Online Finance

Along with Christopher Coyle and Gareth Campbell , I've recently had a paper published in the Journal of Financial Stability entitled This Time is Different: Causes and Consequences of British Banking Instability over the Long Run . In this paper, we use bank share prices to measure British banking stability over two centuries. We find that over the long run interest rates, inflation, lending growth and equity prices are leading indicators of instability and that there is a long-run relationship between UK bank instability and the credit-risk premium. This paper is an extension of my Banking in Crisis book, where I look at the institutional and political causes of banking instability rather than their macroeconomic causes and consequences.

My former PhD student Will Quinn has a new QUCEH working paper entitled Squeezing the Bears: Cornering Risk and Limits on Arbitrage during the British Bicycle Mania . In this paper, Will argues that the risk of being cornered effectively resulted in constraints on short selling during during the British Bicycle Mania of the mid-1890s. These constraints on short selling made it very difficult for traders to correct overvalued shares in bicycle companies. Will's paper is one of the first to look at constraints on short selling during historical financial bubbles.

I'm passionate about economic history. I believe that if we want to understand today's world and economy, we need to know the evolution and trajectory of the economy. In addition, our economic past provides us with useful policy lessons for our economic present and future. Finally, economic history has an intrinsic value in and of itself - I'm constantly fascinated about how our ancestors approached economic issues and solved complex economic contracting issues.   My passion for economic history is one of the reasons that I founded the Queen's University Centre for Economic History (QUCEH), which has in turn attracted amazing young academics to Queen's University Belfast . At QUCEH, we are continually thinking of ways of demonstrating the usefulness of economic history to wider society. This week two things demonstrated our commitment to this cause. First, QUCEH entered the Twitterverse - please follow us at @QUCEHBelfast . Second, we d...

One of the highlights of my job is to supervise and mentor PhD students. Two of my students have recently defended their dissertations - Meeghan Rogers and Will Quinn. Congratulations to them both! Meeghan's dissertation looks at corporate finance through the ages and looks at debt volatility, provincial stock exchanges and investment trusts. She has recently started as an assistant professor at Pfeiffer University in North Carolina.   Will's dissertation looks at the British bicycle mania of the mid-1890s. Will starts as a postdoc on financial bubbles at Queen's University Belfast in October. You can read some working papers written by Will and Meeghan here and here .

The Economic History Society has a new blog entitled The Long Run . Along with former PhD student Will Quinn, I have written a post on speculative bubbles and what history teaches us about such episodes. You can read the post here . 

Queen's University Centre for Economic History  is hosting the EurHistock Conference this week. Some of the world's leading financial historians will be presenting papers which speak to current debates in financial economics. The conference programme is available here .

The Magna Carta ("The Great Charter") is a fascinating constitutional document. You can find out more about it at the British Library website . Many view the Magna Carta as the cornerstone of common law legal systems and modern political constitutions.  To celebrate the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, the International Review of Law and Economics has published a special issue on the topic. This special issue attempts to answer the following questions: What did Magna Carta actually say? What economic problems was it solving? Is it a constitutional document or a myth? Why did it endure over eight centuries? What has been its influence? Is it relevant today?