Tom Juravich

Tom Juravich is a professor of Labor Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Juravich is also a musician and labor movement activist.
Education and career.
Juravich, a former mechanic, received a Ph.D. in sociology in 1983 from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
From 1984 to 1993 he was an assistant and associate professor in the Department of Labor Studies at Penn State University where he also directed a workers' education program for wage-earners in the Philadelphia area.
In 1993, Juravich was appointed as an associate professor of labor studies at UMass Amherst, being full professor in 1997. He was director of the UMass Amherst Labor Center from 1997-2006 and 2016-2018.
Research focus.
Tom Juravich studies work, workers and the labor movement. As an ethnographer, his exploration of the labor process began with his participant observation as a machine mechanic in a New England wire mill which was published in his first book, "Chaos on the Shop Floor: A Worker’s View of Quality, Productivity and Management".  Despite the degradation and segmentation of work, he found that workers retained more (unrecognized) skills than many had suggested. He continued his work on the labor process with "At the Altar of the Bottom Line: The Degradation of Work in the 21st Century" that explores the work of nurses, call center representatives, industrial workers, as well as undocumented workers in the fish processing industry. Juravich returned to exploring the complex ways that workers’ skills persist in his “Artifacts of Workers Knowledge: Finding Skill in the Closing and Restructuring of a Furniture Manufacturer" in "Ethnography". He is currently researching wage theft and the work of undocumented workers in residential construction and is part of an NSF grant exploring the impact of artificial intelligence and computer-based technology on the future of work.
Juravich’s research on the labor movement focuses on organizing and strategic campaigns.  His quantitative research with Kate Bronfenbrenner on organizing documented the importance of grassroots rank-and-file tactics for successful organizing in both the private and public sector.  Beginning with his "" on the Steelworkers’ (with Kate Bronfenbrenner) he had also written extensively about union strategic campaigns. His chapter “Beating Global Capital: A Framework and Method for Union Strategic Corporate Research and Campaigns,” pioneered an approach to strategic corporate research and campaigns and is widely cited and utilized in the labor movement.  Building on this approach Juravich created and is the webmaster for www.StrategicCorporateReseach.org  a comprehensive website for conducting corporate research in the U.S. and Canada. He teaches strategic corporate research and campaigns to a variety of union, community and environmental groups.
Juravich continues to write about the contemporary labor movement in recent articles, including “.”  He also builds on his work in labor history and union culture that he began with "Commonwealth of Toil: Chapters in the History of Massachusetts Workers and Their Unions" (with Jim Green and William Hartford) with his recent “Bread and Roses: The Evolution of a Song, Labor Songbooks, and Union Culture.”  He is also co-editor with his colleagues at the UMass Labor Center of "Labor in the Time of Trump".
Musical works.
Juravich has produced five recordings of labor and roots music. His first album, "Rising Again," was produced by the United Auto Workers. His 1989 "A World to Win" and the 1991 "Songs from the Film Out of Darkness: The Mine Workers Story" (produced by Academy Award Winner Barbara Kopple) were released on Flying Fish Records. Juravich’s latest CDs and Tangled in Our Dreams (with Teresa Healy) (2006) and, (2007) were released by Finnegan Music.
Published works.
Musical works.
www.tomjuravich.com


Fools Guild

The Fools Guild is based in California, themed around the medieval and renaissance idea of the Court jester. The central activity of the Guild is producing three parties a year in Los Angeles: Halloween, New Year's Eve, and April Fool's Day.
History.
The Fools Guild was born in 1979 at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire of Southern California, where the original improvisational team met while performing as jesters, jugglers, pass-the-hat-acts, and mimes. Originally named by former Pleasure Faire entertainment director Peg Long, The Fools Guild was primarily an improvisational troupe performing at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire near San Francisco and other Bay Area venues.
Around 1982, the Fools Guild moved south to Los Angeles where they rented a house at 8228 Fountain in West Hollywood. The house had a giant main room and very high ceilings, and the Fools began to host parties, workshops and other performance-centered events. Very quickly a social club of comedic performers evolved and the house became known as the Guild Hall. The house was originally built specifically for parties by the original house builders the Santleys. The Santleys were Vaudeville artists and original members of the Screen Actors Guild. They were also members of the old Hollywood Comedy performers club "The Masquers". The Masquers included silent Film actors and comedy celebrities and they often met at the old 8228 residence.
At the Guild Hall, the Fools events attracted other artists in Hollywood, creating focal point for the emerging "New Vaudeville" scene in Los Angeles. The parties became more ornate, with elaborate themed decor and costumes, and drew a growing roster of local regulars, including members of the nearby Groundlings Theatre and The Comedy Club.
In 1987, the original Guild Hall at 8228 Fountain was torn down to make room for an apartment building. The Guild continued the parties using rented venues.
Members.
Many members are professionals in the entertainment business, while some are amateurs. Most live in the Los Angeles area, with some in the Bay Area California, though membership is not restricted to California residents.
In 2004, The American Society of Cinematographers' Technology Committee and the six-studio industry consortium Digital Cinema Initiatives created the ASC-DCI Standard Evaluation Material (StEM) "Mini Movie" as the official image quality reference used to create the requirements and standards for Digital Cinema (Filmed on the Universal backlot with Allen Daviau as director of photography). Then King of Fools Christina Linhardt (AKA Venus Creamus) was hired as casting director for the project, drawing talent almost entirely from the Guild. The Fools Guild is officially thanked in the credits of the StEM movie.


Seaway Food Town

Seaway Food Town, Inc. was a company that operated the Food Town chain of supermarkets and The Pharm chain of discount drug stores in Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan. Based in Maumee, Ohio, it was founded in 1948 as a buying and advertising cooperative, incorporated as Seaway Food Town in 1957, and became a publicly traded company in the early 1960s. The company was acquired by Spartan Stores in August 2000.
At the time of the merger with Spartan, the company operated 47 Food Town supermarkets and 26 The Pharm deep-discount drugstores.
In 2003 Spartan Stores sold or closed all 39 of the Food Town stores.


