Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.1017/s0968565022000208
M. Vaihekoski
A newly collected historical database for the Helsinki Stock Exchange (HSE) is used to analyse the number and structure of listed equity securities. The analysis shows that from its establishment in October 1912 to the end of 1981, a total of 849 different stock series and related issue rights have been listed on the HSE. Of these, 206 are normal stock series and they represent 167 different companies. The two largest industries represented on the HSE during most of the analysed period are metal and manufacturing and pulp and paper industries. Together they represented more than half of the listed companies throughout most of the sample period.
{"title":"Helsinki Stock Exchange: trading and listed securities, 1912–1981","authors":"M. Vaihekoski","doi":"10.1017/s0968565022000208","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0968565022000208","url":null,"abstract":"A newly collected historical database for the Helsinki Stock Exchange (HSE) is used to analyse the number and structure of listed equity securities. The analysis shows that from its establishment in October 1912 to the end of 1981, a total of 849 different stock series and related issue rights have been listed on the HSE. Of these, 206 are normal stock series and they represent 167 different companies. The two largest industries represented on the HSE during most of the analysed period are metal and manufacturing and pulp and paper industries. Together they represented more than half of the listed companies throughout most of the sample period.","PeriodicalId":44063,"journal":{"name":"Financial History Review","volume":"29 1","pages":"326 - 341"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48275344","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.1017/S0968565022000221
Peter M. Solar
Price currents and newspapers are major sources of information on prices during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but drawing conclusions about trends and fluctuations in values from the quotations in these sources poses several recurrent difficulties. After discussing the origins of the prices in these sources, we use a range of examples, mainly involving commodity prices, to illustrate important problems in working with historical price data. These include missing observations and price inertia, varying gaps between low and high price quotations, and the splicing together of price series from different sources or for different commodity qualities. The last two problems often arise from changes over time in the detail with which prices for heterogeneous commodities were reported.
{"title":"Prices: sources, problems, solutions","authors":"Peter M. Solar","doi":"10.1017/S0968565022000221","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0968565022000221","url":null,"abstract":"Price currents and newspapers are major sources of information on prices during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but drawing conclusions about trends and fluctuations in values from the quotations in these sources poses several recurrent difficulties. After discussing the origins of the prices in these sources, we use a range of examples, mainly involving commodity prices, to illustrate important problems in working with historical price data. These include missing observations and price inertia, varying gaps between low and high price quotations, and the splicing together of price series from different sources or for different commodity qualities. The last two problems often arise from changes over time in the detail with which prices for heterogeneous commodities were reported.","PeriodicalId":44063,"journal":{"name":"Financial History Review","volume":"29 1","pages":"287 - 309"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48185286","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.1017/S0968565022000233
A. Riva
This article focuses on the conflicts over market access rules on the two primary Italian stock exchanges, Milan and Genoa. These conflicts disrupted the quality of information produced by the two markets. Official brokers aimed to defend their monopoly on brokerage and capture rents by limiting market access. Banks wanted wider access so as to avoid paying these rents, create an opaque market and maximize the benefit from their informational advantage. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Milan Exchange implemented a transparent market organization while the Genoa Exchange remained opaque, creating a complementarity between them which fostered the development of the securities market overall. When in 1907 a violent crisis erupted in the dominant Genoa Exchange, legislation was adopted to harmonize the organization of the Italian exchanges.
{"title":"Market access and transparency: the Genoa and Milan stock exchanges from Italian Unification to World War I","authors":"A. Riva","doi":"10.1017/S0968565022000233","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0968565022000233","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on the conflicts over market access rules on the two primary Italian stock exchanges, Milan and Genoa. These conflicts disrupted the quality of information produced by the two markets. Official brokers aimed to defend their monopoly on brokerage and capture rents by limiting market access. Banks wanted wider access so as to avoid paying these rents, create an opaque market and maximize the benefit from their informational advantage. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Milan Exchange implemented a transparent market organization while the Genoa Exchange remained opaque, creating a complementarity between them which fostered the development of the securities market overall. When in 1907 a violent crisis erupted in the dominant Genoa Exchange, legislation was adopted to harmonize the organization of the Italian exchanges.","PeriodicalId":44063,"journal":{"name":"Financial History Review","volume":"29 1","pages":"358 - 375"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48099694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.1017/S0968565022000245
Frederic Steinfeld
This article uses the leading firms of the German chemical industry as a case study to provide a detailed example of how companies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century used internal financing as an instrument of corporate finance. It traces the at first diverse significance of internal financing for the industry and identifies two moments of market concentration that triggered a convergence of corporate finance by a harmonisation of accounting standards that were not predefined by legal frameworks. The article argues that secret reserves and further ways of internal financing were key components of this harmonisation. The industry-wide creation of secret reserves cloaked the companies’ actual financial strength from outsiders who were merely left with an image of the respective firms that was carefully drafted by companies’ managers.
