Anglo-American securities regulation : cultural and political roots, 1690-1860

This book examines the regulation of the earliest securities markets in England and the United States, from their origins in the 1690s through the 1850s. Professor Banner argues that during the reign of Queen Anne a complex and moderately effective body of regulatory control was already extant, reflecting widespread Anglo-American attitudes toward securities speculation. He uses traditional legal materials as well as a broad range of nonlegal sources to show that securities regulation has a much longer ancestry than is often supposed. This book examines the regulation of the earliest securities markets in England and the United States, from their origins in the 1690s until the 1850s. Professor Banner argues that during the reign of Queen Anne a complex and moderately effective body of regulatory control was already extant, reflecting widespread Anglo-American attitudes toward securities speculation. He uses both traditional legal materials (including court opinions, statutes, and legal treatises) and as a broad range of non-legal sources (novels, broadsides, contemporary engravings) to examine contemporary images of stock markets and speculation practices, and he shows that securities regulation has a much longer ancestry than is often supposed. Insights from both legal and cultural history are utilised to explain how popular thought about the securities market was translated into regulation and, reciprocally, how that regulation influenced market structures and the activities of speculators This book examines the regulation of the earliest securities markets in England and the United States, from their origins in the 1690s until the 1850s. Stuart Banner argues that by the reign of Queen Anne a complex and moderately effective body of regulatory control was already extant, reflecting widespread English (and later American) attitudes toward securities speculation. He uses both traditional legal materials (including court opinions, statutes and legal treatises) as well as a broad range of non-legal sources (novels, broadsides, engravings) to examine contemporary images of stock markets and speculation practices, and he shows that securities regulation has a much longer ancestry than is often supposed Two institutional developments in late seventeenth-century England - the beginning of the permanent national debt and the rapid spread of the corporate form of enterprise - caused the volume of English securities transactions to become large enough to give rise to an organized securities market. This is a history of the law governing the earliest stock markets in England and the United States. Professor Banner uses both traditional legal materials and as a broad range of non-legal sources, and shows that securities regulation has a much longer ancestry than is often supposed.

A history of the law governing the earliest stock markets in England and the United States.