Columbus City Center

Columbus City Center (known locally as City Center) was a , three-level shopping center in Columbus, Ohio. It was located in the city's downtown, near the Ohio Statehouse, next to the Ohio Theatre, and connected to a Hyatt hotel. The mall had a large parking structure attached that, despite the mall's closure in 2009, is still used extensively by downtown workers. The parking structure has been joined, directly or via bridge respectively, to two 12 story structures, 250 S. High Street (completed in January 2016) and 80 on the Commons (80 East Rich Street), both of which feature lower level office spaces with residential spaces on the upper floors.
At the time of its opening, City Center was Central Ohio's largest and most upscale shopping mall. However, a combination of factors soon stripped it of this status.
History.
Columbus City Center was developed by the city as part of the Capitol South development, opening on August 18, 1989. Lazarus, already open since 1851, was made one of the original anchor stores by connecting it with the mall via an enclosed bridge across High Street. The Lazarus store by City Center was the flagship Lazarus store. The other original anchor stores were Marshall Field's and Jacobson's. Taubman Company leased and managed the building until control was later taken over by Mills Corporation. Early leasing efforts were substantially enhanced when Limited Brands (now known as L Brands), a locally based dominant specialty retailer, announced that all of its brands would have a presence at the center.
In 2003, the Marshall Field's store became a Kaufmann's. It was later rebranded as Macy's following the Federated-May merger of 2005.
Decline.
During its last decade of operation, City Center's positioning as the premier shopping destination in Columbus was eliminated, due primarily to the opening of the three shopping centers across the northern end of Columbus, and the closing of its key anchor tenants. At the mall's peak in 1992, it had 144 tenants occupying of retail space; just 17 years later, in 2009, there were only eight small stores open for business, occupying .
Competition from new shopping centers.
In July 1997, The Mall at Tuttle Crossing opened on the northwest side of Columbus. The developers of City Center also built Tuttle. Though its opening had a much more devastating effect on the nearby Westland Mall, Tuttle presented an attractive alternative for upscale shoppers in the surrounding area who would have otherwise shopped at City Center. However, Tuttle alone did not have the capacity to decimate City Center, as City Center was still a convenient destination for wealthy residents in eastside suburbs such as Bexley, Pickerington, New Albany, and others.
The opening of Easton Town Center in June 1999 dramatically changed the outlook on shopping centers in Columbus. Located near the intersection of the I-270 Outerbelt, I-670, and SR-161 on the northeast side of Columbus, Easton presented a unique mixed-use format that was instantly successful. The combination of Easton and Tuttle gave nearly all wealthy suburban shoppers throughout Columbus more convenient shopping options. In conjunction to driving significant retail traffic away from downtown, Easton also hastened the downfall of nearby Northland Mall.
To make matters worse for City Center, Glimcher Realty Trust opened Polaris Fashion Place in October 2001. The mall was built on the far northern end of Columbus to capture the corridor of suburban development in the Columbus suburbs of Powell and Worthington, as well as the rapid population growth in nearby Delaware and Union counties. With this trifecta of new shopping centers across the wealthy northern end of Columbus, tenants fled City Center and Northland Mall (closed 2002).
Loss of anchor tenants.
In the face of competition from new shopping centers, City Center lost two key anchor tenants over the next few years. Jacobson's went bankrupt in 2002 and closed all of its stores, creating the first hole in City Center's anchor lineup. Lazarus, after 153 years of tenancy in downtown Columbus, closed in mid-2004. This left City Center with just one anchor, Kaufmann's, which was about to be rebranded as Macy's. Declining sales at the City Center location prompted its closure in late November 2007.
Final days.
Shortly after the Lazarus closing, Mills Corporation, through a 50/50 partnership with General Motors, purchased a large portion of Taubman's holdings, including Tuttle and City Center. Mills, with extensive experience in converting aged malls into revitalized structures emphasizing fresh entertainment and dining options, was seen by many to be the new hope for City Center's future. However, excitement quickly faded as Mills announced significant financial difficulties in 2006, including accounting irregularities and earnings restatements going back several years. Many of its new and redevelopment projects were either put on hold or discontinued. By February 2007, a bidding war developed between Brookfield Asset Management and Simon Property Group, in conjunction with Farallon Capital Management, for control of Mills' assets. Simon won and assumed ownership of Mills' assets in Columbus, including City Center.
Around this time, the development arm of Nationwide Insurance (parent company of Nationwide Realty Investors, both based in Columbus, and responsible for much of the Arena District development) stepped up on behalf of the City of Columbus to put together a plan for the mall's future if Simon were to abandon the center.
On July 31, 2007 the City of Columbus filed a lawsuit to evict the management company, Simon Property Group, which held the lease on the underlying land, to gain control of the mall. The city alleged that mall management grossly neglected the property, allowed it to fall into disrepair, did not pay real estate taxes for some time, and failed to make a rent payment for the land in excess of $200,000. Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman said of possible redevelopment for the property, "I have many, many ideas, I want to see some retail back in it, offices as well. We have thousands of people moving downtown and there's a great need for retail activity. Our downtown is on the move. This is the only thing holding us back.". In the last minutes before eviction was to take place, the city was able to negotiate a purchase agreement to buy the property from Simon and take over full control.
Two recent developments have set the stage for what could potentially revitalize the area surrounding City Center. First is the pronounced downtown housing boom, which has brought many young professionals back to the city. Several vacant buildings have been converted into condos, and the nearby German Village continues to show strong growth. Second, and more immediate, is the substantial redevelopment of the vacant Lazarus building. The redevelopment, now complete, converted the building to a format suitable for office space, academic research, arts, and dining.
On February 3, 2009, Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman announced that Columbus City Center would close on March 5, 2009, and be torn down by the Summer of 2009. The parking garage that was constructed for City Center remained, as did its underground parking area, but the mall was demolished.
The last retail business to operate in the mall, and also an original tenant from when the mall opened in 1989, was a franchise of Mark Pi's Express, which closed on February 27, 2009.
The mall was officially closed to all pedestrian traffic on Thursday March 5, 2009. Demolition of the mall began on approximately October 1, 2009, and was completed in March 2010. Demolition was by S.G. Loewendick & Sons.
Columbus Commons.
Columbus Commons is a park and green space located on the site of the former Columbus City Center mall. The park features gardens, a performance stage, a carousel, a reading room and a café. The $20 million project was developed by CDDC and Capitol South, private, non-profit development organizations.
Philosophy of the built environment.
In "Thinking Like a Mall" Steven Vogel, professor of philosophy at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, uses the City Center Mall as an example to argue that malls have a life and a purpose of their own. He claims that, in some sense, they can be considered as living entities, and asks "Why, does the destruction of a natural entity such as a mountainside raise moral questions while the demolition of a building does not?"


Metrocenter (Phoenix, Arizona)

Metrocenter was a regional enclosed shopping mall in northwest Phoenix, Arizona. It was bounded by Interstate 17 (the equivalent of 27th Ave.), 31st, Dunlap and Peoria Avenues. The anchor stores were Harkins Theatres, Walmart Supercenter, and Dillard's Clearance Center. Upon closure there were 3 vacant anchor stores that were once Sears, JCPenney, and Macy's. The mall featured 100 stores, a 12 screen movie theater, and a food court. Since January 2012, the mall had been owned by the Carlyle Development Group based in New York City. The mall officially closed on June 30, 2020.
Parts of the film "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" were filmed in the mall.
History.
Development.
Metrocenter was a joint venture of Westcor, a regional shopping center development firm headed by a group of real estate investors and developers led by Russ "Rusty" Lyon, Jr., and Homart Development Company, the real estate division of Sears, Roebuck and Company. The project was announced in November 1970, the first site plans and artist renderings announced in the spring of 1972, and construction beginning in June 1972. The mall was designed by local architect Robert Fairburn who headed the Phoenix offices of Flatow, Moore Bryan & Fairburn. Ernest W. Hahn was general contractor selected to build the mall. The Broadway building was designed by Charles Luckman, and was constructed by the Del E. Webb Corporation.
The mall was built on in an area of Phoenix that was a sparsely populated residential district at what was then considered the northern edge of town (the area was actually an unincorporated part of Maricopa County which was annexed by the city of Phoenix because of the project). Lyon's firm correctly noted that population growth would favor northwest Phoenix. After the site was chosen, "...from then on, it was a matter of appealing to the marketing acumen of the major department stores. They didn't take much convincing."
There was some initial opposition to the project from neighborhood residents who feared heavy traffic generated from major retailers as well as buildings which exceeded height limits. As a result, there were some delays in the rezoning of the land by the city of Phoenix, but residents' fears were eventually addressed to their satisfaction. A lawsuit filed by the "Deer Valley Residents Association" was dropped by late September 1972.
In June 1972, the First National Bank of Arizona (now the Arizona operations of Wells Fargo Bank) made a $21 million loan to the developers, which was the largest commercial real estate loan ever made in Arizona up to that time. The total cost of Metrocenter was estimated at $100 million.
The mall was opened for business in Early 1973, and when it opened as the first two-level, five-anchor mall in the U.S., it was the largest shopping center in Arizona and was considered one of the largest shopping centers in the United States. Shoppers initially came from as far away as Flagstaff and Tucson to see and to shop at the large mall.
Metrocenter became the model for later Westcor master-planned developments around Phoenix, such as Paradise Valley Mall.
Decline and renovations.
The mall started to decline economically after the 1980s; as the Phoenix area expanded, many of the immediate residential neighborhoods bordering Metrocenter became less middle-class/upscale and more working-class in demographics. Newer malls, such as Paradise Valley Mall and Fiesta Mall seized market share from Metrocenter in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. In addition to increased competition, crime in the mall's neighborhood and parking lot increased. Local car enthusiasts started cruising the mall in the early 80's, driving their cars around the property and socializing. Later Phoenix Police began blocking traffic for the "cruisers", which also inconvenienced mall goers and led to a decline in weekend patronage.
In 1992-93 Metrocenter underwent a renovation that was completed by The Weitz Company General Contractors.
In January 2004, Metrocenter was sold by DVM Co., a joint venture of Simon Property Group and Rusty Lyon, Jr., to a joint venture of The Macerich Company and AEW Capital Management. The new ownership brought back the founding developer, Westcor, by now an Arizona retail giant and subsidiary of The Macerich Co., to manage the property.
In 2005, several of the mall's retail stores that appeared in "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure", such as Oshman's Sporting Goods and Casual Corner, closed in accordance with the chains' foldings, and were replaced by newer stores. Facing large vacancies, in 2005–2006, the exterior of the mall was improved. The parking lot was repaved and 35 percent more lighting was added. New "Metrocenter" signs were placed above the mall's entrances. More than 300 trees were removed (most of them eucalyptus) and desert-friendly landscaping was planted.
Metrocenter's interior was revamped in 2007. Diaper-changing stations and attendants were added to the restrooms. A nursing room, Wi-Fi access, and a community room with seating for up to 100 were added to the mall. The food court and play center were remodeled. In November 2007, a closed-circuit camera television system was installed that is sophisticated enough to read the license plate number of any car in the mall's parking lot. Public view monitors were installed at the entrances to the mall showing that entrance to people as they entered the mall.
On April 6, 2010 Jones Lang LaSalle took over management and 15% ownership of Metrocenter Mall from Westcor.
Redevelopment.
Later in 2010, the mall was put up for sale and in January 2012, the sale to the Carlyle Development Group for $12.2 million was finalized. The company had publicly stated that over a period of five to six years, it hoped to turn the property into a mixed-use development site, with retail, residential, medical and possibly college campus tenants.
In June 2016, a massive redevelopment of Metrocenter was approved by the Phoenix City Council. Metrocenter will undergo a massive revitalization that will bring more retail and restaurants as well as office buildings, apartments, senior housing, and health-care facilities to the mall.
The City of Phoenix rezoned the mall to allow office, medical and residential space; it had been zoned for solely retail use.
Closure.
In a letter from general manager Kim Ramirez on June 19, 2020, Metrocenter Mall announced that they would be closing at the end of that month citing "the drop in our occupancy levels due to the COVID-19 pandemic."
After 47 years of service, Metro Center Mall was closed on June 30, 2020 due to low store occupancy levels following the COVID-19 pandemic, and failed rejuvenation projects to boost foot traffic. Remains of the mall were auctioned off on December 3, 2020.
Anchors.
The original anchor stores were Sears, Rhodes Brothers, Diamond's, Goldwater's, and The Broadway. All of the anchors opened in 1973, save for Sears which opened in 1974. The mall had an ice skating rink on the ground level overlooked by the mall's food court, which was designed to resemble the fuselage of an airliner.
The ice rink closed in 1990, the large space where it once sat was filled, and the balcony that overlooked it was filled to house more seating in the food court. The food court was also redesigned and now no longer resembles an airliner fuselage. In 1974, the mall opened a triple-screen movie theater by General Cinema Corporation. The theater was acquired by Harkins Theatres in March 1999, and converted to a 12-screen theater.
Over time, the mall's anchors have changed as a result of acquisitions and consolidation amongst department stores. Diamond's was converted to Dillard's in 1984. Rhodes Brothers was converted to Liberty House in 1974, then to Joske's in 1984. After Joske's was acquired by Dillard's in early 1987, the location became a second Dillard's, and then a JCPenney. JCPenney moved to Christown Spectrum Mall in 2007 and left the former location of JCPenney vacant until Metrocenter's ultimate closure.
The Broadway was acquired by Federated department stores in 1996, and converted to a Macy's. Goldwater's was converted to J.W. Robinson's in 1989, which became Robinsons-May in 1993. In 2005, Macy's closed its store at the former Broadway site, which returned to the mall a year later, at the Robinsons-May building after the May Department Stores were acquired by Macy's in 2006. In January 2015, Macy's announced it was closing its Metrocenter location for the second time in ten years by early spring, citing a nationwide reorganization. The store closed in June.
Dillard's was converted to a clearance center in 2009, closing the first level of its store.
In June 2014, it was announced that a Walmart Supercenter would open, taking over the space occupied by the vacant Broadway building. The Broadway building was demolished and construction for the Supercenter began on July 20, 2016. The new Supercenter opened in October 2017, though it is not accessible from the mall.
On May 31, 2018, it was announced that Sears would be closing in September 2018 as part of a plan to close 72 stores nationwide, which left the mall without any original anchors. Only Dillard's Clearance Center and Walmart Supercenter (which has no mall entrance) are the remaining anchors.


