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7?   COPY   2 


BEB 

FACULTY  WORKING 
PAPER  NO.  1177 


The  Integration  and  Efficiency  of  the 
London  and  Amsterdam  Stock  Markets  in 
The  Eighteenth  Century 

Larry  Neal 


College  of  Commerce  and  Business  Administration 
Bureau  of  Economic  and  Business  Research 
University  of  Illinois,  Urbana-Champaign 


BEBR 


FACULTY  WORKING  PAPER  NO.  1177 
College  of  Commerce  and  Business  Administration 
University  of  Illinois  at  Urbana-Champaign 
September,  1985 


The  Integration  and  Efficiency  of  the 
London  and  Amsterdam  Stock  Markets 
in  the  Eighteenth  Century 


Larry  Neal,  Professor 
Department  of  Economics 


The  author  acknowledges  with  gratitude  helpful  comments  on  earlier 
drafts  by  George  Alter,  Jeremy  Atack,  Robert  Eagly,  Barry  Eichengreen, 
John  James,  Donald  McCloskey,  John  McCusker,  and  James  Riley  as  well  as 
discussants  in  seminars  at  the  University  of  Chicago,  University  of 
Illinois  and  Indiana  University.   Research  support  was  given  by  the 
Research  Board  and  the  Bureau  of  Economic  Research  of  the  University  of 
Illinois  and  the  National  Science  Foundation,  (SES  83-09211). 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2011  with  funding  from 

University  of  Illinois  Urbana-Champaign 


http://www.archive.org/details/integrationeffic1177neal 


ABSTRACT 


In  the  early  eighteenth  century,  a  special  form  of  economic 
integration  occurred  between  the  two  leading  mercantile  cities  of 
Europe,  Amsterdam  and  London.  An  international  capital  market 
developed,  the  significance  of  which  has  been  largely  overlooked  in 
the  more  recent  historical  and  the  economic  literature.  This  paper 
lays  the  basis  for  a  greater  appreciation  of  the  role  of  this  early 
international  capital  market  in  particular,  and  such  markets  in 
general,  by  explaining  its  operation  in  theoretical  terms  and 
analyzing  its  results  in  quantitative  terms. 

It  concludes  that  these  two  markets  were  efficient  and  well- 
integrated  from  the  second  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century  on. 
The  spot  prices  quoted  in  the  London  market  followed  a  random 
walk  process  consistent  with  efficient  markets.  The  forward  prices 
in  the  Amsterdam  market  were  highly  correlated  with  them.  The 
semi-annual  dividend  payments  in  London  then  produced  regular 
patterns  in  the  Amsterdam  prices  both  from  the  Le  Bachelier  effect 
and  the  practice  of  London  quoting  prices  ex  dividend  during  the 
preparation  of  dividend  payments  while  Amsterdam  quoted  them 
with  dividend. 


In  the  early  eighteenth  century,  a  special  form  of  economic 
integration  occurred  between  the  two  leading  mercantile  cities  of  Europe, 
Amsterdam  and  London.  An  international  capital  market  developed  which 
led  to  ever  wider-ranging  capital  markets  for  each  center  over  the 
succeeding  centuries.  It  may  also  have  facilitated  the  progress  of  economic 
integration  for  northwestern  Europe  in  terms  of  markets  in  goods  and  labor. 
The  significance  of  this,  however,  seems  to  have  been  largely  overlooked  in 
the  more  recent  historical  and  the  economic  literature.  This  paper  lays  the 
basis  for  a  greater  appreciation  of  the  role  of  this  early  international 
capital  market  in  particular,  and  such  markets  in  general,  by  explaining  its 
operation  in  theoretical  terms  and  analyzing  its  results  in  quantitative 
terms. 

Shares  of  the  great  chartered  joint  stock  corporations  in  England 
were  traded  simultaneously  on  the  stock  exchanges  of  London  and 
Amsterdam  at  the  end  of  1723  and  continued  to  be  traded  through  peace, 
war,  and  revolution  into  the  nineteenth  century.  Little  evidence  remains  of 
this  activity  save  for  the  prices  of  the  shares  but  these  exist  in  great 
quantity.  Using  modern  theory  and  quantitative  techniques,  a  great  deal  of 
interest  can  be  inferred  from  them.  Section  I  explains  how  this  unique 
form  of  capital  market  integration  came  into  existence  and  how  the  two 
markets  operated  separately  and  jointly.  Section  II  summarizes  what  the 
evidence  available  to  us  tells  about  the  operation  of  the  respective  capital 
markets.    It  shows  that,  at  least  for  the  multiply  listed  stocks,  the  two  stock 


