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"(Wright and Smith) have written a remarkably lucid and elegantly organized history that keeps the major themes in view, even while discussing the minutiae of crafting and marketing various new insurance products or of managing the firm and its investment portfolio. As the authors themselves point out, the history of life insurance has not attracted much serious scholarship or inspired writing. Fortunately, Mutually Beneficial has both. It integrates the Guardian's career into a wider account of the American life-insurance business and American economic history more generally, and it manages to do so with a light touch."
--Geoffrey Clark, "Harvard Business History Review"

"(Mutually Beneficial is), without doubt, a major contribution to the economics and history of life insurance in the twentieth century. Wright and Smith have provided, for example, the most comprehensive account yet of product development, and the section on investment strategies is also important. In sum this will make a fine addition to the library of insurance historians, and to financial and business historians more generally."
--Robin Pearson, "Accounting, Business & Financial History"

"The matieral is well documented. The authors have produced a nonvanity company history that goes behind the scenes to describe the company's corporate culture and policies and provide a explanation of how ethical and business precepts have led to consistent profitability."
--"Enterprise & Society"

Mutually Beneficial tells the story of the evolution of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, one of the most important life and health insurers inthe history of the U.S. economy and life insurance industry. Relying on exclusive access to the company's archives, interviews with its current executive officers, the public record, and scholarly articles and monographs, Robert E. Wright and George David Smith provide a strategic analysis of Guardian, from its founding to its standing in the insurance world today.

Mutually Beneficial also describes the origin of Guardian's distinctive approach to business-its corporate culture and policy-and how these principles flow from the ethical and business precepts of its founders. By rigorously attending to its policyholders as a matter of practice as well as principle, Guardian has long been one of the most consistently profitable life insurance firms as measured by return on net wealth. This unique history will be of interest to anyone in the insurance business, as well as financial and economic professionals.

Changing Scotland uses longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey to improve our knowledge and understanding of the impact of devolution on the lives of people in Scotland. It is the first time that BHPS data has been used in this way. The book provides a detailed examination of social, economic, demographic and political differences, especially those involving dynamic behaviour such as residential mobility, unemployment duration, job mobility, income inequality, poverty, health and deprivation, national identity, family structure and other aspects of individual's lives as they change over time. This data provides a 'baseline' for policy formulation and for analysing the impact of subsequent differential developments arising out of devolution. The book is also an invaluable resource for establishing pre-existing differences between England and Scotland and evaluating the impact of policy initiatives by the Scottish Executive.

Modern financial theories enable us to look at old problems in early American Republic historiography from new perspectives. Concepts such as information asymmetry, portfolio choice, and principal-agent dilemmas open up new scholarly vistas. Transcending the ongoing debates over the prevalence of either community or capitalism in early America, Wright offers fresh and compelling arguments that illuminate motivations for individual and collective actions, and brings agency back into the historical equation.

Wright argues that the Colonial rebellion was in part sparked by destabilizing British monetary policy that threatened many with financial insolvency; that in areas without modern financial institutions and practices, dueling was a rational means of protecting one's creditworthiness; that the principle-agent problem led to the institutionalization of the U.S. Constitution's system of checks and balances; and that a lack of information and education induced women to shift from active business owners to passive investors. Economists, historians, and political scientists alike will be interested in this strikingly novel and compelling recasting of our nation's formative decades.

This book explains how six policies collectively called the North American Wildlife Conservation Model (NAWCM), put in place around the turn of the twentieth century, saved numerous iconic big game species from extinction. Rigid adherence to the NAWCM, however, especially its ban on the commercial sale of wild game meat, has allowed deer and some other species to become overabundant pests in areas where hunting pressure recently declined and habitat rebounded. Texas and South Africa have proven that scientific insight and market incentives can combine to prevent game overabundance and decrease the fragility and extend the range of iconic mammal game species. This book outlines how intermediate steps, like proxy hunting and other wildlife regulation reforms, could be used to lure more hunters into the field and move other states towards the Texas model incrementally, thereby minimizing risks to wildlife or human stakeholders.