Chiesmans

Chiesmans was a department store group based in Lewisham, London. The business was established in 1884 as a general draper, expanding to become the largest department store in south-east London and operator of a network of branches stretching from Essex to the Isle of Wight. The group was acquired by House of Fraser in 1976. The former Lewisham flagship store closed in 1997.
Early history.
Chiesman Brothers was started by the brothers Frank and Harry Chiesman in September 1884 in Lewisham. They bought Cross Brothers drapery business at 59 High Street, Lewisham, which was known as Paris House, and specialised in the sales of remnants and job lots. The brothers changed the business, selling new lines across a variety of product categories in addition to drapery.
The store expanded into neighbouring properties and in 1899, waiting rooms and a tea room were added to the store.
Within a few short years the brothers had established Lewisham's leading department store. By 1908 the store encompassed 41-59 High Street. The premises were divided by a road and a tunnel was constructed connecting the two buildings. The furniture department was a particularly successful part of the business and Chiesmans purchased several properties to hold their stock.
After the First World War, the brothers' sons Stewart, Russell and Howard joined the firm and in 1921 a new store was constructed.
In the same year the company was incorporated as Chiesmans Limited. During the 1930s the store was extended and other properties were purchased, including property on the opposite side of the High Street. By 1939, a new bridge was built spanning Granville Grove linking the two halves of the main store.
Expansion.
In 1933, Chiesmans began a period of expansion beyond Lewisham with the purchase of Denniss Paine & Co. of Maidstone, Kent.The next acquisition was that of Martins of Canterbury in 1949, while a third store was added in 1957 at Gravesend (previously Bon Marche).
In 1957, the business became a Public Limited Company, with most of the shares being retained by the Chiesman family. Over the next two years stores were purchased in Tunbridge Wells (Waymarks, 1958), the Isle of Wight (Edward Morris, 1959), Ilford (Burnes, 1959), Upton Park (John Lewis, 1959) and Rochester (Leonards, 1959). The Lewisham store was extended again in 1960. Additions included a new fabric hall and self-service restaurant.
Takeover.
In 1976 Chiesmans was purchased by House of Fraser. The stores were brought under the same management as Barkers and Army & Navy as part of the Southern Division trading group of House of Fraser.
The former Chiesmans offices at Lewisham became the head office for the regional group.
Further branches were added to the Chiesmans nameplate under House of Fraser’s ownership.
A number of the former Hide group stores in London and the south-east, which had been acquired in 1975, were initially renamed Chiesmans, including the eponymous Kingston upon Thames store and the J R Roberts branch at Southend.
A store was also opened in Bexleyheath.
Closure.
Eventually the Chiesmans stores were renamed Army & Navy.
Maintenance costs and changing retail patterns led to the Lewisham store shrinking to half its size in 1993 and later, closing down entirely in 1997.
All of the former Chiesmans stores are now closed.
Legacy.
Harry Chiesman served as Mayor of Lewisham in 1920 and laid the foundation stone of Lewisham War Memorial, which was given Grade II listed status on 13 July 2016.


Robert Ekelund

Robert Burton Ekelund Jr. (born 1940) is an American economist.
Education.
Originally from Galveston, Texas, Ekelund attended St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas, earning his BBA in economics in 1962 and his MA in economics and history the next year. He was a member of the Order of the Barons and first worked as an instructor in economics while completing his master's degree.
He then moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to teach and continue his graduate work at Louisiana State University. He finished his PhD in economics and political theory there in 1967. His doctoral dissertation was on Jules Dupuit, a French civil engineer and economist. Ekelund would maintain this interest in Dupuit, making him the topic of a dozen journal articles and a 1999 book, "Secret Origins of Modern Microeconomics: Dupuit and the Engineers".
Career.
In 1967, after the completion of his PhD, Ekelund was hired by Texas A&M University economics department. He was made Professor of Economics in 1974 and remained on the faculty of the College Station, Texas school until 1979, when he moved to Auburn, Alabama to become a professor at Auburn University. Ekelund was a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and in 2003 he served as the Vernon Taylor Distinguished Visiting Professor at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Ekelund is now Catherine and Edward Lowder Eminent Scholar Emeritus at Auburn University and is a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute. He is also an Independent Institute research fellow and an adjunct faculty member of the Mises Institute.
Significance in economics.
Economic topics notably discussed by Ekelund include cultural economics, the history of economic thought, the economics of regulation, the economics of religion, public choice theory, mercantilism, and the economics of the American Civil War blockades.
Textbooks by Ekelund have sold successfully with his and Robert Tollison's basic book, "Economics" now in its seventh edition. One of Ekelund's primary interests centers on the history of economic theory and its relevance to contemporary economic theory and policy. His book with Robert Hebert, "A History of Economic Theory and Method" has entered its sixth edition and the fifth decade of continual publication. The book illustrates how models can facilitate the analysis of economic theory as well as its interaction with both ancient and contemporary psychology, sociology, anthropology, and culture. This book, with various editions translated into five languages, remains a primary source in the development of modern economic theory.
His interests in the economics of regulation were combined with Sir Edwin Chadwick's historical study in 2012. Chadwick's sophisticated 19th-century conceptions of moral hazard, common pool problems, asymmetric information, and theory of "competition for the field" of service (franchising) were pioneering concepts in contemporary theory but were only rediscovered in the second half of the 20th century. Ekelund along with E. O. Price chronicled these stark innovations in a recent book entitled The Economics of Edwin Chadwick: Incentives Matter. According to Professor Sam Peltzman of the University of Chicago, "Economists owe a great debt to Ekelund and Price for making us aware of Edwin Chadwick's seminal contributions. Chadwick lived in the middle of the 19th century, but he anticipated many of the theoretical and practical advances that culminated in the law and economics revolution of the late 20th century. These include Coase's analysis of social cost and Demsetz's proposal for franchise bidding in natural monopolies. Read the summary of Chadwick's ideas about railroads and consider that Britain adopted many of them but only more than a century later. The book is full of similar examples where Chadwick's prescience is extraordinary. Economists, legal scholars and practitioners, especially those working at the intersection of law and economics, will want to read this book."
Ekelund's 1981 book with Tollison, "Mercantilism as a Rent-Seeking Society", is cited as an exemplar of the school of thought that argues that mercantilism, rather than being the result of miscalculation, was a system designed by rent-seekers to enforce public policy favorable towards themselves.
Dupuit and the French engineers.
His 1999 collaboration with Hébert, "Secret Origins of Modern Microeconomics", has been praised for publicizing the theoretical and applied achievements of Jules Dupuit and others whose work in economics was often previously overlooked as mere engineering literature. In his review, economist Marcel Boumans of the University of Amsterdam asserts, "For too long they were neglected in the history of economics. Ekelund and Hebert's tribute to their work remedies this shortcoming." According to a July 1999 book review in the "American Journal of Economics and Sociology",
According to Nicos Theocarakis of the University of Athens,
Economics of religion.
Sacred Trust and The Marketplace of Christianity have both spawned debate among those interested in one of the latest new "fields" in economics—the economics of religion. Economist John Wells argues in his March 1998 Journal of Markets and Morality review of Sacred Trust that,
In his Chronicle of Higher Education review of The Marketplace of Christianity, David Glenn notes that arguments in the book that Westerners have demanded "cheaper" religions over time are at odds with assertions by economist Laurence R. Iannaccone that "strict churches are strong." Barry R. Chiswick in his 2009 review of the book in the "Journal of Economic Literature", notes that Ekelund and his cohorts use income, education, the state of science and full price of alternative religious beliefs to predict the types of religions chosen. Factors affecting demand and risk profiles between mainline Protestant religions, on the one hand, and fundamentalist and traditionalist Roman Catholics, on the other relate
Chiswick concludes that schisms are beneficial and that "[t]hese ideas seem to be particularly relevant in the current period where religious fundamentalism and liberalism/individualism are clashing to various degrees in all the world's religions. The application of microeconomic theory that is so successfully applied here to one major development in Christianity can, in principle, be applied to these other religions as well."
Building upon previous research Ekelund and Robert Tollison's "prequel" entitled Economic Origins of Roman Christianity draws upon the economics of networking, entrepreneurship, and industrial organization to explain Christianity's rapid ascent in the presence of Jewish and pagan competitors. The book introduces St. Paul as an entrepreneur, Constantine as a political strategist and the Merovingian and Carolingian monarchs as players with the Roman papacy to enhance the church's power and dominance over much of Western Europe—culminating in a virtual monopoly during the high Middle Ages. According to Professor Rachel M. McCleary of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Economic Origins is "An engrossing and insightful account of the branding of early Christianity through entrepreneurship, networking, manipulation of civil governments, and the control of entry into the Roman religion market. This is a major contribution to the study of religion, giving us a fresh, analytical approach to early Christianity and how it became the powerful medieval church."
Cultural economics.
The interface between culture and economics, including the study of specific markets and institutions relating to art and museums, caught the interest of economists, including Ekelund, decades ago. Economist David Throsby established "cultural economics" in the hierarchy of the American Economic Association's index of topics considered "economics" in 1994. Ekelund has been associated with such studies for several decades, conducting studies with colleagues in the late 20th and early 21st centuries using a small auction sample of Latin American art. Later, with colleagues and an acute interest in American art, he analyzed a database of 14,000 observations on 80 American artists born in the 19th and 20th centuries. A series of contributions was followed by a book, The Economics of American Art: Issues, Artists and Market Institutions, published in 2017. The book studies a number of critical issues including (a) how the market for American art developed historically from colonial times to the present; (b) how the age of an American artist is related to her productivity; (c) how returns to art investment in the pre-1950 and contemporary periods compare to other types of investments; (d) the economic underpinnings of art crime, such as theft and the creation of fakes; and (e) how the "bubble" observed in art markets is facilitated by the institutions through which art is marketed.
David Throsby of Macquarie University comments that
Kathryn Graddy of Brandeis University and editor of the Journal of Cultural Economics, argues that the authors' approach is
Ekelund, in addition to his studies of art and economics, has also analyzed some of the economic factors affecting museums, including contemporary art bubbles and attendance related to the business cycle, and studied the effect of the hypothetical elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts on museums and the arts generally.
Fine arts.
In addition to his work in economics, Ekelund is an artist who has shown regularly in juried and other shows over the past two decades with solo and joint exhibitions in Alabama. Ekelund has also designed book covers for the University of Chicago Press and Edward Elgar Publishing in London. He is an avid art collector and curator whose collection has been exhibited in several museums. He was a founding member of the advisory board for the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art in Auburn, Alabama and was the museum's acting co-director from 2006 to 2007 and chairman of the Advisory Board from 2010 to 2012.
He is also a classically trained pianist and has recorded five albums: "Solace" (also called "For the Piano"); "Reverie"; "Bach, Beethoven, Brahms"; "Musical Idioms"; and "Reflections on Childhood", performing works by Bach, Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Debussy, Ravel, Grieg, Griffes, Scott Joplin, Turina, Granados, Gershwin, and others. He has been a contestant in the 2008, 2009, 2012, and 2014 Van Cliburn Amateur Competition, and he created an homage to Chopin's 200th birthday. Many piano works, including his Van Cliburn entries, appear on his YouTube channel.


