Academic literature on the topic 'Automobile industry and trade – Spain – History'

Numerous studies handle analyses of revealed comparative advantages of global trade (especially in agriculture sector) using Balassa index, but the selected automobile industry represents new potentials to study. This study focuses on the competitiveness of automobile industry, which is a key sector due to its high value-added activities, a competitive market, with increasing technology requirements and high employment characteristics. The aim of our paper is to analyse the revealed comparative advantages of global automobile trade as well as the duration and stability of Balassa indices by applying Markov transition probability matrices and Kaplan-Meier survival function. The source of data is global automobile exports at HS6 level for 1997-2016. The paper has reached numerous conclusions. First, by analysing characteristics of global automobile trade, it turned out that China, USA, Japan and Germany were the biggest producers of cars, however the top exporters were Germany, Japan and Canada in the period analysed, together giving 40% of all products exported - the top10 countries, however, gave 71% of concentration. Second, our analysis has made it clear that the most traded/exported automobile product is vehicle with only sparkling ignition internal combustion (1500-300cm3) (870323) globally, giving more than 40% of all vehicle exports between 1997 and 2016. Third, the calculation of Balassa indices showed that Spain and Japan had highest comparative advantages in all periods analysed among the most important automobile exporters in the world.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show how the National Socialist regime participated in popular commercial events such as trade fairs to posture their propaganda. I demonstrate how the inter-trade organization and one particular company – Daimler-Benz AG – tailored their advertising to the communication strategies used by the Nazi regime. Design/methodology/approach – This case study is based on the archival records of Daimler AG. The way in which the 50th anniversary of the automobile was staged at the Berlin Motor Shows of 1935 and 1936 is understood as part of the communication strategies of the German automotive industry, as well as of the Nazi regime. Findings – This paper shows how intimately connected the 50th anniversary of the automobile was to the themes of racing and motorization. The automobile as a German invention had the potential to reconcile the motorization of the German people – a sign of modernity – with the blood and soil ideology of the Nazis. The Berlin Auto Show became an important platform for this project. The paper also shows how Daimler-Benz’s approach should be read differently. Originality/value – The article sheds new light on the interaction between and inter-dependence of one particular company’s – Daimler-Benz AG’s – communication strategies and those of the Nazi regime. Furthermore, the 50th anniversary of the automobile, celebrated at the auto show in Berlin, provides a good opportunity to add exhibitions to of advertising history of the 1930 Germany.

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes the effects generated by the import and consumption of madeja silk from China in the commercial and productive level of Mexico and Spain between 1580 and 1620. The paper questions the traditional image of an Asian trade defined by expensive, manufactured goods, oriented to an elite consumption. Considering the Memorial of Horacio Levanto (1620) and in the context of modern globalization, we propose the hypothesis that Asian trade responded to mass consumption, influencing productive structures in New Spain and Spain herself. Madeja silk from China was one of the main semi-processed goods imported via Acapulco which, as raw material, promoted the development of the Novohispanic textile industry.

This article analyzes the causes for the long-term success of the Barcelona (Spain) and São Paulo (Brazil) automobile industry clusters. Comparative evidence suggests that both clusters emerged in the early twentieth century through the formation of Marshallian external economies. Nevertheless, neither Barcelona nor São Paulo reached mass automobile production before 1950. The consolidation of the clusters required the adoption of strategic industrial policy during the golden age of capitalism. This policy succeeded in encouraging a few hub firms to undertake mass production by using domestic parts. The strategic policy also favored these leading corporations transferring their technical, organizational, and distribution capabilities, which in turn amplified the advantages of the clusters. Local institutions did not make a significant contribution.

In 1906, a writer declared that it remained an “unsolved problem whether the automobile is to prove a fad like the bicycle, or a lasting factor in the industry of the country.” A few years later, concerned with the possibility of overproduction and market saturation, auto executives and other commentators were writing articles for the advertising trade press with titles like “Why Auto Production Must Be Curtailed” and “The Fading of the Automobile Rainbow.” Considering that by the early twenty-first century, the United States had a population of nearly 300 million people and an average of 2.1 registered motor vehicles per household, it is difficult to appreciate how uncertain the industry’s status seemed in its early years. Yet although contemporary observers may not have known it, in many ways by the end of 1908 the foundation stoneswere already in place for a hundred years of automotive economic and cultural preeminence in the United States. Two events from that year are well known as harbingers of the industry’s future. In September, General Motors was established, and in October, Ford introduced its Model T to the nation's auto dealers. In time, these developments had a profound impact on American automobile manufacture and management.

