Productividad, competencia e innovación en la banca privada española (1900-1914)

This study investigates the productivity differences and its sourcesacross a set of banks during the last years of the liberal era of theSpanish banking system (1900-1914). These years were characterised bymajor qualitative and quantitative changes in the banking industry includinga sharp increase in the size of the system, in the number of firms, andin its regional distribution. Employing DEA productivity analysis andthe Malmquist index, we discover that these changes were accompanied bya generalised increase in the efficiency of least productive banks. Also,we observe that the crisis of some regional banking groups, like theCatalan, can be linked with its low productivity levels. In consequence,in the light of our productivity evidence, we conclude that the increasein competition was beneficial for the system because helped to the successof the most efficient banks.

The hotel industry and its importance in the technical and economic development of a region : the Lake Geneva case (1852-1914)

The historiography dedicated to tourism has emphasised how some socio-economic evolutions such as urbanisation, mechanisation of transport or the advent of leisure time in society have supported pleasure trips and therefore the development of the hotel industry. On the contrary, the research has too often neglected or at least minimised the impact of the hotel sector on a region's development. This contribution seeks to fill this gap by analysing the Geneva Lake region, one of the most important birthplaces of the European tourism. In this space not much touched by the first industrial revolution, the hotel business has in fact played the role of an economic motor, stimulating investment and employment. This dynamism provoked a domino effect on several other sectors of the economy (industry, bulding sector, banking). To please their customers, the hoteliers have not only given impulses on housing modernisation, but also to the revitalisation of transport, energy and communication networks. The necessity to remain on the state-of-the-art of technical issues, with the concern of competitiveness, has called forth an acceleration of the technology transfer and stimulated the constitution of technical know-how.

Protectionist but globalised? Latin American custom duties and trade during the pre-1914 belle époque

While it is true that Latin American republics had no rival on maximising revenues from custom collection during the belle époque, this paper shows that Latin American countries were also generous importers, only behind the larger commercial countries of Western Europe in terms of imports per capita. Latin American citizens were much more linked to international trade than citizens of most regions of the world. Their relation to the world economy was tighter both via their imports and their exports relative to their population and income levels. This paper comes to show that there is no contradiction between the high custom collection by the Latin American republics and their high level of interaction with the global economy in the pre-1914 belle époque, although large country differences can be observed when descending from the regional to the national level.

A Avaliação da aprendizagem na imprensa cabo-verdiana (1914/1916)

O sistema escolar cabo-verdiano estruturou-se num contexto de dependência e submissão política (enquanto colónia portuguesa) e congregou a sociedade das ilhas – professores, pais, cidadãos, intelectuais, homens de opinião e de poder. Sendo a imprensa “um lugar estratégico de constituição do discurso (…) e um ponto de convergência de uma multiplicidade de falas” (Imbert, 1982: 362), é uma das fontes privilegiadas para a história do ensino em Cabo Verde. As manifestações internas da cultura escolar integravam, além das representações e práticas educativas, o currículo e a avaliação da aprendizagem. A avaliação sempre esteve presente no quotidiano escolar, “pois permite conhecer a situação do educando nas diversas fases da sua evolução cognitiva e fundamentar juízos de valor decisivos não só para a melhoria da sua aprendizagem como também para a valorização das experiências educativas futuras” (Valadares & Graça, 1998: 12).