Central banks around the world have substantial domestic and foreign financial assets and liabilities on their balance sheets reflecting their role as monetary authorities. This paper explores the long-term trends in risk and return in central banking using the central bank of Denmark, Danmarks...

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...

We study Irelandś 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...

This chapter presents historical evidence about Swedish stock prices, dividends, and yields on government fixed-interest securities. Monthly returns are presented since 1901 for stocks, since 1874 for government long-term bonds and since 1856 for short-term Treasury bills or central bank...

The paper constructs financial-account stock data for Denmark 1875-2005 on an annual frequency and explores the historical monetary and financial trends and cycles on the basis of the new data set. The annual financial-account data constructed in the paper are based on a comprehensive range of...

The paper presents time series for Danish general government net lending in the period 1875-2003 and analyses the long-term term fiscal development in Denmark. Even though Denmark today has one of the largest public sectors in Europe, relatively speaking, the Danish general government's deficit...

Does the combination of inflation and high corporate taxes explain the increase in bank leverage in the 20th century? Inflation automatically increases bank debt, while high corporate taxes hinder capital accumulation. Capital ratios therefore drop, until leverage-induced returns are sufficient...

The paper paints a broad picture of the interest-rate development in Denmark since 1875. Three different short-term interest-rate series (the official discount rate, private banks' average deposit rate, and the market rate of discount/money market rate) and two different long-term interest-rate...

This paper offers a fact-oriented chronology of the Danish exchange-rate policy since the introduction of the krone as the Danish currency unit in 1875. -- Exchange-rate policy ; Danish krone exchange rates ; History of exchange rates ; Gold Standard ; Bretton Woods system ; European...

This paper constructs annual trade-weighted nominal and real effective exchange rate indices for Denmark covering the period since the introduction of the krone as the Danish currency unit in 1875. Two real effective krone rate indices with respectively wholesale prices and consumer prices used...