Hoyt Bleakley and Paul Rhode use a “regression discontinuity design” (RDD) to find a persistent negative effect of slavery’s legality on rural population density throughout the period from 1790 to 1860. Yet their reported results cannot be replicated. Instead, the replication shows...

This paper assesses the validity of comparisons of the current financial crisis with past crises in the United States. We highlight aspects of two National Banking Era crises (the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1907) that are relevant for comparison with the Panic of 2008. In 1873,...

Wherever dechristianisation could not have possibly materialised, in those polities which abandoned God to start with, since the Fall to the eschaton, slavery was never substantially execrated, having continued to this day, net of abolitionism, in globalisation. Thence the perduring Arab slave...

Focusing on a “safe withdrawal rate” and then deriving a “wealth accumulation target” to achieve by the retirement date is the wrong way to think about retirement planning. Such a formulation isolates the working (accumulation) and retirement (decumulation) phases. When considered...

Valuation-based market timing demonstrates greater potential to improve risk-adjusted returns for conservative long-term investors than given credit by Fisher and Statman (2006). On a risk-adjusted basis, market-timing strategies provide comparable returns as a 100 percent stocks buy-and-hold...

Focusing on a “safe withdrawal rate” and then deriving a “wealth accumulation target” to achieve by the retirement date may not be the best way to approach retirement planning. Such a formulation isolates the working (accumulation) and retirement (decumulation) phases. When considered...

The aim of traditional retirement planning is to set a wealth accumulation target for your retirement date so that your desired expenditures can be obtained using a “safe” withdrawal rate. But it is quite difficult to know if you are making progress toward this target. Volatility over short...

Valuation-based market timing demonstrates strong potential to improve risk-adjusted returns for conservative long-term investors. Such timing strategies based on the cyclically-adjusted price-earnings ratio provide comparable returns as a 100 percent stocks buy-and-hold strategy but with...

Abstract This paper analyzes and measures the value that American private banks added as directors of non financial companies. Using data between 1874 and 1913, and an event study from 1906, I find that bank directors added about 20% of a firm's market capitalization. Collusive practices...

Before the Panic of 1907 the large New York City banks were able to maintain the call loan market’s liquidity during panics, but the rise in outside lending by trust companies and interior banks in the decade leading up the panic weakened the influence of the large banks. Creating a reliable...