Sav-A-Center

Sav-A-Center was a trade name owned by The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company.
History.
The Sav-A-Center name was first used for a chain of 20 supermarkets in the greater New Orleans, Louisiana, area. The division operated throughout Louisiana, and had two stores in Mississippi. In addition, the Sav-A-Center division included three regular A&P stores, one of which was a small "corner grocery" in the French Quarter of New Orleans that A&P had been operating since 1931.
By August 2005, Sav-A-Center operated primarily in the Baton Rouge and New Orleans metropolitan areas, and along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Many stores sustained damage as a result of Hurricane Katrina. Twenty-one stores reopened within a few months of the storm; two others following remodeling to repair flood damage. Five stores were closed permanently due to severe damage to the stores and surrounding areas. In April 2007, the chain exited the Baton Rouge area.
On May 30, 2007, A&P confirmed that it was planning to exit the New Orleans area, and was seeking buyers for its 20 remaining Sav-A-Center stores. A&P said the company cited its decision to focus on its remaining operations in the Northeast, where it operated the majority of its stores. It was announced in September 2007 that the remaining Sav-A-Center stores would be sold to the locally owned Rouses chain. Rouses took over 16 Sav-A-Center stores, including the Mississippi stores and the French Quarter A&P, sold one to competing chain Breaux Mart, and closed the others.
A&P Sav-A-Center.
The Sav-A-Center name was also added to many of A&P's Northeastern and mid-South Atlantic stores in the mid-1980s, shortly after A&P purchased most of Stop & Shop’s New York metro area stores following the chain’s exit from the market area. After the sale, A&P found itself sharing strip-mall space with many Bradlees stores, which at the time were owned by Stop & Shop, and in some cases the two chains shared a building in a manner not unlike today’s Walmart supercenters. When A&P took over the supermarkets, a common wall was built to separate the businesses. In many areas, including Tidewater region/Hampton Roads, Virginia, in North Carolina, plus most of A&P's Northeastern area, traditional A&P stores were remodeled as Sav-A-Centers; the classic A&P sign's red, orange, and yellow colors became shades of kelly green.
In the Northeast, the former Stop & Shop stores were larger than most of the traditional A&P stores. The company tried to use the Sav-A-Center conversion as a part of its "We've Built a Proud New Feeling" campaign, which was created to shed the company's high-price, stodgy perception. The campaign featured images of larger, cleaner, modern-style stores, happy, upscale-looking shoppers, and friendly, cooperative staff. (It was during this time that A&P debuted its Futurestores.) The Sav-A-Center stores were renovated with oversized graphics of fresh-looking produce and baked goods; they also were outfitted with IBM-POS checkouts. However, A&P had trouble shedding its high-price perception; gradually, the low-volume Sav-A-Centers lost sales and shoppers to stores such as Pathmark (now a division of A&P) and NYC area-leader ShopRite (the Wakefern retailers' cooperative). Some of the stronger Sav-A-Centers survived, but many eventually closed, or were re-branded in the mid-to-late 1990s as "A&P Food Market". A&P's southeastern and Carolina divisions were sold in 1998; some of the smaller New York metro-area stores that survived were rebranded beginning in 2001 as Food Basics.
Kohl's Sav-A-Center.
After A&P purchased the Kohl's Food Stores chain, based in Wisconsin, some of those stores were re-branded as Kohl's Sav-A-Center. These stores were later re-branded as Kohl's Food Market or Kohl's Food Emporium before that chain went under.
Family Mart Sav-A-Center.
In the 1980s and 1990s A&P rebranded many locations of its Southern United States The Family Mart chain as Family Mart Sav-A-Center.
Dominion Save-A-Centre.
Beginning in the late 1980s, A&P Canada opened several stores in the Toronto area under the "Save-A-Centre" name. Its logo was the same as the American Save-A-Center, with the exceptions of being red rather than green, and "Centre" being the Canadian spelling of "center". In the late 1990s, these stores were rebranded as Dominion Save-A-Centre (Dominion was another Canadian supermarket chain owned by A&P) and some remained in operation, eventually converted to Metro stores by 2009, following Metro's acquisition of A&P's Canadian properties, including Dominion.
Pathmark Sav-A-Center.
A&P revived the Sav-A-Center name on newly remodeled Pathmark locations in New Dorp, New York, Irvington and Edison, New Jersey; Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, and in three stores in Philadelphia. In addition, A&P's website rebranded Pathmark as "Pathmark Sav-A-Center". here. Before being branded Pathmark Sav-A-Center, many of the chain's locations were branded "Pathmark Super Center".


