‘The rules of the game’: London finance,Australia, and Canada,c.1900–14

It is often asserted that, between 1865 and 1914, economic dependence on British capital subjected settler societies to an unofficial imperialism wielded by the City of London. This article argues that both advocates and critics of such models, particularly in the recent controversy over ‘gentlemanly capitalism’, pay insufficient attention to the City itself. Using the Edwardian City's connections with Australia and Canada, it illustrates the range of financial intermediaries involved and explores their perceptions of political economy in these countries. It concludes that the City's influence (or ‘structural power’) was limited by its internal divisions and hazy conceptions of political economy.     

The Declining Value‐relevance of Accounting Information and Non‐Information‐based Trading: An Empirical Analysis*

Recently, a growing body of literature has suggested that financial statements have lost their value‐relevance because of a shift from a traditional capital‐intensive economy to a high‐technology, service‐oriented economy. These conclusions are based on studies that find a temporal decline in the association between stock prices and accounting information (earnings and book values). This paper empirically tests a theoretical prediction arising from the noisy rational expectations equilibrium model that suggests that the decline could be driven by non‐information‐based (NIB) trading activity, because such trading reduces the ability of stock prices to reflect accounting information. Specifically, Dontoh, Radhakrishnan, and Ronen (2004) show that when NIB trading increases, the R²s of a regression of stock price on accounting information declines. Our empirical tests confirm this prediction; that is, the decline in the association between stock prices and accounting information as measured by R²s is driven by an increase in NIB trading.     

The scope and structure of the Danish negro slave trade

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine the scope and structure of the Danish negro slave trade in the second half of the eighteenth century. This, it will be shown, did not consist merely of a Danish triangular slave trade within a closed Danish mercantilist colonial system: it was based upon extensive cooperation with other slave trading nations both in Africa and the West Indies. The Danish slave trade embraced three branches: slaves imported into St. Croix for employment, a transit slave trade at St. Thomas and a triangular slave trade. The present paper examines these largely independent aspects of the Danish slave trade, surveys the economic background and attempts to elucidate the edict of 16 March 1792, abolishing the trade.     

Slave prices,the African slave trade,and productivity in the Caribbean, 1674–18071

We draw wide‐ranging implications about slave productivity change by making use of newly collected data on the prices paid for nearly 230,000 slaves as they arrived in the Americas from Africa between 1674 and 1807. Prices for the product that most slaves were destined to produce‐sugar‐are also available. Together the comprehensive series allow us to derive annual measures of average slave productivity and to compare productivity trends across different sectors of the Caribbean. Average productivity rose throughout the Caribbean, and the pattern of average productivity change across regions was similar, indicating an open slave market. These averages mask sharp differences in the growth of demand for slaves among regions, as reflected by their slave populations. Between 1700 and 1790 the increase in demand ranged from 90 per cent in Barbados to 600 per cent in Jamaica and Cuba; while total factor productivity overall may have doubled. The slave trade accommodated the rising demand. It also served to offset population attrition among the slaves.     

Yorkshire and Lancashire ascendant: England's textile exports to New York and Philadelphia, 1750–1805

This article uses American merchants' papers to identify the leading English textile exporters to New York and Philadelphia (1750–1805). It shows that Yorkshire and Lancashire took the initiative from London after 1783. The north's ascendancy stemmed from refinements to a well‐functioning trading system rather than from the creation of wholly new channels of trade. The emergent exporters of Leeds and Manchester were driven as much by the dictates of sales as of manufacturing; their factory investments were just one component of a series of connections with production. American importers retained their role as intermediaries between English exporters and backcountry retailers.     

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INTERNATIONAL EQUITY MARKET BEHAVIOUR AND THE JSE

This paper investigates empirically the relationship between domestic and international market returns and volatilities, using the London Stock Exchange as the international market proxy. In order to address problems of widely differing bourse composition, the relationships are tested at both the broad bourse index level and the sectoral sub‐indices level. The paper finds significant evidence of a positive relationship between foreign returns and domestic returns and, in addition, between foreign volatility and domestic volatility. It is found that, for most sectors, the main association period is during the same concurrent trading day, although there are additional significant lags present in most of the series. Strong evidence is also found that the magnitude of volatility on the JSE and most of its sub‐indices reacts far more to negative shocks than it does to positive shocks.     

