浅议我国证券市场中的信用交易

随着经济和技术的不断发展,投资者不得不面对一个新的时代——信用交易时代。发达国家早已建立了信用交易制度,但是我国证券市场还存在着很多问题,尚未建立信用交易制度。文章讨论了证券市场信用交易的主要模式,以及我国证券市场信用交易的必要性,提出了建立我国证券市场信用交易制度的建议。     

The credit relationship between Henry III and merchants of Douai and Ypres, 1247–70

This article looks at an important but neglected aspect of medieval sovereign debt, namely ‘accounts payable’ owed by the Crown to merchants and employees. It focuses on the unusually well‐documented relationship between Henry III, King of England between 1216 and 1272, and Flemish merchants from the towns of Douai and Ypres, who provided cloth on credit to the royal wardrobe. From the surviving royal documents, we reconstruct the credit advanced to the royal wardrobe by the merchants of Ypres and Douai for each year between 1247 and 1270, together with the king's repayment history. The interactions between the king and the merchants are then analysed. The insights from this analysis are applied to the historical data to explain the trading decisions made by the merchants during this period, as well as why the strategies of the Yprois sometimes differed from those of the Douaissiens.     

London creditors and the fifteenth‐century depression

Evidence of debts owed to Londoners, and contested before the royal Court of Common Pleas, allows an examination of the role of London creditors in the English depression of the fifteenth century and a reassessment of its causes. In this article, four main issues are examined. What is the nature of the Court of Common Pleas evidence (section I)? What were the three main forms of credit offered by Londoners—unsecured cash loans, sales of goods on credit, and written instruments called bonds (section II)? What is yielded by decadal analysis of Londoners’ extension of credit in the fifteenth century—making direct comparisons with Nightingale's published Statute Merchant and Staple data (section III)? What defines, in modern economic terms, the claim of so‐called ‘monetarist’ historians that credit was actively withdrawn during the depression, and how is this verified by the actions of London creditors (section IV)? It is concluded that the records of the Court of Common Pleas provide the detailed evidence monetarist historians have previously lacked both to prove that Londoners actively withdrew credit during the fifteenth century and to demonstrate that they employed pure equilibrium credit rationing in order to do so.     

Extending home ownership before the First World War: the case of the Co‐operative Permanent Building Society, 1884–19131

Formed in the mid‐nineteenth century, the building societies grew rapidly from their humble beginnings as localized ‘self‐help’ institutions to become the dominant players in the house mortgage market by the interwar period. Throughout their early history, the societies presented themselves as champions of home ownership among the working classes, but historians of housing have generally disputed the role that building societies played, or could have played, in extending home ownership before the First World War. The case study presented in this article shows that it was possible for a building society to lend to working‐class borrowers, and that home ownership before the First World War was not beyond the grasp of such people. While it was undoubtedly an exception within the movement, the Co‐operative Permanent Building Society showed a genuine commitment to working‐class owner‐occupation, providing the majority of its loans to both skilled and unskilled workers on easy repayment terms. How it was able to overcome the adverse selection and moral hazard risks involved in lending to such groups of people is the focus of this article.     

British working‐class household composition,labour supply,and commercial leisure participation during the 1930s

The early twentieth century constituted the heyday of the ‘breadwinner–homemaker’ household, characterized by a high degree of intra‐household functional specialization between paid and domestic work according to age, gender, and marital status. This article examines the links between formal workforce participation and access to resources for individualized discretionary spending in British working‐class households during the late 1930s, via an analysis of household leisure expenditures. Leisure spending is particularly salient to intra‐household resource allocation, as it constitutes one of the most highly prioritized areas of individualized expenditure, especially for young, single people. Using a database compiled from surviving returns to the Ministry of Labour's national 1937/8 working‐class expenditure survey, we examine leisure participation rates for over 600 households, using a detailed set of commercial leisure activities together with other relevant variables. We find that the employment status of family members other than the male breadwinner was a key factor influencing their access to commercial leisure. Our analysis thus supports the view that the breadwinner–homemaker household was characterized by strong power imbalances that concentrated resources—especially for individualized expenditures—in the hands of those family members who engaged in paid labour.     