markets  were  economically  efficient  by  modern  standards  throughout  the 
eighteenth  century,  although  some  doubt  may  remain  about  the  operation  of 
the  Amsterdam  market.  Section  III  then  tackles  the  challenging  task  of 
explaining  the  small,  but  persistent,  differences  in  prices  that  existed 
between  the  two  markets.  The  regression  results  show  technical  differences 
in  the  operations  of  the  two  markets  largely  account  for  both  the 
persistence  with  which  Amsterdam  prices  were  above  London  prices,  and 
for  the  existence  of  apparently  unexploited  profit  opportunities  in  the 
Amsterdam  market.  It  turns  out  that  exchange  rate  fluctuations  were  also 
often  a  major  influence  on  price  differences,  sometimes  reflecting  large 
movements  in  the  capital  markets  and  sometimes  causing  adjustments  in 
them.  The  concluding  section  draws  some  of  the  implications  of  this 
chapter  of  history  for  our  understanding  of  the  integration  of  international 
capital  markets  especially  in  terms  of  information  flows  and  government 
interventions. 


It  is  traditional  to  date  the  beginning  of  the  English  National  Debt, 
referring  to  long-term  funded  debt,  in  1693.  In  that  year,  Act  4  William 
and  Mary  c.3  imposed  a  special  duty  on  beer,  ale,  and  other  liquors  to 
guarantee  payment  of  the  interest  on  a  million  pound  loan  which  was  to  be 


floated  at  10%  interest.1  By  this  action,  William  simply  applied  to  his  new 
domain  the  same  techniques  for  raising  credit  that  he  had  employed  as 
Stadhouder  in  the  Netherlands.  A  crucial  element  in  the  set  of  financial 
practices  brought  to  England  in  William's  train  was  the  resale  of  shares  in 
joint  stock  corporations,  i.e.,  the  initiation  of  our  modern  stock  exchanges. 
While  chartered  joint  stock  companies  existed  in  England  prior  to  William, 
it  appears  that  trade  in  their  shares  increased  considerably  in  the  early 
1690s  and  certainly  the  number  of  companies  increased  markedly  in  that 
decade.  This  followed  a  very  active  period  of  stock  trading  in  the 
Amsterdam  Beurs  in  the  1680s. 

To  aid  him  in  raising  money  for  his  War  of  the  League  of  Augsburg 
against  Catholic  France,  William  brought  with  him  numerous  financial 
advisors  and  military  contractors  from  Holland.  These  men  included  a  high 
proportion  of  Jews  and  Huguenots  who  were  eager  to  apply  in  a  relatively 
backward  England  the  financial  techniques  and  institutions  that  had  been 


Alice  Clare   Carter,  The  English  Public  Debt  in  the  Eighteenth  Century, 
(1968),  p.  5. 


developed  over  the  past  century  in  Amsterdam.2  Their  activities  eventually 
came  to  concentrate  on  shares  of  the  Bank  of  England  (founded  in  1694), 
the  New  East  India  Company  (1698),  the  United  East  India  Company  (a 
consolidation  of  the  Old  and  New  East  India  Companies  which  occurred  in 
1702),  and  the  South  Sea  Company  (1711).  The  charters  of  each  permitted 
foreigners  to  own  shares  and  this  right  was  upheld  by  the  Crown  and  the 
companies  despite  occasional  challenges  from  members  of  Parliament.3  The 
shares  of  these  three  great  companies  were  liquid  assets  for  both  English 
and  foreign  owners  because  an  active  resale  market  existed  for  them.  The 
trading  activity  occurred  in  the  London  Stock  Market  and  in  the  Amsterdam 
Beurs. 


Van  Dillen  gives  a  few  of  the  more  noteworthy  examples  of  the  Jewish 
financial  investors.  Moses  Machado  went  with  the  king  to  England  in  1688 
and  became  his  prime  contractor  for  the  campaign  in  Ireland;  Joseph  de 
Medina  had  a  large  contract  as  military  supplier  in  1713;  while  Sir  Solomon 
de  Medina  was  the  greatest  army  contractor  of  his  day,  financing  in 
particular  the  campaigns  of  the  Duke  of  Marlborough.  (J.  G.  Van  Dillen, 
"De  economische  positie  en  beteknis  der  Joden  in  de  Republiek  en  in  de 
Nederlandse  koloniale  wereld,"  in  H.  Brugmans  and  A.  Frank,  eds., 
Geschiednis  der  Joden  in  Nederland,  (1940),  p.  584.) 

Further,  our  earliest  description  of  the  operation  of  the  Amsterdam  stock 
exchange,  Josef  Penso  de  la  Vega's  Confusion  de  Confusiones,  appears  to  be  a 
highly  florid  elaboration  of  an  earlier  technical  manual  that  he  had 
prepared  on  the  various  techniques  and  regulations  employed  in  the 
Effectenbeurs.  The  purpose  of  this  manual  most  likely  was  to  inform  his 
countrymen  who  had  gone  to  London  and  who  wished  to  participate  in  the 
speculation  that  was  beginning  there.  Hermann  Kellenbenz,  introd.  to  Josef 
de  la  Vega,  Confusion  de  Confusiones,  (1957),  p.  xiv. 

