We examine the returns to investors in publicly traded stock in new industries. We examine data from the United States on sellers of own-brand personal computers, airlines and airplane manufacturers, automobile manufacturers, railroads, and telegraphs. We find that a relatively small number of...

This article examines the financial dislocations that were occurring at the time of the iconic Edgar Degas 1873 painting, “The Cotton Exchange at New Orleans” and draws parallels to financial events of the 21st century. One can find some potentially useful historical lessons to draw on from...

Financial professionals are well aware that the ongoing implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act may cause changes to market structure, including in the futures markets. Should market participants be concerned? The short answer is not necessarily, given that the history of U.S. futures trading is...

This article covers examples of successful futures contracts that responded to new large-scale commercial risks over the past 170 years. The article explains the new commercial circumstances that ushered in the intense need for hedging instruments, spanning the grain, financial, crude oil, and...

We examine the returns to investors in publicly traded stock in new industries. We examine data from the United States on sellers of own-brand personal computers, airlines and airplane manufacturers, automobile manufacturers, railroads, and telegraphs. We find that a relatively small number of...

Heightened counterparty risk during the recent financial crisis has raised questions about the role clearinghouses play in global financial stability. Empirical identification of the effect of centralized clearing on counterparty risk is challenging because of the co-incidence of macro-economic...

The objective of this paper is to examine the absolute and risk-adjusted effects on distribution rates and total wealth created by adding loss-limiting trend following strategies to buy and hold portfolios. Using 150 years of equity and bond data, we found that applying trend following to...

We employ a new data set comprised of disaggregate figures on clearinghouse loan certificate issues in New York City to document how the dominant national banks were crucial providers of temporary liquidity during the Panic of 1907. Clearinghouse loan certificates were essentially bridge loans...

In August 1763, northern Europe experienced a financial crisis with numerous parallels to the 2008 Lehman Brothers episode. The 1763 crisis was sparked by the failure of a major provider of acceptance loans, a form of securitized credit resembling modern asset-backed commercial paper. The...

This essay discusses trends in new banking history scholarship. It does so by conducting bibliometric content analysis of the entire literature involving the history of banks, bankers and banking published in all major academic journals since the year 2000. It places this recent scholarship in...