The nature of America's early economy has been hotly contested for several decades. Historians have often focused on the question of when America became "capitalist," while economists have tried to determine when American economic growth sped up. In The Origins of Commercial Banking in America, Robert E. Wright argues that the ultimate causes of American economic development and transformation into a modern society can be reduced to the causes of American banking. In the first full analysis of the origins of American commercial banking since Bray Hammond's monumental study forty-five years ago, Wright skillfully examines the political and economic forces that contributed to the origins and rise of banks in cities such as Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, as well as in smaller towns servicing rural America. Wright expertly assesses the impact of the war for independence, Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris' policies under the Confederation, the economic and political effects of the postwar depression of 1784-86, the attempts of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 to address the country's economic problems, and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton's financial program under the new Constitution. Wright looks at both the macro and micro sides of issues how state and national governments addressed problems and chartered (and sometimes unchartered banks) as well as how private individuals tried to cope with the need to obtain capital and the effects on them of early bankruptcy laws. He describes the varied and sometimes arcane financial and commercial instruments that existed both before and after the establishment of banks, and how they fostered economic development. We are introduced to an emerging capitalist system struggling to provide capital needed by America's voracious economy. The Origins of Commercial Banking in America is essential reading for anyone interested in the political and economic origins of the early republic."

This book presents the most compelling arguments for and against implementing a basic income guarantee today, in the voice of proponents and critics, in alternating chapters. Tables, figures, and pictures illustrate the key concepts and evidence, which include benefit cliffs and disincentive deserts, time series macroeconomic data, business, economic, and technological change (BETC), artificial intelligence and other general purpose technologies, along with advanced robotics, the environmental Kuznets Curve, income distributions, democracy, social justice, dependence, autonomy, and economic freedom. A neutral, non-partisan tone introduction defines UBI and covers the history of universal income plans, while the conclusion summarizes the main arguments for and against UBI before surveying alternative policies, including universal basic asset, credit, service, job, and training plans.

This work contains primary research texts regarding two centuries of the development of corporate finance in the US and Great Britain. It is designed to help scholars, financial managers, and public policymakers to investigate the historical background of issues in contemporary corporate finance.

This volume offers a selection of texts drawn from the archives on the subject of corporate governance in England and America covering the period 1836-1846. It focuses on the mechanisms that stakeholders use to ensure that their investments are properly used.

This book offers a unique perspective on fascinating historical topic. It presents a comprehensive selection of texts drawn from the archives of corporations in England and America. The book fits into the library collection of any institution concerned with history or finance.

This volume offers a selection of texts drawn from the archives on the subject of corporate governance in England and America. It focuses on the mechanisms that stakeholders use to ensure that their investments are properly used and that any sums owed to them are properly calculated and paid.

This volume offers a selection of texts drawn from the archives on the subject of corporate governance in England and America covering the period 1881-1889. It focuses on the mechanisms that stakeholders use to ensure that their investments are properly used.

This volume offers a selection of texts drawn from the 1891 archives on the subject of corporate governance in England and America. It focuses on the mechanisms that stakeholders use to ensure that their investments are properly used.

This volume offers a selection of texts drawn from the archives on the subject of corporate governance in England and America covering the period 1847-1878. It focuses on the mechanisms that stakeholders use to ensure that their investments are properly used.

This work contains primary research texts regarding two centuries of the development of corporate finance in the US and Great Britain. It is designed to help scholars, financial managers, and public policymakers to investigate the historical background of issues in contemporary corporate finance.

This work contains primary research texts regarding two centuries of the development of corporate finance in the US and Great Britain. It is designed to help scholars, financial managers, and public policymakers to investigate the historical background of issues in contemporary corporate finance.

This volume assembles a broad selection of rare primary resource materials in the form of essays, reports, books and compendia informing on US public finances in the late eighteenth century. It investigates the debates put forward, from which comparisons with today's debt can be drawn.

