• Betting on Hitler: The Value of Political Connections in Nazi Germany
    • “Drawing on previously unused contemporary sources about management and supervisory board composition and stock returns, we find that one out of seven firms, and a large proportion of the biggest companies, had substantive links with the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Firms supporting the Nazi  movement experienced unusually high returns, outperforming unconnected ones by 5% to 8% between January and March 1933.”
  • Death by Derivatives
    • “The opening of a canal in 1848 led to the birth of modern financial derivatives, and the early demise of some of the men who traded them.”
  • The Federal Telegraph Company, the U.S. Navy, and the Beginnings of Silicon Valley
    • “The early history of Silicon Valley is incomplete unless it is framed within the context of American foreign policy. The Federal Telegraph Company, the region’s first major high technology firm, received its first contract from the U.S. Navy in 1913. Its subsequent success relied not only on navy contracts but also on State Department support and access to Bureau of Standards technology.”
  • The Economic Failure of Britain’s Empire Marketing Board
    • “The formation of the Empire Marketing Board (EMB) in 1926 was a unique experiment in interwar Britain: it was the first, publicly funded marketing board in the UK that sought to encourage domestic consumption of empire foodstuffs and raw materials… the Board aimed to increase public awareness of the strong economic interdependence between Britain and its Empire.”