For  details,  see  Larry  Neal,  "Efficient  Markets  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century?  The  Amsterdam  and  London  Stock  Exchanges,"  in  Jeremy  Atack, 
ed.,  Proceedings  of  the  Business  History  Conference,  (1982). 


The  prices  at  which  shares  changed  hands  on  the  London  market  are 
available  to  us  on  a  daily  basis  in  John  Castaing's  Course  of  the  Exchange.4 
This  remarkable  data  source  began  publication  in  March  1697  and  continued 
to  appear  twice-weekly,  on  Tuesdays  and  Fridays,  through  the  entire 
eighteenth  century  under  a  variety  of  publishers.5  Each  issue  gave  price 
quotations  for  the  past  three  trading  days  on  each  of  the  major  securities 
traded  by  the  brokers  in  Exchange  Alley.  The  list  was  headed  by  the  shares 
in  the  three  leading  joint  stock  companies  but  included  the  other  chartered 
companies  as  well  as  quotations  on  various  issues  of  government  debts  and 
annuities. 

For  the  prices  on  the  Amsterdam  Beurs,  we  have  available  a  series  of 
price  quotations  taken  every  two  weeks  for  the  shares  of  the  Bank  of 
England,  the  East  India  Company  and  the  South  Sea  Company.  These  were 


The  first  regular  publication  of  stock  prices  on  the  London  Stock 
Exchange  appears  to  have  been  John  Houghton's  Collection  for  Improvement 
of  Husbandry  and  Trade,  which  began  publication  March  30  (O.S.),  1692  and 
each  week  provided  the  Wednesday  prices  for  the  shares  of  eight  chartered 
corporations  until  it  ceased  publication  in  June;  when  it  resumed  in  January 
20,  1692/3  it  continued  to  give  Wednesday  prices.  With  the  issue  of  January 
22,  1696/7  changed  format  and  the  dates  were  no  longer  for  the  preceding 
Wednesday  of  that  week,  but  rather  for  a  preceding  Tuesday  or  Friday. 
This  makes  it  appear  that  they  were  merely  copied  from  Castaing's 
definitive  Course  of  the  Exchange  which  began  publication  erratically  in 
1697  and  then  continuously  from  the  beginning  of  1698  on  Tuesdays  and 
Fridays. 

John  J.  McCusker,  Money  and  Exchange  in  Europe  and  America,  1600- 
1775;  A  Handbook,  (1978),  p.  31.  A  full  history  of  the  publication  can  be 
found  in  Larry  Neal,  "The  Rise  of  a  Financial  Press  in  Western  Europe, 
1677-1796,"  Proceedings  of  the  Business  History  Conference,  13  (1985), 
forthcoming.  In  1811,  when  it  was  published  by  Wetenhall,  it  became  the 
official  price  list  of  the  London  Stock  Exchange. 


published  by  the  Dutch  economic  historian,  J.G.  Van  Dillen  in  193 1.6  Van 
Dillen  drew  these  data  from  the  Amsterdamsche  Courant.  a  Dutch 
newspaper  which  appeared  thrice-weekly.  Starting  July  14,  1723  it  began  to 
give  price  quotes  for  shares  of  the  Dutch  East  India  and  Dutch  West  India 
Companies  with  the  agio  rate  for  the  Bank  of  Amsterdam.  Beginning  with 
the  issue  for  August  9,  1723  (N.S.),  the  Courant  began  giving  in  addition 
quotes  for  the  three  English  joint-stock  companies.  These  continued  to 
appear  regularly  in  each  issue,  with  quotes  for  other  Dutch  and  English 
securities  coming  in  for  a  time  and  then  leaving,  until  December  19,  1794 
with  the  French  occupation  of  Amsterdam  and  the  founding  of  the  Batavian 
Republic.  The  official  price  list  for  stocks  on  the  Amsterdam  Beurs  began 
publication  the  following  year.7 

This  fortnightly  series  by  Van  Dillen  reduced  the  number  of  joint 
observations  for  each  of  the  English  companies  from  over  30,000  for  just 
the  London  market  to  only  1,676.  For  each  date  in  the  Amsterdam  series,  I 
took  the  London  quotation     on  the  same  trading  day  for  each  of  the  three 


J.G.  van  Dillen,     "Effectenkoersen  aan  de  Amsterdamsche  beurs   1723- 
1794,"  Economisch-historisch  Jaarboek,  dl.  17,  (1931),  pp.  1-34. 

