Rural financial markets in low-income countries: Recent controversies and lessons

Recently some researchers have criticized traditional agricultural credit policies in low-income countries. This article identifies the major points of controversy between traditional views and these new views and also summarizes the primary lessons learned from these controversies. Savings mobilization, more flexible interest rate policies, less loan targeting, and greater emphasis on improving the quality of financial services in rural areas are new views that are emphasized.     

Making sense of immigration policy: Argentina, 1870–1930

The aim of this article is to disentangle the different forces that shaped Argentinian immigration policy from 1870 to 1930. A new index of immigration policy is presented, showing how immigration restrictions increased over time but, in contrast with the US, Argentina remained open to mass migration until the 1930s. The quantitative evidence presented here suggests that there were economic reasons to restrict immigration prior to the 1930s, namely rising inequality, the closing of the frontier, and the declining relative quality of immigrants. A political economy interpretation helps to understand the long‐run evolution of immigration policy. Labour interests could not be translated into Parliament in a direct way. A large share of workers did not have the right to vote simply because they were foreigners. Inequality influenced immigration policy through social unrest since those negatively affected by massive immigration developed alternative actions: general strikes, labour unrest, and violence. Contrary to what economic theory would have predicted, anti‐immigration legislation came from Argentinian capital and landowners who feared political and social unrest.     

A soft touch? British industry,empire markets,and the self‐governing dominions,c.1870–1914

The belief that Britain's empire markets were soft is well entrenched in the literature. It is, however, a belief that has been largely untested. Indeed, the literature does not even offer an explicit definition of softness. This article attempts to fill this gap by discussing the meaning of the term and then posing the question whether between 1870 and 1914 Britain's fastest growing markets—Australasia and Canada—can in fact reasonably be labelled soft, as has often been assumed. The article concludes that the demand for British imports in these markets was driven more by considerations of income and price than by colonial sentiment or preference.     

Individual investors and local bias in the UK, 1870–1935

This article examines the long‐run evolution of local bias by UK investors between the 1870s and the 1930s. It uses a large sample of nearly 30,000 shareholders based on 197 sets of share records, a large and representative database of the investor population across sectors and time. It investigates the structure and the evolution of local investment preference between shareholders and the companies in which they invested, as measured by the distance between where they lived and corporate headquarters. The study offers evidence of strong initial local investment preference, which declined over time for non‐Londoners, but remained strong for Londoners until the 1930s. Local investment preference of security holders was related to the size of the board of directors and, for wealthy investors, was related to the age of the firm. For large firms, local networks between investors and directors appear stronger when director shareholdings and voting rights were important. This study supports the analytical hypothesis of local informal trust networks between investors and directors as a means to overcome informational asymmetries and weak legal protection, and provides evidence that local preference was a means to curb insider opportunism and private benefits of control.