Simon Ville | University of Wollongong (original) (raw)
Papers by Simon Ville
Business History Review, 2020
The article is a rare investigation into multinational activity in a wealthy resource-based colon... more The article is a rare investigation into multinational activity in a wealthy resource-based colonial economy toward the end of the first wave of globalization. It challenges the conventional wisdom that multinationals had a limited presence in pre-1914 Australia, where government loans and portfolio investment from Britain into infrastructural and primary industries dominated. Our new database of nearly five hundred foreign firms, from various nations and spread across the host economy, shows a thriving and diverse international business community whose agency mattered for economic development in Australia. Colonial ties, natural resources, stable institutions, and high incomes all attracted foreign firms.
Archives of Natural History , 2020
The archives of the Australian Museum and the Macleay Museum are deployed to analyse the global t... more The archives of the Australian Museum and the Macleay Museum are deployed to analyse the global trading networks of two important Australian natural history collectors in the midnineteenth century. The evidence reveals much about the challenges they faced transacting in heterogeneous specimens over long distances. It also uncovers some of the solutions they pursued, particularly in choosing the appropriate type of transaction, forging trust-based trading networks, obtaining up-todate scientific information, and drawing on the infrastructure of existing, regular commodity trades.
Business Groups in Australia in Colpan and Hikino eds Business Groups in the West, 2018
Colonial enterprise in Ville & Withers eds The Cambridge Economic History of Australia, 2015
Australian Economic History Review, 2018
Twentieth-Century China, 2019
Chinese industrialization has been understood chiefly in terms of China’s engagement with more po... more Chinese industrialization has been understood chiefly in terms of China’s engagement with more powerful countries, especially Japan and Britain. During the early twentieth century, nevertheless, the development of China’s woolen industry—part of a broader program of Chinese industrial development—depended largely on an import trade in raw wool from Australia. Through a study of this industry and trade, we show how a minor world power played a more significant part in Chinese industrialization than previously imagined.
Scandinavian Economic History Review, 2019
This paper challenges Ed Barbier’s influential contribution to the resources and economic develop... more This paper challenges Ed Barbier’s influential contribution to the resources and economic development debate and extends our understanding of the process of resource-based development in two relevant economies since World War Two. We argue that: the expansion of resource-based industries remained a viable path of economic development in the ‘contemporary era’ since the 1950s; nations have modernised their economies while continuing to invest in resource industries; and innovation frontiers more than physical frontiers shaped the development of natural resource industries. We build our argument by providing a comparative study of two successful resource-based economies, Australia and Norway. Our focus is on aquaculture and offshore oil and gas, growth industries in both countries. Aquaculture is renewable and of recent origin, offshore oil and gas is non-renewable but with a longer history in other nations. Differences between the two nations are also discussed, particularly the narrower product specialisations of Norway. In both nations and both industries, though, there are common patterns of knowledge-intensive development through three stages – learning from older and imported technologies, the development of national capabilities, and their exploitation overseas through internationalisation – that draw upon the relationship between the resource sector and its supporting enabling sector.
Business History, 2018
Why do some firms last longer than others? This question has attracted considerable interest amon... more Why do some firms last longer than others? This question has attracted considerable interest among scholars from business history, management and economics. Our paper combines the business historians’ macro view of the relationship between size, longevity, and economic development with quantitative modelling. We apply survival analysis to data relating to size, age and profitability, three first-order explanations of longevity, for Australian stock exchange listed corporations from 1901 to 1930. The novelty of the paper is twofold: we find that firm size is a poor predictor of longevity for the full sample but its age and profitability are highly significant; our data covers a longer time frame and relates to a rich mid-sized and non-industrialised country.
Journal of Economic History, 2017
The effects of military service have been studied for decades, but surprisingly few researchers ... more The effects of military service have been studied for decades, but
surprisingly few researchers have estimated the effects of World War II
(WW2) service. Exploiting very large cohort differences in probability of
service amongst Australian males, we conduct one of the first econometric
studies of WW2 service. We find a significant negative effect on
employment in 1966, half of which is accompanied by pensioner status.
There are positive effects on home ownership and on separation/divorce. A
feature of our analysis is a novel visual depiction of the identifying
variation, drawing on the Frisch-Waugh theorem.
