This paper investigates the origins of the shareholder-orientated corporate governance (CG) model of the US and the stakeholder-orientated model prevailing in continental Europe (exemplified by Switzerland and Germany) for most of the 20th century. We reject the most common theories, which...

This article analyzes the manifold situations in which the efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) has influenced—or has failed to influence—federal securities regulation and state corporate law, and the prospective roles for the EMH in these contexts. In federal securities regulation, the EMH has...

We study Ireland´s 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...

Information on the performance of equities during the latter part of the globalized long nineteenth century is scarce, particularly for smaller European economies such as Ireland. Using a dataset of over 35,000 price‐year observations from the Investor’s Monthly Manual, this paper constructs...

British general incorporation law granted companies an extraordinary degree of contractual freedom to craft their own governance rules. In this paper we study the uses to which this flexibility was put by examining the articles of association written by three samples of companies from the late...

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...

This paper studies structural transformation of Soviet Russia in 1928-1940 from an agrarian to an industrial economy through the lens of a two-sector neoclassical growth model. We construct a large dataset that covers Soviet Russia during 1928-1940 and Tsarist Russia during 1885-1913. We use a...