Land reform and its financial arrangements are central elements of modern Irish history. Yet to date, the financial mechanisms underpinning Irish land reform have been overlooked. The paper outlines the mechanisms of land reform in Ireland and the importance of land bonds to the process. The...

This paper introduces a new database on Irish land bonds listed on the Dublin Stock Exchange from 1891 to 1938: it outlines the nature of these bonds and presents data on their size, liquidity and market returns. These government-guaranteed bonds arose during a period when the possibility of...

This paper introduces a new database on Irish land bonds listed on the Dublin Stock Exchange from 1891 to 1938. It outlines the nature of these bonds and presents data on their size, liquidity and market returns. These government-guaranteed bonds arose during a period when the possibility of...

We study IrelandÕs inheritance of debt following its secession from the United Kingdom at the beginning of the twentieth century. Exploiting structural differences in bonds guaranteed by the UK and Irish governments, we can identify perceived uncertainty about fiscal responsibility in the...

We study the daily yields on Irish land bonds listed on the Dublin Stock Exchange during the years 1920-1938. We exploit structural differences in bonds guaranteed by the UK and Irish governments to find Irish events that had long term effects on the credibility of government guarantees. We...

In the last 15 years of the nineteenth century c.300 British brewers incorporated and floated securities on the stock market. Subsequently, in the 1900s, the industry suffered a long-lived hangover. In this paper, we establish the stylised facts of this transformation and estimate the gains...

Why do some banks fail in financial crises while others survive? This article answers this question by analysing the effect of the Dutch financial crisis of the 1920s on 142 banks, of which 33 failed. We find that choices of balance sheet composition and product market strategy made in the...

The rise and fall of De Lorean Motor Cars Limited (DMCL) has been traditionally interpreted as the result either of John De Lorean´s psychological flaws or as confirming the supposedly inherent weaknesses in activist industrial policy. However, when the episode is examined in more detail,...

We argue that the partition of ethnic groups following the Scramble for Africa does not itself matter for development in Africa. It matters only when the partitioned groups are relatively small because small groups lack political representation which may promote ethnic mobilization and foster...

Using ownership and control data for 890 firm-years, this paper examines the concentration of capital and voting rights in British companies in the second half of the nineteenth century. We find that both capital and voting rights were diffuse by modern-day standards. This implies that ownership...