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- Faculty Publications (17)
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- 2020
- Book
American Business History: A Very Short Introduction
By: Walter Friedman
By the early twentieth century, it became common to describe the United States as a "business civilization." President Coolidge in 1925 said, "The chief business of the American people is business." More recently, historian Sven Beckert characterized Henry Ford's... View Details
- January 2019 (Revised December 2020)
- Case
Angola Starts Now
By: Jeremy Friedman and Sophus A. Reinert
After five centuries of colonialism, four decades of civil war, an extended experiment with Marxism-Leninism, and nearly four decades of rule by a single man, José Eduardo Dos Santos, Angola finally has a chance to realize its enormous economic potential. A country... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
Junior Achievement: Training Teenagers for Business Careers after World War II
This article traces the growing popularity of Junior Achievement's "Company Program" in the two decades after World War II. The program provided high school students with the opportunity to form teams and start mini-corporations that would last for most of the school... View Details
- 2016
- Working Paper
Wesley Mitchell's Business Cycles after 100 Years
This article looks back at the publication and influence of Wesley Mitchell's Business Cycles, published in 1913. It surveys some of the key ideas in the book and explains the reasons why it resonated with a variety of people, including economists,... View Details
- 2014
- Book
Business History
By: Walter A. Friedman and Geoffrey Jones
This volume contains a selection of 42 foundational articles on the discipline of business history written between 1934 and the present day by scholars based in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. A wide-ranging editorial introduction describes the... View Details
- 2013
- Book
Fortune Tellers: The Story of America's First Economic Forecasters
The period leading up to the Great Depression witnessed the rise of the economic forecasters, pioneers who sought to use the tools of science to predict the future, with the aim of profiting from their forecasts. This book chronicles the lives and careers of the men... View Details
- 2012
- Book
The Rise of the Modern Firm
By: Geoffrey Jones and Walter A. Friedman
This authoritative volume focuses on the rise of modern firms, from their early history to the present day. It considers the role of laws and contracts in shaping the growth and influence of business enterprises. It presents entrepreneurs, executives and the firms they... View Details
- 2010
- Chapter
Leadership and History
Historians have written a lot about business leaders, especially successful ones. In fact, rags-to-riches stories have come to embody the philosophy of America itself, yet the term "business leadership" was rarely used until the early twentieth century. This chapter... View Details
- January 2008 (Revised July 2009)
- Case
Forecasting the Great Depression
What is proper role of professional economic forecasting in financial decision making? The case presents excerpts from three leading economic forecasters on the eve of, and just after, the stock market crash of October 1929. The first set of excerpts is from Roger... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Irving Fisher, Economic Forecasting, and the Myth of the Business Cycle
A premier economist of the twentieth century and a founder of neoclassical thought, Irving Fisher was also an active participant in the field of economic forecasting. Fisher made theoretical contributions to the understanding of economic fluctuations, popularized the... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
The Seer of Wellesley Hills: Roger Babson and the Babson Statistical Organization
Roger Babson was a pioneer of the business-forecasting industry in the United States in the early twentieth century. He built the largest private economic forecasting agency in the period and published a great range of economic statistics in his weekly newsletters. As... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
The Rise of Business Forecasting Agencies in the United States
- 2004
- Book
Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America
This book chronicles the remarkable metamorphosis of the American salesman from itinerant amateur to trained expert. From the mid-nineteenth century to the eve of World War II, the development of sales management transformed an economy populated by peddlers and... View Details
- Research Summary
Business History
Walter Friedman serves as co-editor of Business History Review. He has a special interest in the history of marketing and personal selling, and is author of Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America (Harvard, 2004). He is also interested in the... View Details