Charles R. Hickson

The effect of age on the satisfaction of academics with teaching and research

The core activities of university teachers are in the areas of teaching and research. This article addresses the effect of age on the satisfaction of academics on these activities. Towards this end, a questionnaire was designed including several demographic questions such as age, gender, and rank. The questionnaire was administered to 1,102 university teachers in the UK. A total of 554 responses were received, giving a response rate of 50.3 per cent. Our results indicate that age has quite a different effect on academic teaching staff from on academic research staff. For example, the effect of age on teaching satisfaction indicates that the job satisfaction decreases with age but at a decreasing rate. On the other hand, our results for research satisfaction indicate that age affects job satisfaction positively but at a decreasing rate. Other reported regression analyses indicate that both teaching and research job satisfaction increase with rank and that women tend to be slightly more satisfied in their career than male counterparts. The findings from the latter regression analyses reveal somewhat weak relationships.

Rule Britannia!: British Stock Market Returns, 1825-1870

This article presents a new series of monthly equity returns for the British stock market for the period 1825-1870. In addition to calculating capital appreciation and dividend yields, the article also estimates the effect of survivorship bias on returns. Three notable findings emerge from this study. First, stock market returns in the 1825-1870 period are broadly similar for Britain and the United States, although the British market is less risky. Second, real returns in the 1825-1870 period are higher than in subsequent epochs of British history. Third, unlike the modern era, dividends are the most important component of returns.

Some aspects of overall job satisfaction: a binomial logit model

While there has been several job satisfaction studies, very few of them are about the university teachers or academics in general. The present work examines not only how satisfied UK academics are with their primary tasks of teaching and research, but also their satisfaction with their pay. Using a binomial logit analysis on a survey data, the study found a strong positive relationship between pay satisfaction and gender, indicating that women academics are more satisfied than the men counterparts. The study also found that research and teaching satisfaction are negatively affected with increasing age and length of service in higher education respectively. Unsurprisingly, research and pay satisfaction are positively associated with rank. It was found that the engineering staff members are dissatisfied with their research but more significantly, their teaching. The implications of these findings are explored.

The Genesis of Corporate Governance: Nineteenth-Century Irish Joint-Stock Banks

Up until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the corporate form of business enterprise was uncommon in the British Isles because firms could not adopt this organisational form without prior state approval. However, following the repeal of the Bubble Act in 1825, there was a substantial growth in the number of joint-stock companies, especially in the banking, insurance and railways sectors. This growth came about due to the state’s increased disposition towards granting charters and the introduction of legislation which permitted banks to adopt the corporate form without requiring explicit state approval. Although it is commonly believed that the Berle and Means firm, characterised by diffused ownership and a separation of ownership from control, was not prevalent in the Britain until the 1950s at the earliest, the rise of the incorporated business enterprise in the second quarter of the nineteenth century resulted in some firms having diffused ownership and a separation of ownership from control. The first piece of legislation in the British Isles that permitted businesses to form freely as a joint-stock corporation was the Irish Banking Copartnership Regulation Act (1825). This historic piece of legislation permitted Irish banks to form on a joint-stock basis with transferable stock, and granted banks all the privileges normally associated with incorporation except limitation of liability. In this article, we analyse the corporate governance of unlimited liability Irish joint-stock banks. It has been suggested that there may have been extensive shareholder participation in the running of these joint-stock banks up until the collapse of the share mania in 1836/37, and, after this period, these banks became a lot less democratic. However, as well as examining this shareholder voice argument, we will also analyse other corporate governance practices and mechanisms within Irish joint-stock banks. An examination of the corporate governance practices of Irish joint-stock banks is enlightening for several reasons. Firstly, the Agricultural & Commercial Bank of Ireland collapsed in 1836, calling into question the viability of the joint-stock form and the corporate governance of joint-stock banks. Secondly, banks are known to have a peculiar contractual nature which may make them more prone to agency problems, making adequate corporate governance mechanisms all the more important. Thirdly, these jointstock banks had unlimited liability, which would imply that weak governance would not only diminish the value of a shareholder’s investment, but could also endanger their personal wealth. In the next section, we examine the development of the joint-stock bank in Ireland. The following section examines the institutional and legal mechanisms which may have offered protection to shareholders, depositors and note-holders of Irish joint-stock banks. Section four analyses the three Belfast-based banks and suggests that the corporate