•t 

Johannes  de  Vries,  Een  Eeuw  vol  Effecten,  Historische  schets  van  de 
Veremging  voor  de  Effectenhandel  en  de  Amsterdamse  Effectenbeurs  1876- 
1976,  (1976),  p.  19. 


stocks.8  Graphing  both  the  levels  and  first  differences  of  the  prices  in  each 
market  against  each  other  for  each  company  makes  it  evident  that  the  two 
markets  were  very  closely  correlated  from  the  beginning  of  the  series. 
These  graphs  are  far  too  long  to  reproduce  here  but  the  visual  effect  of 
nearly  perfect  congruence  is  indicated  perhaps  in  Table  1.  This  gives  the 
correlation  coefficients  between  the  levels  and  the  first  differences  of  the 
price  series  in  Amsterdam  and  London  for  the  Bank  of  England,  the  East 
India  Company,  and  the  South  Sea  Company.  These  correlation  coefficients 
are  quite  consistent  for  the  levels  across  the  four  peacetime  periods  that 
occurred  between  1723  and  1794.9  And  they  are  consistently  high  for  each 
of  the  three  companies.  The  correlations  for  the  first  differences  are 
naturally  much  lower  but  also  show  much  more  variation  by  company  and 
by  time  period.  One's  first  question  upon  finding  two  distinct  price  series 
for  the  same  financial  asset  --  were  the  two  markets  in  which  prices  were 
struck  closely  integrated?  —  is  answered  here  with  a  resounding  affirmative 


This  exercise  was  complicated  by  two  features:  1)  the  Dutch  had  been 
on  the  Gregorian  calendar  since  the  middle/end  of  December  1582  while  the 
British  did  not  shift  until  September  2/13,  1752;  and  2)  the  Amsterdam 
market  traded  Sunday  through  Friday  while  the  London  market  traded 
Monday  through  Saturday.  To  deal  with  the  first  feature,  I  counted  back 
eleven  days  to  find  the  corresponding  London  quotes  before  September  13, 
1752;  the  second  feature  was  dealt  with  by  matching  the  Saturday  quote  in 
London  to  a  Sunday  quote  in  Amsterdam  whenever  one  appeared. 

From  Keller's  Dictionary  of  Dates  (1934),  I  chose  October  19,  1739  as  the 
start  of  the  first  war  period  (War  of  Jenkins  Ear)  and  October  1748  as  the 
end  (Treaty  of  Aix-la-Chapelle).  Hostilities  began  for  the  Seven  Years  War 
in  August  1756  while  for  financial  purposes  in  the  capitals  they  ended  with 
the  Treaty  of  Paris  signed  February  10,  1763.  I  took  March  13,  1778  as  the 
effective  date  of  hostilities  in  Europe  arising  from  the  American  War  for 
Independence  since  this  was  when  the  Treaty  of  Alliance  of  France  and  the 
United  States  was  communicated  to  England.  This  ends  with  the 
Preliminarv  Treaty  with  the  United  States  signed  in  Paris  on  November  30, 
1782. 


if  one  looks  only  at  the  levels.  The  first  differences,  however,  raise  more 
interesting  questions  about  the  sources  of  the  varied  patterns  that  occurred. 
The  striking  thing  is  the  absence  of  any  trend  in  any  of  the  three  stocks 
toward  closer  integration  over  the  course  of  the  century. 

--    TABLE  1  ABOUT  HERE  -- 

The  apparently  close  and  stable  integration  of  these  two  capital 
markets  will  not  be  surprising  to  18th  century  historians,  enamored  as  they 
are  by  the  leisurely  modernity  of  the  Age  of  Enlightenment.  Mail  packet 
boats  left  London  regularly  for  Amsterdam  on  a  twice-weekly  basis  and 
dispatches  from  London  four  to  seven  days  old  appeared  each  week  in  the 
Amsterdam  and  other  Dutch  newspapers.  Dutch  investors  were  represented 
among  major  holders  of  Bank  of  England  stock  from  the  beginning.  Their 
holdings  grew  until  1751  with  a  "Dutch  rush"  occurring  between  1721  and 
1726.  They  continued  to  receive  dividends  and  capital  bonuses  even  when 
the  Netherlands  had  become  the  Republic  of  Batavia  in  1795  and  then 
departments  within  the  Napoleonic  empire  in  the  first  decade  of  the  19th 
century  10 

How  large  were  these  investments  by  the  Dutch  in  the  English  public 
debt?     In  the  most  recent  summary  of  the  available  studies,  Wilson  relies  on 


John   Clapham,    The   Bank    of  England,   A    History,    v.    I,   "1694-1797" 
London:  Macmillan,  1945,  pp.  278-289. 


