While mature capital markets in Western economies suffer from a significant drop in listed companies for two decades, the number of listings at stock exchanges on the African continent is increasing and the importance of stock exchanges for equity issues is growing. This not only raises...

The London Stock Exchange was the largest capital market in the world at the beginning of the twentieth century, but Britain also had numerous other stock markets based in provincial cities and towns. This paper provides the first in-depth quantitative assessment of these markets. We find that...

Using a new weekly blue-chip index, this paper investigates the causes of stock price movements on the London market between 1823 and 1870. We find that economic fundamentals explain about 15 per cent of weekly and 34 per cent of monthly variation in share prices. Contemporary press reporting...