Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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Item LOCAL RESISTANCE AND RECOVERY IN THE NEOLIBERAL ERA: A CASE STUDY OF THE 1993 NAVAL BASE CLOSURE IN CHARLESTON, SC(2024) Verkouw, Clay Stephen; Chung, Patrick; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission transformed military base communities throughout the United States from 1988-2005. This work offers an account of military base closure from the local level, tracing the origins, resistance, impacts, and recovery in Charleston, South Carolina. A neoliberal turn in domestic politics resulted in the closure of hundreds of military bases, like the Charleston Naval Shipyard. Despite significant local resistance, the BRAC Commission shuttered the shipyard, ending decades of military investment and thousands of stable government jobs in the Charleston region. Yet, Charleston leaders took important steps in the post-closure years to maintain the traditions of military Keynesianism in Charleston, leading to a very successful economic recovery from the naval base closure crisis. This case study seeks to complicate existing narratives of U.S. military industry resilience, post-Cold War base closure, and military privatization benefits through a local history of a transformative period in Charleston.Item Resistance in the Digital Workplace: Call Center Workers in Bell Telephone Companies, 1965-2005(2021) Goldman, Debbie J; Greene, Julie; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Resistance in the Digital Workplace analyzes the ways in which a predominantly female unionized workforce contested the degradation of the labor process and downward pressure on living standards and job security in the automated call centers of two leading telecommunications companies, AT&T and Bell Atlantic (now Verizon) in the latter decades of the twentieth century. In their struggles with employers, the call center workers and their union, the Communications Workers of America (CWA), fought for good, secure, humane jobs amidst the digital revolution, neoliberal policy regime, the financial turn in capitalism, and the decline of unions. The study argues that the very forces that were driving change in the call centers also shifted and frequently narrowed the terrain upon which these call center workers struggled with management for control and power. While CWA and its call center members scored impressive victories in placing limits on abusive surveillance, work speed-up, and some forms of outsourcing, the study also demonstrates the boundaries of collective worker power in the highly automated call center environment. Resistance in the Digital Workplace examines key questions of labor history: workers’ struggles for job control in automated workplaces; the opportunities and constraints of the U.S. enterprise-based collective bargaining system; the failure of U.S. labor law to protect workers when organizing; alternative organizing models such as CWA’s bargain to organize strategy; the impact of neoliberal regulatory and economic policies on the decline of union power; the rise and fall of labor-management partnerships in the 1990s; the financial turn in capitalism; the fissuring of employment systems; global outsourcing of service work; and the successful strike against the corporate giant Verizon in the year 2000. The contests of CWA and its call center members, operating in one of the most dynamic and important sectors of the U.S. and global economy, highlight the opportunities, challenges, and constraints that so many U.S. service workers face in their struggles for power in the post-industrial service economy.Item Caffeinated Development and Other Essays in Latin American Economic History(2020) Uribe-Castro, Mateo; Wallis, John J; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation consists of three essays. The first one focuses on Colombia after 1850 and measures the impact of the expropriation of Church's assets on political violence. With yearly data on the number of battles per municipality, archival information on the reform, and difference-in-differences, the paper documents a reduction of political violence in places where the Church's assets were expropriated. The paper contests the traditional idea of the expropriation of Church's real estate as a source of political violence. It highlights changes in political competition after the alliance between Conservative factions and the Church was weakened. Specifically, it shows the reduction in political violence was concentrated in municipalities with high political competition and where the Conservative Party was relatively weak. The second essay studies the effect of the first wave of globalization on developing countries' structural transformation, using data from Colombia's expansion of coffee cultivation. Counties engaged in coffee cultivation in the 1920s developed a smaller manufacturing sector by 1973 than comparable counties, despite starting at a similar level in 1912. My empirical strategy exploits variation in potential coffee yields, and variations in the probability to grow coffee at different altitudes. This paper argues that coffee cultivation increased the opportunity cost of education, which reduced the supply of skilled workers, and slowed down structural transformation. Using exogenous exposure to coffee price shocks as instrument, I show that reductions in cohorts' educational attainment led to lower manufacturing activity in the long-run. The effect is driven by both a decrease in demand for education and reductions in public goods. Finally, coffee cultivation during the early 20th Century had negative long-run effects on both individual incomes and poverty rates. The third essay explores how changes in commodities’ prices can have differential effects on school enrollment according to characteristics of crop’s production functions. It compares schooling outcomes in counties that specialize in sugar (a land intensive crop with economies of scale) or coffee (mostly produced in small farms) in Puerto Rico between 1900 and 1930. Sugar price increases lead to increases in enrollment in sugar counties, while coffee price changes have a negative relationship with enrollment in coffee regions.Item Faith in Markets: Christian Business Enterprise in America, 1800-1850(2017) Slaughter, Joseph; Sicilia, David; Ridgway, Whitman; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Faith in Markets: Christian Business Enterprise in America, 1800-1850, answers the question of how theologically conservative Protestants approached business in the expanding market economy of the early national period. Recent Supreme Court cases (such as Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.) have cast light on an important and controversial