Early modern, long-distance trade was fraught with risk and uncertainty, driving merchants to seek means (that is, institutions) to reduce them. In the traditional historiography on Spanish colonial trade, the role of risk is largely ignored. Instead, the guild merchants are depicted as anti-competitive monopolists who manipulated markets and exploited colonial consumers. Jeremy Baskes argues that much of the commercial behavior interpreted by modern historians as predatory was instead designed to reduce the uncertainty and risk of Atlantic world trade. This book discusses topics from the...
Early modern, long-distance trade was fraught with risk and uncertainty, driving merchants to seek means (that is, institutions) to reduce them. In th...
As the dust settles on nearly three decades of economic reform in Latin America, one of the most fundamental economic policy areas has changed far less than expected: labor regulation. To date, Latin America's labor laws remain both rigidly protective and remarkably diverse. Continuity Despite Change develops a new theoretical framework for understanding labor laws and their change through time, beginning by conceptualizing labor laws as comprehensive systems or -regimes.- In this context, Matthew Carnes demonstrates that the reform measures introduced in the 1980s and 1990s have only...
As the dust settles on nearly three decades of economic reform in Latin America, one of the most fundamental economic policy areas has changed far les...
