The Exchange

The University of Illinois Foundation announces the opening of the 2015-2016 John Rovensky Fellowships application process. Two $8,000 fellowships will be awarded for doctoral students writing their dissertations in U.S. business or economic history. The fellowships are available largely through the generosity of the late John E. Rovensky and are administered by the University of Illinois Foundation. Awardees may use the fellowship concurrently with other funding sources, including grants or teaching assignments. Eligibility Applicants must be working toward a Ph.D. degree with U.S. business or economic history as the area of major interest. Fellowship recipients must be enrolled in a doctoral program at an accredited college or university in the United States. Preference will be given to applicants who are preparing for a career in teaching and research and who will have completed all graduate course work prior to the fall of 2015. Awards are non-renewable, but may be taken al...

This week's collection of notes of interest from around the Web: Web resource for Depression studies: "American Life Histories : Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940" at the Library of Congress; the site contains "the life stories of more than 10,000 men and women from a variety of regions, occupations and ethnic groups. People who told stories of life and work during the 1930s include an Irish maid from Massachusetts, a woman who worked in a North Carolina textile mill, a Scandinavian iron worker, a Vermont farm wife, an African-American worker in Chicago meat packing house, and a clerk in Macy's department store." "Tracing Capitalism around the Globe" is a Cambridge University Press blog interview with Larry Neal and Jeffrey Williamson, coeditors of CUP's Cambridge History of Capitalism . More on Thomas Piketty:    a weekly series of substantive posts by Adam David Morton    "Piketty Envy" from Th...

The 2015 EABH (European Association for Banking and Financial History) has issued a call for papers for its next archival workshop, to be held on May 14, 2015, in Prague, Czech Republic. The workshop, hosted by the Czech National Bank and in cooperation with the Czech Banking Association, will focus on "Inflation. Money. Output: Economic and Financial Data Underpinning Analysis and Policy-Making." As the call for papers explains, Reliable and timely economic and financial statistics are of paramount importance today. . . . central banks, commercial banks and insurance companies have been systematically collecting and compiling economic and financial data since at least the 1920s, if not earlier, in support of macro-economic analysis and policy-making. No doubt, many of these institutions will have in their archives data collections pre-dating automation . . . . The purpose of this workshop is to gain a better understanding of what is actually available in financial ins...

As the new academic year begins, we again offer a round-up of ongoing workshops, forums, and discussion groups in business and economic history. Please check each website for more detailed information. Some groups, particularly those in non-US universities, may not yet have posted Fall 2014 information; in those cases, a link to the home site or last available listing is included.      In addition to their value for those able to participate directly, these groups often maintain mailing lists and sometimes make speakers' papers freely available. Business History Seminar , Harvard Business School (scroll down) Business History Unit Seminars, LSE Business History @ Erasmus Seminars Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society (Hagley) Research Seminars Centre for Macroeconomics and the Historical Record (MEHR), University of Copenhagen Columbia University Seminar in Economic History Seminars in Economic and Social History , University ...

A conference on "The History of Law and Business Organization" will be held at the Harvard Business School on November 21-22, 2014. The meeting is sponsored jointly by the Business History Initiative , the Economic History Seminar at Harvard University, and the Program in Economic History at the Economic Growth Center, Yale University. According to the conference statement: It brings together leading scholars to advance the study of the intersection of law and business organization. The conference explores the consequences of underlying legal structures for business and economic development. The key topics for discussion will revolve around the type of legal form that is most conducive to economic development (i.e., the corporation versus alternative forms like the partnership or intermediate forms like the private limited liability structure). The conference papers will consider the significance of the Anglo-American common-law tradition versus code-based legal systems....

As part of the 80 th  anniversary celebrations of the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Chile, the Faculty is hosting an International Conference on the Economic and Business History of Latin America to be held on December 12, 2014 in its premises in Santiago, Chile. The conference invites contributions in English or Spanish in all areas associated to the themes of the conference. A selection of the participating papers will be invited to be published in a special issue of the journal  Estudios de Economía with Bernardo Bátiz-Lazo (Bangor University) as guest editor. The conference is organized with the sponsorship of Universidad de Santiago de Chile.     The conference is also organizing a posters session open to undergraduate and postgraduate students undertaking their thesis in any field relevant to the conference. The best posters will be awarded a prize. The deadline for submitting contributions and posters is Octobe...

The preliminary program for the annual meeting of the American Society for Legal History (ASLH), to be held on November 6-9, 2014 in Denver, Colorado, has been posted.  Papers of interest include Justene G. Hill, Princeton University, “'A Monstrous Nuisance': Legislative Responses to Slave Economies in South Carolina, 1850-1860” (Friday, A2) Tamara Venit-Shelton, Claremont McKenna College, “Too Big to Fail? Stephen Mallory White, the Southern Pacific, and the Transformation of Anti-Monopolist Politics in California and the Nation” (Friday, B2) Megan Francis, University of Washington, “Black Convict Labor, Capitalism, and the Rise of the New South” (Saturday, D4) and entire sessions such as “Law's Governance and Labor's Bodies” (Friday, B3) “ 'The Crime Against the Economy': Revolutions, Markets and the Law” (Friday, C2) “Building a Public Economy: New Approaches to Progressive-Era Economic Regulation” (Saturday, B4) Those interested in attend...