Carey's four arguments against Malthusianism, 644. — Effect of environment on his thought, 647. — Relationship of wealth, utility, capital, value, and cost of reproduction, 648. — The two arguments on rent: (a) Land is capital, rents grow proportionately less; (b) The natural order of cultivation, 651. — Three possible interpretations of Carey on returns, 659. — An argument by the writer on interrelationships in the problem of proportionality, 666. — Carey and Ricardo on returns, 669. — Conclusion, 671.

[In the late nineteenth century Britain had almost no mandatory shareholder protections, but had very developed financial markets. We argue that private contracting between shareholders and corporations meant that the absence of statutory protections was immaterial. Using approximately 500 articles of association from before 1900, we code the protections offered to shareholders in these private contracts. We find that firms voluntarily offered shareholders many of the protections that were subsequently included in statutory corporate law. We also find that companies offering better protection to shareholders had less concentrated ownership.]

The distortion of the labor/leisure choice by social security during the period the earnings test is in effect is well known. This paper, using a life-cycle asset maximization approach to social security acceptance, shows that the earnings test is not a sufficient cause for such a distortion in the constrained period or over the life cycle. We use time-series analysis to test the net empirical importance of the substitution and wealth effects associated with social security on the market work of younger men and find that hours worked per week would have fallen from 2 to 3 hours since 1936 without the present social security system. Such findings suggest that large savings effects associated with social security are over-estimates.

We estimate demand for residential broadband using high-frequency data from subscribers facing a three-part tariff. The three-part tariff makes data usage during the billing cycle a dynamic problem, thus generating variation in the (shadow) price of usage. We provide evidence that subscribers respond to this variation, and we use their dynamic decisions to estimate a flexible distribution of willingness to pay for different plan characteristics. Using the estimates, we simulate demand under alternative pricing and find that usage-based pricing eliminates low-value traffic. Furthermore, we show that the costs associated with investment in fiber-optic networks are likely recoverable in some markets, but that there is a large gap between social and private incentives to invest.

Abstract Why do firms pay dividends? To answer this question, we use a hand-collected data set of companies traded on the London stock market between 1825 and 1870. As tax rates were effectively zero, the capital market was unregulated, and there were no institutional stockholders, we can rule out these potential determinants ex ante. We find that, even though they were legal, share repurchases were not used by firms to return cash to shareholders. Instead, our evidence provides support for the information–communication explanation for dividends, while providing little support for agency, illiquidity, catering, or behavioral explanations.

Abstract News media plays an important role in modern financial markets. In this article, we analyze the role played by the news media in an historical financial market. Using The Times’s coverage of companies listed on the London stock market between 1825 and 1870, we examine the determinants of media coverage in this era and whether media coverage affected returns. Our main finding is that a media effect mainly manifests itself after the mid-1840s and that the introduction of arm’s-length ownership along with markedly increased market participation was the main reason for the emergence of this media effect.

This paper addresses three questions: (1) How severe were the episodes of banking instability experienced by the UK over the past two centuries? (2) What have been the macroeconomic indicators of UK banking instability? and (3) What have been the consequences of UK banking instability for the cost of credit? Using a unique dataset of bank share prices from 1830 to 2010 to assess the stability of the UK banking system, we find that banking instability has grown more severe since the 1970s. We also find that interest rates, inflation, lending growth, and equity prices are consistent macroeconomic indicators of UK banking instability over the long run. Furthermore, utilising a unique dataset of corporate-bond yields for the period 1860 to 2010, we find that there is a significant long-run relationship between banking instability and the credit-risk premium faced by businesses.