The Global Economy: A Concise History traces the history of the global economy over the past thousand years. In doing so, it explores all the main waves of globalization, from the trade revolution of ...the Middle Ages, to the Great and Little Divergence between the West and the East, as well as the North and the South of the world.
This book examines the Industrial Revolution and the World Wars, and their respective consequences, as well as the interaction between technological shifts and the transition in geopolitical equilibria. The last chapters are dedicated to an in-depth examination of the transformation which occurred in the global economy after 1989. The chronological structure of the book is designed to help students memorize and understand key events. This book also discusses broader themes, such as convergence–divergence, growth and decline, development, and industrial revolutions.
This will make it of interest not only to students and academics, but to all readers wishing to gain a deeper understanding of the history and current state of the global economy.
1. The structural characteristics of preindustrial economies 2. The "Great Divergence" 3. New players, new institutions 4. The Industrial Revolution: technology and society 5. Why Europe? Why Britain? 6. An unstoppable process 7. A new world balance 8. The Western model and its limits 9. The first phase of globalization 10. The Great War: the end of a world 11. The post-war years: the age of insecurity 12. The crisis of capitalism 13. State intervention 14. The Second World War: "Creative Destruction" 15. Prosperity at last 16. Decolonization: lights and (many) shadows 17. From Keynes to neoliberalism 18. Third World, "Third Worlds" 19. The end of a great dream 20. Unstable leadership 21. Europe in search of an identity 22. The globalized world 23. A different kind of crisis? 24. In praise of history
Living up to its title, this volume puts the global economy front and center in a concise history that covers the Neolithic Revolution through the 2008 financial crisis in only a few hundred pages. Editors Colli and Amatori (both, Bocconi Univ., Italy) focus on how goods, services, and resources moved across national boundaries, using the experiences of individual countries in service to the larger theme. Chapters elucidate how these systems evolved in response to flows of goods and resources and in turn shaped them over time, primarily centering on the period since roughly AD 1700, what economic historians have come to call “the Great Divergence.” This is when western European (and later North American) incomes per person started growing much more rapidly than in the rest of the world. The book grapples with both the causes of this divergence and the consequences for the global economy. The text’s greatest strength is its up-to-date scholarship, bringing the latest findings to bear on classic issues such as late-19th-century globalization and the origins of the Great Depression, making this an excellent addition to any economic historian’s or library’s collection.
--L. D. Johnston, College of St. Benedict/St. John's University
Andrea Colli is Professor of Economic History at Bocconi University, Italy. He has published several books and articles in fields such as the structure and evolution of SMEs, the role of family firms in modern economic growth, and foreign direct investment during the 20th century.
Franco Amatori is Professor of Economic History at Bocconi University, Italy. He specialized in business history during his time at Harvard Business School, USA, and has written extensively on Italian and international business history.
Sternal wound infection remains a serious potential complication after cardiac surgery. A recent development for preventing wound complications after surgery is the adjunctive treatment of closed ...incisions with negative pressure wound therapy. Suggested mechanisms of preventive action are improving the local blood flow, removing fluids and components in these fluids, helping keep the incision edges together, protecting the wound from external contamination and promoting incision healing. This work reports on our initial evaluation and clinical experience with the Prevena™Incision Management System, a recently introduced new negative pressure wound therapy system specifically developed for treating closed surgical incisions and helping prevent potential complications. We evaluated the new treatment on sternal surgical incisions in patients with multiple co-morbidities and consequently a high risk for wound complications.
The Prevena™incision management system was used in 10 patients with a mean Fowler risk score of 15.1 Range 8-30. The negative pressure dressing was applied immediately after surgery and left in place for 5 days with a continuous application of -125 mmHg negative pressure. Wounds and surrounding skin were inspected immediately after removal of the Prevena™ incision management system and at day 30 after surgery.
Wounds and surrounding skin showed complete wound healing with the absence of skin lesions due to the negative pressure after removal of the Prevena™ dressing. No device-related complications were observed. No wound complications occurred in this high risk group of patients until at least 30 days after surgery.
The Prevena™system appears to be safe, easy to use and may help achieve uncomplicated wound healing in patients at risk of developing wound complications after cardiothoracic surgery.
Manuscript Type
Review
Research Question/Issue
This article addresses the diverse and fragmented literature about the corporate governance of business groups. We collected scholarly work on the ...subject, proposed a conceptualization of the main research questions they addressed, classified them according to their research themes, and identified future research directions.
Research Findings/Insights
Academic research on corporate governance in business groups has been increasing but is still a developing field. Available analyses make use of the main theoretical frameworks in general in corporate governance research. However, there are several areas of analysis that still need stronger conceptualization and empirical work, leaving many opportunities for future studies and a pressing need to substantiate and extend the findings of previous studies.