The Impact of Firm Size and Liquidity on the Cost of External Finance in Africa

Established illiquidity measures are constructed for emerging markets in Africa and used to determine which best explains trading costs. Costs of equity are derived from an augmented Capital Asset Pricing Model for a sample of emerging financial markets generally ignored in the literature. These include: South Africa and Namibia, three countries in North Africa and four in Sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA), plus London and Paris as examples of integrated markets. Minimum variance portfolios are constructed and asset weights derived, with the sample divided into countries dependent on their legal regime. Portfolio weights are shown to be directly related to well‐regulated markets with high standards of corporate governance and disclosure, and firms seeking cost‐effective finance from SSA stock markets are at a distinct disadvantage compared with those in Northern Africa, South Africa and, in particular, London and Paris.     

Informal trading in Soweto

Informal sector trading is re‐examined five years after initial investigations in Soweto. Structural changes in informal trading are manifestations of rising unemployment in the formal economy. More important is the widening differentiation between business enterprises at the apex of the informal spectrum with substantial turnover and employment opportunities through to most informal enterprises operating at ‘survival’ levels. These results confirm the domination of the laws of supply and demand in informal trading and emphasize the free market character of the sector.     

GDP in the Dutch Cape Colony: The National Accounts of a Slave‐Based Society

New estimates of the gross domestic product of the Dutch Cape Colony (1652‐1795) suggest that the Cape was one of the most prosperous regions during the eighteenth century. This stands in sharp contrast to the perceived view that the Cape was an “economic and social backwater,” a slave economy with slow growth and little progress. Following a national accounts framework, we find that Cape settlers' per capita income is similar to the most prosperous countries of the time – Holland and England. We trace the roots of this result, showing that it is partly explained by a highly skewed population structure and very low dependency ratio of slavery, and attempt to link the eighteenth‐century Cape Colony experience to twentieth‐century South African income levels.     

Copper sheathing and the British slave trade

British slave traders were early and rapid adopters of the new technique of sheathing ships' hulls with copper. From the 1780s this innovation increased sailing speeds of British slave ships by about a sixth, prolonged the ships' lives by at least a half, and reduced the death rates of slaves on the middle passage by about half. It was, above all, the fall in death rates, and possibly the improved condition of surviving slaves, that made the investment so compelling. Copper sheathing may have paid for itself in a single voyage, even though it was usually good for several. By the 1790s few slave ships, even if making only a single voyage, were uncoppered. These results confirm that copper sheathing was one of the major improvements in shipping productivity before the use of iron and steam in the mid‐nineteenth century.     

低碳经济下碳排放权法律问题探讨

文章通过对我国低碳经济下碳排放面临的法律问题进行分析,提出碳排放行为涉及多种法律关系,碳排放权是一种特殊的用益物权,碳排放权交易合同是一种特殊的民事合同,以及出台《碳排放权交易法》等建议,从而为规范我国碳排放权交易市场的发展提供理论依据。     

Regulation,rent‐seeking,and the Glorious Revolution in the English Atlantic economy

The rapid rise of England's colonial commerce in the late seventeenth century expanded the nation's resource base, stimulated efficiency improvements across the economy, and was important for long‐term growth. However, close examination of the interests at play in England's Atlantic world does not support the Whiggish view that the Glorious Revolution played a benign role in this story. In the decades after the Restoration, the cases of the Royal African Company and the Spanish slave trade in Jamaica are used to show that the competition between Crown and Parliament for control of regulation constrained interest groups on either side in their efforts to capture the profits of empire. Stuart ‘tyranny’ was not able to damage growth and relatively competitive (and peaceful) conditions underpinned very rapid increases in colonial output and trade. The resolution of the rules of the Atlantic game in 1689 allowed a consolidated state better to manipulate and manage the imperial economy in its own interests. More secure rent‐seeking enterprises and expensive wars damaged growth and European rivals began a process of catch‐up. The Glorious Revolution was not sufficient to permanently halt economic development but it was sufficient to slow progress towards industrial revolution.     

除息日股票价格波动——基于国际市场的对比实证分析

本文探讨了四个不同地域(美国、英国、日本和中国)的资本市场在金融危机时期,其代表性的蓝筹股在除息日的价格波动行为。实证结果发现:在除息日,对于纽约和上海交易所,股票价格的下跌量等同于红利数额并且没有证据表明超额收益和短期交易的存在;对于东京交易所,股价下跌少于股息量,恰恰相反,伦敦交易所的股票下跌量超过股息额,这表明上述两个交易所的股票在除息日前后存在着异常收益和短期套利交易行为。     

The trans‐Atlantic slave trade and local political fragmentation in Africa

This article examines the possibility that the trans‐Atlantic slave trade influenced the political institutions of villages and towns in precolonial Africa. Using anthropological data, it shows that villages and towns of ethnic groups with higher slave exports were more politically fragmented during the precolonial era. Instrumental variables are used to show that the relationship is causal. It is argued that this fragmentation is important for relative economic development because it still influences political institutions today. This argument is supported by the use of more contemporary data to show that in contemporary Nigeria and Tanzania, areas with higher levels of precolonial political fragmentation have a higher incidence of bribery.     

