• Pricing Lottery Loans
    • “A Lottery is a taxation, Upon all the fools in creation; And Heav’n be prais’d, It is easily rais’d” (1731)
  • Forgotten Exchanges
    • “It is usually assumed that the NYSE has always been the dominant market. However, its position prior to 1933 was constantly challenged, reflecting the dynamics of the competition between the exchanges where entry of brokers was limited and where frequent booms and productivity shocks drove up order flow and listings.”
  • Bubble Burst? Blame Women
    • “So just how do you reduce the risk of crisis in financial markets? In the aftermath of the South Sea Bubble of 1720, contemporaries reached a firm but controversial conclusion: keep women out.”
  • Prediction Machines
    • “That not one, but many, such machines will be built in the course of time and put in operation, seems inevitable. Their accuracy will of course depend upon the degree of completeness and correctness of the formulae by which they are constructed.” 
  • Rating Agency Origins
    • “Why did credit rating agencies first appear when (1909) and where (the United States) they did in history? What has been the experience of capital market participants with agency credit ratings since they did appear?”