Rating the UK: the British government's sovereign credit ratings, 1976–8

The UK received its first sovereign credit ratings in 1978. Despite having required financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund only 18 months earlier, the British government managed to secure ‘triple‐A’ ratings from both Standard and Poor's and Moody's. Both assessments of creditworthiness reflected improving economic conditions but also British efforts to influence the sovereign ratings process. The Bank of England and the Treasury sought guidance from American investment banks to prepare for the ratings process and then controlled the flow of information available to the rating agencies accordingly, stressing the strengths of the national economy and downplaying the weaknesses. The British government subsequently launched its first bond issue in the New York market to high levels of investor demand. Consideration of these achievements complements the historiography concerning Britain's economic fortunes in the late 1970s. Scrutiny of events also offers a rare glimpse into the confidential sovereign ratings process. Both agencies relied on a combination of quantitative and qualitative evaluations of the UK. In addition, this article highlights the existence of a unique period in the history of sovereign credit ratings. From 1974 to 1985, the ratings industry enjoyed a cautious revival focused principally on ‘triple‐A’ borrowers.     

The Ties that Bind: The Decision to Co‐Offend in Fraud

It is frequently observed that fraud has a greater economic impact on society than any other category of crime. Arguing that both research and practitioner frameworks in auditing and forensic accounting have tended to adopt an individualizing perspective predicated primarily on solo offending, this article adopts an inductive approach to consider why individuals co‐offend in fraud. It reports the results of a set of interviews with 37 individuals convicted of a range of frauds including financial statement fraud, insider trading, credit card fraud, money laundering, and asset misappropriation. In each instance, the fraud was perpetrated by a group of two or more co‐offenders. Based on inductive, exploratory case coding, we find that reasons for co‐offending vary according to the type of bond that exists between co‐offenders. Two dimensions of fraudulent co‐offending are identified—the primary beneficiary of the fraud and the nature of group attachment—to derive three distinct archetypes of bonds between co‐offenders: (1) individual‐serving functional bonds, (2) organization‐serving functional bonds, and (3) affective bonds. Key elements of each archetype as well as their impact on the decision to co‐offend are examined. Our findings suggest that the social nature of fraud is not merely an incidental feature of the crime but is instead a potential key to understanding its etiology and some of its distinctive features. They also support the need for diagnostic tools to move beyond individualistic analyses of fraud toward a broader, group‐sensitive assessment of fraud risk.     

Access to agricultural extension,credit and markets among small‐scale farmers in southern Zambia

This article used survey data to determine the extent to which small‐scale farm households in the Choma district of Zambia's southern province have access to agricultural extension services, credit and markets. The findings show that the majority of the sample households had access to extension and credit services. They also showed that the resource base or wealth of the households — as manifested by farm size, livestock ownership and human capital or management capacity (the household head's training in agriculture) — is a significant factor when accounting for differential access to extension and credit. On the other hand, study findings suggest that farm households are facing problems with marketing their produce under the liberalised agricultural marketing system. Based on these findings, the article discusses recommendations for providing solutions to some of the problems affecting small‐scale farmers in accessing production services.     

Building an alternative economic network? Consumer cooperation in Scotland from the 1870s to the 1960s†

There is growing interest in the ways in which, and the values according to which, economic activity is undertaken. For instance, mutual ownership has been identified as one means of helping to ‘redeem’ capitalism. This article engages with such issues by examining aspects of the behaviour of consumer cooperative societies in Scotland from the 1870s to the 1960s. It starts by discussing whether cooperatives represent a means of conceptualizing and undertaking economic activity that provides an alternative to the paradigm of investor‐led (neo)liberal capitalism. From this, and an outline history of consumer cooperatives in Scotland, it identifies two variables—dividend on purchases and funds for education—as proxies for the values underpinning cooperatives’ economic behaviour. Analysis of these variables indicates the existence of distinct cultures of cooperation, notably in the Glasgow and Edinburgh areas. The article concludes by offering two ‘lessons from history’ for those interested in alternative economic networks. The first is that cooperation can, and has, conceptualized and sustained an alternative to the dominant (neo)liberal economic paradigm. The second is that the scaling‐up of such voluntaristic economic thought and behaviour is unlikely to present a macro‐level challenge to it.     