Dickson's  benchmark  figures  for  1723-24  and  1 750.11    Dickson  found  that  in 

1723-24  the   total  foreign   holdings  of  stock  in   the  "Big  Three"  companies 

amounted   to  9.3   percent   of   the   total   capital   while   by    1750   the   total   of 

foreign  holdings  in  the  same  companies  (by  now  South  Sea  annuities  had 

replaced    the    original    stock)   amounted    to    19.2    percent.12      Looking    more 

closely    at    the    growth    of    foreign    holdings    in    Bank    of    England    stock, 

Dickson  found  that  it  was  not  until  the  South  Sea  Bubble  that  foreigners, 

especially  the  Dutch,  began  to  invest.    He  concluded  that 

As  a  result  of  the  South  Sea  Bubble  this  trend  was  markedly 
accentuated  [towards  holdings  of  government  and  company 
stock].  By  1723-24  foreign  holdings  of  English  government 
securities  had  reached  --  for  the  first  time  --  a  really 
substantial  size.  They  were  to  go  on  increasing  in  amount 
until  the  massive  foreign  disinvestment  of  the  last  twenty 
years  of  the  eighteenth  century.13 

Even  though  the  result  of  modern  scholarship  has  been  to  reduce  the 
proportions  of  English  Funds  held  by  foreigners  from  the  heights  of  40%  or 
more  reported  to  Lord  North  in  1776, 14  the  new  lower  bounds  that  have 
been  established  still  exceed   the  proportions  of  foreign   trade  and  foreign 


Charles  Wilson,  "Dutch  Investment  in  Britain  in  the  1 7th-  19th 
Centuries,"  in  Credit  Communal  de  Belgique,  Collection  Histoire  Pro  Civitate, 
no.  58,  "La  Dette  Publique  aux  XVIIIe  et  XIXe  Sieclcs."  (1980),  p.  201. 

12 

P.G.M.  Dickson,  The  Financial  Revolution  in  England:  A  Study  in  the 
Development  of  the  Public  Credit.  1688-1756.  London:  Macmillan,  1967,  p.  312 
and  p.  321. 

13  Ibid.,  pp.  311-12. 

14  Alice    Carter,    "The    Dutch    and    the    English    Public    Debt    in    1777," 
Economica,  20  (1953),  pp.  159-161. 


labor  in  the  English  economy  of  the  eighteenth  century.15  The  evidence  is 
persuasive  that  economic  integration  between  these  two  great  mercantile 
powers        occurred        first        through        the        movements        of        capital. 


II 


15  N.F.R.  Crafts,  "British  Economic  Growth,  1700-1813:  A  Review  of  the 
Evidence,"  Economic  History  Review,  36  (1983),  p.  197  puts  exports  as  a 
proportion  of  national  income  for  Great  Britain  between  8  and  12  %  during 
the  eighteenth  century  and  not  over  15%  until  1801.  Neil  Tranter,  "The 
labour  supply,  1780-1860,"  in  D.  N.  McCloskey  and  R.  Floud,  eds.,  The 
Economic  History  of  Britain  since  1700,  v.  I  (1981),  p.  211,  puts  the  maximum 
share  of  foreign  immigrants,  mainly  Irish,  in  the  labor  force  at  much  lower 
levels. 


The  more  interesting  questions  of  the  ebb  and  flow  of  Dutch 
investments  in  the  English  securities,  particularly  whether  they  were 
destabilizing  and  speculative  as  contemporary  English  opinion  had  it,  or 
whether  they  were  passive  and  on  the  whole  stabilizing,  remain  unanswered. 
Evidence  to  deal  with  these  questions  lies  primarily  in  the  price  data  for 
the  two  markets  described  above.  It  should  be  noted,  however,  that  the 
Bank  of  England  was  responsible  for  recording  transfers  of  ownership  in 
"government  stock"  which  included  shares  of  the  Bank  itself,  the  East  India 
Company,  annuities,  and  Consols.  In  principle,  these  records  could  be  used 
to  link  foreign  movements  of  capital  to  sustained  rises  or  falls  in  the  market 
price  of  British  company  shares.  To  date  the  only  use  of  these  records  has 
been  by  Carter  and  then  for  only  a  three  month  period  at  the  beginning  of 


11 


1755. 16  The  best  that  can  be  done  at  present  is  to  search  for  evidence  that 
either  of  the  markets  for  English  securities,  the  Amsterdam  and  the  London 
stock  exchanges,  were  less  than  efficient  in  setting  prices. 