Owen Owen

Owen Owen was a Liverpool-based operator of department stores in the United Kingdom and Canada. Beginning with a drapery shop in Liverpool, a chain of department stores was built up, often by taking over rival retailers. The company remained under Owen family control until the 1980s, and the brand ceased to be used in 2007.
Founder.
Owen Owen was born on 13 October 1847 at Cwmrhaeadr near Machynlleth at the westernmost tip of Montgomeryshire, Wales. His family were hill farmers. Welsh agriculture had prospered during the Napoleonic Wars when imports of food were restricted but, after the war, there was such a severe depression that in 1838 the farm which had been their home for generations had to be mortgaged and the following year sold. Owen Owen was the first child of his father's second wife, but she died after giving birth to six children when Owen Owen was only eight. His mother had a brother, Samuel, who needed help to run his draper's shop in Bath; so Owen Owen went to Bath and his uncle gave him both a home and an education. He was educated at the Wesleyan College, Taunton, and started working at his uncle's shop in 1860.
In 1868, at the age of 20, with some help from Uncle Samuel, Owen Owen opened his own draper's emporium at 121 London Road, Liverpool, close to where his father's brother, Robert, had had a shop at number 93. By 1873 Owen Owen had over 120 employees, many from Wales, and a quarter of an acre of floor space. Owen Owen was interested in his staff's well-being. Besides being the first employer in Liverpool to give staff a half day off each week, he also set up a trust fund for retired employees. In the 1880s he began investing in other enterprises including railways, and in 1889 became director of Evans & Owen Ltd in Bath, the shop started by his uncle. He moved to London in 1891, after marrying, but continued to manage the Liverpool store which became one of the largest stores in the north of England. He also invested in many other stores and estates.
In his private life he was an active supporter of many Welsh organisations. He died of cancer in London on 27 March 1910 at the age of 62.
The company effectively remained under family control until 1985.
Chain.
Owen Owen opened a drapery shop at 121 London Road in Liverpool. Over the years the store expanded, but in the 1920s when the city's retail focus moved away from the London Road area, the Owen family lent the company the money to move to a better position on Clayton Square where a large purpose-built department store (originally designed as a luxury hotel) was erected. The company then purchased rival chain T J Hughes and moved that firm's Liverpool store into the empty London Road premises.
Owen Owen expanded by building a store in Coventry, which was bombed during World War II. After the war it continued to expand, purchasing G W Robinson in Canada and adding other stores to the UK portfolio, the Coventry store being rebuilt on a nearby site.
A subsidiary company, Plumb (Contract Furnishers and Shopfitters) Ltd., was created from its own shopfitting department and had offices at Bishop Street, Coventry and Kempston Street, Liverpool. By 1979 the business operated 19 department stores branded either Owen Owen or under their original name but taglined as an Owen Owen store. It also operated three T J Hughes stores in the UK, and seven G W Robinson stores in Canada.
In the 1980s the Owen family sold the business. T J Hughes was split off and G W Robinson sold. In 1991 the firm purchased several Lewis's stores from administration (not to be confused with John Lewis) and was known briefly under the business name of 'Lewis's Owen Owen', before being taken over by Philip Green in 1994.
In 1995 Green launched the brand "Kid's HQ" in four of his Lewis's and Owen Owen Stores. The company was then stripped of its assets, which included the closure of the flagship Liverpool branch of Owen Owen, and was cut from twelve stores to one, Lewis's of Liverpool, following the sale of many stores to other chains including Allders and Debenhams.
In early 2005, Philip Green sold his stake in the business to David Thompson who began a new phase of expansion at Owen Owen, acquiring Joplings and Robbs from the Merchant Retail Group and purchasing Esslemont & MacIntosh from the Esslemont family. The Owen Owen brand name was no longer used, but remained the name of the operating company.
On 28 February 2007 Owen Owen entered administration. The reason claimed for the company's demise was the disruption in Liverpool city centre caused by the Big Dig. The Esslemont & MacIntosh store at Aberdeen was closed on 5 May 2007. In the same month the Liverpool, Hexham and Sunderland stores were sold as a going concern to Vergo Retail Ltd., controlled by the previous owner of Owen Owen, David Thompson, and enabling the stores to continue to trade.
Former department stores in the United Kingdom.
Owen Owen
Lewis's
Other department stores
The Owen Owen Trust Fund.
The trust fund continues as a registered charity, supporting those who were formerly employed by any company in the Owen Owen group, together with their spouses and dependents.


David Greig (supermarket)

David Greig was the supermarket (initially grocery shop) chain founded by the Greig family of Hornsey, north London. With its headquarters at Atlantic Road, Brixton (and later at Waterloo Road, London) and grocery shops across southern England, it was a rival to the Sainsbury's chain, John and Mary Sainsbury having opened their first grocery shop in Holborn one year earlier. A deep personal rivalry developed between the two families, because of acrimonious feelings about the Greigs' alleged betrayal of a verbal agreement regarding the purchasing of sites for development.
The David Greig chain is considered to have been established in 1870, when the founder's mother opened a small provisions shop at 32 High Street, Hornsey. By 1881 David Greig had joined his mother in the business and described himself as a 'provision dealer' in the census of that year. Beyond, Hornsey, Greig opened his first shop at 54-58 Atlantic Road, Brixton in 1888, initially "anchoring" the nascent Brixton Market, which started in Atlantic Road in the 1870s and was so successful that it spread to Brixton Road before being relocated to Brixton Station Road plus several purpose built covered arcades and finally also Electric Avenue, to reduce congestion and allow further growth.
By the late 1960s, there were more than 220 Greig shops across the south of the country, all trading under the David Greig brand. However, the company was sold to Fitch lovell and merged into Fitch Lovell's own Key Markets supermarket brand in 1972 after crippling death duties were incurred when several of the men in the family died in quick succession, with inheritance tax obligatory on their entirely private holdings. Key Markets was later bought by Gateway, and eventually rebranded as Somerfield, although several of the larger stores were taken over by ASDA, including the Sturry Road site, near Canterbury. This was in turn bought by the Co-operative Group. Each of these changes included considerable restructuring, so many ex-Greig stores may now be in different ownership.
David Greig was a notable philanthropist, leaving trusts for the benefit of Hornsey and the community. These have contributed to the Greig City Academy in Hornsey.
A commemorative plaque has been placed on 32 Hornsey High Street, the site of the very first Greig shop. The David Greig shop at 54-58 Atlantic Road, Brixton, is no longer a supermarket, but the frontage, containing a "DG" cypher, remains relatively original, and although the full name has been removed from the facade it is still visible in the mosaic floor outside the recessed shop entrance.
The David Greig shop at 65 Lordship Lane in East Dulwich is listed Grade II for its authentic 19th-century interior.
The old David Greig building at 23 St Georges Street Canterbury (now Superdrug) was designed by Robert Paine and Partners in 1952 and became a listed building in 1995 under the English Heritage building protection scheme. There is an inscription on the wall, in memory of DAVID GREIG, founder and DAVID ROSS GREIG. When Superdrug refurbished the store in the 1990s and the marble replaced, a stonemason was employed to re-create the inscription. It can still be seen today.
There is another facility in Alcester (Warwickshire) in memory of his wife Hannah Susan. The current sports, arts and community facilities are called The Greig and are managed by the Hannah Susan Greig Memorial Company Limited.
The family tableaux is located in Magpie Hall Lane cemetery, Bromley, London.ent.
A David Greig shop sign was uncovered at No.257 Old Kent Road after the current occupiers carried out refurbishments in November 2019.


Pearsons of Nottingham

Pearson Brothers was a department store located in Nottingham, England, which closed in 1988.
History.
Pearson Brothers started out in 1899 when Frederick Pearson bought a former ironmongery store called Wigglesworth based at 56 Long Row, which was rented. Frederick changed the name of the business to Pearsons and employed his two sons, Charles William and Tom, a porter and a small boy. The business not only had a shop but an office and a cellar with a water pump.
By 1894, electricity was being introduced to Nottingham, and Pearsons employed an electrical engineer to do contract work for customers. The store supplemented the electrical contract work by selling electrical goods within the store, becoming an official dealer for many products, including The Hoover Company in 1925. The business was growing quickly and the first of many extensions was built in 1898 at the rear of the store to accommodate a showroom for the new firegrates that the company had designed.
Over the next three decades, the business expanded the store in both size and the goods that it sold. However, the business slumped during the 1920s while the Council House was being built, as did many companies in the vicinity. But, in the 1930s, the business grew again by expanding the store and purchasing a secondhand motor vehicle for deliveries. The gramophone listening room was converted into a café during this decade, and the lease was extended with the property owner, Mr Joseph Darby, in 1934. During the 1930s, Laurie Pearson, son of Tom (one of the Pearson Brothers), invented and patented the first safe and practical electric blanket, while a special lift was added to cope with the different levels of floors.
After the war, the business celebrated its Diamond Jubilee in 1949, and by the end of the 1950s had become an authorised dealer for His Master Voice products from EMI, Coke and Gas burning appliances from East Midlands Gas Board, Redfyre Oil Heaters from Newton, Chambers and Co Ltd, and the sale of Silver from Mappin & Webb, among others. The company was also providing street lighting to the city and fire fighting equipment.
In 1966, the next major development to the store opened, with the new entrance on Upper Parliament Street in a Scandinavian style to try and modernize the firm's appearance. By 1986, the store had a coffee shop and a Planters restaurant, and opened a new £100,000 fashion floor.
Closure.
The freeholders for the property where the store was built wanted to redevelop the location as an arcade and gave notice in 1987 to the grandson of the founder Robert Pearson. A fight was put up but unfortunately, by October of that year, the business accepted the offer for the lease. In January 1988, the store closed its doors for the last time, with the loss of 115 jobs.
After the development failed to materialize, it was dropped during 1990 by the owners Grosvenor Properties of London after their plans to demolish the Georgian façade was objected to. In 1993, planning permission was given to turn the site into a multi-storey car park and government offices. By 1996, no work had taken place and a fire destroyed the interiors of the building. The Upper Parliament building was eventually demolished to make way for the multi-storey development, while the Long Row buildings have since been converted into new retail space.