If the landlord so wanted . . . Family,farm production,and land transfers in the manorial system1

The manorial system was a salient feature of the pre‐industrial economy in Europe from the early middle ages until the late nineteenth century. Despite its importance, it is not usually the main focus of eighteenth‐ and early nineteenth‐century European economic history. Looking at a vital manorial economy, this article deals with land transmissions, a crucial factor in the socioeconomic reproduction of pre‐industrial societies, and demonstrates both similarities and important differences between the tenants on manorial land and freeholders. Although their strategies were often similar, we show that the manorial system consisted of a two‐party government—the landlord and the tenant—whose interests did not always coincide. In the nineteenth century, market expansion and commercialization promoted more active landlord strategies in terms of demesne expansions and by means of implementing short‐term leases. This made intergenerational transfers within the family increasingly difficult for tenants.     

‘Stop‐go’ policy and the restriction of postwar British house‐building

From the mid‐1950s to the early 1980s the Treasury and the Bank of England successfully advocated a policy of restricting both private and public sector house‐building, as a key but covert instrument of their wider ‘stop‐go’ macroeconomic policy framework. While the intensity of restrictions varied over the economic cycle, private house‐building was restricted (through limiting mortgage availability) for almost all this period. This was achieved by keeping building society interest rates low relative to other interest rates and thus starving the building society movement of mortgage funds. Mortgage restriction was never publicly discussed and sometimes operated alongside ambitious housing targets and well‐publicized policy initiatives to boost housing demand. This article outlines the evolution of house‐building restriction, together with its impacts on the housing sector and the wider economy. We review the evolution of the policy framework and its consequences, compare the level and stability of British house‐building during this period—historically and relative to other countries—and undertake time‐series econometric analysis of its impacts on both house‐building and house prices. Finally, implications for debates regarding stop‐go policy, Britain's housing problem, and the distributional consequences of government macroeconomic policy are discussed.     

Finance and long‐term development issues in Southeast Asia

This article analyses Southeast Asian finance over more than a century in light of three issues: the realisation of finance‐leading development; indigenous entrepreneurship; and effective credit provision in rural areas. Colonial currency board systems and non‐interventionist government characterised finance in pre‐World War II Southeast Asia. There was decisive change after independence to a variety of state‐directed, or indeed socialist, attempts to overcome unfavourable pre‐war development legacies. Despite these departures, the article finds that throughout Southeast Asian history, finance rarely, if ever, led development. Today, indigenous entrepreneurship, explored for Malaysia, is generally either bolstered by political patrons or even entirely substituted for by state finance. More positively, market‐aware state initiatives in microfinance may offer a realistic institutional alternative to rural Southeast Asia's historic reliance on informal finance.     

A review of trade trends: South Africa and the Indian Ocean Rim

Since 1990, intense diplomatic efforts have taken place to secure and negotiate trade treaties with South Africa's traditional trading partners (the European Union, in particular) and those countries in close geographic proximity. This article examines South Africa's trade links with some of its ‘non‐traditional’ trading partners, in particular the countries of the Indian Ocean Rim (IOR), in an attempt to ascertain the nature of the trade and its importance vis‐a‐vis the rest of the world. An examination of trade data for the years 1992‐5 indicates that trade with the IOR consists mainly of the mutual exchange of natural resource products and that this trade is growing much faster than South Africa ‘s trade in general. Given this trade dynamism, South Africa should pay increasing attention to international relations with these countries. South African trade with the Rim was also found to differ from trade with the rest of the world in that it comprises the mutual exchange of natural resource‐based products. This research shows that our imports and exports are positively related to the gross domestic product of our trading partners, and negatively related to their population size and distance from South Africa. Also, more open economies have absorbed more exports from South Africa. There is some ambiguity as to the role that distance plays in determining the level of imports into this country. The intensity indices computed in this article have to be viewed in the light of this research.     