Journal of Global History, 2017
Australian Journal of Politics and History, 2016
From the early twentieth century, many Australian farm products have had their prices set by some... more From the early twentieth century, many Australian farm products have had their prices set by some form of intervention, often administered by a statutory marketing board. Wool was different: intervention, other than war-related exigencies, came much later and in a different mechanism, a reserve price scheme (hereafter RPS). The RPS that operated from 1970 until its collapse in 1991 has been roundly criticised. Four key elements explain the belated emergence and particular form of price controls: the specific characteristics of wool ̶ its importance to the economy, its export orientation, and its non-perishability; the shifting locus of economic and political power in favour of small farmers; the declining influence of the wool selling brokers’ and their associations; and the rise of statutory bodies and their capture by key figures supporting increased government participation.
Business History Review, 2015
From the mid-nineteenth century, raw wool became a global commodity as new producing countries in... more From the mid-nineteenth century, raw wool became a global commodity as new producing countries in the southern hemisphere supplied the world's growing textile industries in the north. The selling practices of these big five exporters-Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina and Uruguay-ranged from auction through hybrid auction-private sale to exclusively private sale. We explore why these countries persisted with different marketing arrangements, contradicting two streams of the institution literature, isomorphism and the new institutional economics. The paper makes several important contributions through blending distinct branches of theory and by focussing on the international constraints to convergence in an earlier period of globalisation.
Business History Review, 2020
The article is a rare investigation into multinational activity in a wealthy resource-based colon... more The article is a rare investigation into multinational activity in a wealthy resource-based colonial economy toward the end of the first wave of globalization. It challenges the conventional wisdom that multinationals had a limited presence in pre-1914 Australia, where government loans and portfolio investment from Britain into infrastructural and primary industries dominated. Our new database of nearly five hundred foreign firms, from various nations and spread across the host economy, shows a thriving and diverse international business community whose agency mattered for economic development in Australia. Colonial ties, natural resources, stable institutions, and high incomes all attracted foreign firms.
Archives of Natural History , 2020
The archives of the Australian Museum and the Macleay Museum are deployed to analyse the global t... more The archives of the Australian Museum and the Macleay Museum are deployed to analyse the global trading networks of two important Australian natural history collectors in the midnineteenth century. The evidence reveals much about the challenges they faced transacting in heterogeneous specimens over long distances. It also uncovers some of the solutions they pursued, particularly in choosing the appropriate type of transaction, forging trust-based trading networks, obtaining up-todate scientific information, and drawing on the infrastructure of existing, regular commodity trades.
Business Groups in Australia in Colpan and Hikino eds Business Groups in the West, 2018
Colonial enterprise in Ville & Withers eds The Cambridge Economic History of Australia, 2015
Australian Economic History Review, 2018
Twentieth-Century China, 2019
Chinese industrialization has been understood chiefly in terms of China’s engagement with more po... more Chinese industrialization has been understood chiefly in terms of China’s engagement with more powerful countries, especially Japan and Britain. During the early twentieth century, nevertheless, the development of China’s woolen industry—part of a broader program of Chinese industrial development—depended largely on an import trade in raw wool from Australia. Through a study of this industry and trade, we show how a minor world power played a more significant part in Chinese industrialization than previously imagined.
Scandinavian Economic History Review, 2019
This paper challenges Ed Barbier’s influential contribution to the resources and economic develop... more This paper challenges Ed Barbier’s influential contribution to the resources and economic development debate and extends our understanding of the process of resource-based development in two relevant economies since World War Two. We argue that: the expansion of resource-based industries remained a viable path of economic development in the ‘contemporary era’ since the 1950s; nations have modernised their economies while continuing to invest in resource industries; and innovation frontiers more than physical frontiers shaped the development of natural resource industries. We build our argument by providing a comparative study of two successful resource-based economies, Australia and Norway. Our focus is on aquaculture and offshore oil and gas, growth industries in both countries. Aquaculture is renewable and of recent origin, offshore oil and gas is non-renewable but with a longer history in other nations. Differences between the two nations are also discussed, particularly the narrower product specialisations of Norway. In both nations and both industries, though, there are common patterns of knowledge-intensive development through three stages – learning from older and imported technologies, the development of national capabilities, and their exploitation overseas through internationalisation – that draw upon the relationship between the resource sector and its supporting enabling sector.
