenzo Vianello and others in the 19th and 20th centuries who desperately sought to disprove Pacioli’s authorship of his treatise. Had they found it, a different history would be told, but would Pacioli’s place have been usurped? This study considers the purpose behind de Raphaeli’s instructional manual; its content; what it tells us about how Venetian wholesale merchants did their bookkeeping in the 15th century; and about how bookkeeping was taught by tutors before Pacioli removed the need for a tutor in 1494.

Development and validation of a low-density SNP panel for paternity and kinship analysis and evaluation of genetic variability and structure of commercial Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) populations from Brazil

Genetic improvement programs of the Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) have been implemented worldwide aiming to enhance growth, survival and disease resistance traits. The use of low-density SNP panels for performing high-throughput, low-cost paternity assignments, kinship determination and evaluating genetic variability parameters and structure in L. vannamei broodstock lines will help increase observed genetic gains. Samples from four selection lines from a breeding nucleus (N = 167), from seven retail stores in Brazil (N = 191), and from families (offspring, known dams and putative sires) from a commercial breeding nucleus (N = 257) were used in the study. All samples were genotyped with a set of 96 SNP markers mined from a dataset developed locally. Observed minor allele frequencies for 88 quality-controlled SNPs ranged between 0.11 and 0.5 with an average of 0.38. Mean observed population heterozygosity varied from 0.319 to 0.471. Mean estimated population Fis was 0.022 and ranged from −0.075 to 0.109. STRUCTURE and PCA analysis revealed retail store samples to have a mean composition of 85% from a common population, suggesting a common post larvae producer supplied the different grow out farms and/or wholesale merchants from different sampled areas. Overall average estimated probabilities of non-exclusion considering one known parent and one putative parent was 1.1 × 10–6, 7.0 × 10–4 considering no known parents, and 2.6 × 10–10 considering a putative pair of sire and dam. Parentage analysis using CERVUS resulted in correct dam assignments of all tested offspring. Sire assignments with >95% confidence were obtained in all cases. Obtained results indicate the developed SNP panel provides a viable tool for performing large-scale high-throughput kinship and paternity assignments, and population structure and assignment of commercial Pacific white shrimp broodstock. The developed tool can provide pedigree information and improve genetic gains in breeding programs that seek to increase grow-out survival rates and overall productivity in biologically and non-biologically challenging production environments.

Location Selection Model for Small Wholesale Shops in Samutprakarn Province, Thailand

The objectives of this research were to study the factors affecting the importance of location selection criteria and present a model for the location selection of a small wholesale store in Samutprakarn province. The research applied the Modified Analytic Hierarchy Process methodology: screening the criteria of location selection from the literature review by interviewing five small wholesale business owners and using a set of questionnaires to collect data from 60 small wholesale merchants, followed by an analysis. The research found that the location zone is the most important factor influencing the location selection criteria. For the stores located in the industrial area, the priority is given to the parking space and the width of the road, while those located in the residential area place the first priority on the proximity or being located along the main and secondary roads. However, the importance level of the location selection criteria ranked in the second and third positions was similar for industrial and residential locations, namely proximity to fresh markets and proximity to distribution centers, respectively. The location selection model will help the small wholesale business owners in Samutprakarn province and similar areas consider the potential location for their business establishments. Furthermore, the commercial building owners can also use this model to assess the rental potential of their commercial buildings. Academia can also use the acquired factors and models for further studies.

Review: The Problem with Feeding Cities: The Social Transformation of Infrastructure, Abundance, and Inequality in America, by Andrew Deener

Review: <i>The Problem with Feeding Cities: The Social Transformation of Infrastructure, Abundance, and Inequality in America</i>, by Andrew Deener

Storage Changes Stable Isotope Composition of Cucumbers

Vegetable food stuff produced under controlled and identical conditions from one farm of identical “age” (batch) has a similar isotopic composition. This fact can be used to control the origin of vegetables. This question is of special relevance when food-contaminations have to be traced back to the producer, or certain production claims have to be controlled. However, as vegetables are harvested, brought to whole-sale merchants and to retail shops, where they remain until being bought by the consumer, one has to consider possible changes in isotopic composition during this transfer period, when comparing vegetables of questioned origin with reference samples taken directly from the field/producer. We investigated changes in the isotope composition of vegetables during storage by studying as an example cucumbers from one batch. We stored the cucumbers in a vegetable storage under controlled conditions and removed one sample every day and analyzed its isotopic composition. We found changes in the δ15N and δ18O isotope values over the investigated period of 21 days, with both parameters showing positive linear correlations, and maximum enrichments with time of more than 1.5‰ for δ15N and more than 2‰ for δ18O. However, within the interval the samples remained in a saleable condition the isotope variations remained more or less within the variability of the sample batch. Our study demonstrates that changes in the isotopic signature in vegetables might occur after harvest during storage and have to be taken into account when (commercial) samples collected in a market are investigated.

