IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/21822.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Leveraging the British Railway Mania: Derivatives for the Individual Investor

Author

Listed:
  • Campbell, Gareth

Abstract

During the British Railway Mania of the 1840s the promotion and construction of new railways increased dramatically. These new projects were generally financed by shares with uncalled capital, which allowed investors to make payments on an instalment basis over a period of several years. There is evidence that these assets can be regarded as futures or options, implying that investors were purchasing highly leveraged derivatives. The leverage embedded in these assets multiplied both the positive returns during the boom, and the negative returns during the downturn. It also affected the payment schedule for investors as little capital was required initially, but the subsequent ‘calls for capital’ resulted in deleveraging.

Suggested Citation

  • Campbell, Gareth, 2010. "Leveraging the British Railway Mania: Derivatives for the Individual Investor," MPRA Paper 21822, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:21822
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/21822/1/MPRA_paper_21822.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/23577/2/MPRA_paper_23577.pdf
    File Function: revised version
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/29839/1/MPRA_paper_29839.pdf
    File Function: revised version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mitchell, B. R., 1964. "The Coming of the Railway and United Kingdom Economic Growth," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(3), pages 315-336, September.
    2. Gary S. Shea, 2007. "Financial market analysis can go mad (in the search for irrational behaviour during the South Sea Bubble)," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 60(4), pages 742-765, November.
    3. Detken, Carsten & Smets, Frank, 2004. "Asset price booms and monetary policy," Working Paper Series 364, European Central Bank.
    4. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2009. "Moral and Social Constraints to Strategic Default on Mortgages," Economics Working Papers ECO2009/27, European University Institute.
    5. Owen A. Lamont & Richard H. Thaler, 2003. "Can the Market Add and Subtract? Mispricing in Tech Stock Carve-outs," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(2), pages 227-268, April.
    6. Foote, Christopher L. & Gerardi, Kristopher & Willen, Paul S., 2008. "Negative equity and foreclosure: Theory and evidence," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 234-245, September.
    7. Campbell, Gareth, 2010. "Cross-Section of a ‘Bubble’: Stock Prices and Dividends during the British Railway Mania," MPRA Paper 21821, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Black, Fischer & Scholes, Myron S, 1973. "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 637-654, May-June.
    9. Gary S. Shea, 2005. "Understanding financial derivatives during the South Sea Bubble: the case of the South Sea subscription shares," CDMA Working Paper Series 200512, Centre for Dynamic Macroeconomic Analysis.
    10. Campbell, Gareth & Turner, John, 2010. "‘The Greatest Bubble in History’: Stock Prices during the British Railway Mania," MPRA Paper 21820, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Johansen, Soren, 1988. "Statistical analysis of cointegration vectors," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 12(2-3), pages 231-254.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Richard Chamboko & Jorge Miguel Bravo, 2020. "A Multi-State Approach to Modelling Intermediate Events and Multiple Mortgage Loan Outcomes," Risks, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-29, June.
    2. Asish Saha & Hock-Eam Lim & Goh-Yeok Siew, 2021. "Housing Loan Repayment Behaviour in Malaysia: An Analytical Insight," International Journal of Business and Economics, School of Management Development, Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan, vol. 20(2), pages 1-19, September.
    3. John Y. Campbell, 2013. "Mortgage Market Design," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 17(1), pages 1-33.
    4. Goodstein, Ryan & Hanouna, Paul & Ramirez, Carlos D. & Stahel, Christof W., 2017. "Contagion effects in strategic mortgage defaults," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 50-60.
    5. Plamen Nenov, 2013. "Regional Mismatch and Labor Reallocation in an Equilibrium Model of Migration," 2013 Meeting Papers 565, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. Gouriéroux, Christian, 1994. "Modèles économétriques : utilisation et interprétation (les)," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Couverture Orange) 9423, CEPREMAP.
    7. Shai Bernstein & Timothy McQuade & Richard R. Townsend, 2017. "Do Household Wealth Shocks Affect Productivity? Evidence from Innovative Workers During the Great Recession," NBER Working Papers 24011, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Børsum, Øystein, 2010. "Contagious Mortgage Default," Memorandum 10/2010, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    9. Clark, Brian & Hasan, Iftekhar & Lai, Helen & Li, Feng & Siddique, Akhtar, 2021. "Consumer defaults and social capital⋆," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    10. Queirós, Francisco, 2024. "Asset bubbles and product market competition," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 19(1), January.
    11. Khandani, Amir E. & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C., 2013. "Systemic risk and the refinancing ratchet effect," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 29-45.
    12. Ming-Yuan Leon Li & Chun-Nan Chen, 2010. "Examining the interrelation dynamics between option and stock markets using the Markov-switching vector error correction model," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(7), pages 1173-1191.
    13. Haughwout, Andrew & Peach, Richard & Tracy, Joseph, 2008. "Juvenile delinquent mortgages: Bad credit or bad economy?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 246-257, September.
    14. Ramachandran, Lakshmi Shankar & Tayal, Jitendra, 2021. "Mispricing, short-sale constraints, and the cross-section of option returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(1), pages 297-321.
    15. Andersson, Fredrik & Mayock, Tom, 2014. "How does home equity affect mobility?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 23-39.
    16. Huang, Shirley J. & Yu, Jun, 2010. "Bayesian analysis of structural credit risk models with microstructure noises," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(11), pages 2259-2272, November.
    17. Gary S. Shea, 2007. "Arbitrage and Simple Financial Market Efficiency during the South Sea Bubble: A Comparative Study of the Royal African and South Sea Companies Subscription Share Issues," CDMA Working Paper Series 200716, Centre for Dynamic Macroeconomic Analysis.
    18. Andrew Haughwout & Ebiere Okah & Joseph Tracy, 2016. "Second Chances: Subprime Mortgage Modification and Redefault," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(4), pages 771-793, June.
    19. He, Xue-Zhong & Li, Youwei, 2015. "Testing of a market fraction model and power-law behaviour in the DAX 30," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 1-17.
    20. Campbell, Gareth & Turner, John, 2010. "‘The Greatest Bubble in History’: Stock Prices during the British Railway Mania," MPRA Paper 21820, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    bubbles; financial crises; Railway Mania;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • N23 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • G13 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Contingent Pricing; Futures Pricing
    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pra:mprapa:21822. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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.