Suchergebnisse

Until the 1790s marine insurance in the United States was organized by brokers and underwritten by private individuals. Beginning in 1792, however, the private underwriters had to compete with newly formed marine insurance corporations. Each organizational form had advantages and disadvantages. This article uses archival data from a private underwriter and a corporation to study how the competition between these different organizational forms was affected by a powerful exogenous shock which substantially increased the risks to American merchant shipping in the late 1790s: the "Quasi-War" between the United States and France.

AbstractThis article compares a variety of theoretical approaches to conceptualizing institutional change. Our goal is neither to discover the 'best' theory, nor to attempt to build a new one. Rather, we wish to compare how the theories we consider agree or differ with respect to the causes, process, and outcomes of institutional change. Some of the theories we discuss emphasize the deliberate creation of institutions through the political process, while others emphasize the spontaneous emergence of institutions through evolutionary processes. Still others combine elements of evolution and design. We differentiate a variety of approaches to conceptualizing the interaction between formal and informal rules. We discuss recent theories based on the 'Equilibrium View' of institutions, and theories emphasizing the role of habit, learning, and bounded rationality. We also consider theoretical explanations for institutional inertia and path-dependence.

Over the last fifteen years, scholars have documented the rapid development of the U.S. financial system between the ratification of the Constitution in 1788 and the Civil War. To date, most of this work has concentrated on commercial banks and securities markets while neglecting the roles early marine, fire, life, and other insurers played in American financial and economic development. This article seeks to redress the balance by presenting new data on the number and authorized capitalizations of specially incorporated insurers in all states prior to 1861, by analyzing agency problems within the insurance industry, and by describing the economic roles fulfilled by those hitherto underappreciated corporate financial intermediaries.