“We gather the most comprehensive database of government bonds for the first globalization era to date to conduct the first historically informed study of the importance of liquidity for colonial and sovereign yield spreads. Considering both liquidity and credit shows that the two markets were segmented: Credit was the most important factor in the pricing of sovereign debt, but liquidity predominated in the colonial market, explaining 10 to 39% of colonial yield spreads.”
“On the heels of their successful financial investment in early US government bonds, Dutch investors in the 1790s turned their attention—and money—toward the speculative potential of the American land itself.”
“After spending many years in Wall Street and after making and losing millions of dollars, I want to tell you this: It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight! It is no trick at all to be right on the market. You always find lots of early bulls in bull markets and early bears in bear markets…. Men who can be both right and sit tight are uncommon. I found it one of the hardest things to learn. But it is only after a stock operator has firmly grasped this that he can make big money.”
“This paper explains the disparate paths of venture capital organizations in the United States and Germany over the post-World War II period—the early emergence and burgeoning of the sector in the U.S., and the lagging of development in Germany.”