Table  2  gives  the  initial  results  of  time  series  analysis  on  the  four 
main  time  series  of  interest  --  the  cash  prices  for  Bank  of  England  and  East 
India  Company  stock  quoted  in  London,  and  the  forward  prices  for  the 
same  two  stocks  quoted  in  Amsterdam.  Basically,  we  are  interested  in 
testing  the  proposition  that  the  following  equations  are  accurate  descriptions 
of  price  movements  in  each  case: 

1)Lit+l  ■  Lit  "  ut+l  ;  i  -  1.  3;  t  -  time 
2)Ait+l  "  Ait  =  ut+l  ;  i  ■  1»  3;  t  -  time 
where  L  is  the  London  price  and  A  is  the  Amsterdam  price. 

The  standard  technique  is  to  estimate  AutoRegressive,  Integrated, 
Moving  Average  (ARIMA)  models  for  the  changes  in  prices.  If  it  can  be 
found  that  some  combination  of  autogressive  and  moving  average  processes 
yield  consistently  good  descriptions  of  price  changes,  then  presumably  these 
processes  could  be  discovered  by  interested  speculators  and  used  to  make 
profits  in  the  markets.  For  efficient  markets  to  have  existed,  these  models 
should    show    (0,0)   —    i.e.,   that    last    period's    price    alone    remains    the    best 


Alice  Clare  Carter,  "Transfer  of  Certain  Public  Debt  Stocks  in  the 
London  Money  Market  from  1  January  to  31  March  1755,"  Bulletin  of  the 
Institute  of  Historical  Research,  28  (November  1955),  p.  203. 


predictor  of  this  period's  price.    The  results  of  two  different  techniques  for 
estimating  ARMA  models  are  shown  in  Table  2.17 

--  TABLE  2  ABOUT  HERE  -- 

For  the  period  as  a  whole,  both  methods  are  consistent  in  showing 
market  efficiency  in  both  markets  for  Bank  of  England  stock  and  in  the 
London  market  for  East  India  Company  stock.  Both  methods  indicate  that  a 
(0,3),  i.e.,  a  third-order  moving-average  process,  existed  in  the  Amsterdam 
prices  of  the  East  India  Company.  This  appears  to  be  in  place  only  after 
1737,  however.  The  remainder  of  the  table  shows  the  estimated  ARMA 
models  for  each  period  of  war  and  peace  after  Barnard's  Act.  Here  the 
results  are  mixed,  although  most  cases  are  clear  random  walks,  i.e.,  ARMA 
(0,0).  But  it  is  only  in  the  London  market  for  East  India  stock  that  we  find 
consistent  evidence  in  each  sub-period  for  an  efficient  market.    In  the  two 


17 

Both  the  "B-J"  and  "H-R"  methods  are  strictly  mechanical  procedures 
that  estimate  the  autocorrelation  coefficients  and  the  partial  correlation 
coefficients  for  up  to  10  lags  over  the  time  series.  The  "B-J",  or  standard 
Box-Jenkins  method,  determines  which  of  these  coefficients  are  statistically 
significant  from  zero  and  then  the  investigator  selects  the  most  plausible 
model.  (Box  and  Jenkins,  Time  Series  Analysis:  Forecasting  and  Control  San 
Francisco:  Holden-Day,  1976.)  The  "H-R"  method  is  a  recursive  process  in 
which  each  autoregressive  process  up  to  order  10  is  estimated  and  then  the 
residuals  of  each  estimate  are  used  to  calculate  variances.  The  process 
which  minimizes  the  expression: 

o2k  +  2k/n 
where  k  is  the  order  of  autoregressive  process  and  n  is  the  number  of 
observations.  Then,  using  ordinary  least  squares  regressions,  ARMA  models 
are  estimated  up  to  order  (p,5)  where  p  is  the  order  of  AR  model  selected 
above.  Finally,  the  residuals  of  the  estimated  ARMA  models  are  used  to 
calculate  sample  variances  and  (p,q)  selected  which  minimizes: 

log  (o2p,q)  +  (log  n/n)(p  +  q) 
where   q   is   the   order   of   moving  average   process.   (Hannan   and   Rissanen, 
Biometnka,      1983.)      The      tests      are      repeated      or      various      subperiods, 
corresponding  to  the  peacetime  and  wartime  periods  selected  above. 


13 


markets  for  Bank  of  England  stock  we  find  sub-periods  when  some  kind  of 
ARMA  process  seems  to  have  been  at  work.  It  is  interesting,  however,  that 
these  never  occur  in  both  markets  for  any  given  sub-period.  The  only  sub- 
period  when  a  (0,3)  ARMA  appears  for  East  India  Company  stock  on  the 
Amsterdam  exchange  is  1739-1748,  the  War  of  the  Austrian  Succession.  This 
is  also  when  an  anomalous  (3,0)  ARMA  is  found  for  Bank  of  England  stock 
on  the  London  market.  Since  only  the  coefficient  on  the  third  term  was 
found  to  be  significantly  different  from  zero  in  each  case,  some  data  error 
was  suspected.  None  was  found,  but  another  possible  source  of  the  anomaly 
was  detected. 

