Faculty at Home: Amanda Gregg

Please join Amanda Gregg for a talk entitled “Corporations under Autocracy: Lessons from the Economic History of the Russian Empire.”

Please register for this Zoom webinar here. 

The past is full of useful economics. This presentation outlines what we can learn from studying corporations in the Russian Empire, a key “emerging market” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Using newly collected data from historical sources such as balance sheets and corporate charters, this presentation explains the strategies that corporations in the Russian Empire used to finance operations and expansion, to design their charters to attract outside investment, and to decide whether to remain in operation or exit the market. Overall, this research presents an optimistic picture of the Russian economy under autocracy with several important caveats (such as the distortions created by restricting access to the corporate form).

Amanda Gregg joined the Middlebury College Department of Economics in the fall of 2015 after completing her PhD in economics at Yale University. Her research concerns industrial development, productivity, and commercial law in late imperial Russia. Recent publications include “Factory Productivity and the Concession System of Incorporation in Late Imperial Russia” in the American Economic Review and “Capital Structure and Corporate Performance in Late Imperial Russia” with Steven Nafziger in the European Review of Economic History. She is currently contemplating a project on Vermont’s economic history, and, in her spare time, she is a bluegrass mandolin enthusiast.