Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of tables and figures
- List of contributors
- Part I Overview
- Part II National experiences of big business
- 3 The United States: Engines of economic growth in the capital-intensive and knowledge-intensive industries
- 4 Great Britain: Big business, management, and competitiveness in twentieth-century Britain
- 5 Germany: Competition abroad – cooperation at home, 1870–1990
- 6 Small European nations: Cooperative capitalism in the twentieth century
- 7 France: The relatively slow development of big business in the twentieth century
- 8 Italy: The tormented rise of organizational capabilities between government and families
- 9 Spain: Big manufacturing firms between state and market, 1917–1990
- 10 Japan: Increasing organizational capabilities of large industrial enterprises, 1880s–1980s
- 11 South Korea: Enterprising groups and entrepreneurial government
- 12 Argentina: Industrial growth and enterprise organization, 1880s–1980s
- 13 USSR: Large enterprises in the USSR – the functional disorder
- 14 Czechoslovakia: The halting pace to scope and scale
- Part III Economic and institutional environment of big business
- Index of company names
- General index
9 - Spain: Big manufacturing firms between state and market, 1917–1990
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of tables and figures
- List of contributors
- Part I Overview
- Part II National experiences of big business
- 3 The United States: Engines of economic growth in the capital-intensive and knowledge-intensive industries
- 4 Great Britain: Big business, management, and competitiveness in twentieth-century Britain
- 5 Germany: Competition abroad – cooperation at home, 1870–1990
- 6 Small European nations: Cooperative capitalism in the twentieth century
- 7 France: The relatively slow development of big business in the twentieth century
- 8 Italy: The tormented rise of organizational capabilities between government and families
- 9 Spain: Big manufacturing firms between state and market, 1917–1990
- 10 Japan: Increasing organizational capabilities of large industrial enterprises, 1880s–1980s
- 11 South Korea: Enterprising groups and entrepreneurial government
- 12 Argentina: Industrial growth and enterprise organization, 1880s–1980s
- 13 USSR: Large enterprises in the USSR – the functional disorder
- 14 Czechoslovakia: The halting pace to scope and scale
- Part III Economic and institutional environment of big business
- Index of company names
- General index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
At the end of the nineteenth century, the Spanish economy was still largely agrarian. Its exports, mainly oriented toward Western European countries, were primary products – mainly agricultural and mineral. Since the 1850s it attracted much foreign investment in railway building and mineral development. Railway and telegraph networks, the essential base for large-scale industrial enterprise, although not very large, were completed. With a population of about 17 million inhabitants, and a low density for European standards, it constituted a medium-sized market.
By 1890 the government was a constitutional monarchy with a bicameral legislature. Universal suffrage for males only was approved this year. A stable political system was in place with Conservatives and Liberals alternating in office. The Spanish policy was basically liberal and favorable to business development. Government itself played a minimal direct role in the economy, operating the postal and telegraph systems. As many other European countries, Spain switched to higher tariffs in 1891 because of the impact of the agrarian depression. Textile and steel producers took advantage of the new protectionist mood.
The victory of the United States over Spain in 1898 and the resulting loss of its once global empire brought a regeneracionismo movement in politics, with a strong bias for economic development and industrial growth. The succeeding years were marked by a wave of new investments (increasingly by Spaniards as well as foreigners) in urban transportation and utilities, shipping, sugar refining, the growth of universal banking enterprises and stock exchanges and more public investments in port development, roads, irrigation schemes, and the like. These investments brought a dramatic increase in investment-output ratios.
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- Information
- Big Business and the Wealth of Nations , pp. 277 - 304Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997
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