Purpose – There are two main alternative explanations in the literature for the patterns of financial reporting during the period of the British Industrial Revolution (BIR). Rob Bryer sees the new social relations of production in which manufacturing entrepreneurs strove to increase the...

Dividends can provide a tangible signal of earnings, but this function depends upon characteristics of financial reporting that were not always present in early financial capitalism. Although eighteenth-century English canal companies offered low‐risk securitized capital approved by Parliament...

Purpose – Changes in financial reporting information were an important part of the British transition from feudalism to capitalism, with statements showing cash surpluses or deficits being gradually superseded by income statements and balance sheets. The existing literature does not...

The patterns of change in the financial reporting practices of the early railway companies, and their causes, are important aspects of the evolution of accounting practice more generally. They have accordingly been widely discussed in the literature, although the views expressed have rarely been...