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| Issue Date | View | Title | Author(s) | Type of Publication | Series/Report no. | Abstract |
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2012
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Working Paper
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EUI MWP; 2012/01
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View Abstract
What was the recipe for the success of Raiffeisen’s banking model? What made it possible for imitations of this German rural cooperative microfinance institution to work well in some European countries, but fail in others? This paper answers these questions with a comparison of Raiffeisenism in Ireland and the Netherlands. Raiffeisen banks arrived in both places at the same time, but had drastically different fates. In Ireland they were almost wiped out by the early 1920s, whilst in the Netherlands they proved to be a long-lasting institutional transplant. Raiffeisen banks were successful in the Netherlands because they operated in a niche market with few viable competitors. Meanwhile, rural financial markets in Ireland were unsegmented and populated by long-established incumbents, leaving little room for new players, whatever their perceived advantages. Whereas Dutch Raiffeisen banks were largely self-financing, closely integrated into the wider rural economy and took advantage of socioreligious division, their Irish counterparts did not.
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2012
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Working Paper
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EUI HEC; 2012/01
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View Abstract
Alan S. Milward was an economic historian who developed an implicit theory of historical change. His interpretation which was neither liberal nor Marxist posited that social, political, and economic change, for it to be sustainable, had to be a gradual process rather than one resulting from a sudden, cataclysmic revolutionary event occurring in one sector of the economy or society. Benign change depended much less on natural resource endowment or technological developments than on the ability of state institutions to respond to changing political demands from within each society. State bureaucracies were fundamental to formulating those political demands and advising politicians of ways to meet them. Since each society was different there was no single model of development to be adopted or which could be imposed successfully by one nation-state on others, either through force or through foreign aid programs. Nor could development be promoted simply by copying the model of a more successful economy. Each nation-state had to find its own response to the political demands arising from within its society. Integration occurred when a number of nation–states shared similar political objectives which they could not meet individually but could meet collectively. It was not simply the result of their increasing interdependence. It was how and whether nation-states responded to these domestic demands which determined the nature of historical change.
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2011
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Working Paper
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EUI MWP; 2011/35
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View Abstract
This paper puts forward the methodological view that certain data produced by financial markets can be used without the need to look into how they were compiled. It argues that when trying to understand the causes of the Austrian Boden-Kredit Anstalt's collapse of September 1929, data from bank balance sheets are not a reliable source, whereas data such as bond yields and interest rate differentials help locate the origin of the financial crisis in the resignation of Austria's Chancellor Ignaz Seipel in April 1929.
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2011
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Working Paper
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EUI MWP; 2011/25
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View Abstract
Taking as a starting point his first treatise in Chinese, ‘On Friendship’ (Jiaoyou lun, 1595), this paper aims to analyze the process by which the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1583-1610) shaped the concept of virtuous friendship in late Ming China, specifically among the Confucian literati. ‘On Friendship’ is a treatise that reflects and is part of the Renaissance and humanist culture brought to China. It is, in part, a translation into Chinese of maxims by authors such as Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, Herodotus, Augustine and Ambrose, juxtaposed with ideas derived from the Confucian tradition, especially those on virtuous friendship. In recent years, cultural historians have begun to recognize how important friendship was as a topic of great interest to late Ming intellectuals, which suggests that Ricci was attempting to participate in, and to benefit from, a discussion that was already taking place in China. This paper aims at analyzing the way Ricci shaped virtuous friendship in his Jiaoyou lun by taking both paths, the European and the Chinese, but also focusing on the more or less ‘winding’ nature of these paths. Indeed, Ricci´s treatise was nurtured from different sources, which in turn implied selections and omissions. In a first section I address the less problematic aspect of Ricci´s Jiaoyou lun: its humanistic hue; in a second section I focus on the adaptation to – but also the manipulation of – Confucian values and precepts; in a third section I address a key – and debatable – aspect, that is, the idea of Ricci´s treatise as ‘secular’. Last but not least, a fourth section is dedicated to concluding remarks.
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2011
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Working Paper
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EUI MWP; 2011/24
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View Abstract
In the sixteenth century, the dukes of Württemberg, also sovereigns of Montbéliard, enforced Lutheranism as the new faith in the city and its surrounding dependent villages. The dukes sought to convert the French-speaking peasants there to the new religion but stumbled on ancestral traditions, old rituals, local identity and language, part of the peasants’ mentalities, culture and set of social norms. In order to disseminate the new faith, the authorities relied on pastoral visits and teaching in order to convert the faithful, and also established a consistory to make sure social discipline and new moral norms were effectively respected. This paper explores rural communities confronted by the process of conversion and confessionalization in Montbéliard from 1524 to 1660 and intends to demonstrate that peasants adapted somehow to the new faith but kept their own beliefs, rituals and social norms, refusing therefore an acculturation process.
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