Fabricating the Market: The Promotion of Life Assurance in the Long Nineteenth-Century

The market for life assurance did not emerge "naturally" from a particular problem of the allocation of resources, it had to be made. Life insurance had to appear desirable and reliable. This involved the circulation of a variety of advertising media, one aspect of which was the fabrication of grand offices as headquarters for life assurance companies. These buildings and their widely-circulated images were part of a process of making life assurance appear prudent and proper, but more importantly secure. Through this fabrication of the liberal market, the City of London was transformed into a centre of commerce and finance.     

AN INTEGRATIVE APPROACH TO PROCESS PARAMETER SELECTION

This case study of a process improvement project from the Hewlett-Packard Analytic Products Group illustrates a number of important approaches for operations strategy. First, we show how process control in capillary tube manufacturing led to a significant improvement in tubing strength, a quality measure that relates to the frequency of tube defects at a particular stress level. Next, we show how one particular approach used for experimental design and process improvement was considerably more economical than another standard method. In conclusion, we link the process characteristics such as defect frequency to strategic measures such as company revenue and investment to underscore the strategic importance of process control.     

U.S. COMMERCIAL BANK LENDING THROUGH 2008:Q4: NEW EVIDENCE FROM GROSS CREDIT FLOWS

What was hiding behind the aggregate commercial bank loans through the end of 2008? We use balance sheet data for every insured U.S. commercial bank from 1999:Q1 to 2008:Q4 to construct credit expansion and credit contraction series and provide new evidence on changes in lending. Until 2008:Q3 net credit growth was not dissimilar to the 1980 and 2001 recessions. However, between the third and fourth quarter credit contraction grew larger than credit expansion across all types of loans and for the largest banks. With the inclusion of 2008:Q4 data our series most resemble the intensification of the Savings and Loan crisis. (JEL E44, E51, G21)     

Virtus on Whitehall: The Politics of Palladianism in William Kent's Treasury Building, 1733–61

Abstract The development of the modern state in the eighteenth century had a material as well as a socio‐political dimension. The 1730s saw the domination of neo‐Palladianism in the Office of Works and the establishment of a prominent and permanent administrative centre whose style made an architectural statement about the conduct of Walpole's government. The nature of this statement is only comprehensible when viewed in the context of contemporary political debate. William Kent's Treasury invoked antique Rome in order to emphasise the government's competence and assert the independence of its officers from patronage and their commitment to the common good.