Table  3  shows  the  average  length  of  time  interval  between  each 
Amsterdam  quote  from  the  Amsterdamsche  Courant.  as  well  as  the  variance 
of  the  intervals  and  the  number  of  observations  in  each  wartime  and 
peacetime  period.  The  mean  ranges  from  15  to  16  days,  as  one  expects  for  a 
sample  taken  fortnightly  with  occasional  gaps  for  religious  holidays.  But 
the  variance  is  especially  high  for  the  War  of  the  Austrian  Succession  and 
the  peacetime  between  the  Seven  Years  War  and  the  War  of  American 
Independence.  It  is  in  these  periods  that  three  of  the  six  exceptions  to 
random  walks  occur.  This  is  reassuring  for  the  validity  of  the  remaining 
(0,0)  processes  since  if  a  regular  time  series  process  exists  but  is  sampled  at 
irregular  intervals,  the  bias  will  be  to  find  a  random   walk  process.     If  a 


random   walk    exists    in   a   series,   on    the    other    hand,    but    is   sampled    at 
irregular  intervals,  the  possibility  of  finding  a  deterministic  process  arises.18 

To  reach  a  preliminary  conclusion,  efficient  markets  for  the  leading 
British  financial  securities  appear  to  be  in  place  in  both  Amsterdam  and 
London  after  the  South  Sea  Bubble  of  1720.  Moreover,  they  seem  to  have 
continued  to  operate  efficiently  up  to  the  outbreak  of  the  French 
Revolutionary  Wars  near  the  end  of  the  century.  Various  episodes  of 
market  inefficiencies  leading  to  speculative  profit  possibilities  probably  did 
arise  at  times  but  they  appear  to  have  been  confined  to  the  Amsterdam 
market.  These  periods  merit  closer  examination,  especially  in  terms  of 
possible  differences  in  the  way  each  market  operated. 

Ill 

The  key  to  understanding  the  (0,1)  and  (1,0)  processes  found  above 
lies  in  the  finding  that  the  London  prices  were  spot,  or  money,  prices  while 
the  Amsterdam  prices  were  forward,  or  time,  prices.  The  London  practice 
likely  arose  as  a  matter  of  convenience  since  no  fixed  settlement  days 
among  brokers  existed  originally  and  time  contracts  could  vary  widely.  But 
in  1734,  Barnard's  Act    (7  Geo.  II,  cap.  8)  forbade  all  dealings  in  options  and 

18  Time-series  purists  will  object  that  any  irregularity  in  the  timing  of  the 
observations  violates  the  assumptions  of  the  statistical  technique  and  so  the 
irregular  appearance  of  the  Courant  rules  it  out  for  time-series  analysis 
Given  the  frequency  of  religious  holidays  in  the  eighteenth  century  even  in 
Protestant  Amsterdam  and  London,  however,  a  case  can  be  made  that  the 
irregularities  in  its  appearance  reflect  precisely  irregularities  in  trading 
activity  on  the  Effectenbeurs.  It  is  the  market  activity,  after  all  that  is  the 
underlying  process,  not  the  appearance  of  the  newspaper 


15 


future  deliveries  of  stocks,  with  a  fine  of  500  pounds  to  be  levied  on  each 
person  party  to  such  a  contract.19 


This  latter  act  was  persistently  violated  in  fact,  according  to 
Mortimer.20  Dickson,  on  the  other  hand,  feels  that  the  Act  may  have  been 
effective  in  transferring  options  business  to  Amsterdam  and  encouraging 
London  traders  to  deal  on  margins.21  Castaing's  price  lists  was  consistent  in 
showing  prices  at  money  although  Cope  speculates  that  the  curious  practice 
of  printing  the  names  of  the  Bank  of  England  and  the  East  India  Company 
in  capital  letters  may  have  developed  to  indicate  those  securities  in  which 
dealings  in  time  may  have  been  possible.22  Since  the  transfers  of  stocks  for 
the  chartered  companies  came  to  be  handled  through  the  Bank  of  England, 
purchases  could  in  principle  be  made  for  a  forward  date  at  which  the 
transfer  could  be  made  at  the  Bank.  The  illegality  of  dealings  in  futures 
and  options  may  not  have  eliminated  the  practice  in  the  London  market  — 


Malachy  Postlethwayt,  "Stock-Jobbing",  in  The  Universal  Dictionary  of 
Trade  and  Commerce,  2  vols.,  4th  edn.  (1774),  repr.  1971. 

Thomas  Mortimer,  Every  Man  His  Own  Broker:  Or  a  Guide  to  Exchange 
Alley,  3rd  ed.  (1761). 

