Historians have become increasingly interested in networks as an analytical tool for eighteenth-century commerce. In much of the historiography these networks are treated as inherently beneficial for the wider economy and the actors themselves. Recently, however, historians have started to problematize networks and to complicate our understanding of them. Indeed, the quote above stresses that a network is not simply the actors within it, but the relationships between them. Realizing this facilitates an understanding of how such networks function.

During 1870–1914, business actors were concerned about the increasing uncertainty and occasional cheating in commercial relationships. In such situations, economic actors seek to improve the information they have, so as to benefit from strong comparative advantages over their competitors. This essay analyzes the acquisition and circulation of information and the actors and rules involved between 1870 and 1914, through a comparative approach (France and Italy). It considers individual trading firms, professional associations, information intermediating agencies, and state offices. We argue that these agencies (and therefore markets and institutions) acted much less as rivals than as complements in this era. Indeed, product information is different from information on the reputation of economic actors, the latter generating further distinctions between reputation for payment, respect of deadlines, and fidelity to the terms and objects of the contract. In turn, such kinds of situated micro-information differ from general statistics on market evolution and prices. We show that most economic actors were much more interested in the former (specifics) than in the latter kinds of information. To demonstrate this point, we compare the way traders, their associations, and private and state agencies intervened in the gathering, circulation, and interpretation of economic information in two countries, Italy and France, between 1870 and 1914. We argue that their opposite outcomes were not simply the result of different “mentalities” or attitudes to risk (as exogenously given), but rather can be traced to the different institutional settings and economic segmentation of the market for information in these two countries. In fact, unlike the Italian government, French ministries refused to provide their traders with micro-information on potential overseas correspondents and product characteristics. That is to say, “attitude to risk” and “animal spirits” are not exogenous and cannot be studied outside a given historical and institutional context.

This article is a study in the strength of shared strategic beliefs amongst leading British clearing bankers in the years following World War II and how those common beliefs may have inhibited potential for market growth. The subject of the study is the performance of large British deposit bankswith respect to the financing of industry. This behavior has long been criticized by economic historians as suboptimal and, depending on the commentator, has been presented variously as evidence of entrepreneurial failure, the gentrification of the City, social schism amongst the economic and social elite, the political influence of City institutions, the external orientation of capital markets, or institutional sclerosis. However, in earlier studies we have offered a rational economic explanation of the banks' behavior and practices in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This paper analyzes cooperative enterprises' networks in the Italian economy, in accordance with recent economic theory, to throw light on the causes of their success of in the last 30 years. We reference the vast literature about business networks to identify some interpretative lines that can be transferred to the cooperative world. On this basis, a typology of the Italian cooperative networks is offered, in order to evaluate the competitive advantages of each type of net, their governance methods, their evolution, and their impact on the recent flourishing of Italian cooperatives. Our conclusion is that the use of networks by co-ops has been very intensive and can still be strengthened, if Italian co-op umbrella organizations will merge. Building large cooperative corporations was often the result of networking, as was the creation of joint stock companies owned by cooperatives.

Capitalist development involves ongoing technological changes in which a series of innovations develop and diffuse.Wars and other discontinuities periodically break the process, thwarting some innovations and generating others. Wartime experience hence illuminates the question of whether innovation responds to the changing economic environment or maintains earlier directions. The paper examines the roles of peacetime factors and wartime dislocations in the development of three Civil War innovations, firearms, shoe mechanization, and petroleum. Using patent data, government procurement records, and selected firm records to compare antebellum and wartime activities, I argue for the continuity of innovation in its content and in the occupation, network status, and location of patentees. Wartime innovation evolved out of antebellum firms, networks, and inventors. It drew on machinists, engineers, and applied scientists to transfer critical antebellum capabilities into innovating sectors. The war accelerated innovations in firearms and shoe mechanization and may have slowed petroleum innovation. Whereas the North continued antebellum innovation processes during the war, the South, with little capability in any of the sectors, was unable to innovate successfully even when military need was strong.