During the motorisation boom in the Netherlands in the 1920s, Dutch wagonmakers started making bodies for motorised utility vehicles. Prior to this, luxury carriage builders already had made the transition to production of automobiles or the bodies for these new vehicles. For wagonmakers, the decline in demand for their traditional business and farm wagon and carts began after World War I. However, the automobile industry created many opportunities for them as well. Archival information shows that the Dutch trade associations and government agency Rijksnijverheidsdienst, played a key role in the innovation and retraining process by building a network, stimulating wagonmakers to modernise and retrain, and by transferring and developing knowledge.

AbstractThis article examines the evolution of the Autonomous Union of the Vine (Sindicato Autónomo de la Vid [SAVID]), a radical wine industry union that operated in the Jerez area (Spain) between 1979 and 1987. The SAVID was born as a result of a series of internal conflicts and splits in the trade union Unión Sindical Obrera (USO), which was founded by Christian groups that were influenced by self-management ideas in the province of Cádiz during the 1970s. Drawing on the life stories of two union members, this article analyzes the creation, evolution, and decline of the SAVID labor union of the sherry wine industry in the Jerez area, which can be categorized as a paradigmatic case of “militant particularism.” The biographical narratives of the union members make the identification and analysis of factors involved in both the rise and the decline of this trade union possible. These narratives will also help in contesting the dominant narratives on the role of the trade union movement and the radical Left during the Spanish Transition by providing empirical evidence of labor militancy on a local scale.

French royal officials, speculators such as John Law, and the French Crown itself had placed great hopes in the development of the tobacco industry in French Louisiana. Some officials even anticipated that Louisiana tobacco might someday be grown in sufficient quantities to supply all the needs of the French Tobacco Monopoly. These lofty expectations were never realized although tobacco production did reach 400,000 pounds in 1740.By the time of the transfer of the colony to Spain in 1766 the perils of war and erratic shipping had almost killed the industry. Most planters had switched to the more profitable production of indigo. Historian Jacob Price claims that the failure of the French government's efforts to develop the tobacco trade resulted from a misunderstanding about costs. In Louisiana, he writes, labor was expensive and freight dear, yet French authorities expected Louisiana tobacco to be competitive in price in the French market with Virginia tobacco, grown in an established market, with abundant labor, and much closer to Europe. Fortunately, the Spanish officials had no such illusions.

AbstractWestern Europe's industrialization was powered largely by coal. Within 15 years after the end of the Second World War, however, governments were subsidizing coal and protecting producers from foreign competition while allowing their industries to contract in a way that avoided large-scale unemployment of miners. The oil-price shocks of 1973–1974 and 1979–1980 gave temporary reprieve to hard-coal production until international oil prices slumped in 1986. This event, combined with ever more stringent environmental regulations and, later, caps on carbon-dioxide emissions, led to the disappearance of subsidized coal mining in one country after another. As of the end of 2019, hard coal was still being mined – in small amounts – in only three Western European countries: Norway, Spain, and the United Kingdom. This paper describes the history of the industry from 1945 through to the present, and the consequences of subsidy policy for trade in hard coal and its substitutes. A common observation is that a reduction in subsidized coal production by a country has not necessarily translated into increased imports of coal on a one-for-one basis.

Hardly had the Spaniards and Portuguese established their first footholds in the newly discovered Americas they claimed as their exclusive preserves than their European rivals and enemies were on the scene. In what came to be known as the Spanish Indies they endeavoured to obtain some of the continent's staggering wealth in precious metals. In Brazil they were after the logwood that could be more or less had for the taking. It produced dyes far superior to those then in use in Europe and in great demand in an expanding textile industry, of which that of England was a considerable part. Besides which there was the pleasing prospect that Brazil's great rivers might give access to the silver mining regions of Spanish South America. Such predatory urges were sharpened as Protestantism took root in Western Europe. Convinced that the military strength of Spain, the continent's leading Catholic power, stemmed from American bullion, zealous Protestants believed that could this wealth only be diverted into the right hands the true faith would be saved, its adherents duly rewarded and Spain, deprived of its lifeblood, ruined. But the implementation of this godly strategy was no obstacle to conducting a lucrative commerce with the arch-enemy. Sugar and tobacco, of which the Iberian Americas were soon substantial producers, could be purchased for sale in a growing European market. Equally appealing was the opportunity to sell to Portuguese and Spanish colonists the African slaves their plantation economies demanded. And no less attractive or rewarding was the chance to supply them with those European goods, both luxuries and necessities, which they were forbidden to produce for themselves and which Iberian industries were increasingly unable to provide, or which, through the inadequacies of the Spanish and Portuguese imperial commercial monopoly, were usually in short supply and invariably grossly over-priced.