Flight‐to‐safety and the credit crunch: a new history of the banking crises in France during the Great Depression†

Despite France's importance in the interwar world economy, the scale of the French banking crises of 1930–1 and their consequences have never been fully assessed quantitatively. The lack of banking regulation severely limited the availability of balance sheet data. Using a new dataset of individual balance sheets from more than 300 banks, this article shows that the crises were much more severe than previously thought, although they did not affect the main commercial banks. By reconstructing financial flows, this study shows that the fall in bank credit was mostly driven by a flight‐to‐safety by deposits, from banks to savings institutions and the central bank. The decrease in bank deposits due to bank runs was offset by an increase in deposits with savings institutions, with the central bank, and in cash hoarding, whereas the decrease in bank credit was not offset by an increase in loans from non‐bank financial institutions. In line with the gold standard mentality, cash deposited with savings institutions and the central bank was used to decrease marketable public debt and increase gold reserves, rather than pursuing countercyclical policies. Despite massive capital inflows and rising aggregate money supply, France suffered from a severe, persistent credit crunch.     

The making of a fiscal state in Song China, 960–1279

In light of the Schumpeterian paradigm, this article explores the rise of the tax state in eleventh‐century China and its further transition towards a fiscal state until the Mongol conquest in 1279. By the late eleventh century in the Song dynasty, two‐thirds of state revenues came from taxing non‐agricultural sectors, especially from the collection of excise. The Song state became the first sustainable tax state in global history, as manifested in three major aspects: monetization; indirect taxation; and centralization and professionalization in the tax administration. The boundary of the Song tax state was largely confined to urban settlements. In rural areas, the state gave up the collection of commercial taxes by farming out this right to local elites. In the twelfth century, as traditional tax revenues fell far short of supporting military defence, the Song administration utilized credit instruments. Around 1200, the amount of redeemable promissory notes first exceeded that of annual tax revenues. This shift from tax‐based public finance to credit‐based public finance completed the transition towards a fiscal state. Nonetheless, this development in the fiscal state was still at an early stage and proved to be unstable. Toward the end of the Southern Song, hyperinflation caused by the over‐issuance of promissory notes seriously threatened the economy.     

Indigenous accumulation in the Kimberley during the early years of ‘self‐determination’, 1968–1975

This article — using empirical data gathered from, among other sources, the Western Australian State Records Office, National Archives, and Hansard — traces the trajectory of indigenous owned businesses in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. As part of the analysis, the article investigates the main reasons for a shift to the development policy of ‘self‐determination’ during the early 1970s. As well, there is recognition of the major contribution made by an emerging Aboriginal leadership to the evolving policy regime. In doing so, there is a critical re‐evaluation of the origins of, and support for, successful indigenous owned business enterprises.     

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.     

Is there anything real about real wages? A history of the official British cost of living index, 1914–62

This article explores the history of the cost of living index, tracing its evolution from its introduction in 1914 as a device designed to furnish an adequate evidential base for the tariff reform debate, through to the mid‐twentieth century, when it had become one of the most important measures in the British economy, influencing the wages of millions of workers. By embedding the index within the wider economic, political, and social histories of the period, the article presents a consideration of how it came to exert such influence over the economy, and why, despite its widely acknowledged inadequacies, the index remained tied to a rough estimation of a pre‐1914 pattern of working‐class expenditure until 1947. Through examining the debates surrounding its compilation and the context in which decisions were taken about its modification, it is demonstrated that, far from being a neutral statistical measure, the official cost of living index was essentially political in nature.     

Did the 48‐hour week damage Britain's industrial competitiveness?1

Britain's 1919 introduction of a 48‐hour week for industrial workers has been highlighted as a key factor depressing its relative labour productivity. This largely ignores both any potential offset to lower hours from higher hourly productivity and the fact that the 48‐hour week was also introduced in almost all other industrialized nations (generally involving substantially greater reductions in hours). We examine the international context and the short‐term impact on British productivity, focusing on three major export industries—coal, cotton, and iron and steel. Britain did not suffer any significant relative productivity loss in these industries, while reduced working hours are shown to have been partially compensated for by higher hourly productivity.     

The City of London and slavery: evidence from the first dock companies, 1795–18001

Through analysing the composition of the founding shareholders in the West India and London Docks, this article explores the connections between the City of London and the slave economy on the eve of the abolition of the slave trade. It establishes that over one‐third of docks investors were active in slave‐trading, slave‐ownership, or the shipping, trading, finance, and insurance of slave produce. It argues that the slave economy was neither dominant nor marginal, but instead was fully integrated into the City's commercial and financial structure, contributing materially alongside other key sectors to the foundations of the nineteenth‐century City.