There is general consensus that tax havens have long played a major role in the evolution of the capitalist system on a global scale. There is also no doubt that Switzerland is one of the first, if not the first, tax haven to have emerged, as well as one of the most important in the world. However, knowledge and understanding of the history, particularly the distant past, of tax havens remains lacking, despite the considerable volume of literature devoted to them. Therefore, this article attempts to make two innovative contributions. The first is an attempt to explain the emergence of the Swiss tax haven, by analyzing the processes and factors whose intertwining led to its emergence. It thus improves the general understanding of the genesis of tax havens at an international level. The second contribution is to show that already on the eve of World War I, the Swiss Confederation possessed the necessary characteristics for a tax haven.

Between 1974 and 1986, the intervention of various French governments on both the right and the left—in addition to corporate maneuvering and increased focus on competitiveness and lean production—resulted in foreign direct investment, mergers, plant closures, and bankruptcies among struggling French automotive suppliers. This article will explore why these efforts were unsuccessful by revisiting the first Japanese attempts to enter the European automobile industry. It does so not only through the case of Nissan in the United Kingdom in 1984 but also through the essentially unfamiliar and contemporaneous example of French automotive suppliers.

Warren Buffett famously commented that the U.S. airline industry had made zero profit in its first nine decades. Subsequently, between the millennium and the Great Financial Crisis the airlines in total lost almost $60 billion. Yet no major airline was liquidated or taken over in those nine years. Financial support was repeatedly provided by GE, the conglomerate supplier of leasing finance, engines, and servicing. The article offers a historical perspective on the factors behind this relationship between GE and airlines. It outlines the benefits or costs to GE, airline shareholders, and passengers; the relevance of the model for other industries; and implications for different notions of efficiency.

Historical accounts of the Internet's origins tend to emphasize U.S. government investment and university-based researchers. In contrast, this article introduces actors who have been overlooked: the entrepreneurs and private firms that developed standards, evaluated competing standards, educated consumers about the value of new products, and built products to sell. Start-up companies such as 3Com and Cisco Systems succeeded because they met rapidly rising demand from users, particularly those in large organizations, who were connecting computers into networks and networks into internetworks. We consider a relatively brief yet dynamic period, from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, when regulators attacked incumbent American firms, entrepreneurs flourished in new market niches, and engineers set industry standards for networking and internetworking. As a consequence, their combined efforts forged new processes and institutions for so-called open standards that, in turn, created the conditions favorable for the “network effects” that sustained the formative years of the digital economy.

This article analyzes changes in the composition of Colombia's entrepreneurial class since the 1990s. We identify an increasing heterogeneity among the country's entrepreneurs, marked by greater diversity in gender, social class, and educational level. We also note more diverse regional origins, career trajectories, and political orientations among this group. The increasing number of women entrepreneurs, especially, played a significant role in changing the dynamics of entrepreneurship within the country. To provide some examples, this article looks at the trajectories and career dynamics of a selected group of women business leaders in Colombia. In terms of conceptual framing, this article makes use of the alternative business history (ABH) approach developed to explore emerging markets.

This article looks at the implementation of food standards of identity by the U.S Food and Drug Administration from the 1930s to the 1960s, a period in the FDA’s history wedged between the “era of adulteration” of the early twentieth century and the agency’s turn to “informational regulation” starting in the 1970s. The article describes the origin of food standards in the early twentieth century and outlines the political economy of government-mandated food standards in the 1930s. While consumer advocates believed government standards would be important to consumer empowerment because they would simplify choices at the grocery store, many in the food industry believed government standards would clash with private brands. The FDA faced challenges in defining what were “customary” standards for foods in an increasingly industrial food economy, and new diet-food marketing campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s ultimately led to the food standards system's undoing. The article concludes by looking at how FDA food standards came to be framed cynically, even though voluntary food standardization continued and the system of informative labeling that replaced FDA standards led to precisely the problem government standards were intended to solve.

When faced with Esther Sahle's, Edmond Smith's, and Dane A. Morrison's recent books on English and American merchants, their activities, and their communities, a reader with any level of exposure to the field of early modern and early republic business history might legitimately ask, do we really need more? Historians have so completely associated early modern economic activity with merchant activity that many have deemed the period an era of “merchant capitalism.” The field is full of excellent studies and one might rightfully ask whether historians such as Jacob Price (Capital and Credit in British Overseas Trade [1980]), David Hancock (Oceans of Wine [2009]), Cathy Matson (Merchants and Empire [1998]), and Francesca Trivellato (The Familiarity of Strangers [2009]), among many others, have not plumbed the depths of the subject. Scholars of the Black Atlantic have also increasingly questioned the legitimacy of projects that continue to render the violence of slavery ancillary to discussions of business practice. To some extent, genuine historical engagement with merchants must reproduce the views of colonizers and enslavers to make the people whom it studies legible to modern audiences. This reproduction does damage as it illuminates, and business historians must engage this critique directly to maintain the legitimacy of their projects. In a crowded field with foundations that are seriously challenged by an emergent strain in this historical discipline, it is worth skeptically asking what three additional studies can add.

When people ask me, as they often do, to recommend a single-volume overview of American economic history, I always feel stumped. Sometimes I suggest textbooks in the field, sadly all out of date at this writing, and sometimes monographs that cover specific periods or topics. Now, finally, I have a good answer. I can recommend Jonathan Levy's Ages of American Capitalism. A comprehensive narrative that runs from the colonial period through the recent financial crisis, the book is broader than the accounts most economic historians would offer in that it pays considerable attention to Americans’ cultural responses to economic change. At the same, time, however, it provides up-to-date coverage of the relevant economics literature, making it accessible to readers not able to follow the econometrics. Undoubtedly, specialists will find things to quibble about. I did. But that goes with the territory. The bottom line is that Ages of American Capitalism is an impressive work of synthesis that everyone interested in American history should read.

This article explores the linkages between globalization, cities, and firms in twentieth-century India. Since the interwar period in the early twentieth century, India withdrew from the global economy, reintegrating only in the 1990s. This reshaped the metropolitan hierarchy in India in specific ways, whether through international migration and creation of new supply chains before 1991 or by foreign direct investment in the final decade of the twentieth century. Firms—both Indian and multinational—had to respond to different waves of globalization and accordingly made location choices that in turn shaped the urban evolution. More broadly, this article points to the relevance of integrating urban history more closely with business history in studies of globalization.

Rahul Bajaj, long-time chairman of the more-than-120-year-old Bajaj empire—best known for Bajaj Auto, one of the most valuable motorcycle firms globally, and Bajaj Finserv, its financial services arm—was a larger-than-life figure in Indian industry and public life. Famed for his probity, Bajaj twice served as president of the Confederation of Indian Industry, was an elected member of the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of Parliament), was awarded a Padma Bhushan (the third-highest civilian award), and was a fearless and outspoken public figure. His business career, which started in 1958 at the height of India's License Raj, in many ways charts the story of India's dramatic economic transformation over the decades.