Waste assessment in distribution and marketing logistics of horticultural products: evidence from Brazil

Worldwide, one-third of the food produced is inconsumable due to marketable quality losses. Parallelly, and given the growing world population, levels of waste have become unacceptable. Supply channels play a fundamental role in establishing strategies for food waste mitigation. The objective of this research was to analyze if good operational practices with different dimensions of distribution and commercialization logistics may contribute to reduce fruit and vegetable waste. The studied dimensions were: logistics, operations, technology, trade and management. Several questionnaires were administered to 83 specialized wholesale merchants from a large supply center in Brazil, for lettuce, potato, orange, papaya and tomato. The results indicated that for papaya and potato, low and high waste generation are associated with a greater number of anti-waste actions (p = 0.0071 and p = 0.0469 respectively). For tomato, lettuce and orange, no significant differences for found. These results represent a first approach to understanding the reasons for food waste at wholesale centers. Highlights: Worldwide, one-third of the food produced is inconsumable due to marketable quality losses. In Brazil, about 40 thousand tons of food is wasted per year. Food waste in the fruit and vegetable supply chain is associated with the following dimensions: logistics, operation, technology, trade and management. For papaya and potatoes, low levels of residues are associated with a greater number of anti-waste actions such use of a cold chamber and use of promotional pricing, respectively. For tomato, lettuce and orange, no significant differences was found for high and low levels of waste in relation to the number of actions undertaken in these chains.

Ghetto: The History of a Word by Daniel B. Schwartz (review)

Reviewed by: Ghetto: The History of a Word by Daniel B. Schwartz Murray Baumgarten Daniel B. Schwartz. Ghetto: The History of a Word. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. 266 pp. doi:10.1017/S036400942000029X Transformative changes of the last five hundred years mark the history of the ghetto—the word and the physical enclosure of the Jews that it names—from its invention in Venice in 1516 to the present, which Daniel B. Schwartz charts in this excellent and important book. His thorough account of the shifts, extensions, and changes in phrasing and meaning maps the genealogy of the word in this succinct historical narrative. The carefully deployed research ranges through Italian, Yiddish, German, Russian, Hebrew, and English sources and articulates the parameters of ghetto studies. The narrative traces the strata of successive redefinitions of the ghetto, as they are generated by theological, economic, political, military, genocidal, and racist decisions that have, in its five-hundred-year history, become embedded in this word. Ghetto: The History of a Word begins in Venice as the "compulsory Jewish quarter" for Jews to live in (25), and the reader learns how, elaborated throughout Italy over the next five decades, and Europe over the next five hundred years, it significantly changed its meanings [End Page 446] as it stigmatized and stereotyped the Jews, and was then in the United States extended to African Americans. From Venice, Schwartz takes us to Rome, where in 1555 Pope Paul IV gave the ghetto a severe Christian inflection. By 1562 the word is generalized: now it refers not to a Venetian sequestration of Jews in the Canareggio district, with rules and regulations intended to control the resident Jews and make them offer small loans to the poorer classes. In Rome, rather, the ghetto came to define a compulsory Jewish quarter in a generic sense, and this meaning spread throughout Italy. While "Christians may not have been permitted to live in the [Venice] ghetto, it was hardly off-limits to them," as it would become in Rome (37). Indeed, Christians came to the ghetto "to borrow on pledges, buy strazzaria [used clothing], or cut deals with wholesale merchants … [and] even came to observe Sabbath services in synagogue and to listen to the Italian-language sermons"—an early example of "ghetto tourism" (37). By contrast, "The Roman Ghetto sought to hem in Jews physically and economically as never before," yet "still assigned them a place, however narrow and stigmatized, within the city" (37). (Fast-forward to the Nazi ghetto, which was exclusive to Jews, there transformed into subhuman alien slave laborers.) In Rome, the ghetto became a Christian weapon: "The popes viewed the ghetto as more than simply a device for striking an equilibrium between acceptance and expulsion" (34). For "Jews had lived in Rome from before the establishment of the Roman Empire," and thus, "unlike in Venice, the creation of the ghetto in Rome could not be conceptually linked to the construction of a community" (34). The word remains the same, but now its meaning has changed: "If the Venetian Ghetto represented a move in the direction of greater (if still hedged) inclusion, the Roman Ghetto was just the opposite" (34–35). Rather than offering Jews protection in return for financial services, as the Venice ghetto had, "the papal ghetto was a punishment of sorts, one (albeit major) component of a concerted assault on Jewish life designed to make Jews thoroughly miserable and reduce them to penury" (35). In the latter half of the sixteenth century, papal ghettoization was part of a policy intended to accelerate Jewish conversion to Christianity through harsh discipline. Rather than diluting its stigma, the generalization of the word sharpened its anti-Jewish purposes. Even in liberal Piedmont, which in 1848 led the way for Jewish emancipation, the ghetto dated to 1679, and the Jews had been branded with the ghetto stereotype. Free now to move throughout the realm, the Jews thanked the king publicly in plaques in synagogues in smaller towns, as they continued to struggle with the definition of aliens that had been imposed on them. In The Influence of the Ghetto on the State (1782), the Mantuan nobleman and political economist...