Eric M. Warburg

Erich Moritz Warburg (15 April 1900 – 9 July 1990) was a German and American businessman and a member of the prominent Warburg family of German-Jewish bankers.
Early life and education.
Warburg was born to a Jewish family in Hamburg, Germany on April 15, 1900 His parents were Alice (née Magnus) and Max Warburg, director of M. M. Warburg & Co. and scion of the Warburg banking family.
Warburg was educated at the in Hamburg. In 1918, he served in the German Army. In 1938, he fled Germany for the United States and during World War II, he served as a lieutenant colonel and intelligence officer in the United States Army. As a German language speaker, he interrogated many prominent Nazis including Hermann Göring.
During the war, Warburg facilitated the migration of German scientists and their families to the United States. He was later awarded the Legion of Merit by the United States, the Order of the British Empire by Great Britain, and the Croix de Guerre by France.
Career.
Warburg apprenticed in the banking business in Berlin, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London and New York City. From 1929 to 1938 he was a managing partner of M. M. Warburg & Co. in Hamburg and of Warburg & Company of Amsterdam. In 1939, he founded E.M. Warburg & Co. in New York City (which later became the private equity firm Warburg Pincus).
Warburg is most known for his efforts to strengthen German-American relations, for which he was awarded the inaugural Eric M. Warburg Prize.
Personal life.
He was married to Dorothea Thorsch. They had three children: Max of Hamburg, Germany; and two daughters, Dr. Marie Warburg of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts and Erica Warburg also of Hamburg, Germany.


Four pillars policy

The four pillars policy is an Australian Government policy to maintain the separation of the four largest banks in Australia by rejecting any merger or acquisition between the four major banks. The policy, rather than formal regulation, first articulated in 1990, reflects the competitive concerns of more concentration as well as the broad political unpopularity of further bank mergers. A number of economically liberalist commentators have argued that the "four pillars" policy is built upon economic fallacies and works against the Australia's better interests.
The top four banking groups in Australia ranked by market capitalisation at share prices at 1 December 2017:
By market capitalisation, the Commonwealth Bank and Westpac are usually the two biggest companies on the Australian Securities Exchange and the big four banks make up a quarter of the ASX200.
History.
In 1990, the then Labor Treasurer Paul Keating adopted a policy, originally called "six pillars" — which covered the big four banks (Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, NAB, ANZ) and two insurers (AMP and National Mutual) — that further mergers of these institutions would be rejected. It was articulated in the context of a proposed merger between ANZ and National Mutual. Keating believed this arrangement would ensure a competitive banking market.
In 1997, leading business figure Stan Wallis produced a report of his inquiry into Australia's financial system, entitled the "Final Report of the Financial System Inquiry" and commonly referred to as "the Wallis report." Wallis recommended that the "Four Pillars" model be dismantled, to leave the banks subject to the same merger competition tests as other businesses. In response, the then Coalition Treasurer Peter Costello's removed the pillar status of the two insurers (National Mutual had by that time already been acquired by France's AXA), but the ban on mergers of the remaining four banks was retained, with the rider that none of them were considered immune from foreign takeover. With the change of government, new Treasurer Wayne Swan stated in 2008 that the Labor government has no plans to dismantle the four pillars policy.
Legal and policy analysis.
The four pillars policy has not prevented the four major banks from acquiring smaller competitors. For example, in 2000, CBA acquired the Colonial group, which had emerged as a major bank–insurance combine in the 1990s, after the Colonial Mutual insurance group took over State Bank of NSW in 1994. The Commonwealth Bank also acquired the State Bank of Victoria in 1990 and BankWest in 2008. Westpac acquired the Challenge Bank in 1995, Bank of Melbourne in 1997, and St.George Bank in 2008.
In 2017, Peter Costello said that the advantage of having big banks under the four pillars policy was stability, which he attributed to Australia faring well during the GFC.
Criticism.
The policy has been criticised for being anti-competitive by ensuring that the four major banks are immune from takeover by the most likely suitors. At the same time, it is credited with insulating the banks from the global financial crisis of 2007–08. The major banks have criticised the policy on the basis that limiting the size of Australian banks makes them less internationally competitive.


Ross McKibbin

Ross Ian McKibbin, FBA (born January 1942) is an Australian academic historian whose career, spent almost entirely at the University of Oxford, has been devoted to studying the social, political and cultural history of modern Britain, especially focusing on Labour politics and class cultures.
Early life.
Ross Ian McKibbin was born in Sydney, Australia, in January 1942, the son of Arnold Walter McKibbin, a teacher, and his wife, Nance Lilian, daughter of Clarence Spence, a bank manager from Bega. McKibbin's father's family emigrated from Northern Ireland in the 1860s. His paternal grandfather was the secretary to the vice-chancellor of Sydney University and the family were staunchly Protestant. When Arthur McKibbin was demobilised from the RAAF after World War II, he took up teaching at North Sydney Boys' High School until 1951, when the family relocated to Forbes, a rural township in New South Wales; five years later, they moved to Orange, where McKibbin completed his schooling.
In 1959, he enrolled at Sydney University, around the same time that his father was offered a bureaucratic post in the city's Education Department. At university, he involved himself in the Labour Club, wrote a dissertation on the origins of Australian nationalism and received a university prize for his fourth-year examination results. Influenced by a tutor, Ernest Bramsted, and his own Labour politics, McKibbin became interested in the history of the British Labour Party which, in contrast to its Australian counterpart, then embraced a certain left-wing idealism. Keen to access British archives, he completed his doctorate on the party's early history under the supervision of Pat Thompson at St Antony's College, Oxford, between 1964 and 1967. He returned to Australia to lecture at the University of Sydney between 1968 and 1969; finding, once again, that he needed ready access to British archives, he was appointed a Research Lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford.
Career and works.
In 1972, McKibbin became a Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at St John's College, Oxford, and remained there for the rest of his career. Between 2006 and 2015, he was an Emeritus Research Fellow there and in 2015 he became Emeritus Fellow. In 1999, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, and in 2009, he was elected an honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. McKibbin's work has focused on working-class life and the politics of the Labour party and the labour movement more generally. In the words of Peter Ghosh, McKibbin's work "embraces an unprecedented range of the life and activities of the ‘ordinary man’; it combines the most generous human sympathies with a stringent intellectual discipline; and it embodies a radical and novel conceptualization of the recent past".
Bibliography.
In addition to many reviews for the "London Review of Books", and an obituary of his doctoral supervisor for "The Guardian", McKibbin's academic works include:
Further reading.
Clare V. J. Griffiths, James J. Nott & William Whyte (eds.) "Classes, Cultures, and Politics: Essays on British History for Ross McKibbin." Oxford University Press, 2011.


Securum

Securum was a Swedish state company founded in 1992 during the financial crisis in Sweden 1990–1994 for the purpose of taking on and unwinding bad debt from the partly state-owned Nordbanken bank. It followed a proposal made to the Swedish authorities by McKinsey & Co and based on better practices from the US banking crises of the 1980s (e.g., Savings & Loan, Resolution Trust Company and Mellon Bank). Many of the debts were owed by real-estate companies and it became a goal for Securum to stabilize the property market. The company was established when Anne Wibble was Finance Minister and Per Westerberg was Minister for Business and Industry in the Government of Carl Bildt.
The company took over a quarter of the bank's credit portfolio, comprising 3000 credits with 1274 companies (of which 790 were listed companies, the biggest of which was Nobel Industries to the value of 24 billion Swedish kronor). Securum had a share capital of 24 billion kronor from the Swedish state as well as 27 billion in credits. That would be enough to get through the crisis during a period of 10 to 15 years.
Securum's design was quite particular and followed proven success factors for a "bad bank": speed and independence to isolate the problem exposures, while simultaneously protecting capital and liquidity of the surviving "good bank" and its operations. In addition, The company management were given free hands. A large number of the credits were unwound by the summer of 1994. Five flotations were executed: Nobelpharma – today Nobel Biocare – Servisair and three property companies: Castellum AB, Norrporten as well as Pandox. By the summer of 1997, Securum itself could be wound down.


