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(Alexander Hamilton)的计划，将革命战争债务重组为长期证券，季度利息以货币支付，这一行动或多或少创造了美国国债的现代形式。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。历史学家通常从增强美国政府信用和对该国银行体系的重大提振作用的角度来看待这些行动。当时，美国的银行体系只有三家银行。尽管这些行动对美国随后的经济发展同样重要，但人们对这些行动在创建证券市场方面产生的影响的研究要少得多，这些证券市场让美国政府和企业能够筹集资金，投资者可以从活跃的债券和股票交易市场的流动性中受益。这个项目涉及提取早期美国证券市场的详细量化记录，主要是从当时的报纸上提取，其次是从档案手稿来源和公共记录中提取，并准备分析这些市场的效率特征及其对经济增长的影响的研究。主要调查人员在对1790年至19世纪30年代中期美国债务市场的研究中调查了这些消息来源，当时美国债务被短暂取消。在这个过程中，他们发现，在国会颁布法案时，活跃的债务和股票市场立即在纽约、费城和波士顿等城市涌现，此后不久在巴尔的摩也出现了活跃的债券和股票市场。在这些城市中的每一个城市，报纸通常每周一次报道1790年发行的三次美国债券的价格，以及美国银行股票的价格。这些都是当时的“全国市场”证券。与此同时，银行和保险公司股票、州和市政债券发行以及运输和其他公司企业的“地方”发行市场也反映在报纸的报价中。对全国市场证券月底报价的分析表明，国内城市市场迅速表现出高度的市场间一体化，它们的存在促进了美国证券在海外的流动和相应的外国资本流入美国。该项目将创建一个编码的、计算机化的每周证券价格报价以及定期利息和股息支付的数据库。这个数据库应该会引起其他人的兴趣，包括经济历史学家和金融经济学家。调查人员将利用该数据库调查一系列问题，包括国内和海外证券市场的整合；构建比目前更详细的资产价格、收益率和回报指数所揭示的模式；以及证券市场与银行体系和更广泛的企业发展之间的关系。该项目将探索更大的问题，即金融发展与经济增长的关系。美国很幸运，它的金融体系在其历史之初可以与其他国家的金融体系相媲美。很可能，这种金融体系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.