UK company insiders, such as directors, were legally allowed to trade in the shares of their own companies up until the Companies Act of 1980. This article investigates the trading behaviour of directors over the period 1890 to 1909 in the UK. It finds relatively few instances of directors who...

Miller and Modigliani (1961) show that in perfect and complete financial markets a firm's value is unaffected by its dividend policy. Much of the more recent research has demonstrated that dividend policy becomes important in the presence of taxation, asymmetric information, incomplete...

The German firm of Siemens and Halske introduced many enterprising features of what later came to be known as welfare capitalism in the mid-nineteenth century. Profit sharing, annual bonuses, a pension fund, a reduction in work hours, and an annual party were all means to ensure a productive,...