intersection of capitalism and religion in the United States: the Christian Business Enterprise (CBE). Three CBEs of the early nineteenth century form the core of my study: George Rapp & Associates (the Harmony Society of Western Pennsylvania/Southern Indiana), the Pioneer Stage Coach Line (upstate New York), and Harper & Brothers (New York City). These proprietors embraced the most influential strains of Christianity in early America: Pietism, Calvinism, and Arminianism while attempting to create an ethical marketplace. Their efforts produced three distinct visions of a moral economy in the early national period: Christian communal capitalism, Christian reform capitalism, and Christian virtue capitalism. Faith in Markets challenges the prevailing notion in the historiography that concludes CBEs were the product of twentieth century Bible Belt Protestants reacting to the New Deal, World War II, or the Cold War. Instead, Christian Business Enterprise has a deeper history, that dates back to the earliest decades of the American republic. Melding the new history of capitalism with the revived field of American religious history, Faith in Markets demonstrates how individuals’ religiously motivated choices shaped market activity, as well as the market itself. The Methodist Harper brothers, for instance, rose to prominence as the most powerful publishers of the nineteenth century, dramatically shaping American culture with their middle class Victorian literary products, all while serving as a model of trustworthy business in an age of anonymous market exchange. Ultimately, whether reforming the market by successfully limiting the workweek to six days, presenting an alternate vision for republican industry and community, or fostering middle class Victorian values, the key figures in Faith in Markets illustrates how Christian Business Enterprises indelibly shaped antebellum American culture.Item Institutional Persistence and Change in England's Common Law: 1700-1865(2015) Schmidt, Martin; Murrell, Peter; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Institutions are widely regarded as important, even ultimate drivers of economic growth and performance. A recent mainstream of institutional economics has concentrated on the effect of persisting, often imprecisely measured institutions and on cataclysmic events as agents of noteworthy institutional change. As a consequence, institutional change without large-scale shocks has received little attention. In this dissertation I apply a complementary, quantitative-descriptive approach that relies on measures of actually enforced institutions to study institutional persistence and change over a long time period that is undisturbed by the typically studied cataclysmic events. By placing institutional change into the center of attention one can recognize different speeds of institutional innovation and the continuous coexistence of institutional persistence and change. Specifically, I combine text mining procedures, network analysis techniques and statistical approaches to study persistence and change in England’s common law over the Industrial Revolution (1700-1865). Based on the doctrine of precedent - a peculiarity of common law systems - I construct and analyze the apparently first citation network that reflects lawmaking in England. Most strikingly, I find large-scale change in the making of English common law around the turn of the 19th century - a period free from the typically studied cataclysmic events. Within a few decades a legal innovation process with low depreciation rates (1 to 2 percent) and strong past-persistence transitioned to a present-focused innovation process with significantly higher depreciation rates (4 to 6 percent) and weak past-persistence. Comparison with U.S. Supreme Court data reveals a similar U.S. transition towards the end of the 19th century. The English and U.S. transitions appear to have unfolded in a very specific manner: a new body of law arose during the transitions and developed in a self-referential manner while the existing body of law lost influence, but remained prominent. Additional findings suggest that Parliament doubled its influence on the making of case law within the first decades after the Glorious Revolution and that England’s legal rules manifested a high degree of long-term persistence. The latter allows for the possibility that the often-noted persistence of institutional outcomes derives from the actual persistence of institutions.Item From Partisan Banking to Open Access - A Study on the Emergence of Free Banking in Early Nineteenth Century Massachusetts(2014) Lu, Qian; Wallis, John; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation examines how the financial sector, specifically banks, achieved open entry in early nineteenth-century Massachusetts. The first chapter introduces this question and provides the historical background and conceptual framework necessary for unpacking this question. The second chapter provides new evidence showing how the majority political party, the Federalists, held a monopoly on banks by dominating the state legislature in charge of issuing charters for new banks, effectively prohibiting members of the opposing political party, the Democratic- Republicans, from opening banks. Political turnover in the period between 1810 and 1812 destroyed the Federalist monopoly and allowed for the possibility of open entry in the banking sector. The third chapter provides a new measurement of an elite coalition by collecting original data about bank directors and state legislators in an effort to identify their relationship. The empirical results show how the political composition of the banking sector changed during the Federalist and the Democratic-Republican eras and how the banking sector became less connected to political elites (i.e. the legislators) in the 1830s-1850s. The fourth chapter shows that for people who were ever legislators at some point in their life, they were more likely to be legislators and bankers at the same time in the late 1790s and early 1800s than afterwards. The fifth chapter collects data on private accumulation of wealth from Boston tax rolls and data on bank balance sheets to show that bankers were always richer than other wealthy citizens in the 1830s and 1840s, but their relative wealth inequality remained stable. New banks chartered in the 1840s and 1850s were smaller banks. The sixth chapter provides an explanation of the transition from limited to open access banking based on the idea of intra-elite competition. Taken together, these chapters show that the banking sector moved toward free banking by solving the problem of exclusive party politics. Although intra-elite conflicts did not eliminate elites banking privileges, political elites