The European Association for Banking and Financial History has just started a new working paper series, with Chris Colvin as one of the editors. Along with my co-authors, I have a new working paper available in this series. The paper looks at ownership diffusion in the last half of the nineteenth century. Surprisingly, we find that ownership was much more diffused in the past than we expected. It was also diffuse compared to twenty-first century corporations. The paper is available here.
My colleague and former PhD student Gareth Campbell has created a website about the British Railway Mania - click here . This episode has been described by the Economist as probably the greatest bubble in human history. Gareth's website provides background on the Mania and posits some explanations for the 'bubble'. In his explanation of why the bubble happened, Gareth places a lot of emphasis on investor myopia regarding future dividends and uncalled capital. His study of investors during the episode does not support the view that this episode was fuelled by naive and irrational investors.