In the late twentieth century, the European Union (EU) emerged as a global leader in setting environmental protections, including vehicle emissions standards. But member state consensus around environmental rules did not come easily, and the regional norms eventually set by the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, had complex origins. This article argues that common emissions standards were ultimately achieved through a public-private process during the program to create the Single European Market in the 1980s and 1990s. For regional policymakers, standards were key to achieving an internal car market and strengthening the auto industry's global competitiveness; for many European carmakers and their transnational business associations, common norms could facilitate economies of scale and level the playing field. The “liberal environmentalism” born out of this convergence of interests produced common standards that fell pragmatically between the greenest member states and those most invested in protecting their national champion firms.

That the United States stands almost alone among nations in its failure to adopt the metric system has long been blamed on conservative, reactionary forces. This paper argues against this interpretation, which passes for conventional wisdom in both academic and popular circles. It instead contends that attacks on the metric system in the late nineteenth and twentieth century originated with progressive engineers, entrepreneurs, and industrialists who had taken the lead in setting the nation's first industrial standards. Far from being backward-looking reactionaries, they enjoyed reputations as cutting-edge leaders in the development of the machine-tool industry, the railroads, and the metal-working industries. Many of them pioneered new methods of management that privileged rationality, efficiency, and systemic approaches; indeed, they strongly influenced the development of what became known as scientific management. These individuals deftly advanced their cause through the nation's political institutions, thwarting the metric cause.

In his efforts to secure passage of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, John F. Kennedy had to placate not only oil and coal interests at home, but also traditional trade partners like Venezuela abroad, and he also had to foster the broad national security aim of retaining domestic oil reserves. This article argues that Kennedy was able to utilize a fair trade doctrine to gain enactment of legislation that would both lower trade barriers and assist domestic producers hurt by increased imports.

The processes whereby technical know-how is translated into business decisions are not widely understood; neither is there much definitive information about the role the engineer historically has played in administration. The data upon which this paper is based suggests that management of modern enterprise has been increasingly dependent upon graduates of engineering schools. The facts and implications are of interest not only to historians, but to businessmen and educators.

This article uses the R. G. Dun and Company credit ratings to analyze North Carolina black businessmen and their firms in the fifteen years following the Civil War. When combined with data in local histories and in the federal census, the credit ratings reveal how the postbellum black business community, especially the mulatto population, was significantly shaped by antebellum emancipation. Blacks who shared the advantage of prewar freedom employed their superior financial resources and business experience to dominate their local economies after the war. Further, both as individuals and collectively, blacks used their newly acquired political power to foster economic opportunities in ways hitherto unrecognized by both political and business history scholars.