The Equity Market and U.K. Railway Investment 1831-1850

Extract

If I may be allowed to appropriate the term speculation for the activity of forecasting the psychology of the market, and the term enterprise for the activity of forecasting the prospective yield of assets over their whole life, it is by no means always the case that speculation predominates over enterprise.

The interaction between investment activity and the capital market that has aroused so much discussion in the theoretical literature has also been the subject of considerable attention in historical studies, though in the case of the latter, often without benefit of firm quantitative evidence. One important exception has been the fruitful results of efforts to compile data for British railway investment expenditures and capitalisation, in the nineteenth century. In particular, the work of Mitchell (1964) and Kenwood (1965) has yielded more or less complete and reliable figures of capital expenditure for the periods 1831–1912 (U.K.) and 1825–1875 (Great Britain) respectively. More recently Hawke and Reed (1969) have provided separate series for share and loan capital raised over the period 1825–1912. Subsequently, Mitchell has also produced separate figures for gross and net investment in both current and constant price terms, though the net investment and constant price series are so far only available in published form for the period 1870–1912. Additional data include Gayer, Rostow and Schwartz’s ( 1953)