He trading of unlimited liability bank shares in nineteenth-century Ireland: The Bagehot hypothesis

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Queens University Belfast
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050703002493
• 发表日期: 2003
• 页码: 931-958
• 关键词: shareholder liability; Ownership structure; firm

摘要

In the mid-1820s, banks became the first businesses in Great Britain and Ireland to be allowed to form freely on an unlimited liability joint-stock basis. Walter Bagehot warned that their shares would ultimately be owned by widows, orphans, and other impecunious individuals. Another hypothesis is that the governing bodies of these banks, constrained by special legal restrictions on share trading, acted effectively to prevent such shares being transfer-red to the less wealthy. We test both conjectures using the archives of an Irish joint-stock bank. The results do not support Bagehot's hypothesis.