The Trading of Unlimited Liability Bank Shares in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: The Bagehot Hypothesis

In the mid-1820s, banks became the first businesses in Great Britain and Ireland to be allowed to form freely on an unlimited liability joint-stock basis. Walter Bagehot warned that their shares would ultimately be owned by widows, orphans, and other impecunious individuals. Another hypothesis is that the governing bodies of these banks, constrained by special legal restrictions on share trading, acted effectively to prevent such shares being transferred to the less wealthy. We test both conjectures using the archives of an Irish joint-stock bank. The results do not support Bagehots hypothesis.

DOES LIMITED LIABILITY MATTER?: EVIDENCE FROM NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH BANKING *

The superiority of the corporation over other organizational forms is typically attributed to the fact that every owner has limited liability. The widely-held, but empirically unsubstantiated, view is that the main advantage of limited liability over extended shareholder liability is that the enforcement costs of the latter generally impedes the tradability and liquidity of stock. We use the rich shareholder-liability experience of nineteenth-century British banking to test this standard view. As well as exploring the means by which unlimited liability was enforced, we examine the impact of liability regimes on the tradability and liquidity of stock. Our evidence suggests that liability rules appear to be irrelevant from the perspective of stock tradability and liquidity.

Shareholder liability regimes in nineteenth-century English banking: The impact upon the market for shares

The 1826 Banking Copartnership Act allowed unlimited liability joint stock banks to form freely for the first time. Such banks were criticised by Walter Bagehot because he believed that impecunious individuals would own their shares. As the 1826 Act crucially contained a post-sale-extended liability restriction, Bagehots view reduces to whether or not this restriction was effective. This article tests the effectiveness of this restriction by using a simple finance model to measure the risk of the shares of limited and unlimited banks, which traded concurrently during our sample period. Using share price data from 1873 to 1888, obtained from the Investors Monthly Manual, our results indicate that the perceived risk of the unlimited liability banks was greater, and after the general move to limited liability in 1879, perceived risk fell. Furthermore, we also find that, after controlling for size, the unlimited liability banks tended to have a smaller number of shareholders and stickier share prices.

Pre- and post-famine indices of Irish equity prices

The market for company stock in Ireland entered its formative period in the mid 1820s with the incorporation of banks and railways. Using data obtained from stockbroker lists, we estimate market capitalisation and construct weighted and unweighted monthly stock market indices for the period 1825–64. Our findings show that the market appears to have been relatively unaffected by the Famine. We suggest that an efficient-market explanation may better explain this finding than a dual-economy explanation. Our findings also show that the stock market increased significantly in value in the post-Famine period. This finding is consistent with an increase in demand for financial assets as well as the rapid commercialisation of the Irish economy.

Free Banking Gone Awry: The Australian Banking Crisis of 1893

Australia during the second half of the nineteenth century experimented with a free banking system. However, the severe banking crisis experienced in 1893 poses a difficulty for proponents of free banking as they argue that such systems should be free from instability. We suggest that the few regulations that Australian banks faced were either not credible or had minimal impact on bank prudential behaviour. Using data on individual banks and the overall banking system, we go on to suggest that the 1893 banking crisis was the natural outcome of an unregulated environment. We also examine the role played by the colonial governments during the crisis.

Organisational flexibility and governance in a civil-law regime: Scottish partnership banks during the Industrial Revolution

Unlike their English counterparts, Scottish partnership banks during the Industrial Revolution operated under partnership law which was similar to the French société en commandite. The article suggests that the definitive feature of this partnership law was that it permitted partnerships to separate ownership from control and stock to be traded. Archival evidence also suggests that Scottish partnership banks had mechanisms to ameliorate potential insider opportunism arising from the separation of ownership from control. The available evidence also suggests that the ability of Scottish banks to separate ownership from control may have contributed to the relative stability of the banking system.