IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jechis/v67y2007i02p379-409_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Marine Insurance in Britain and America, 1720–1844: A Comparative Institutional Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Kingston, Christopher

Abstract

This article examines how the marine insurance industry evolved in Britain and America during its critical formative period, focusing on the information asymmetries and agency problems that were inherent to the technology of overseas trade at the time, and on the path-dependent manner in which the institutions that addressed these problems evolved. I argue that the market was characterized by multiple equilibria because of a potential lemons problem. Exogenous shocks and endogenous institutional development combined to bring about a bifurcation of institutional structure, the effects of which persist to the present day.

Suggested Citation

  • Kingston, Christopher, 2007. "Marine Insurance in Britain and America, 1720–1844: A Comparative Institutional Analysis," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 67(2), pages 379-409, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:67:y:2007:i:02:p:379-409_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022050707000149/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brousseau, Eric & Raynaud, Emmanuel, 2011. "“Climbing the hierarchical ladders of rules”: A life-cycle theory of institutional evolution," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 65-79.
    2. Rik P. & William Goetzmann & K. Rouwenhorst, 2009. "New Evidence on the First Financial Bubble," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2542, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Nov 2009.
    3. Candela, Rosolino A. & Geloso, Vincent, 2019. "Why consider the lighthouse a public good?," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    4. Rosolino A. Candela & Vincent J. Geloso, 2018. "The lightship in economics," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 176(3), pages 479-506, September.
    5. Frehen, Rik G.P. & Goetzmann, William N. & Geert Rouwenhorst, K., 2013. "New evidence on the first financial bubble," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(3), pages 585-607.
    6. Brousseau, Eric & Garrouste, Pierre & Raynaud, Emmanuel, 2011. "Institutional changes: Alternative theories and consequences for institutional design," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 79(1-2), pages 3-19, June.
    7. van der Heide, Arjen & Kohl, Sebastian, 2022. "Private insurance, public welfare, and financial markets: Alpine and Maritime countries in comparative-historical perspective," MPIfG Discussion Paper 22/4, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    8. Mendonça, Sandro, 2013. "The “sailing ship effect”: Reassessing history as a source of insight on technical change," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(10), pages 1724-1738.
    9. Yang Hu & Les Oxley, 2017. "Exuberance in Historical Stock Prices during the Mississippi and South Seas Bubble Episodes," Working Papers in Economics 17/08, University of Waikato.
    10. Acheson, Graeme G. & Aldous, Michael & Quinn, William, 2022. "The anatomy of a bubble company: The London Assurance in 1720," QUCEH Working Paper Series 22-08, Queen's University Belfast, Queen's University Centre for Economic History.
    11. Wallis, John Joseph, 2011. "Institutions, organizations, impersonality, and interests: The dynamics of institutions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 79(1-2), pages 48-64, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:67:y:2007:i:02:p:379-409_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jeh .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.