Books by "Herman van der Wee"
3 books found
A Small Nation in the Turmoil of the Second World War
by Herman van der Wee, Monique Verbreyt
2009 · Leuven University Press
This monograph presents an in-depth analysis of Belgium's monetary and financial history during the Second World War. Exploring Belgium's financial and business links with Germany, France, The Netherlands, Great Britain, the United States, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the study focuses on the roles played by the Central Bank and private bankers in Brussels, by the Belgian government in exile in London, and by the Belgian minister plenipotentiary in New York. Among the subjects arising are: German attempts to plunder Belgium and Belgian resistance strategies; the peripeteia of the Belgian gold reserve; the role of the Belgian Congo; Belgium's participation in the discussions leading up to the Bretton Woods conference; and the negotiations for creating a Customs Union, blueprint for the 1958 Treaty of Rome. The final part of the book analyzes the famous monetary reform devised by Belgian Minister of Finance Camille Gutt at the liberation of the country in September 1944.
1. Research subject and objectives This study focuses on an economic institution, the large industrial holding company, which continues to hold a prominent if not a strategic position in the resource allocation process in many industrialised market economies. Powerful multicompany combines like the famous Japanese zaibatsu and the less familiar but equally powerful European industrial groups rely on the institution of the holding company to tie their intermarket control network together. Two general questions arise from this situation: first, what factors account for the viability and growth within a market setting of those institutions which internalise allocation decisions and, second, what effect do such institutions have on resource allocation? These questions provide the framework in which the proper research subject can be most adequately introduced. Before doing so, it is crucial to point out that the holding company institution, as analyzed in subsequent chapters, should not be confounded with the legal constructs, bearing the same generic name and flourishing in fiscal paradises, whose sole function is to organise tax evasion across national boundaries. The institution, as studied here, is the large holding company through which industrial groups manage multicompany systems. Such multicompany systems, operating an intermarket network by means of holding companies, continue to be more typical for Europe and Japan than for the United States where, for legal reasons, but also because of managerial efficiency, the multicompany system built around the holding company institution was rather short-lived and 1 the giant integrated multiunit enterprise rose to dominance instead.
A survey of recent economic history looks at war recovery, government policy, stagflation, world food sources, labor flexibility, industrial research, trade deficits, and the Oil Crisis