Defence date: 21 December 2007
Examining board: Prof. Luciano Segreto, Università degli Studi di Firenze ; Prof. Patrick Fridenson, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris ; Prof. Giovanni Federico, EUI Department of History and Civilization (HEC) ; Prof. Bo Stråth (supervisor) EUI HEC/Robert Schuman Centre
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses

This research and documentation project of surviving Indianapolis automobile factories examines the importance of Indianapolis, Indiana, as a center of automobile manufacturing in its early days. Automobile factories appeared in the city as early as 1895, and were often an outgrowth of bicycle or carriage-building companies. This followed a national trend. As the industry grew, Indianapolis firms continued to produce low-volume, high-quality cars instead of the more popular, low-cost cars being produced by Ford and other Michigan-based manufacturers. The recession of 1921 and the Great Depression of 1929 decimated the market for expensive cars and by 1937 all Indianapolis-based firms were out of the automobile business. A number of their production facilities remain and are employed in a variety of uses. This project documents these buildings and recommends a range of adaptive re-uses based on successful conversions.
Department of Architecture

The purpose of the study was to provide a complete historical account of the events which led to the rise and fall of the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company of South Bend, Indiana. The study also evaluated the impact upon the ethnic development of South Bend from the years 1856 to 1966.The applicability of the Kuhnian paradigmatic process of culture change to the South Bend-Studebaker interaction sphere was considered as well.Ninety-seven employees of the company were selected and interviewed in regard to their knowledge of the company and its impact upon the city. Primary and secondary archival materials were utilized to supplement worker interviews.FINDINGS1. The Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company and the Studebaker Corporation acted as primary agents of ethnic development in the South Bend community.2.The interviewing process provided new data which supplemented and substantiated previous accounts.3. The Studebaker Company's success was founded upon intensive employer-employee involvement in the production process.4. The Studebaker Company's failure was brought about by the breakdown of the employer-employee relationship.CONCLUSIONS1. The study proved the significant impact of the Studebaker Company upon the American transportation industry.2. The Studebaker Company exerted a major influence upon the ethnic and cultural development of the city of South Bend.3. The "paradigmatic process of social change" model as postulated by Thomas Kuhn was appropriate to the Studebaker-South Bend situation.4. An ethnohistorical reconstruction technique proved successful in recounting the impact of the Studebaker Company.

The New Deal legislation of the 1930s would threaten Dallas' peaceful industrial appearance. In fact, New Deal programs and legislation did have an effect on the city, albeit an unbalanced mixture of positive and negative outcomes characterized by frustrated workers and industrial intimidation. To summarize, the New Deal did not bring a revolution, but it did continue an evolutionary change for reform. This dissertation investigated several issues pertaining to the development of the textile industry, cement industry, and the Ford automobile factory in Dallas and its labor history before, during, and after the New Deal. New Deal legislation not only created an avenue for industrial workers to achieve better representation but also improved their working conditions. Specifically focusing on the textile, cement, and automobile industries illustrates that the development of union representation is a spectrum, with one end being the passive but successful cement industry experience and the other end being the automobile industry union efforts, which were characterized by violence and intimidation. These case studies illustrate the changing relationship between Dallas labor and the federal government as well as their local management. Challenges to the open shop movement in Dallas occurred before the creation of the New Deal, but it was New Deal legislation that encouraged union developers to recruit workers actively in Dallas. Workers' demands, New Deal industrial regulations, and union activism created a more urban, modern Dallas that would be solidified through the industrial demands for World War II.

