America's First Securities Markets, 1787-1836: Emergence Development, Integration

1790年，国会颁布了亚历山大汉密尔顿的计划，将革命战争债务重组为长期证券，每季度以硬币支付利息，这一行动或多或少地创造了现代形式的美国国债。第二年，国会通过了汉密尔顿的美国银行计划，这是一家大型公共银行，主要由私人投资者拥有，他们认购了五分之四的股本。历史学家通常认为这些行动提高了美国政府的信用，并对当时只有三家银行的美国银行系统产生了重大推动作用。尽管对美国随后的经济发展同样重要，但对这些行动在创建证券市场方面的影响却研究得少得多，这些市场使美国政府和公司能够筹集资金，使投资者能够从债券和股票发行的活跃交易市场的流动性中受益。 该项目涉及提取早期美国证券市场的详细定量记录，主要来自当时的报纸，较小程度上来自档案手稿来源和公共记录，并准备研究分析这些市场的效率特征及其对经济增长的影响。主要研究人员调查了这些来源，并对1790年至19世纪30年代中期的美国债务市场进行了研究，当时债务被短暂消除。在这个过程中，他们发现，活跃的债券和股票市场在国会颁布法令后立即在纽约、费城和波士顿兴起，不久之后在巴尔的摩也兴起。这些城市的报纸通常每周都会报道1790年发行的三次美国国债的价格，以及美国银行的股价。这些就是当时的“全国市场”证券。与此同时，“地方”发行的银行和保险公司股票、国家和市政债券以及运输和其他公司企业的市场也反映在报纸的报价中。对全国市场证券月末报价的分析表明，国内城市市场迅速表现出高度的市场间一体化，它们的存在有助于美国股市的流动。S.海外证券和相应的外国资本流入美国。 该项目将创建一个编码的计算机化数据库，其中包含每周证券价格报价以及定期利息和股息支付。沿着。这个数据库应该对其他人感兴趣，包括经济历史学家和金融经济学家。调查人员将把数据库应用于一系列问题的调查，包括国内外证券市场的一体化;通过构建比目前更详细的资产价格、收益率和回报率指数所揭示的模式;证券市场与银行系统以及更普遍的公司企业发展之间的关系。该项目将探讨金融发展与经济增长之间关系这一更大的问题。美国很幸运，在其历史之初，拥有一个与其他国家相比毫不逊色的金融体系。这一金融体系很可能对该国经济现代化和增长的早期启动做出了重大贡献。

In 1790, Congress enacted the plan of Alexander Hamilton to restructure Revolutionary War debts into long term securities with quarterly interest to be paid in specie, an action that created the U.S. national debt in more or less its modern form. The following year Congress enacted Hamilton's plan for a Bank of the United States, a large public bank owned mostly by private investors who subscribed for four fifths of its capital stock. Historians generally have viewed these actions in terms of their effects of enhancing the credit of the U.S. government and giving a major boost to the country's banking system, which at the time consisted of only three banks. Much less studied, though no less important for the country subsequent economic development, is the effect these actions had in creating securities markets that allowed American governments and corporations to raise capital and investors to benefit from the liquidity of active trading markets for bond and stock issues. This project invloves extracting a detailed quantitative record of early U.S. securities markets, mostly from newspapers of the era and to a lesser extent from archival manuscript sources and public records, and for preparing studies analyzing the efficiency characteristics of these markets and their implications for economic growth. The principal investigators have surveyed these sources in connection with a study of the market for U.S. debt from 1790 to the mid 1830s, when that debt was briefly eliminated. In the process they discovered that active markets for debt and equity sprang up immediately at the time of Congress's enactments in the cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, and shortly thereafter in Baltimore. In each of these cities newspapers reported, usually with weekly frequency, the prices of the three U.S. debt issues of 1790, as well as the price of U.S. Bank shares. These were the `national market` securities of the day. At the same time, markets for `local` issues bank and insurance company shares, state and municipal debt issues, and transportation and other corporate enterprises were also reflected in newspaper price quotations. Analysis of end of month quotations for the national market securities indicates that the domestic city markets quickly exhibited a high degree of intermarket integration, and that their existence contributed to a flow of U. S. securities overseas and a corresponding inflow of foreign capital to the United States. The project will create a coded, computerized data base of weekly securities price quotations along with periodic interest and dividend payments. This data base should be of interest to others, including economic historians and financial economists. The investigators will apply the data base to investigations of a number of issues, including integration of domestic and overseas securities markets; patterns revealed by construction of more detailed asset price, yield and return indexes than currently exist; and relationships between securities markets and the development of the banking system and, more generally, corporate enterprise. The project will explore the larger question of the relationship of financial development to economic growth. The United States was fortunate to have a financial system that compared favorably with those of other nations at the beginning of its history. It is likely that this financial system made a major contribution to the country's early start on economic modernization and growth.