In this Research Note, Pierre de Longuemar, founder of the Paribas Historical Archives Department, describes the building of their oral history program. Shortly after the Historical Archives Department was begun in 1990, Paribas decided to publish a book on its European roots. Interviews were conducted that proved an effective way of identifying Paribas's main strategic thrust during its postwar modernization. Oral histories were also collected to provide source material on the context of the merger between BNP and Paribas in 2000.

Between 1974 and 1986, the intervention of various French governments on both the right and the left—in addition to corporate maneuvering and increased focus on competitiveness and lean production—resulted in foreign direct investment, mergers, plant closures, and bankruptcies among struggling French automotive suppliers. This article will explore why these efforts were unsuccessful by revisiting the first Japanese attempts to enter the European automobile industry. It does so not only through the case of Nissan in the United Kingdom in 1984 but also through the essentially unfamiliar and contemporaneous example of French automotive suppliers.

What is the relationship between the corporation and American democracy? This provocative and timely question informs the ten essays that Naomi R. Lamoreaux and William J. Novak have assembled in a tightly edited volume that has attracted a good deal of attention from specialists in the history of U.S. public policy. In an age in which the political influence of big business has once again thrust itself onto the political agenda, this collection should also prove to be of great interest to the many historians, legal scholars, and jurists who are trying to understand the long and complex relationship between business, law, and the state.

Looking across the long twentieth century, this article tracks the rise and fall of one form of anti-competition regulation: the certificate of public convenience. Designed to curb “destructive competition” in certain industries, such as transportation and banking, certificate laws prevented firms from entering those industries unless they could convince regulators that they would satisfy an unmet public demand for goods or services. This history highlights how lawmakers used similar techniques in governing infrastructure and finance—two fields that are not often studied together. It also shows that state regulation both prefigured legal change at the federal level and then lagged behind it, suggesting that different dynamics have been in play at each level of governance in devising competition policy over the last century.