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New Economic History Working Paper Series

A new working paper series has just been set up by Queen's University Centre for Economic History (QUCEH) - click here for details. 

The first paper in the series looks at corporate ownership and control in Victorian Britain. I and my co-authors find that corporate ownership was much more dispersed in the Victorian era than we previously thought. This is a bit of a puzzle for the law and finance hypothesis because investor protection law was so poor in this era.

The second paper in the series is by Arcangelo Dimico. Arcangelo looks at the Scramble for Africa and the partition of ethnic groups. He finds that partitioning did not in and of itself matter for development in Africa. However, it does matter when the partitioned ethnic groups are relatively small.

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