Daniel B. Schwartz. Ghetto: The History of a Word. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. 266 pp.

Reviewed by: Ghetto: The History of a Word by Daniel B. Schwartz Murray Baumgarten Daniel B. Schwartz. Ghetto: The History of a Word. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. 266 pp. doi:10.1017/S036400942000029X Transformative changes of the last five hundred years mark the history of the ghetto—the word and the physical enclosure of the Jews that it names—from its invention in Venice in 1516 to the present, which Daniel B. Schwartz charts in this excellent and important book. His thorough account of the shifts, extensions, and changes in phrasing and meaning maps the genealogy of the word in this succinct historical narrative. The carefully deployed research ranges through Italian, Yiddish, German, Russian, Hebrew, and English sources and articulates the parameters of ghetto studies. The narrative traces the strata of successive redefinitions of the ghetto, as they are generated by theological, economic, political, military, genocidal, and racist decisions that have, in its five-hundred-year history, become embedded in this word. Ghetto: The History of a Word begins in Venice as the "compulsory Jewish quarter" for Jews to live in (25), and the reader learns how, elaborated throughout Italy over the next five decades, and Europe over the next five hundred years, it significantly changed its meanings [End Page 446] as it stigmatized and stereotyped the Jews, and was then in the United States extended to African Americans. From Venice, Schwartz takes us to Rome, where in 1555 Pope Paul IV gave the ghetto a severe Christian inflection. By 1562 the word is generalized: now it refers not to a Venetian sequestration of Jews in the Canareggio district, with rules and regulations intended to control the resident Jews and make them offer small loans to the poorer classes. In Rome, rather, the ghetto came to define a compulsory Jewish quarter in a generic sense, and this meaning spread throughout Italy. While "Christians may not have been permitted to live in the [Venice] ghetto, it was hardly off-limits to them," as it would become in Rome (37). Indeed, Christians came to the ghetto "to borrow on pledges, buy strazzaria [used clothing], or cut deals with wholesale merchants … [and] even came to observe Sabbath services in synagogue and to listen to the Italian-language sermons"—an early example of "ghetto tourism" (37). By contrast, "The Roman Ghetto sought to hem in Jews physically and economically as never before," yet "still assigned them a place, however narrow and stigmatized, within the city" (37). (Fast-forward to the Nazi ghetto, which was exclusive to Jews, there transformed into subhuman alien slave laborers.) In Rome, the ghetto became a Christian weapon: "The popes viewed the ghetto as more than simply a device for striking an equilibrium between acceptance and expulsion" (34). For "Jews had lived in Rome from before the establishment of the Roman Empire," and thus, "unlike in Venice, the creation of the ghetto in Rome could not be conceptually linked to the construction of a community" (34). The word remains the same, but now its meaning has changed: "If the Venetian Ghetto represented a move in the direction of greater (if still hedged) inclusion, the Roman Ghetto was just the opposite" (34–35). Rather than offering Jews protection in return for financial services, as the Venice ghetto had, "the papal ghetto was a punishment of sorts, one (albeit major) component of a concerted assault on Jewish life designed to make Jews thoroughly miserable and reduce them to penury" (35). In the latter half of the sixteenth century, papal ghettoization was part of a policy intended to accelerate Jewish conversion to Christianity through harsh discipline. Rather than diluting its stigma, the generalization of the word sharpened its anti-Jewish purposes. Even in liberal Piedmont, which in 1848 led the way for Jewish emancipation, the ghetto dated to 1679, and the Jews had been branded with the ghetto stereotype. Free now to move throughout the realm, the Jews thanked the king publicly in plaques in synagogues in smaller towns, as they continued to struggle with the definition of aliens that had been imposed on them. In The Influence of the Ghetto on the State (1782), the Mantuan nobleman and political economist...

