Browsing by Subject "Trade"

This dissertation is a legal history of debt and economic life in the Indian Ocean during the nineteenth and early-twentieth century. It draws on materials from Bahrain, Muscat, Bombay, Zanzibar and London to examine how members of an ocean-wide commercial society constructed relationships of economic mutualism with one another by mobilizing debt and credit. It further explores how they expressed their debt relationships through legal idioms, and how they mobilized commercial and legal instruments to adapt to the emergence of modern capitalism in the region.

At the same time, it looks at the concomitant development of an Indian Ocean-wide empire of law centered at Bombay, and explores how this Indian Ocean contractual culture encountered an Anglo-Indian legal regime that conceived of legal documents in a radically different way. By mobilizing written deeds in imaginative ways, and by strategically accessing British courts, Indian Ocean merchants were able to shape the contours of this growing legal regime.

Most broadly, the dissertation argues that law and courts became increasingly central to economic life in the Indian Ocean, and that economic actors in the region employed a wide range of different legal strategies in adapting to a changing world of commerce. In the Indian Ocean, as elsewhere, the histories of commerce and law were inextricably intertwined.

A long-held assumption in animal behavior is that females and males differ fundamentally in their mating strategies. Females are thought to be more choosy because female reproduction typically is limited by parental investment. Males, on the other hand, are expected to compete among themselves for access to females or resources, since male reproduction is limited primarily by mating access. This dichotomy is challenged by the increasing realization that males can be choosy and females also compete aggressively. It remains unclear, however, if and how selection acts on aggressive behavior in the context of intrasexual competition among females (reviewed in Chapter 1). In this thesis, I use a population of free-living tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) to test predictions about the selective pressures shaping aggressive behavior in females. First, using an experimental manipulation of nest site availability, I demonstrate that more aggressive females have a competitive edge in acquiring nestboxes, a critical limiting resource required for breeding (Chapter 2). This result shows that more aggressive females are more likely to breed and, thus, that females experience direct selection to be aggressive in the context of competition for mating opportunities. Next, I demonstrate a fitness cost of female aggression (Chapter 3): high levels of aggression in females are not associated with the quantity of offspring, but instead, more aggressive females had offspring of lower quality (i.e. reduced mass). Using a cross-fostering approach, I explore the causal link between female aggression and offspring mass, and I find that a trade-off between female aggression and maternal care best accounts for this cost of aggression. Site differences may create variation in how selection shapes female aggression, but the overall finding that more aggressive females have lower quality offspring indicates that this cost may work counter to selection favoring aggressive behavior in the context of competition over nestboxes. Understanding the evolution of female aggressiveness in a biparental system is incomplete without examining how males may alter the selective environment shaping female behavior. In Chapter 4, I explore the potential role of a female's mate in offsetting the costs of aggression. Males appear to mitigate these costs for their female partners, but not by compensating for poor parenting by aggressive females. Instead, females invest more heavily in reproduction, laying more and larger eggs, when mated to a male that is more different from her own phenotype. If this differential investment outweighs the cost of aggressiveness in terms of offspring quality, then male phenotype may play a key role in understanding the selective pressures shaping the evolution of aggressive behavior in females. Altogether, this dissertation explores the costs and benefits of female aggressive behavior. The focus on aggressiveness as a sexually selected trait in females provides a much needed parallel to the wealth of information already known about the selective pressures shaping sexually selected traits in males.

This dissertation investigates how variation in trade credit standards play a role in firm maturation. In Chapter 1, I survey existing research in trade credit. Following this, I identify lifecycle trends in supplier trade credit policy in Chapter 2. Young suppliers assume greater risks in trade credit provision early in their lifecycles in order to advance growth and product market agendas. There is a peak around a supplier's IPO in the riskiness of trade credit supplied, measured by doubtful receivables and the length of credit provided (receivables length). I find that young firms in industries where customer-supplier relationships are more significant have higher doubtful receivables, consistent with suppliers varying trade credit standards to build relationships. Additionally, young suppliers with more complex products (as measured by R&D intensity) offer longer duration loans compared to suppliers of similar age. Offering riskier trade credit terms affects economic outcomes. In Chapter 3, I study if varying trade credit standards for the purpose of relationship building is a viable strategy for all firm maturities. I use the incidence of a major free trade agreement to study firm responses to a major disruption in existing supplier-customer relationships. Chapter 3 posits both supplier driven as well as customer driven explanations for the observed responses, finding evidence consistent with older suppliers have a reduced incentive as well as capacity to engage in relationship building.