We consider the value of social capital that derives from membership in a church. American states with larger churchgoing populations had lower business bankruptcy rates from 1921 to 1932, and states in which the churchgoing population was concentrated in few churches had business bankruptcy...

In this paper, I use the materials of the debate on the reliability and the utility of "business barometers" of the Twenties in order to show that the theoretical reflexions of the time could be used by economic historians as a working hypothesis to analyze the influence exerted by circulating...

Credit reporting is a contested process whereby parties with distinct interests (borrowers, lenders, and intermediaries) jointly construct the form, method, and style of credit assessment. In contrast to theories that argue information should grow more secure and credit relationships more...

We use the authoritative Montgomery's Auditing reference series from 1912 to 1998 as a proxy for the U.S. auditing profession's stance towards fraud detection as an audit goal and its attention to the implementation of this goal. A quantitative content analysis of the editions finds that the...

The banking industry experienced a significant amount of turmoil during the Great Contraction of 1929-1933. In response, banks were forced to adjust their portfolios with the changing economic climate. One aspect banks had control over was their reserves. While there has been extensive analysis...

This paper examines the behavior of all banks in New York State during the Great Contraction and their possible reasons of exit. Combining bank-level balance sheet and failure data for every bank in the state, I find that there are distinct patterns in bank exit. Mergers and consolidations peak...

We document that ownership by officers and directors of publicly-traded firms is on average higher today than earlier in the century. Managerial ownership rises from 13 percent for the universe of exchange-listed corporations in 1935, the earliest year for which such data exist, to 21 percent in...

We document two puzzling facts during the 1918–19 influenza outbreak. First, we find no significant differences among US life insurers' profitability before or after 1918. Second, there are fewer insurers in distress after the outbreak. We argue that an increase in insurance demand offset...

This paper invites readers to look into how beliefs about future events help to better understand organizational change. Our argument is that the adoption of information technology and the adoption of new organizational forms around it have been driven by shifts in collective ideas of legitimate...

For most of the twentieth century the conventional wisdom held — probably correctly — that shareholders in America's large corporations were passive and powerless and that real power in a public corporation was wielded by its managers. Beginning in the 1980s, however, shareholders in the...