Business History, 2018
Why do some firms last longer than others? This question has attracted considerable interest amon... more Why do some firms last longer than others? This question has attracted considerable interest among scholars from business history, management and economics. Our paper combines the business historians’ macro view of the relationship between size, longevity, and economic development with quantitative modelling. We apply survival analysis to data relating to size, age and profitability, three first-order explanations of longevity, for Australian stock exchange listed corporations from 1901 to 1930. The novelty of the paper is twofold: we find that firm size is a poor predictor of longevity for the full sample but its age and profitability are highly significant; our data covers a longer time frame and relates to a rich mid-sized and non-industrialised country.
Journal of Economic History, 2017
The effects of military service have been studied for decades, but surprisingly few researchers ... more The effects of military service have been studied for decades, but
surprisingly few researchers have estimated the effects of World War II
(WW2) service. Exploiting very large cohort differences in probability of
service amongst Australian males, we conduct one of the first econometric
studies of WW2 service. We find a significant negative effect on
employment in 1966, half of which is accompanied by pensioner status.
There are positive effects on home ownership and on separation/divorce. A
feature of our analysis is a novel visual depiction of the identifying
variation, drawing on the Frisch-Waugh theorem.
Journal of Global History, 2017
Australian Journal of Politics and History, 2016
From the early twentieth century, many Australian farm products have had their prices set by some... more From the early twentieth century, many Australian farm products have had their prices set by some form of intervention, often administered by a statutory marketing board. Wool was different: intervention, other than war-related exigencies, came much later and in a different mechanism, a reserve price scheme (hereafter RPS). The RPS that operated from 1970 until its collapse in 1991 has been roundly criticised. Four key elements explain the belated emergence and particular form of price controls: the specific characteristics of wool ̶ its importance to the economy, its export orientation, and its non-perishability; the shifting locus of economic and political power in favour of small farmers; the declining influence of the wool selling brokers’ and their associations; and the rise of statutory bodies and their capture by key figures supporting increased government participation.
Business History Review, 2015
From the mid-nineteenth century, raw wool became a global commodity as new producing countries in... more From the mid-nineteenth century, raw wool became a global commodity as new producing countries in the southern hemisphere supplied the world's growing textile industries in the north. The selling practices of these big five exporters-Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina and Uruguay-ranged from auction through hybrid auction-private sale to exclusively private sale. We explore why these countries persisted with different marketing arrangements, contradicting two streams of the institution literature, isomorphism and the new institutional economics. The paper makes several important contributions through blending distinct branches of theory and by focussing on the international constraints to convergence in an earlier period of globalisation.
in M. Badía-Miró, V. Pinilla and H. Willebald eds Natural Resources and Economic Growth: Learning from History (Abingdon: Routledge), 2015
in John Wilson, Steve Toms, Abe de Jong and Emily Buchnea, eds The Routledge Companion to Business History (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge), 2017
in K. Costello ed. Boundless Plains (Sydney: One Mandate Group, 2017), 2017
in D Merrett (ed), Business Institutions and Business Behaviour in Australia, 2000
International Encyclopedia of Organization Studies, 2007
In A. Bashford & S. Macintyre (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Australia (pp. 377-402). Port Melbourne, Australia: Cambridge University Press., 2013
In L. Mann & J. Chan (Eds.), Creativity and Innovation in Business and Beyond: Social Science Perspectives and Policy Implications (pp. 64-81). New York: Routledge., 2011
in W.R. Garside (ed) Institutions and Market Economies: The Political Economy of Growth and Development, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 112-136., 2007
In G. Boyce, S. Macintyre & S. Ville (Eds.), How Organisations Connect Investing in Communication (pp. 1-7). Victoria: Melbourne University Publishing., 2006
In G. Boyce, S. Macintyre & S. Ville (Eds.), How Organisations Connect Investing in Communication (pp. 198-208). Victoria: Melbourne University Publishing., 2006
In G. Boyce, S. Macintyre & S. Ville (Eds.), How Organisations Connect Investing in Communication (pp. 171-197). Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Publishing., 2006