This study assesses the impact of self-regulation on equity markets by analysing IPO failure rates on the London Stock Exchange during 1900–13. Focussing on differences between Official Quotation (OQ) and Special Settlement (SS) methods of going public, we find that the failure rate of IPOs by...

How did modern and centralized fiscal institutions emerge? We develop a model that explains (i) why pre-industrial states relied on private individuals to collect taxes; (ii) why after 1600 both England and France moved from competitive methods for collecting revenues to allocating the right to...

We divide decedents into two groups: “rentiers" (whose wealth is smaller than the capitalized value of their inherited wealth) and “savers” (who consumed less than their labor income). Applying this split to a unique micro data set on inheritance and matrimonial property regimes, we find...

By providing more public goods (irrigation), collective agriculture can deal with negative weather shocks more effectively. Yet, collective institutions are fraught with problems of work incentives, excessive grain procurement, and the like, which in one extreme historical instance had resulted...

The Foreign and Colonial Investment Trust is the oldest surviving closed end fund, having been established in 1868. Its early success and emulation were related to its identification of a missing market – the provision of a wholesale diversified vehicle for the investing public. This paper is...

Sweden experienced a decline in inter-county real wage differentials for agricultural workers between 1860 and 1940, historical evidence of early labor market integration well before widespread unionization in agriculture occurred. By means of dynamic panel data analysis, this paper examines...

The growth of the modern regulatory state is often explained in terms of an unambiguous increase in regulation driven by the actions of central governments. Contrary to this traditional narrative, we argue that as governments increased state capacity, they often strove to weaken the autarkic...

A birth certificate establishes a child's legal identity and age, but few quantitative estimates of the significance of birth registration exist. Birth registration laws were enacted by U.S. states in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Using 1910–1930 census data, this study finds that minimum...

Pre-modern growth was to a large extent dependent on processes of commercialization and specialization, based on cheap transport. Seminal interpretations of the process of economic growth before the Industrial Revolution have pointed to the strategic importance of the rise of the Atlantic...

We document the existence of a distinctive national naming pattern for African Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We use census records to identify a set of high-frequency names among African Americans that were unlikely to be held by whites. We confirm the...