Etica mercantile e sviluppo economico

2009 ◽  
pp. 465-502
Author(s):  
Monika Poettinger
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Capital ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Social Recognition ◽  
Moral Code ◽  
Economic Independence ◽  
New Era ◽  
Moral Communities ◽  
Self Interest

- Up to the nineteenth century, merchants extended networks of subsidiaries, correspondents and investments world-wide, becoming a major trigger of innovation and economic development. To guarantee the functioning of their international merchant houses, they had to adhere to a strict moral code. The resulting "moral communities" diffused everywhere the "merchant´s liberty": working to fulfil oneself, striving to obtain economic independence and richness as social recognition. As the Ancien Régime neared its end, merchants were ready to economically and morally guide society into a new era. At the same time as many discussed the noblesse commerçante, though, philosophers and economists ridiculed merchant virtues, transforming merchants in men bent only on profit and self-interest. The industrialist, so, became the bourgeoisie´s myth and merchant ethics vanished from the agenda of historians and economists alike. Industrialization thusly lost one of its main characters and economy missed a catalyst of innovation and social capital formation.

Civic honesty around the globe

Science ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 365 (6448) ◽  
pp. 70-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alain Cohn ◽  
Michel André Maréchal ◽  
David Tannenbaum ◽  
Christian Lukas Zünd
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Additional Data ◽  
Private Institutions ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Material Benefits

Civic honesty is essential to social capital and economic development but is often in conflict with material self-interest. We examine the trade-off between honesty and self-interest using field experiments in 355 cities spanning 40 countries around the globe. In these experiments, we turned in more than 17,000 lost wallets containing varying amounts of money at public and private institutions and measured whether recipients contacted the owners to return the wallets. In virtually all countries, citizens were more likely to return wallets that contained more money. Neither nonexperts nor professional economists were able to predict this result. Additional data suggest that our main findings can be explained by a combination of altruistic concerns and an aversion to viewing oneself as a thief, both of which increase with the material benefits of dishonesty.

The Balance Sheet of Economic Development

1951 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 325-338
Author(s):  
Abbott Payson Usher
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Balance Sheet ◽  
General Recognition ◽  
Detective Stories ◽  
Single Part

The astute reader even of detective stories makes a practice of looking at the end of the book because the ending reveals the basic values of the book more quickly than any other single part of the whole. An audience is at a disadvantage unless the speaker furnishes some preliminary sketch of the problems to be explored and some brief answers to the questions to be examined. It is therefore appropriate to state the purpose of the paper in a few words. It is proposed to show that his torical analysis affords no support for the uncritical faith in progress that characterized most of the nineteenth century. The development of the power economy has not brought the abundance for all nor the general recognition of the advantages of world-wide freedom of trade that was confidently anticipated by idealists like Cobden.

Growth and Social Capital: Empirical Analysis of the Relationship

2019 ◽  
pp. 128-134
Author(s):  
Ksenia V. Bagmet
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Social Capital ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Panel Data Analysis ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
International Institute ◽  
Level Of Economic Development

The article provides an empirical test of the hypothesis of the influence of the level of economic development of the country on the level of development of its social capital based on panel data analysis. In this study, the Indices of Social Development elaborated by the International Institute of Social Studies under World Bank support are used as an indicators of social capital development as they best meet the requirements for complexity (include six integrated indicators of Civic Activism, Clubs and Associations, Intergroup Cohesion, Interpersonal Safety and Trust, Gender Equality, Inclusion of Minorities), comprehensiveness of measurement, sustainability. In order to provide an empirical analysis, we built a panel that includes data for 20 countries divided into four groups according to the level of economic development. The first G7 countries (France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom); the second group is the economically developed countries, EU members and Turkey, the third group is the new EU member states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania); to the fourth group – post-Soviet republics (Armenia, Georgia, Russian Federation, Ukraine). The analysis shows that the parameters of economic development of countries cannot be completely excluded from the determinants of social capital. Indicators show that the slowdown in economic growth leads to greater cohesion among people in communities, social control over the efficiency of distribution and use of funds, and enforcement of property rights. The level of tolerance to racial diversity and the likelihood of negative externalities will depend on the change in the rate of economic growth. Also, increasing the well-being of people will have a positive impact on the level of citizens’ personal safety, reducing the level of crime, increasing trust. Key words: social capital, economic growth, determinant, indice of social development.

Voting and Popularity

2019 ◽  
pp. 852-879 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gebhard Kirchgässner
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Relevant Variables ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
Real Growth ◽  
Voting Intentions

For about 45 years, vote and popularity functions have been estimated for many countries, indicating that both voting intentions and actual votes are influenced by economic development. The economy is, of course, not the only and probably not always the most important factor, but there is no doubt anymore that it is an important factor. The most relevant variables are still unemployment and/or real growth, and inflation. The estimated coefficients vary considerably between countries and time periods. In studies done, retrospective sociotropic voting dominates. However, the evidence is not so univocal; rather, it tells that voting has egotropic as well as sociotropic aspects, and it is prospective as well as retrospective. It is still open what roles self-interest and altruism play in voting.

Landscape and Ecology

2020 ◽  
pp. 342-368
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Grimley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Musical Thought ◽  
The Social ◽  
Representational Practice ◽  
Raymond Williams ◽  
The City ◽  
Privileged Site

Images of landscape lie at the heart of nineteenth-century musical thought. From frozen winter fields, mountain echoes, distant horn calls, and the sound of the wind moving among the pines, landscape was a vivid representational practice, a creative resource, and a privileged site for immersion, gothic horror, and the Romantic sublime. As Raymond Williams observed, however, the nineteenth century also witnessed an unforeseen transformation of artistic responses to landscape, which paralleled the social and cultural transformation of the country and the city under processes of intense industrialization and economic development. This chapter attends to several musical landscapes, from the Beethovenian “Pastoral” to Delius’s colonial-era evocation of an exoticized American idyll, as a means of mapping nineteenth-century music’s obsession with the idea of landscape and place. Distance recurs repeatedly as a form of subjective presence and through paradoxical connections with proximity and intimacy.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document