FinancialHistory.co.uk Logo

Infographics of Recent Publications

J'Accuse! Antisemitism and Financial Markets in the Time of the Dreyfus Affair
Journal of Financial Economics, 2024

Do, Quoc-Anh; Galbiati, Roberto; Marx, Benjamin; Ortiz Serrano, Miguel A.
We study the stock market performance of firms with Jewish board members during the "Dreyfus Affair" in 19th century France. In a context of widespread latent antisemitism, initial accusations made against the Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus led to short-lived abnormal negative returns for Jewish-connected firms. However, investors betting on these firms earned higher returns during the period corresponding to Dreyfus' rehabilitation, starting with the publication of the famous op-ed J'Accuse! in 1898. Our conceptual framework illustrates how diminishing antisemitic biases among investors might plausibly explain these effects. Our paper provides novel insights on how antisemitism can increase and decrease over short periods of time at the highest socio-economic levels in response to certain events, which in turn can affect firm value in financial markets.

Real Effects of Supplying Safe Private Money
Journal of Financial Economics, 2024

Xu, Chenzi; Yang, He
Privately issued money often bears default risk, which creates transaction frictions when used as a medium of exchange. The late 19th century US provides a unique context to evaluate the real effects of supplying a new type of money that is safe from default. We measure the local change in "monetary" transaction frictions with a market access approach derived from general equilibrium trade theory. Consistent with theories hypothesizing that lowering transaction frictions benefits the traded and inputs-intensive sectors, we find an increase in traded goods production, in the share of manufacturing output and employment, and in innovation.

Foreign Debt, Capital Controls, and Secondary Markets: Theory and Evidence from Nazi Germany
Journal of Political Economy, 2024

Papadia, Andrea; Schioppa, Claudio A.
We investigate how internal distribution motives can affect the implementation of an important macroeconomic policy: capital controls. To do this, we study one of history's largest debt repatriations, which took place under strict capital controls in 1930s Germany, providing a wealth of quantitative and historical evidence. We show that the authorities kept private repatriations under strict control, thus avoiding detrimental macroeconomic effects, while allowing discretionary repatriations in order to reap internal political benefits. We formalize this mechanism in a model in which elite capture can affect optimal debt repatriations and the management of official reserves under capital controls.

The Legal Origins of Financial Development: Evidence from the Shanghai Concessions
Journal of Finance, 2023

Levine, Ross; Lin, Chen; Ma, Chicheng; Xu, Yuchen
The primary challenge to assessing the legal origins view of comparative financial development is identifying exogenous changes in legal systems. We assemble new data on Shanghai's British and French concessions between 1845 and 1936. Two regime changes altered British and French legal jurisdiction over their respective concessions. By examining the changing application of different legal traditions to adjacent neighborhoods within the same city and controlling for military, economic, and political characteristics, we offer new evidence consistent with the legal origins view: the financial development advantage in the British concession widened after Western legal jurisdiction intensified and narrowed after it abated.

Wealth of Two Nations: The U.S. Racial Wealth Gap, 1860-2020
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2024

Derenoncourt, Ellora; Kim, Chi Hyun; Kuhn, Moritz; Schularick, Moritz
The racial wealth gap is the largest of the economic disparities between Black and white Americans, with a white-to-Black per capita wealth ratio of 6 to 1. It is also among the most persistent. In this article, we construct the first continuous series on white-to-Black per capita wealth ratios from 1860 to 2020, drawing on historical census data, early state tax records, and historical waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances, among other sources. Incorporating these data into a parsimonious model of wealth accumulation for each racial group, we document the role played by initial conditions, income growth, savings behavior, and capital returns in the evolution of the gap. Given vastly different starting conditions under slavery, racial wealth convergence would remain a distant scenario, even if wealth-accumulating conditions had been equal across the two groups since Emancipation. Relative to this equal-conditions benchmark, we find that observed convergence has followed an even slower path over the past 150 years, with convergence stalling after 1950. Since the 1980s, the wealth gap has widened again as capital gains have predominantly benefited white households, and convergence via income growth and savings has come to a halt.

