Dividends of development : securities markets in the history of US capitalism, 1865-1922 / Mary A. O'Sullivan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

O'Sullivan, Mary A., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Securities--United States.

Securities.

Economic development.

United States.

Capital market--United States.

Capital market.

Securities industry--United States.

Securities industry.

Capitalism--United States.

Capitalism.

Economic development--United States.

Physical Description:

xvi, 384 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2016.

Summary:

The unprecedented importance of finance in our societies, as well as its central role in provoking economic crises, has generated an enormous interest in understanding the historical origins and evolution of modern financial systems. Today the U.S. economy is seen as an archetype of a capitalist system in which securities markets play a central role. Moreover, these markets have had a high profile in some of the most dramatic moments in U.S. history, often in the context of crises. Dividends of Development: Securities Markets in the History of U.S. Capitalism, 1865-1922, explains how U.S. securities markets became central to the institutional fabric of U.S. capitalism. After the Civil War, these markets had a narrowly circumscribed relationship to the country's real economy, being largely dominated by railroad securities. Moreover, their role in the U.S. financial system was of limited significance given the relatively modest resources that financial institutions committed to investment in, and lending on, corporate securities. That situation was to undergo fundamental change from the Civil War through the end of World War 1 but the development of U.S. securities markets did not occur as a result of a smooth, or even, linear process. 0Instead, the book shows that the transformation of U.S. securities markets occurred through a process that was volatile and time-consuming, unscripted by powerful actors, and driven, above all else, by the dramatic but unstable character of the nation's economic development. These claims about the trajectory, the operation, and the underlying dynamics of the development of U.S. securities markets are brought together in a novel synthesis that portrays the historical evolution of securities markets in the United States as the "dividends" of the country's distinctive trajectory of economic development.

Contents:

1 Fits and Starts in the History of US Securities Markets, 1866-1914 21

2 Yankee Doodle Went to London: Anglo-American Breweries and the London Securities Market, 1888-1892 74

3 An Inauspicious Beginning: Early US Flirtations with Industrial Securities, 1889-1897 108

4 The Truth about the Trusts: Propitious Conditions for US Markets for Industrial Securities, 1397-1902 146

5 From Undigested to Indigestible: US Industrials in the Panic of 1907 189

6 Wall Street on the Defensive, 1908-1913 231

7 Too Much Ado about Morgan's Men: The US Securities Markets, 1908-1914 273

8 The Wages of War, 1914-1922 311.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 365-376) and index.

ISBN:

9780199584444

0199584443

OCLC:

945088408