明治後期～第一次世界大戦期における集散地肥料卸商の活動と展開 : 奥村嘉蔵東京支店の帳簿から

明治後期～第一次世界大戦期における集散地肥料卸商の活動と展開 : 奥村嘉蔵東京支店の帳簿から

O Comércio Atacadista Carioca (1855-1900): Padrões e Processos Espaciais

Na segunda metade do século XIX começa a se desenrolar com mais intensidadea separação entre os usos do solo na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, processo que norteia o presente artigo. O objetivo é participar dessa discussão através da análise dos padrões e processos espaciais relacionados aos comerciantes atacadistas, que serão vistos nos anos de 1855 e 1900. Partimos da premissa de que os atacadistas, mais do que meros responsáveis pelo depósito e comercialização de produtos “em grosso”, cumprem ainda o papel da intermediação comercial. A articulação entre as escalas espaciais da produção e do consumo não deve ser subestimada, principalmente num mundo onde ainda predominam a dificuldade e a lentidão nas comunicações. Por fim, a cadeia comercial de exportação do café será vista como um caso à parte e terá mais dois recortes temporais intermediários, possibilitando uma análise espacial mais detalhada.

Organizational Identities and Their Economic Performance: An Analysis of U.S. Textile and Apparel Firms

As the U.S. textile and apparel industries have globalized, firm activities within the industry have changed, impacting organizational identity. Given that organizational identity is a viable strategic element for organizational competitive advantages, this study explored how today’s U.S. textile and apparel firms describe themselves as organizations, compared the findings with business classification descriptions provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, and investigated the relationship between organizational identity congruence and performance. Results of content analysis of web-based communication data and multivariate statistical techniques suggested that the majority of U.S. textile and apparel manufacturers and wholesale merchants use self-descriptors such as product provider, service provider, or business partner, rather than Census Bureau terms such as manufacturers or wholesalers. The findings also showed that organizational identity congruence is positively associated with various organizational performance outcomes. The study concludes with the contributions and implications of the study findings, limitations, and future research opportunities.

Dynamik, Geographie und Gesellschaftsspezifik der Jüdischen Ansiedlung in Pest um die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts

The dynamics, geographical and social characteristics of the settlement of Jews in Pest in the mid-19th century . The author examines the life and internal social problems of the Jews settled in Pest towards the end of the 18th century. Even before that time Jewish society was not homogeneous, and this was also the case in Pest. The social differences can be seen in the dynamics and geography of the settlement. The first to arrive in Pest were entrepreneurs from Óbuda who had considerable influence in the region, followed by wholesale merchants from Pozsony. The more prosperous entrepreneurs and wholesalers attracted the poorer Jewish strata who did not have the permanent Pest residence permits required for independent business activity (the so-called Toleranz). Although the great majority of the Jews lived in Terézváros (Theresa Town), where individual families lived depended on their financial situation. The more prosperous the new settlers were, the further they lived from the old centre of Terézváros, the core of which was formed by the area around Dob and Király streets. However, it was here that the first synagogues were opened. The denominational records of births and deaths that formed part of the research material show that in the new Pest Jewish society there were also family forms differing from the religious norm. The question arises of how the Jewish community accepted the unmarried mothers and children born out of wedlock. There is proof that the single mothers also had their sons circumcised and all deceased Jewish children were probably buried in the Israelite cemetery. These facts point to acceptance, but the way the entries were made in the records of births and deaths indicates that the community acknowledged only reluctantly the structure of births outside wedlock.

