“The annual data on total returns for equity, housing, bonds, and bills cover 16 advanced economies from 1870 to 2015, and our new evidence reveals many new insights and puzzles.”
“In what could be considered the first business how-to book, an Italian merchant from the 1400s advises leaders to be charitable, ethical, and treat people fairly; be modest; look for the right qualities in a wife; be selective in deals; and retire at 50, when ‘natural fervor abates, his blood calms down, his intelligence dims and his memory becomes less quick, so that he risks committing many errors in his business’.”
“This paper examines brokerage regulations in Central and Western Europe from approximately 1250 to 1700. Based on a sample of 70 cities with more than 1609 sets of regulations, we find that brokerage was a multifunctional institution, which served matchmaking, quality certification, and tax collection functions, mainly in product wholesale markets but also in finance and real estate markets.”
“The early history of the Transvaal gold mines for long has been linked with imperialism, the Jameson Raid and the Boer War. The gold mine owners actually had no financial interest in war with the Boers since their money was made primarily by stock market manipulation, rather than in efficiently utilizing the underlying assets.”
“This paper examines the case of Boston’s Long Wharf, a joint-stock company locally chartered in 1710, in order to gain insight into the significant internal and external challenges early American investors faced when their investment was in a physical structure.”