La presente tesis doctoral quiere contribuir al conocimiento del proceso de desarrollo de la industria automovilística en España mediante la elaboración de una historia económica y empresarial de FASA (FASA-Renault), desde su constitución, en 1951, hasta 1985, momento en que tanto la empresa como el sector en su conjunto se encuentran ya en su madurez. El estudio de FASA es pertinente y relevante, ya que estuvo presente desde los inicios del despegue del sector y representó un 24% de la producción acumulada durante el período. La mayor novedad de la investigación es la explotación de unas fuentes directas de información hasta el presente no exploradas –Actas del Consejo de Administración y las Actas de la Junta General de Accionistas– o infrautilizadas –Memorias de Actividad. Los principales trabajos que han analizado el proceso de desarrollo de la industria automovilística en España son los de Jordi Catalan y José Luis García Ruiz. Jordi Catalan sostiene que entre los factores explicativos del despegue sobresale la aplicación de políticas estratégica. Por su parte García Ruiz resta importancia al posible efecto de las políticas aplicadas. El primer objetivo del trabajo es aportar evidencia empírica que refuerce la hipótesis sobre el papel propulsor de las políticas industriales estratégicas de corte proteccionista en los procesos de industrialización de los países en fase de actualización en la línea trazada por las investigaciones de Ha-Joon Chang. Sin embargo, aunque las políticas aplicadas pueden explicar parte del desarrollo de una industria, no justifican el éxito de una empresa en concreto. Por ello, el segundo objetivo del trabajo es establecer los factores determinantes del proceso de crecimiento de FASA. La hipótesis examinada es que el éxito de FASA provino de la materialización de la triple inversión descrita por Chandler y que ello fue posible por la transferencia de recursos y capacidades por parte de Renault. La tesis doctoral consta de una introducción, a modo de capítulo inicial, más otros cuatro capítulos en los que se ofrece una historia económica y empresarial de FASA que sigue un orden cronológico y adopta una perspectiva evolutiva. En el primer capítulo se expone el proceso de constitución de la empresa y se analizan los años en que se ensambló el Renault 4CV. En el siguiente capítulo, que transcurre entre 1958 y 1965, se estudia la transformación de FASA de simple planta ensambladora a auténtica fabricante de automóviles de turismo. En el tercer capítulo, que abarca de 1965 a 1974, se analiza el proceso de transformación de FASA-Renault en una gran empresa mediante la realización de la triple inversión. Finalmente, en el último capítulo se analiza la trayectoria de FASA-Renault durante la crisis de la estanflación. En primer lugar, el trabajo ha aportado nueva evidencia empírica que refuerza la hipótesis de Chang conforme la mayor parte de economías en proceso de actualización han empleado políticas activas para la promoción del desarrollo económico. La evidencia aportada en los dos primeros capítulos muestra como fue la política industrial consistente en reservar el mercado del automóvil a los fabricantes instalados, la condición necesaria que forzó a Renault a ceder las licencias de producción. Es importante resaltar que para Renault su óptimo era vender directamente en España la producción realizada en Francia, mientras que su second best era montar en Valladolid los conjuntos completos fabricados en Billancourt. Además, fue la obligatoriedad de incorporar unos amplios porcentajes de producción doméstica la que obligó a Renault a ceder la producción de componentes estratégicos como el motor. La evidencia aportada en los capítulos tercero y cuarto valida la hipótesis conforme el éxito de FASA-Renault se sostuvo en la materialización de la triple inversión –en producción, comercialización y managment– que Chandler relaciona directamente con el auge de la gran empresa industrial moderna. Asimismo, los datos analizados señalan que fue la transferencia de recursos financieros, humanos y técnicos por parte de la régie Renault la que posibilitó que la compañía castellana alcanzara las capacidades competitivas necesarias, situándose en el mismo nivel de desarrollo que las factorías francesas. Merced a ello FASA-Renault se convirtió en el principal centro de producción de automóviles Renault fuera de Francia.
The aim of the Ph.D. dissertation is to contribute to improve our knowledge of the development process in the automotive industry in Spain. This research undertakes an economic history of the firm “FASA-Renault” between its foundation in 1951 and 1985 when the Spanish economy was about to join the EEC. In the analysis of the firm through the thesis, a chronological structure and an evolutionary perspective is adopted. The study of FASA is relevant: throughout the period examined, the firm produced on average up to a 24% of the total volume of cars manufactured in Spain. The objective is twofold. First, in chapters 1 and 2 empirical evidence of the role of strategic policy on the industrialization of developing countries is provided. The results go in line with the hypothesis drawn by Chang (1994, 2002). Market protection was the necessary condition that forced Renault to transfer its technology and its production licenses to FASA. More importantly, the optimum for Renault was to sell in Spain the cars that were produced in France, while its second best was to assemble in Spain the complete sets manufactured in the France. Second, in chapters 3 and 4 the key factors for FASA-Renault’s success are established. Following Chandler (1990), it is possible to argue that the accomplishments of the firm came from the realization of the triple investment in production, commercialization and management. As a result, FASA became the main Renault production center outside France.

Defence date: 16 September 1994
Examining board: Prof. Giuseppe Bertola, University of Turin ; Prof. Christopher Bliss, Nuffield College Oxford ; Prof. Alan Kirman, E.U.I. ; Prof. Stephen Martin, E.U.I., supervisor ; Prof. Luis Rodriguez, Universidad Carlos III, Madrid