Becoming Bourgeois: Merchant Culture in the South, 1820–1865 (review)

Reviewed by: Becoming Bourgeois: Merchant Culture in the South, 1820–1865 Jonathan Daniel Wells Becoming Bourgeois: Merchant Culture in the South, 1820–1865. By Frank J. Byrne . ( Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006. Pp. 297. Cloth $50.00.) Is there a revival of interest in the nineteenth-century Southern social structure? After more than three decades of the "cultural turn" in the historiography, it seems that scholars are once again turning their attention to the class structure of the South. Importantly, however, this new trend in the study of class does not leave culture out of the picture but instead ties the two historiographical themes together, to the betterment of both. Building upon recent work on the middle class and the master class, historian Frank Byrne has added yet another dimension to scholarly understanding of the ways in which social structure and culture intertwine. Byrne argues that Southern merchants lived in constant tension between their desire to be accepted as legitimate contributors to society and the feeling among these same merchants that they had more in common with their counterparts in the North than they did with Southern planters or yeomen farmers. Like their brethren in the free states, Southern merchants adhered to nineteenth-century middle-class values such as the importance of education for advancement, the ever-present search for profit, and the belief in evangelical religion. Indeed, as others have pointed out, Byrne finds a great deal of interaction between Northern and Southern merchants, including the trips that the latter made each year to the large cities of the North. In contrast to their affinity with Northern merchants, Southern shopkeepers, grocers, and wholesale merchants found acceptance within the South difficult, according to Byrne. Reviled as "Jews" or "Yankees," Southern businessmen often found themselves targeted for their perceived greed. Although clearly in support of slavery, these merchants questioned the more radical political ideology found in the region; Byrne demonstrates convincingly that these Southerners favored the Whig party and were largely Unionists. When the Civil War broke out, however, Southern merchants were forced from the political fence-riding demonstrated by their adherence to the Constitutional Union party in the 1860 election. Although merchants questioned the wisdom of secession, and realized that war would break [End Page 417] vital trading links with the North, they avidly joined the Confederacy after fighting began. As Byrne points out, Southern merchants "tirelessly worked to place their businesses on a war footing" (128). They served as town quartermasters, army recruiters, and commissary agents even while they tried to benefit from the privation caused by the war. Tales of gouging profits, greed, and opportunism (some of which were exaggerated for effect) found ready believers among a people devastated by war. Byrne is at his best in bringing the social and cultural together when he discusses merchant families. Confronted by financial anxiety before the war, these families faced dwindling supplies and accusations of speculation, especially in the harsh final two years of the war. Interestingly, just as the mistress was forced to run the plantation in the absence of her husband, so too did many merchant wives take over the running of stores and businesses when the men left for the battlefield. Byrne's study would have benefited greatly from an expanded discussion of the Southern social structure. If these merchants were part of a "class," and Byrne uses that term frequently, we need more analysis of important issues such as class formation. If there was a middle class, which elements of the social structure might we consider them in between? Do they fit sandwiched between planters and slaves or should we consider merchants part of an emerging urban society in which white laborers, hired slaves, and incipient industrialists made up the top and bottom of a city-bound social structure? These questions Byrne does not consider. Finally, if the merchants were marginalized and scorned as Byrne argues, then why did so many Southern communities trumpet their progress in business and industry? Byrne has provided us with an insightful analysis of a segment of the Southern population. The hope is that scholars will carry on this work and refine our understanding of the complex society that was...

Hal yaslah li-taqansut (Is He Suitable for Consulship?): The Moroccan Consuls in Gibraltar during the Nineteenth Century

The purpose of this article is to record the history of the Moroccan consulate in Gibraltar during the nineteenth century, utilising published sources and discoveries in a recently catalogued private archive, the archive of the ar-Razini (Erzini) family of Tetuan. The nineteenth century is a period of great economic activity for the merchants of Tetuan, conducting trade with the Middle East and Europe through nearby Gibraltar. The Moroccan consuls were chosen by the sultan from the well-established international wholesale merchants resident abroad, Muslim and Jewish, and most of the consuls appointed to Gibraltar, and their deputies, were merchants from Tetuan. There was not a modern type of salaried consular corps, and the appointment was somewhat informal, with numerous absences and unofficial deputies. However, compared to other more distant consulates, that of Gibraltar was probably the busiest, the most continuously occupied and most closely regulated. The role of the Moroccan consul was to represent the interests of Moroccan merchants, to protect Hajj pilgrims, and to administer the sultan's trade and credit to merchants, but also to inform the sultan of political and technological developments. In the Erzini archive, the most extensive records of Moroccan trade through Gibraltar date from the 1840s to 1860s. Given the informal nature of the Moroccan consulates, the few records of the administration of the Gibraltar consulate that survive in the Erzini archive are quite rare. These records include letter books documenting the attempt to set up a sugar refinery in 1864–6, account books of the Moroccan students sent for military training in 1876–7, a register of passports issued from 1866 to 1875, and a register of residence permits dated 1863–72.

