The rise of America from a colonial outpost to one of the world’s most sophisticated and productive economies was facilitated by the establishment of a variety of economic enterprises pursued within the framework of laws and institutions that set the rules for their organization and operation.
           
To better understand the historical processes central to American economic development, Enterprising America brings together contributors who address the economic behavior of American firms and financial institutions—and the associated legal institutions that shaped their behavior—throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Collectively, the contributions provide an account of the ways in which businesses, banks, and credit markets promoted America’s extraordinary economic growth. Among the topics that emerge are the rise of incorporation and its connection to factory production in manufacturing, the organization and operation of large cotton plantations in comparison with factories, the regulation and governance of banks, the transportation revolution’s influence on bank stability and survival, and the emergence of long-distance credit in the context of an economy that was growing rapidly and becoming increasingly integrated across space.

After decades of suffering redlining and disinvestment by financial institutions, many communities have learned to fight back successfully. In more than seventy U.S. cities, over 300 community-based organizations have negotiated at least eighteen billion dollars in reinvestment commitments in recent years. In original essays, well-known community activists and activist academics tell the stories of some of the most successful reinvestment campaigns in Boston, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and California.


In the series Conflicts in Urban and Regional Development, edited by John R. Logan and Todd Swanstrom.
 

The volume of capital flows between industrial and developing countries has grown dramatically in the past decade and has become a major issue in a world that is increasingly "globalized." Here Takatoshi Ito and Anne O. Krueger, two leading experts on this topic, have assembled a group of scholars who address different types of capital flows—bank lending, bonds, direct foreign investment—and the implications they hold for economic performance. With its particular focus on the Asian financial crises, this work presents a new model for policy makers everywhere in thinking about the role of private capital flows.