Infographics of Publications by Journal

Menu

  • Home
  • Recent
    • 2024: Long-Run Trends in Long-Maturity Real Rates, 1311-2022
    • 2024: Real Effects of Supplying Safe Private Money
    • 2024: Shattered Housing
    • 2024: Foreign Debt, Capital Controls, and Secondary Markets: Theory and Evidence from Nazi Germany
    • 2024: Wealth of Two Nations: The U.S. Racial Wealth Gap, 1860-2020
    • 2024: J'Accuse! Antisemitism and Financial Markets in the Time of the Dreyfus Affair
    • 2024: Independent Regulators and Financial Stability Evidence from Gubernatorial Election Campaigns in the Progressive Era
  • Journal of Finance
    • 2023: The Legal Origins of Financial Development: Evidence from the Shanghai Concessions
    • 2021: For Richer, for Poorer: Bankers' Liability and Bank Risk in New England, 1867 to 1880
  • Journal of Financial Economics
    • 2024: Real Effects of Supplying Safe Private Money
    • 2024: Shattered Housing
    • 2024: J'Accuse! Antisemitism and Financial Markets in the Time of the Dreyfus Affair
    • 2024: Independent Regulators and Financial Stability Evidence from Gubernatorial Election Campaigns in the Progressive Era
    • 2024: Why Did Shareholder Liability Disappear?
    • 2023: Reaching for Yield and the Housing Market: Evidence from 18th-Century Amsterdam
    • 2022: The Big Bang: Stock Market Capitalization in the Long Run
    • 2022: Stocks for the Long Run? Evidence from a Broad Sample of Developed Markets
    • 2021: Global Factor Premiums
    • 2021: Dynastic Control without Ownership: Evidence from Post-war Japan
    • 2021: The Telegraph and Modern Banking Development, 1881-1936
    • 2021: Contracting without Contracting Institutions: The Trusted Assistant Loan in 19th Century China
    • 2021: Rejected Stock Exchange Applicants
    • 2020: Credit and Social Unrest: Evidence from 1930s China
    • 2020: Limited Liability and Investment: Evidence from Changes in Marital Property Laws in the US South, 1840-1850
  • Review of Financial Studies
    • 2023: Inflation and Individual Investors' Behavior: Evidence from the German Hyperinflation
    • 2022: Intermediaries and Asset Prices: International Evidence since 1870
    • 2021: Household Inequality, Entrepreneurial Dynamism, and Corporate Financing
    • 2020: Financial Inclusion, Human Capital, and Wealth Accumulation: Evidence from the Freedman's Savings Bank
    • 2019: Private Contracting, Law and Finance
  • Quarterly Journal of Economics
    • 2024: Wealth of Two Nations: The U.S. Racial Wealth Gap, 1860-2020
    • 2022: Reshaping Global Trade: The Immediate and Long-Run Effects of Bank Failures
    • 2022: Sovereign Bonds since Waterloo
    • 2021: Banking Crises without Panics
  • American Economic Review
    • 2024: Long-Run Trends in Long-Maturity Real Rates, 1311-2022
    • 2024: The Ends of 27 Big Depressions
    • 2022: Measuring Geopolitical Risk
    • 2021: The Intergenerational Effects of a Large Wealth Shock: White Southerners after the Civil War
    • 2020: Upping the Ante: The Equilibrium Effects of Unconditional Grants to Private Schools
    • 2020: Factory Productivity and the Concession System of Incorporation in Late Imperial Russia, 1894-1908
  • Journal of Political Economy
    • 2024: Foreign Debt, Capital Controls, and Secondary Markets: Theory and Evidence from Nazi Germany
    • 2022: The Effects of Banking Competition on Growth and Financial Stability: Evidence from the National Banking Era
    • 2021: Discrimination, Managers, and Firm Performance: Evidence from 'Aryanizations' in Nazi Germany
    • 2020: Income and Wealth Inequality in America, 1949-2016
  • Queen's University Belfast
    • 2024: Why Did Shareholder Liability Disappear?
    • 2019: Private Contracting, Law and Finance
  • Search