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The British North American colonies were the first western economies to rely on legislature-issued paper monies as an important internal media of exchange. This system arose piecemeal. In the absence of banks and treasuries that exchanged paper monies at face value for specie monies on demand, colonial governments experimented with other ways to anchor their paper monies to real values in the economy. These mechanisms included tax-redemption, land-backed loans, sinking funds, interest-bearing notes, and legal tender laws. I assess and explain the structure and performance of these mechanisms. This was monetary experimentation on a grand scale.

This paper examines the effect of bank expansion on credit access and terms of credit in early America. The bank records from Plymouth Bank, Massachusetts and the Census records provide detailed information on borrowers, endorser, types and terms of loans, and borrower characteristics. The results show that the introduction of new banks did broaden credit access. However, after competition was introduced, the Bank focused more on short-term bills of exchange. In other words, the Bank shifted its emphasis from long-term accommodation paper to short-term bills of exchange.

As early as 1818 in Marseilles merchants were asking the courts to recognise the legal character of the maritime sale of goods, which was a sale of a bill of lading representing goods at sea in a ship. The courts of Marseilles found suitable to hear and decide cases in accordance with the law merchant despite the lack of authority in the French Commercial Codes. Merchants everywhere began to deal with documents representing goods without waiting to check the goods as it was the practice under the Napoleonic Code. Thus, the transition of the bill of lading from a mere receipt to a negotiable instrument developed by the practice of merchants arranging the sale of goods in transit. The success of the use of bills of lading in international trade is attributable to its negotiable character and its feature as a document of title.

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:

This paper seeks to analyse the different characteristics a bill of lading holds as a document of title, including the proprietary effects a transfer of goods in transit can have and the bill's use as a means of security as well as its limitations in mo6dern international commerce.

The paper examines the document's nature and the evolution of its traditional legal functions. The analysis includes, among other things, the implications different types of bills have as an instrument in commercial trade. Special attention is given to the attributes that are likely to limit the bill's application in modern international trade, concerning both its scope and value. Finally, the paper offers a set of conclusions and suggests reform measures.

The paper shows how technological innovations in recent years have resulted in the emergence of new forms of transport documentation that might challenge the bill's role in the future. The paper provides a clear understanding of the problems associated with the bill's current form and outlines the main approaches proposed to meet its need for reform.

The paper offers a conceptual analysis of the bill's weak points and discusses how simplification and standardisation, a central registry system and electronic transmission of information may be able to increase efficiency.

Critical assessment undertaken may pave the way for an open discussion on the subject. Legal culture and mercantile customs should be taken into consideration if a successful and sustainable reform is to be achieved.

Knight's Industrial Law Reports goes into a new style and format as Managerial Law This issue of KILR is restyled Managerial Law and it now appears on a continuous updating basis rather than as a monthly routine affair.

During the first decades of the 20th century, German Reformer Silvio Gesell (1862‐1930) championed with a certain success the reforming wave of the epoch by complementing ingenious solutions to some of the most important economic issues of his time with theoretical insights that were as radical as they were penetrating. The purpose of this paper is to offer an introduction to such intuitions, whose validity had been recognized even by a few distinguished academics of the 1930s, but which, owing to the extreme complications that eventually mired German intellectual production in its quasi‐entirety before WWII, failed to preserve the deserved consideration, however slight, they had earned when first formulated. A reappraisal of Gesell's contributions, considering the importance of his main themes, may be worthwhile, all the more so as these deal with questions unsolved to this day.

The English banking system before the Panic of 1825, apart from the Bank of England, which maintained a monopoly of joint-stock banking, was one of private partnerships both in London and in the provinces, most of which were independent unit banks. Since remittance was the principal function of country banks at this time close ties in the form of correspondent relations developed between country banks and London agents, similar to the structure prevailing in the United States later in the nineteenth century between New York and interior banks. Although efficient in the transfer of funds across space, these networks also proved to be quite efficient in the transmission of financial pressures during panics.

“All things are in a constant state of change”, said Heraclitus of Ephesus. The waters if a river are for ever changing yet the river endures. Every particle of matter is in continual movement. All death is birth in a new form, all birth the death of the previous form. The seasons come and go. The myth of our own John Barleycorn, buried in the ground, yet resurrected in the Spring, has close parallels with the fertility rites of Greece and the Near East such as those of Hyacinthas, Hylas, Adonis and Dionysus, of Osiris the Egyptian deity, and Mondamin the Red Indian maize‐god. Indeed, the ritual and myth of Attis, born of a virgin, killed and resurrected on the third day, undoubtedly had a strong influence on Christianity.