Merchants and peasants in the Nazareth region, 1922 – 47

In Nazareth, the wholesale merchants of agricultural commodities made every effort to acquire crops during harvest time, when commodity prices were at their lowest, and to sell them a few months later when demand (and prices) had increased. To facilitate this, merchants established close economic ties with peasant proprietors, in particular by providing them with a ‘safety net’ in lean years in the form of loans at comparatively attractive rates. An unwritten part of this arrangement was that a peasant in such a relationship with a merchant would market most of the surplus of his cash crops at harvest time. A contract in the credit market was thus simultaneously a contract in the goods market, ensuring that merchants would receive payment in crops, while peasants were paid in advance for their produce. It was also the custom that in cases of default, the merchant became the owner of the mortgaged land and the former landowner became the tenant. In such circumstances, the new tenancy agreement was usually interlinked with other agreements, especially in regard to animal husbandry.

昭和恐慌後における佐々木要右衛門家事業の展開

The purpose of this article is to analyze the development of entrepreneurial activities of the Youemon Sasaki family at Shin'ichi in Bingo region which is located in the eastern part of Hiroshima Prefecture during the period after the Showa panic (1930-31) until the wartime (July, 1937-August, 1945). The author utilized such various materials as the oral history, the printed matters and the Sasaki archives to accomplish the above purpose.Youemon Sasaki, successful local wholesale merchant, were seriously hit by the Showa panic, and thereafter, the restructuring by the young leader, Gi'ichi Sasaki, became unavoidable. Gi'ichi closed the weaving factories established in 1915, began sewing business, came to sell new commodities such as wide cloths and garments to the local areas and continued seeking such gains as dividends and rents of land and houses.At the wartime Gi'ichi greatly committed himself to sewing business and kept the wealthy local businessman by becoming a salaried manager in Bingo Tokumen Kasuri Moto Haikyu Kabusiki Kaisha (Bingo Kasuri Distribution Company) and Huhaku Seihin Chuo Seizo Haikyu Tosei Kabushiki Kaisha (Cloth Goods Central Manufacturing Distribution Company). He also earned lots of money through dividends of shares during wartime.In recent years many economic and business historians in Japan are making great efforts to describe the local entrepreneurial activities in the prewar years, and this article is also included in such an academic trend.

The Making and Evolution of the Buenos Aires Economic Elite in the Nineteenth Century: The Example of the Senillosas

The Making and Evolution of the Buenos Aires Economic Elite in the Nineteenth Century: The Example of the Senillosas

A Retrospective Look at Wholesale Gas: Industry Restructuring

The purpose of this paper is to identify lessons learned from the restructuring of the natural gas industry. We draw a number of conclusions including that the billions of dollars of savings typically attributed to gas industry restructuring resulted not from competition but because restructuring stranded billions of dollars in contractual purchase obligations, costs that were absorbed by producers and pipelines. The replacement of regulated wholesale merchants by new entrants did not occur because of competitive efficiencies. Competition in wholesale gas marketing has produced consumer benefits in the form of innovation, new product development, broader choices and possibly reduced costs. Bi-lateral contracting led to the development of gas markets, which in turn, produced market-wide diffusion and integration of pricing information.

蚕糸業再編期における製糸経営

Until the beginning of the 1880s, most Japanese silk exports were to France. The French silk market, however, shrank after the French Panic of 1882, while the U.S. market expanded during the 1880s. In the United States, power looms were widely used in the silk industry, so the demand for even-quality silk was rising. Japanese manufacturers had to produce uniform filatures (machine-reeled silk) for export to the United States. Kaimeisha, which was the leading association of silk manufacturers in Suwa district, Nagano prefecture, had been producing silk for the French market and had relied on wholesale merchants in Yokohama for quality control. After the French Panic, Kaimeisha introduced the production system which offered incentives for the re-reeling and inspection of silk, thus succeeding in the production of uniform filatures, which it labeled with its own Kaimeisha trademark. In order to expand business, Kaimeisha obtained financing from wholesale merchants and local banks, which were relatively modern financial institutions.Another silk manufacturers association, Kairyosha, followed suit and introduced a production system similar to Kaimeisha's. This second organization, however, was financed by traditional financial institutions and was managed by a rural moneylender. The moneylender's participation in management was detrimental to meeting the rising level of quality control required in the U.S. market. The moneylender demanded an increase in deliveries of silk by hiring new association members as he profited by lending them money to purchase cocoons and receiving discounts on members' deliveries. The situation was particularly disfavorable to quality control because membership to the association was not steady.