and banks were still connected and bankers remained the wealthy class, they nevertheless led to de facto free banking.Item THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR: A NEW INSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION OF THE SOCIAL ORDER AND MILITARY FACTIONS DURING THE SECOND REPUBLIC (1931-1939)(2014) La Parra Perez, Alvaro; Wallis, John J; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation presents a new view that emphasizes the role of intra-elite fights in understanding the failure to consolidate democracy during the Second Spanish Republic. The two traditional explanations have emphasized the action of "blocks" and often reflect the ideological tensions behind the interpretation of the Second Republic. Rather than seeing elites as blocks or focusing on ideological divisions, my view focuses on the heterogeneity of interests within elites and how the redistribution of political and economic rents during the Republic relates to the support or animosity of elite factions vis-à-vis the republican government. I apply my view to one specific Spanish elite -the Army- showing that, contrary to traditional interpretations, the military was a non-monolithic organization that was divided into different factions with conflicting interests. I explore the impact that factional military interests had on officers' chosen side (rebel or loyal) during the Spanish Civil War that ended the Republic. The econometric analysis uses a new data set that identifies officers' sides and uses information from military yearbooks to follow officers' individual histories between 1910 and 1936. The results confirm that the Army was a non-monolithic organization where factions behaved differently and responded to the impact from republican military reforms. Officers in favored corps and those that enjoyed greater promotions between 1931 and 1936 were more likely to support the republican regime. I also explore the effect of hierarchy on officers' choice. Results show that subordinates tended to follow the side chosen by their senior officers.Item Irrelevant Genius: Professional Economists and Policymaking in the United States, 1880-1929(2013) Franklin, Jonathan Stevenson; Sicilia, David B; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The rapid establishment and expansion of economics departments in colleges across the United State in the late nineteenth century indicates a significant shift in the way Americans understood economic science and its importance to federal economic policy. This dissertation addresses that phenomenon by explaining how American economists professionalized; and how that process influenced economic policymaking in the U.S. from the formation of the American Economic Association in 1885 to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Chapters alternate between analyzing the dilemmas economists faced while crafting a distinct academic discipline and investing early professional economists' role in the federal economic policymaking process. Three emerging themes help explain the consistent failure of early U.S. economists to translate modern economic theory to economic policy in a timely fashion. First, public skepticism and the persistence of folk economics proved to be a powerful deterrent to professionally-trained economists' authority in debates over policy matters. The combination of democratic idealism, populist politics, and skepticism regarding the motivations of professionally-trained economists undercut much of the social prestige professional economists garnered as educated elites. Second, disagreement among professional economists, often brought on by young economists' efforts to overturn a century's worth of received wisdom in classical economic theory, fostered considerable dissent within the field. Dissent, in turn, undermined the authority of professional economists and often led to doubt regarding economists' abilities among the public and policy compromises that failed to solve economic problems. Third, networking was central in the policymaking process. Personal relationships often were crucial in determining which prerogatives won out, a fact that indicates how haphazardly economic theory was applied to the nation's most pressing economic problems.Item The Role of U.S. Technology Transfer and Foreign Investment in East Asia and the Soviet Bloc in Opening China's Door in 1979(2013) Karr, Dennis K.; Sicilia, David B; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The most radical component of China's Open Door economic policy in the late 1970s was its encouragement of joint ventures and other foreign direct investment (FDI). Although scholars have studied the impact of the new policy on China's economy and on the global economy, few have considered the background of the reforms. Drawing from relevant American business archives, contemporary news reports, and other primary sources, I argue that China's reforms in 1979 were likely influenced by three important dynamics: contributions of American joint ventures and other FDI to China's economically successful neighbors in East Asia and the attractiveness to China's reformers of enabling similar contributions in China; contributions of American joint ventures and other FDI to the Eastern European countries aligned with the Soviet Union, coupled with China's competition with the Soviet Union for expanded economic relations with the U.S.; and interactions between American leaders and businesspeople with Chinese counterparts.Item To Whisper in the King's Ear: Economists in Pahlavi and Islamic Iran(2013) Sadr, Ehsanee Ian; Haufler, Virginia A.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Who whispers in the King's ear, for how long, and to what effect? The primary hypothesis guiding this study is that economists gain influence when the international resources they can deliver are valued and desired by the country's political leadership; and economists lose influence when those resources are not valued or desired. Alternate hypotheses that consider the role of increasing complexity in international economic relations, epistemic communities, emulation, and economists' political activity are also considered. These hypotheses are evaluated through a study of the experiences of economists in Iran under both the Pahlavi monarchy and the Islamic regime. Results indicate support for the primary hypothesis that economists are desired for their ability to signal competence and gain the trust of the international financial and donor communities. Surprisingly, especially in the Islamic Republic, epistemic communities of economists are also found to have been very successful in using moments of political or economic crisis to influence the worldview and economic policy preferences of political leaders.