In the late 1940s and early 1950s, millions of theatergoers, students, and industrial workers saw one or more animated short films, shot in Technicolor and running eight to nine minutes, that were designed to build public support for the principles and practices of free enterprise. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation quietly funded the production of this series of cartoons, titled Fun and Facts about American Business, through multiple grants to industrial animation house John Sutherland Productions via Harding College, an evangelical college in rural Arkansas that would become known nationally for its anti-communist and conservative political activism. This article examines the creation and distribution of the Fun and Facts films in the years 1946 through 1952 as a notable case of ephemeral film and as an example of the Cold War public relations movement known as “economic education.” Further, the article examines the consequences of economic education as a conceptual category on the production and distribution of Cold War industrial propaganda.

Government intervention in the economy is often justified by the need to correct market failures. This study analyzes one case, the investments of Finnish forest industries, in which, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, both policy makers and the trade association representing the sector reasoned that intervention was particularly necessary because otherwise, the only substantial natural resource in the small country would be overexploited. In the long run, however, the growth of forest resources turned out to be higher, and the demand for wood lower, than expected. Furthermore, the most influential industrialists managed to “capture” the regulatory system and make it a component of their network of cartels and other restrictive practices. Regulatory capture is usually seen as a something that should be avoided, but in this case, it helped the Finnish forest industries to transform themselves from a supplier of bulk goods into the world’s leading exporter of high-end paper grades. Recent decline in demand has, however, raised doubts about the wisdom of this strategy.

From a European perspective, what sets apart the Swedish return to the gold standard at prewar parity in 1924 is not only that it occurred before that of every other nation, including the United Kingdom, but also that it could be made by politicians without interference from the central bank. Against this background, it is argued that this decision may be related to the combined impact of two political positions that affected policy making in a crucial way. In a domestic policy context in which minority governments needed support from other parties to realize their political ambitions, the Social Democrats and Conservatives both developed separate positions in favor of an early return of the gold standard during the first part of the 1920s. Because these parties together formed a majority in both chambers of Parliament, a stable political support for a return of the gold standard could thereby emerge.

Although business historiography has demonstrated a variety of impediments placed on women’s entry to entrepreneurship and business, the negotiated mechanisms that constructed the gendered selection has been understudied. Based on an analysis of loan applications by Jewish women in British-ruled Palestine before 1948, this article shows how material considerations to approve the loans and facilitate entry to business activity were based not merely on gender-oriented perceptions on the legitimacy of doing business, but also on a mosaic of normative constructions of family, community, and nation building.

This article explores cultural aspects of the unique archival patrimony of private account books that survive for Florence from the fourteenth to the early seventeenth century, a period corresponding to the city’s greatness as a center of both Renaissance culture and early capitalism. The discussion first surveys the diffusion and the standardization of accounting practice throughout the society, the educational process behind this development, and the emergence of the professional accountant. It then analyzes double entry in its application to both business (including industrial) and domestic accounts in the attempt to extend our knowledge of the accounting reality in this pre-modern capitalist economy beyond the traditional view derived from manuals and theoretical notions. The conclusion examines the cultural functions of Florentine accounting practice ranging from the so-called spirit of capitalism in the business world to some particular characteristics that disposed Florentines in general toward this kind of record keeping.

In the nineteenth century, firms operating in the Anglo-Indian tea trade were organized using a variety of ownership forms, including partnership, joint-stock, and a combination of the two, known as the managing agency. Faced with both an increasing need for fixed capital and high agency costs caused by the distance between owners and managers, the firms adapted and increasingly adopted the hybrid managing agency model to overcome these problems. Using new data from Calcutta and Bengal Commercial Registers and detailed case studies of the Assam Company and Gillanders, Arbuthnot and Co., this article demonstrates that British entrepreneurs did not see the choice of ownership as a dichotomy or firm boundaries as fixed, but instead drew innovatively on the strengths of different forms of ownership to compete and grow successfully.