The impact of ‘stop‐go’ demand management policy on Britain's consumer durables industries, 1952–65

This article examines the impacts of British government ‘stop‐go’ policy on domestic sales of consumer durables over the period 1952–65, via hire purchase restrictions and punitive Purchase Tax rates. Our analysis includes a general review of contemporary evidence regarding the impacts of these measures, a more detailed study of the television sector, and time‐series econometric analysis for both televisions and a representative high‐ticket labour‐saving consumer durable: washing machines. We find that the restrictions had devastating impacts on Britain's consumer durables industries, preventing firms from fully exploiting economies of scale, reducing output growth and international competitiveness, and eroding industrial relations. Government officials were aware of these problems, but considered them a price worth paying to facilitate moves towards sterling convertibility and the re‐establishment of the City as a leading financial and trading centre.     

Children's growth in an adaptive framework: explaining the growth patterns of American slaves and other historical populations

This article presents a new adaptive framework for understanding children's growth in the past. Drawing upon the recent work on adaptive responses in relation to growth, it presents prenatal and postnatal adaptive mechanisms that affect the growth patterns of children. The most novel adaptive response to the historical literature is the prenatal predictive adaptive response where the metabolism and growth trajectory of a child is programmed to match predicted conditions later in life. Having discussed the framework in detail, a reinterpretation of the growth pattern of American slaves is then suggested. It seems likely that a mismatch between relatively good conditions in utero and absolutely appalling conditions in infancy and early childhood led slave children to become extremely stunted by the age of three or four. However, after this age, slave children experienced catch‐up growth because their immune systems had become more developed and because their diet improved tremendously and hookworm exposure was reduced. Thus, it seems that American slave children may have experienced substantial catch‐up growth because they were prenatally programmed for a higher metabolism and growth trajectory. The article concludes by setting out some stylized facts about children's growth in the past and pointing toward areas of future research.     

绥化市城镇化水平地域差异研究

以绥化市10个市县为研究对象,从人口、经济和社会三个方面出发,运用熵值法和综合评价法测算绥化市各市县的城镇化发展水平,结果表明,绥化市各市、县（区）城镇化发展水平差异显著,城镇化发展水平与当地的经济发展水平关系密切。加快城镇化发展应做好以下几点：加强基础设置建设;重点培育龙头企业;大力发展的第三产业;重点培育中心镇。’     

Trends in office rents in the City of London: 1867-1959

This paper details the construction and analysis of a dataset of office lettings, which is used to produce a rent index for the City of London spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It advances prior research through application of a modern version of the repeat measures technique and in coverage of years where office rents have not been previously measured. Results show that there has been no real growth in rents over the period as a whole. However, there have been distinct phases of rental growth and decline that correspond with the wider economic fortunes of the City.     

Demographic trends in late-slavery Jamaica, 1817–32

Early nineteenth-century demographic trends on sugar estates in Jamaica, the most important British Caribbean colony, are examined through the 1817–32 public slave registers. We seek evidence regarding the background to the island's 1831–2 popular insurrection, the immediate cause of the London parliament's vote in 1833 to abolish colonial slavery. Some historians argue that the revolt occurred as ‘political’ effect from a sudden upsurge of metropolitan anti-slavery activism in 1830–1. They believe the uprising broke out despite improvement in enslaved people's material welfare, favoured by many slaveholders to secure population increase after the closure of the British transatlantic slave trade in 1808. Alternative ‘economic’ assessments judge that increasing workloads had been aggravating popular unrest before the revolt. Commercial pressures, and the imminent likelihood of emancipation, allegedly outweighed welfare concerns. The excess of slave deaths over births widened between 1817 and 1832. However, the registers show that demographic deficits resulted mainly from the ageing of the last Africa-born cohorts. Jamaica-born enslaved people became self-reproducing. There was no general pre-1831 regime deterioration. Most slaveholders sought to maintain their Jamaican assets for the long term through pro-natalist measures, and did not expect emancipation. The revolt's causes were thus more ‘political’ than ‘economic’.