This volume assembles a broad selection of rare primary resource materials in the form of essays, reports, books and compendia informing on US public finances in the early nineteenth century. It investigates the debates put forward, from which comparisons with today's debt can be drawn.

This volume assembles a broad selection of rare primary resource materials in the form of essays, reports, books and compendia informing on US public finances in the first half of the nineteenth century. It investigates the debates put forward, from which comparisons with today's debt can be drawn.

This volume covers the latter half of the nineteenth century and concepts such as inflation, the international market for bonds, and the complicated structure of the post-war public debt. It focuses on the varying state of the market and possible changes in the public debt's structure.

This work contains primary research texts regarding two centuries of the development of corporate finance in the US and Great Britain. It is designed to help scholars, financial managers, and public policymakers to investigate the historical background of issues in contemporary corporate finance, including: corporate structure and governance; securities issuance; direct and indirect finance; and fraud detection. Key texts in the set include detailed securities market primers like thomas Fortune's Epitome of the Stocks and Publick Funds and Charles Fenn's Compendium of the English and Foreign Funds. There are extended discussions of policy issues contained in Observations on Unlimited and Limited Liability, by William Hawes; two early, specialized treatises on corporate financial law; descriptions of everyday corporate financial practices, from George Rae's The Internal Management of a Country Bank; and early theoretical treatments of corporate finance, including excerpts from Thorstein Veblen's Theory of Business Enterprise and Alfred Marshall's Industry and Trade.

Academic - Financial And Business History - Economics - Law - History; The company archives of England and America are rich repositories of original texts on the subject of governance, a selection of which are published here. Two major issues ripped from the headlines - Japan's prolonged economic slump and the recent Enron debacle in the United States - both point to the importance of corporate governance, the mechanisms that stakeholders use to ensure that their investments are properly used and that any sums owed them for the use of their resources are faithfully calculated and promptly paid in full. Corporate governance seeks, in short, the reduction of the principalagent problem within major business firms. The history of corporate governance, like the history of any subject, can help today's businesses in two ways. First, knowledge of the past can help prevent firms and policymakers from repeating past mistakes. Second, history is also rife with examples of how to do things right. Corporate governance in Britain and the United States in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was far from perfect, yet it was also far from being completely flawed.Anglo-American corporate governance, therefore, offers both warnings and lessons. This new edition from Pickering & Chatto offers a unique perspective on this fascinating historical topic. We present a comprehensive selection of texts drawn from the archives of corporations in England and America. Many of these texts are very rare and very few have ever been re-published before. Corporate governance is an interdisciplinary subject of interest to scholars of history, economics, business history and law. In short this edition fits into the library collection of any institution concerned with history or finance.

This work contains primary research texts regarding two centuries of the development of corporate finance in the US and Great Britain. It is designed to help scholars, financial managers, and public policymakers to investigate the historical background of issues in contemporary corporate finance.

This work contains primary research texts regarding two centuries of the development of corporate finance in the US and Great Britain. It is designed to help scholars, financial managers, and public policymakers to investigate the historical background of issues in contemporary corporate finance.

This work contains primary research texts regarding two centuries of the development of corporate finance in the US and Great Britain. It is designed to help scholars, financial managers, and public policymakers to investigate the historical background of issues in contemporary corporate finance.

In The Wealth of Nations Rediscovered: Integration and Expansion in American Financial Markets, 1780-1850, Robert E. Wright portrays the development of a modern financial sector - with a central bank, a national monetary system, and efficient capital markets - as the driving force behind America's economic transition from agricultural colony to industrial juggernaut. This study applies the economic theory of information asymmetry to our understandings of early US financial development, expanding on scholarship of finance-led economic growth. The book's research is original, incorporating little-used archival material and data on early US securities prices, trading volumes, and stockholder patterns. The topics covered - securities trading, market liquidity, intermediation, banking reform, emerging market success, and foreign investment - are relevant to discussions in today's business community. Drawing from and building upon Adam Smith's lesser-known insights into financial relationships, The Wealth of Nations Rediscovered positions itself on the cusp of emerging paradigm shifts in history and economics.