{"title":"De-coding the image of the firm: secret reserves and internal financing in the German chemical industry, c. 1890–1916","authors":"Frederic Steinfeld","doi":"10.1017/S0968565022000245","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0968565022000245","url":null,"abstract":"This article uses the leading firms of the German chemical industry as a case study to provide a detailed example of how companies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century used internal financing as an instrument of corporate finance. It traces the at first diverse significance of internal financing for the industry and identifies two moments of market concentration that triggered a convergence of corporate finance by a harmonisation of accounting standards that were not predefined by legal frameworks. The article argues that secret reserves and further ways of internal financing were key components of this harmonisation. The industry-wide creation of secret reserves cloaked the companies’ actual financial strength from outsiders who were merely left with an image of the respective firms that was carefully drafted by companies’ managers.","PeriodicalId":44063,"journal":{"name":"Financial History Review","volume":"29 1","pages":"310 - 325"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44177781","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.1017/s096856502300001x
{"title":"FHR volume 29 issue 3 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s096856502300001x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s096856502300001x","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44063,"journal":{"name":"Financial History Review","volume":" ","pages":"f1 - f2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47663166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.1017/S0968565022000105
J. Jonker, A. Riva
Financial markets derive their political and societal legitimacy from their ability to produce fair and accurate prices. However, reviewing the literature on how stock exchanges price securities, we find an inherent tension between market organization and price disclosure, which is borne out by this special issue's historical case studies.
{"title":"Stock exchange price currents, financial information and market transparency: an introduction","authors":"J. Jonker, A. Riva","doi":"10.1017/S0968565022000105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0968565022000105","url":null,"abstract":"Financial markets derive their political and societal legitimacy from their ability to produce fair and accurate prices. However, reviewing the literature on how stock exchanges price securities, we find an inherent tension between market organization and price disclosure, which is borne out by this special issue's historical case studies.","PeriodicalId":44063,"journal":{"name":"Financial History Review","volume":"29 1","pages":"271 - 286"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41580204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-18DOI: 10.1017/S0968565022000142
Andreea Maerean, M. Pedersen, P. Sharp
How was Romania able to borrow cheaply on the international capital markets before World War I? We explore this within the context of its three southeast European neighbours, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia, using a novel dataset of monthly bond prices from the Berlin and London stock exchanges. A comparison of country characteristics and panel data analysis suggests that Romania was able to borrow under more favourable conditions due to its abundant natural resources and desirable exports.
{"title":"‘Propitious contrast’: Romanian borrowing in a Balkan mirror, 1878–1913","authors":"Andreea Maerean, M. Pedersen, P. Sharp","doi":"10.1017/S0968565022000142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0968565022000142","url":null,"abstract":"How was Romania able to borrow cheaply on the international capital markets before World War I? We explore this within the context of its three southeast European neighbours, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia, using a novel dataset of monthly bond prices from the Berlin and London stock exchanges. A comparison of country characteristics and panel data analysis suggests that Romania was able to borrow under more favourable conditions due to its abundant natural resources and desirable exports.","PeriodicalId":44063,"journal":{"name":"Financial History Review","volume":"30 1","pages":"100 - 123"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47476252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-24DOI: 10.1017/S0968565022000117
Johan Poukens, F. Buelens
To fully understand and exploit the contents of stock exchange official price lists, an in-depth knowledge of local stock exchange regulations and practices is required. This article offers a comparative perspective on price discovery and quotation on the two most important Belgian stock exchanges, Brussels and Antwerp, from their establishment in 1801 up to the reform of 1935.