Selig Perlman

Selig Perlman (December 9, 1888 – August 14, 1959) was an economist and labor historian at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Background.
Perlman was born in Białystok in Congress Poland (then part of Russia) in 1888. His father, Mordecai, was a Jewish merchant who supplied yarn and thread to home weavers and was a friend of Maxim Litvinov's father.
Perlman had a stutter and was extremely shy, which didn't stop him from excelling in the "Cheder" (the local Jewish religious school), and won a scholarship to attend a state-owned high school (or "gymnasium"). While in high school, he learned Russian and a number of other European languages, and his teachers introduced him to the work of Georgi Plekhanov. Thereafter, Perlman became an ardent Marxist.
He never joined a political party or radical movement, however, and his advocacy remained more theoretical than practical. Perlman graduated in 1905.
As a Jew, Perlman was largely barred from obtaining a higher education in Russia. So he left for Torino, Italy, to study at the University of Turin. He came down with bronchitis and transferred to the University of Naples Federico II, because Naples had a warmer climate. He studied medicine, learned Italian, joined the General Jewish Labor Union, and spent weekends with other students talking politics, languages, and literature at Maxim Gorky's home (although Gorky was rarely present for these meetings).
Perlman's paternal grandmother, Anna Blankenstein, had emigrated to the United States some years earlier and was employed as a dressmaker by the designer Hattie Carnegie. The American socialists William English Walling and Anna Strunsky were preparing to travel to Italy. Strunsky, buying dresses for the trip from Carnegie, met Blankenstein—who told her to look up Blankenstein's "brilliant nephew" in Naples who "knew everything about Russian Marxism".
Walling and Strunsky sought out Perlman in Naples in 1906, who gave them his copy of "Das Kapital" and "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon" (neither of which Walling had read). Walling offered Perlman a job, but he turned it down.
Perlman ran out of money at the end of the school year. Unfortunately, the introduction of weaving plants had caused his father's business to collapse. Walling, meanwhile, had been arrested in Russia for inciting sedition and (after the intervention of President Theodore Roosevelt) had returned to the U.S. Perlman wrote to Walling asking for a job, and Walling agreed to provide one.
Perlman arrived in New York City in early 1908, where he translated various works for Walling. Suffering from depression (which he struggled with periodically throughout his life), Perlman traveled to New Hampshire to visit relatives, the Shaber family. (He met Eva Shaber at this time, and would later marry her). After his return, he expressed dissatisfaction with his work for Walling. Walling suggested Perlman leave to go study economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Perlman arrived in Madison, Wisconsin in the middle of 1908, and enrolled as junior at the university there. His roommate was David J. Saposs, later to become a noted historian, and a close friend was Edwin E. Witte. He enrolled in classes taught by Frederick Jackson Turner (who, for most of Perlman's undergraduate career, was his mentor as well), John R. Commons and Richard T. Ely. Perlman worked at various jobs for a while, including a stint as a factory inspector.
Perlman graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics in 1910. His undergraduate thesis was on the history of socialism in Milwaukee.
Perlman then entered the University of Wisconsin–Madison's doctoral program in economics. He became close friends with Edward Morehouse, later a noted economist. About this time, Turner offered to make him a research assistant. Commons also offered him a research assistant slot, working on a history of the American labor movement. Perlman took the position offered by Commons for career reasons (Commons would have been offended had he refused) and because he had already been working in the labor history field. It was Perlman's belief that, by studying the American labor movement, he could generate support for Marx's theories about labor unions.
Although Perlman is often considered a close friend and associate of Commons, the two were not very close. Commons was anti-Semitic and reacted negatively to Perlman's strong Yiddish accent and constant poverty. It was Commons' wife, Ella, who championed Perlman to her husband and others. (She even helped Perlman with his English grammar).
It was while working for Commons that Perlman abandoned his Marxist approach to economics. In its place, he developed a theory of self-interest. It was Perlman's belief that workers became alienated from employers because competition forced wages down. Unions formed to protect wages, Perlman argued, did not arise (as Marx believed) from the bourgeoisie.
From 1911 to 1915, Commons and Turner worked for the federal Commission on Industrial Relations. Commons brought Perlman along, getting him a job investigating strikes and conducting research for the commission. After nearly being lynched by striking workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912, Perlman retreated to the Shaber home in New Hampshire. He began courting Eva Shaber, his second cousin.
In 1912, Perlman married Eva Shaber (d. 1929). Their first son, David, was born in 1920. Their second son, Mark, an economist, was born in 1923. The Perlmans were a deeply religious family, and very active in the local Jewish community in Madison.
While Perlman continued studying for his doctorate, the financial condition of his family in Poland worsened. His father, Mordecai, his mother, Pauline, and his younger brother Jacob, were persecuted by the Russian police, and heavily fined by Russian authorities for having an expatriate in the family. Perlman sought and won a substantial salary increase from Commons, and brought his parents and sibling to the United States. The Perlmans initially settled with family in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. But, unhappy there, they moved to Madison. To save money, Perlman moved in with his parents.
In 1915, Perlman received his doctorate in economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Career.
In 1916, Ely hired Perlman as an assistant to review and rewrite Ely's "The Labor Movement in America." Ely had theorized that labor unions arose from the values and tradition of Christian socialism. In revising Ely's work, Perlman removed all references to this theory. The revised manuscript was delivered in 1918. Ely was so angry that he fired Perlman. (The manuscript later became the basis for Perlman's own "The History of Trade Unionism in the United States.")
Desperate for income, Perlman tried to obtain a professorial position. He interviewed at Cornell University and the University of Arkansas, but anti-Semitic trustees and administrators kept him from winning an appointment at either institution.
 Ely blocked him from getting an appointment at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but in the summer of 1918 Ely was removed as chairman of the department of economics. The instigator of the rebellion was Ella Commons, who coordinated a series of promotions, votes and organizational changes which forced Ely out and permitted Perlman to obtain an assistant professor position.
Perlman helped promote institutionalism and Hegelian historicism as important theoretical approaches to the study of economics, labor and labor unions.
Perlman's theoretical approach was politically detached and relied heavily on data collection, a model which would dominate labor history well into the 1960s. However, Perlman did show signs of breaking away from the Wisconsin school's emphasis on organizations. His study of Marx had left him with an understanding of the importance of class in social movements, although his sense of the concept was limited to an economic understanding and not as broad as British labor historian E. P. Thompson's.
In 1928, Perlman published his most famous work, "A Theory of the Labor Movement." Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin had argued that unions too often pursued improvements in wages and working conditions rather than advocating revolution. Intellectuals, it was argued, had to take over labor unions to prevent such bourgeois inclinations. Perlman criticized this theory by arguing that workers in the United States were not, in fact, alienated as they were in Europe. Rather, in the U.S., the source of owner-worker conflict was not capitalism per se but the downward pressure on wages exerted by a marketplace free from internal tariffs. Unions formed, Perlman argued, as a means for workers to maintain high wages. It was correct, not an aberration, for unions to focus solely on wages and working conditions, he wrote. In response, Perlman developed the "business unionism" model of labor, where the goals of unions are defined by their members. It was an ingenious and effective critique, and one which had a large impact on the American labor movement.
In time, a chair was named for Commons in the economics department, and Perlman appointed to that position. Perlman taught a number of students who later went on to influential careers as economists, historians and politicians in their own right. One of his most notable students was two-term Wisconsin governor Philip La Follette. Another was the noted labor historian Philip Taft. Renowned sociologist C. Wright Mills also listened Perlman's lecturers during his time in Wisconsin and gained his knowledge on the labor movement
Perlman also continued to exercise his religious beliefs throughout his academic career. Although his extreme shyness kept him out of university politics or the media, he worked extensively with the university's . And, despite the disparity in their economic views, Perlman became good friends with economist Milton Friedman.
In 1929, Eva Perlman died. Selig Perlman subsequently married Eva's younger sister Fannie, and had two daughters, Eva and Rachel.
At the end of 1958, Perlman turned 70, which was the mandatory retirement age at the university, and he was forced to retire the following June. Perlman received an appointment as a visiting professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Earlier that year, he had undergone prostate surgery, which had left him weak. In August, he suffered a stroke which may have been related to his prior surgery. He lingered for seven days, then died on August 14, 1959, aged 70.
Assessment.
Perlman is recognized as one of the leading labor historians of the first half of the 20th century. His book, "A Theory of the Labor Movement", "left an indelible impression on a generation of teachers and trade union personnel."
Nevertheless, many scholars have questioned Perlman's conclusions. They challenge his conclusion that American workers were not and are not radical.
For these critics, business unionism has not only proven to be a failure but in fact has been supplanted by social movement unionism in the last six decades. Practitioners of the "new labor history", in particular, see the role of academics as assisting in the growth and development of labor unions rather than as sort of Marxist Svengali leading it to its doom.
Other critics point out that Perlman's work contains biases not readily apparent. Perlman may have held some racist views (particularly toward Asians) which limited his understanding of the evolution of the labor movement. It is fairly clear that his concept of class was limited to economics, and did not include race, status, ethnicity, or other sociological factors.
Nevertheless, critics agree that Perlman holds a significant and meaningful place in the development of labor history.
Perlman and Taft's 1935 History of Labor in the United States, 1896-1932 is a thoroughly researched descriptive account of the wide-ranging tactics and strategies of labor conflicts during this period. In particular, they detail that contrary to mainstream accounts the refusal of corporations to negotiate, government institutions and officials in owners' pockets, and facing the use of legal and military repression workers were forced to escalate their tactics in self-defense.
Memberships.
Selig Perlman was notorious for never attending university meetings, or participating in professional or academic conferences. He never held any memberships in professional organizations.
Family.
Selig Perlman's niece is the writer and etiquette authority Judith Martin, better known as "Miss Manners."


Lansing Metal Center

The Lansing Metal Center was a General Motors foundry located in Lansing Township, Michigan directly across Saginaw Street from the Lansing Craft Center. It was originally built as a jet engine manufacturing plant in 1952 and shuttered in 2006. Upon its closing, the plant was in size, and employed 1,200. General Motors began the demolition of the plant in February 2008, when all operations were transferred to the nearby Lansing Delta Township facility.