Theoretical/Academic Implications
Our study identifies four avenues for future research on corporate governance in business groups. This includes the examination of the complex relationships and co‐evolutionary processes among corporate governance attributes and organizational and performance outcomes of business groups; the effects of ownership goals on groups' performance outcomes; the role and the actual functioning of boards inside business groups; and the analyses of cross‐national comparison and long‐term development of the governance of business groups.
Practitioner/Policy Implications
This research allows practitioners and policymakers to get a better understanding of the crucial areas regarding business groups and their governance, and offers pathways to examine inside the “black‐box” of business groups.
Location of aortic valve calcium (AVC) can be better visualized on contrast-enhanced multidetector row computed tomography. The present evaluation examined whether AVC severity and its location could ...influence paravalvular aortic regurgitation (AR) after transcatheter aortic valve implantation. A total of 79 patients (age 80 ± 7 years, 49% men) with preprocedural multidetector row computed tomography were included. Volumetric AVC quantification and its location were assessed. Transesophageal echocardiography was performed to assess the presence and site of AR after transcatheter aortic valve implantation. Receiver operating characteristic curves were generated to evaluate the usefulness of AVC in determining paravalvular AR at a specific site. Postprocedural AR of grade 1 or more was observed in 63 patients. In most patients (n = 56, 71%), AR was of paravalvular origin. Calcium at the aortic wall of each valve cusp had the largest area under the curve (0.93, p <0.001) in predicting paravalvular AR at the aortic wall site compared to calcium at the valvular edge or body (area under the curve 0.58 and 0.67, respectively). Calcium at the valvular commissure was better than calcium at the valvular edge (area under the curve 0.94 vs 0.71) in predicting paravavular AR originating from the corresponding commissure. In conclusion, contrast-enhanced multidetector row computed tomography can be performed to quantify AVC. Both AVC severity and its exact location are important in determining paravalvular AR after transcatheter aortic valve implantation.
This study aims to experimentally investigate the effects of parallel blade–vortex interaction (BVI) on the aerodynamic performances of an airfoil, in particular as a possible cause of blade stall, ...since similar effects have been observed in literature in the case of perpendicular BVI. A wind tunnel test campaign was conducted reproducing parallel BVI on a NACA 23012 blade model at a Reynolds number of 300,000. The vortex was generated by impulsively pitching a second airfoil model, placed upstream. Measurements of the aerodynamic loads acting on the blade were performed by means of unsteady Kulite pressure transducers, while particle image velocimetry (PIV) techniques were employed to study the flow field over the blade model. After a first phase of vortex characterisation, different test cases were investigated with the blade model both kept fixed at different incidences and oscillating sinusoidally in pitch, with the latter case, a novelty in available research on parallel BVI, representing the pitching motion of a helicopter main rotor blade. The results show that parallel BVI produces a thickening of the boundary layer and can induce local flow separation at incidences close to the stall condition of the airfoil. The aerodynamic loads, both lift and drag, suffer important impulsive variations, in agreement with literature on BVI, the effects of which are extended in time. In the case of the oscillating airfoil, BVI introduces hysteresis cycles in the loads, which are generally reduced. In conclusion, parallel BVI can have a detrimental impact on the aerodynamic performances of the blade and even cause flow separation, which, while not being as catastrophic as in the case of dynamic stall, has relatively long-lasting effects.
Background Myocardial revascularization has been advocated to improve myocardial function and prognosis in ischemic cardiomyopathy (ICM). We discuss the evidence for revascularization in patients ...with ICM and the role of ischemia and viability detection in guiding treatment. Methods and Results We searched for randomized controlled trials evaluating the prognostic impact of revascularization in ICM and the value of viability imaging for patient management. Out of 1397 publications, 4 randomized controlled trials were included, enrolling 2480 patients. Three trials (HEART Heart Failure Revascularisation Trial, STICH Surgical Treatment for Ischemic Heart Failure, and REVIVED REVascularization for Ischemic VEntricular Dysfunction-BCIS2) randomized patients to revascularization or optimal medical therapy. HEART was stopped prematurely without showing any significant difference between treatment strategies. STICH showed a 16% lower mortality with bypass surgery compared with optimal medical therapy at a median follow-up of 9.8 years. However, neither the presence/extent of left ventricle viability nor ischemia interacted with treatment outcomes. REVIVED-BCIS2 showed no difference in the primary end point between percutaneous revascularization or optimal medical therapy. PARR-2 (Positron Emission Tomography and Recovery Following Revascularization) randomized patients to imaging-guided revascularization versus standard care, with neutral results overall. Information regarding the consistency of patient management with viability testing results was available in ≈65% of patients (n=1623). No difference in survival was revealed according to adherence or no adherence to viability imaging. Conclusions In ICM, the largest randomized controlled trial, STICH, suggests that
revascularization improves patients' prognosis at long-term follow-up, whereas evidence supports no benefit of percutaneous coronary intervention. Data from randomized controlled trials do not support myocardial ischemia or viability testing for treatment guidance. We propose an algorithm for the workup of patients with ICM considering clinical presentation, imaging results, and surgical risk.
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