{"title":"Stock exchange regulation and the official price lists of the stock exchanges of Brussels and Antwerp, 1801–1935","authors":"Johan Poukens, F. Buelens","doi":"10.1017/S0968565022000117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0968565022000117","url":null,"abstract":"To fully understand and exploit the contents of stock exchange official price lists, an in-depth knowledge of local stock exchange regulations and practices is required. This article offers a comparative perspective on price discovery and quotation on the two most important Belgian stock exchanges, Brussels and Antwerp, from their establishment in 1801 up to the reform of 1935.","PeriodicalId":44063,"journal":{"name":"Financial History Review","volume":"15 14","pages":"342 - 357"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41248606","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-01DOI: 10.1017/S0968565022000087
Linus Siming
This article provides causal evidence on a long-standing controversy in the finance and labour literature, namely, whether better health and safety in the working environment is in the best interests of firm owners. While, on the one hand, an influential strand of the literature argues that improvements in workers’ health and safety provision can increase costs and harm the market value of equity, another well-consolidated strand of the literature argues that such improvements can reduce costs and create shareholder value. It is empirically challenging to study the relation between the work environment and equity value due to their endogenous relation. To overcome this challenge, I utilize a historic natural experiment that uniquely isolates the effects of mandated investments in health and safety provision on firm market value: on 27 March 1974, the Swedish hung parliament drew a lottery ticket to decide on a legislative proposal that mandated companies to improve their employees’ work environment. The lottery resulted in the approval of the proposal. I find that this outcome led to an immediate and sizable decrease in the market value of Swedish companies that persisted for several days.
{"title":"Health and safety regulations and stock returns: evidence from the 1974 Swedish legislative lottery","authors":"Linus Siming","doi":"10.1017/S0968565022000087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0968565022000087","url":null,"abstract":"This article provides causal evidence on a long-standing controversy in the finance and labour literature, namely, whether better health and safety in the working environment is in the best interests of firm owners. While, on the one hand, an influential strand of the literature argues that improvements in workers’ health and safety provision can increase costs and harm the market value of equity, another well-consolidated strand of the literature argues that such improvements can reduce costs and create shareholder value. It is empirically challenging to study the relation between the work environment and equity value due to their endogenous relation. To overcome this challenge, I utilize a historic natural experiment that uniquely isolates the effects of mandated investments in health and safety provision on firm market value: on 27 March 1974, the Swedish hung parliament drew a lottery ticket to decide on a legislative proposal that mandated companies to improve their employees’ work environment. The lottery resulted in the approval of the proposal. I find that this outcome led to an immediate and sizable decrease in the market value of Swedish companies that persisted for several days.","PeriodicalId":44063,"journal":{"name":"Financial History Review","volume":"29 1","pages":"198 - 218"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43208528","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-01DOI: 10.1017/S0968565022000129
Thibaud Giddey, Malik Mazbouri
The Swiss financial centre, as it developed during the twentieth century, has for a long time been presented and perceived as a singularly stable and solid environment escaping crises and restructuring. This view, promoted by the dominant actors – private banks, cantonal banks and large commercial banks – presenting their own development, in a teleological vision, as success stories, is strongly challenged by more recent research developments. Our article deals with the evolution of banking demography in Switzerland between 1850 and 2000 and examines the exits of banking institutions from the statistics, identifying six periods of crisis and restructuring. The article proposes a new statistical series that makes it possible to scrutinise with a high level of granularity the banks that fail or are taken over, in particular by observing their category of bank and, for the period 1934–99, their size. It uses historical banking demography as a gateway to understand more broadly the phases of transformation of the financial centre. In doing so, this contribution questions the gap between the existence of significant phases of banking instability, their low importance in collective memory, and the perception of the Swiss banking sector as a model of stability. It also helps to refine our understanding of the evolution of the Swiss financial centre in general.
{"title":"Banking crises, banking mortality and the structuring of the banking market in Switzerland, 1850–2000","authors":"Thibaud Giddey, Malik Mazbouri","doi":"10.1017/S0968565022000129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0968565022000129","url":null,"abstract":"The Swiss financial centre, as it developed during the twentieth century, has for a long time been presented and perceived as a singularly stable and solid environment escaping crises and restructuring. This view, promoted by the dominant actors – private banks, cantonal banks and large commercial banks – presenting their own development, in a teleological vision, as success stories, is strongly challenged by more recent research developments. Our article deals with the evolution of banking demography in Switzerland between 1850 and 2000 and examines the exits of banking institutions from the statistics, identifying six periods of crisis and restructuring. The article proposes a new statistical series that makes it possible to scrutinise with a high level of granularity the banks that fail or are taken over, in particular by observing their category of bank and, for the period 1934–99, their size. It uses historical banking demography as a gateway to understand more broadly the phases of transformation of the financial centre. In doing so, this contribution questions the gap between the existence of significant phases of banking instability, their low importance in collective memory, and the perception of the Swiss banking sector as a model of stability. It also helps to refine our understanding of the evolution of the Swiss financial centre in general.","PeriodicalId":44063,"journal":{"name":"Financial History Review","volume":"29 1","pages":"247 - 270"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42017560","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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