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Podcast: New Books in Finance
Episode: Akram Benjamin, "Cotton, Finance and Business Networks in a Globalised World: The Case of Egypt During the First half of the Twentieth Century" (2019)
Description: Firms and entrepreneurs were key drivers of the globalisation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This thesis investigates commodity networks, foreign banking and business networks, as three manifestations of the first global economy, in Egypt. The country was integrated into the world economy by exporting cotton, importing foreign capital, and hosting a large foreign community.The thesis shows that the Egyptian cotton network was sophisticated as market participants were spatially dispersed. The network was instrumentally coordinated by foreign banks that provided the crucial functions of intermediating the flows of cotton, finance, and information. Departing from...