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Ethnic and religious fractionalization have important effects on economic growth and development, but their role in internal violent conflicts has been found to be negligible and statistically insignificant. These findings have been invoked in refutation of the Huntington hypothesis, according to which differences of ethnic, religious and cultural identities are the ultimate determinants of conflict. However, fractionalization in all its demographic forms is endogenous in the long run. In this paper, we empirically investigate the impact of violent conflicts on ethno-religious fractionalization. The data involve 953 conflicts that took place in 52 countries in Europe, Africa and the Middle East between 1400 CE and 1900 CE. Besides a variety of violent confrontations ranging from riots, revolts and power wars between secular sovereigns, the data cover religiously motivated confrontations. We document that countries in which Muslim on Christian wars unfolded more frequently are significantly more religiously homogenous today. In contrast, those places where Protestant versus Catholic confrontations occurred or Jewish pogroms took place are more fractionalized, both ethnically and religiously. And the longer were the duration of all such conflicts and violence, the less fractionalized countries are today. These results reveal that the demographic structure of countries in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa still bear the traces of a multitude of ecclesiastical and cultural clashes that occurred throughout the course of history. They also suggest that endogeneity could render the relationship between fractionalization and the propensity of internal conflict statistically insignificant. Finally, instrumenting for conflicts with some geographic attributes and accounting for the endogeneity of fractionalization with respect to ecclesiastical conflicts shows that religous fractionalization likely has negative effects on economic growth.

The dramatic expansion of public and private financial markets in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution has received extensive attention. Despite this, little is known about how ordinary individual investors managed risk within this framework. Using a newly constructed dataset of share ownership for those joint‐stock companies listed in the financial press of the day, we reconstruct individual portfolio holdings for investors in these companies. We examine individual portfolio holdings first for the decade after the Glorious Revolution and then for the years around the South Sea Bubble. Despite a fivefold increase in the number of unique individuals in the market between the 1690s and the 1720s, we find that in each period roughly 80 per cent of those active in the equity market held shares in only one company, even though many shareholders had the capacity or wealth to diversify share portfolios. These outcomes suggest diversification against idiosyncratic liquidity risk. Overall, however, there is limited evidence that individuals were using their financial portfolios to protect against diversifiable shocks. For many, we argue, company‐specific voting and firm governance rules drove market activity.

Au Canada, les détenus transgenres sont extrêmement exposés à diverses formes de violence physique, spirituelle, émotionnelle et psychologique pendant leur incarcération. L'Ontario et la Colombie-Britannique appliquent des politiques structurées qui permettent aux détenus transgenres d'être placés dans un établissement provincial en fonction de l'identité de genre auquel ils et elles s'identifient. Le Service correctionnel du Canada (SCC) n'a pas institué ce genre de politique. Bien que le SCC ait commencé à évaluer les demandes de placement pénitentiaire et de mesures d'adaptation au cas par cas en publiant le Bulletin de politique provisoire 584, aucune politique permanente officielle n'a été établie pour aider les établissements à mettre en œuvre ou à évaluer ce plan. La présente étude porte sur les instruments internationaux pertinents et sur les lois nationales liées à l'incapacité du SCC d'élaborer des politiques claires pour régir le traitement des détenus transgenres. L'absence de telles politiques a entrainé une violation des droits fondamentaux et constitutionnels des détenus transgenres. L'abolition, ou la non-incarcération, est présentée comme la proposition idéale pour lutter contre la discrimination et devrait être sérieusement envisagée par les législateurs et les décideurs politiques. Jusqu'à ce que l'abolition devienne une option réaliste, l'auteure recommande des façons dont le SCC peut mieux protéger ses détenus transgenres dans le respect des cadres nationaux et internationaux actuels.