Wawelberg

The Wawelbergs were a Polish family whose banking house was active in both Congress Poland and the Russian Empire.
Hyppolite Wawelberg.
The Russian branch was founded by Hyppolite Wawelberg (1843–1901). The first Wawelberg Bank had its origins in a loan office that began operating in the early 1840s. In 1869 young Hyppolite Wawelberg moved to St. Petersburg where he launched a new venture, the Wawelberg Bank. Hyppolite Wawelberg's Polish-Jewish connections (Wawelbergs were Jewish) remained strong, and the bank was generally known as having two separate centers - in Warsaw and in St. Petersburg. The first location of Wawelberg Bank was 25 Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg (House of the Parish of Our Lady of Kazan Cathedral, now housing Stockmann department store and SAS - Scandinavian Airlines System offices). Hyppolite Wawelberg made a fortune in Russia though he was equally well known as a generous philanthropist.
The new Polish Kingdom (; ), as created by the Congress of Vienna, was a Polish entity but was in personal dynastic union with Imperial Russia, since the reigning Romanov Tsar was also king of Poland. Though based in St. Petersburg, the Wawelbergs were instrumental to the development of finance in the Polish Kingdom. They were to Congress Poland what the Medicis were to Florence, the Fuggers to Augsburg, the Rothschilds to France, and the Mellons to the late-19th-century United States.
By 1900 Hyppolite Wawelberg was at the helm of the Wawelberg Bank and held the title of honorable citizen of St. Petersburg, an appellation that could be passed on like a title of nobility. He was also a member of the management board of the Warsaw Bank of Commerce (Bank Handlowy w Warszawie). Back in St. Petersburg he was a member of the treasury of the Jewish Colonist Society, honorable member of the Jewish Educational Society (Общество распространения просвещения среди евреев) and benefactor of the Roman Catholic Beneficial Society (Римско-католического благотворительное общества).
In 1875, in Warsaw, Poland, Hyppolite Wawelberg co-founded the Museum of Industry and Agriculture ("Muzeum Przemysłu i Rolnictwa w Warszawie"). It was in a physics laboratory there that, in 1890–91, Maria Skłodowska (Marie Curie), future investigator of radioactivity and future double Nobel laureate, did her first scientific work.
In 1895 Hyppolite Wawelberg founded the Warsaw Mechanical-Technical School with his faithful friend and collaborator, Stanislav Rotwand (Cтанислав Ротванд, Stanisław Rotwand), an 1860 alumnus of the University of Saint Petersburg law school.
Michael Wawelberg.
Michael Wawelberg ("Михаил Ипполитович Вавельберг"; 1880 – after 1929) received a classical educational at the St. Nicholas Imperial Gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo ("Царскосельская Императорская Николаевская гимназия"), from which he graduated in 1899. His father Hyppolite Wawelberg donated 500 roubles for the gymnasium's own charity, which at the time was a considerable sum of money.
in 1903 Michael Wawelberg graduated from the University of St. Petersburg law school. That year he also took over the management of the Wawelberg Bank, which in 1912 was renamed the St. Petersburg Commercial Bank ("Петербургский Торговый банк"). In 1913 a branch was founded in Poland and became a publicly traded company – the Western Bank ("Bank Zachodni") in Poland). The Wawelbergs later lost control of it due to Russian Bolshevik-induced turmoil.
In 1910 the St. Petersburg Commercial Bank purchased a building with a lot underneath it in one most prestigious locations, at the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and aristocratic "Malaia Morskaia ulitsa" (7 and 9 "Nevsky Prospekt"). The bank announced an open competition for the building's design. The competition was won by young Russian architect Marian Peretiatkovich (Peretyatkovich).
Naom Sindalovskii quotes a telling local St. Petersburg legend about building's construction. According to the legend after the building was constructed and the client (Michael Wawelberg) inspected it and could not find any deficiency with the work, he ordered to change the doors anyway because the door sign said "push." That's not what I do in life, said Wawelberg, I only pull things toward myself.
In 1917, on the eve of the Bolshevik putsch, Michael Wawelberg lived in Tsarskoye Selo at "66 Boulvardnaia ulitsa" (66 Boulevard Street; "ул. Бульварая, 66"; Soviet name: "Октябрьский бульвар", Oktiabr'skii Boulevard). He was the chairman of the Commercial Bank and director of the board of Donetsk and Grushev Coal and Anthracite Mines ("директор правления Донецко-Грушевского акционерного общества каменно-угольных и антрацитовых копий").
He fled Russia after 1917 and then disappears from the public view. Most likely he settled in Poland or spent some time there, because in Andrei Serkov's book on Russian Free Masonry he mentions that two free masons, Alexander Erdman and Michael Wawelberg (М. И. Вавельберг), as they considered themselves Russian, petitioned Grand Master of the Polish Lodge with a request to allow them to found the Russian Lodge in Warsaw.
In St. Petersburg the Wawelbergs are best remembered because of the Wawelberg Bank building still popularly known as the House of Wawelberg (Дом Вавельберга) at 7/9 Nevsky Prospekt.


South Suburban Co-operative Society

The South Suburban Co-operative Society (SSCS) was a co-operative retailer in south London, Surrey and Kent, England. It became part of the Co-operative Wholesale Society, now the Co-operative Group.
The SSCS came into existence in 1918 with the amalgamation of the Croydon (formed 1887), Bromley and Crays (formed 1882 and 1870) and Penge and Beckenham (formed 1879) Societies. In 1930, SSCS merged with the Reigate Industrial and Provident Society, followed by the Tonbridge Industrial Society in 1938.
In May 1947, a sports centre was opened at Beckenham and in May 1949 employees were accorded full membership rights.
The SSCS registered office was at 99 London Road, Croydon, Surrey, where it remained until it merged with the Co-operative Wholesale Society on 28 July 1984. Following the merger of the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society (RACS) with CWS in February 1985, administration of both the SSCS and RACS was moved to Woolwich on 6 May 1985. The London Road offices closed on 17 May 1985 and moved to 18 Blackhorse Lane, Addiscombe until later that year.
Co-operative education was an important part of the SSCS philosophy and in 1920 an Education Department was formed to arrange numerous educational, cultural and social activities and events. It became very influential in both local and national co-operative educational affairs.
The SSCS financially supported a local Co-operative Party Committee, which initiated and sponsored local political candidates and events.
The merger with CWS saw the SSCS operating shops and services over an area of of eastern Surrey and western Kent. In its last full trading year, the SSCS had a turnover of £47m, share capital of £1.7m, membership of 167,000, and 1,100 staff.


Kim Voss

Kim Voss (born 1952) is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley whose main field of research is social movements and the American labor movement.
Education and career.
Voss received her bachelor's degree from Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina in 1974.
She obtained a master's of science degree in sociology from Cornell University in 1977, and a doctorate in sociology from Stanford University in 1986.
Since the fall of 1986, Voss has taught at the University of California, Berkeley.
In 1988, she was a visiting scholar at the Center for Studies of Social Change at the New School for Social Research.
Voss served as the chair of the Sociology Department at the University of California, Berkeley, from 2004-2007. She was the first female chair of the department.
Research focus.
Voss' research focus is the American labor movement, the nature and culture of work, social movements, and comparative sociology.
Much of Voss' early work analyzed why American labor unions were conservative and weak vis-a-vis their European counterparts. In "The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century", Voss argued that the formative period for the American labor movement was the 1870s and 1880s, and that the creation and collapse of the Knights of Labor was a critical factor in determining the future of the American labor movement. Voss examined whether American exceptionalism was the cause of or an outcome of the collapse of the Knights. She concluded the latter, and argued that strong business resistance to unions, weak government and legal protections for worker rights (two sides of the same coin) explained the subsequent politics and culture of unions in America. Voss also argued, however, that the Knights had adopted an ideology which was not resilient in the face of organizational collapse.
More recently, Voss has explored the factors which cause the rise of transnational social movements. She is also studying the power of story-telling and narrative song in social movements.
Memberships and awards.
Voss has been the recipient of a number of awards and honors. Her article "Formal Organization and the Fate of Social Movements," which appeared in the "American Sociological Review" in 1990 was named Best Recent Article by the Comparative Historical Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA) in 1991.
The Political Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association gave her its Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award for a First Book honor in 1995 for her book, "The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century".
The book "Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth," which she co-authored, won the Myers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America in 1997.
Her article "Breaking the Iron Law of Oligarchy," which she co-authored Rachel Sherman and which appeared in the "American Journal of Sociology" in September 2000 won the Distinguished Article Award from the Labor Studies Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems in 2001.
Voss has served in a wide variety of capacities in several professional organizations as well. She was chair of the prize committee of the Comparative Historical Section of the ASA from 1991 to 1992 and again from 1996 to 1999; council representative for the Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section of the ASA from 1994 to 1997; chair of the Labor and Labor Movements Section of the ASA from 2002 to 2003; and secretary-treasurer of the Political Sociology Section of the ASA from 2002 to 2005.
She serves or has served on the editorial board of the "Rose Monograph Series", "Contexts" and the "American Sociological Review". She is also a reviewer form many journals, including the "American Journal of Sociology", "American Sociological Review", "Industrial Relations", "Mobilization", "Perspectives on Politics", and "Theory and Society".
She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the Social Science History Association.