Marine insurance in Britain and America, 1720-1844: A comparative institutional analysis
成果类型：
Article
署名作者：
Amherst College
刊物名称：
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
ISSN/ISSBN：
0022-0507
发表日期：
2007
页码：
379-409
关键词：
摘要：
This article examines how the marine insurance industry evolved in Britain and America during its critical formative period, focusing on the information asymmetries and agency problems that were inherent to the technology of overseas trade at the time, and on the path-dependent manner in which the institutions that addressed these problems evolved. I argue that the market was characterized by multiple equilibria because of a potential lemons problem. Exogenous shocks and endogenous institutional development combined to bring about a bifurcation of institutional structure, the effects of which persist to the present day.