Dickson  (1967),  p.  508,  quotes  a  letter  by  an  Amsterdam  broker  to  a 
Haarlem  merchant  in  1735  that  states  "...in  London  only  cash  purchases  and 
sales  can  be  made." 

S.  R.  Cope,  "The  Stock  Exchange  Revisited:  A  New  Look  at  the  Market 
in  Securities  in  London  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  Economica,  45  (February 
1978),  p.  18.  On  this  point  it  is  interesting  that  Houghton  followed  the  same 
practice  in  his  early  listings  of  stock  but  clearly  stated  that  the  companies 
whose  names  were  printed  in  "Great  Letters"  were  those  that  had  charters 
while  those  that  had  asterisks  in  front  of  them  were  patent  monopolies. 
John  Houghton,  A  Collection  for  Improvement  of  Husbandry  and  Trade,  9 
vols.,  London:  Randall  Taylor  et.  al.,  1692-1703,  republished  Westmead, 
Farnborough,  Hants.:  Gregg,  1969.  The  list  of  stocks  in  no.  106  (Fri.,  August 
10,  1694)  has  note:  "Great  Letters  by  Charter,  (*)  by  Patent." 


indeed,  the  introduction  of  stiff er  bills  in  the  House  of  Commons  in  1745, 
1756,  1771,  and  1773  may  indicate  the  continued  prevalence  of  futures 
trading  —  but  it  no  doubt  was  effective  in  eliminating  the  printed  quotation 
of  future  prices  for  those  contracts  that  were  made. 

In  Amsterdam,  by  contrast,  the  practice  was  always  to  deal  in  time 
contracts  since  legally  binding  possession  of  shares  in  the  Dutch  East  India 
Company  was  not  possible  until  the  actual  transfer  of  the  share  or  shares 
was  entered  in  the  Company's  books.  This  was  not  possible  until  the  books 
were  opened  for  the  payment  of  dividends.  De  la  Vega's  original 
description  of  the  Amsterdam  Beurs  in  fact  describes  "putts"  and  "refuses"  in 
very  modern  terms  for  options  trading.  The  extensive  trading  of  dealers 
with  one  another  on  both  hedging  and  speculative  contracts  in  the  same 
stock  required  regular  "rescounter"  settlement  dates  to  settle  the  net 
differences  and  straighten  out  the  accounts  among  the  various  brokers. 
These  occurred  quarterly,  on  the  fifteenth  of  February,  May,  August,  and 
November.23  The  quarterly  rescounters  may  have  been  for  the  English 
funds  only,  since  de  la  Vega  reports  monthly  rescounters,  on  the  20th  of  the 
month  for  real  stock  with  payment  due  the  25th,  and  on  the  first  of  the 
month  for  "ducaton"  shares.24  ["Ducaton"  shares  were  small  fractions  of 
actual  Dutch  East  India  Company  shares  that  were  devised  to  increase  the 


Isaac  de  Pinto,    Traite  de  la  Circulation  et  du  Credit,  (1771),  p.  305. 
24       de  la  Vega,  introd.  by  H.  Kellenbenz,  p.  xviii. 


17 


possibilities  for  trading  by  smaller  investors  since  the  cash  value  of  each 
original  share  had  increased  over  the  decades  to  very  high  levels  indeed.] 

Van  Dillen  notes  the  difficulties  in  deciding  whether  the  figures  in 

the  Amsterdamsche  Courant  were  cash  or  time  prices: 

Until  1747  this  is  not  mentioned,  but  in  comparing  them  with 
those  found  in  brokers'  notes  preserved  from  1725  to  1737  it 
appears  that  in  that  period  the  quotations  are  cash  prices.  In 
the  year  1737  both  prices  are  sometimes  mentioned.  After  this 
year  we  find  generally  the  forward  rates.  From  1759  onwards 
the  quotations  are  often  followed  by  the  name  of  the  next 
settlement  month,  e.g.,  "all  of  February."  The  difference 
between  the  cash  price  and  the  next  paying  month  is, 
however,  not  more  than  a  few  percent.2 

If  the  Amsterdam  prices  quoted  on  the  English  securities  were  for 
future  delivery,  then  in  general  they  should  lie  above  the  London  cash 
prices  quoted  on  the  same  day.  Chart  1  illustrates  why.26  At  regular 
intervals,  dividends  are  paid  on  each  of  our  securities.  If  nothing  else 
happened  to  disturb  the  price  of  the  shares  from  time  O  to  time  A  on  the 
graph,  the  nominal  value  of  each  share  would  be  fixed  until  the  dividend 
was  paid,  at  which  time  the  value  would  rise  abruptly.  Cash  transactions  in 
the  shares  between  time  O  and  time  A  will  take  into  account  the 
forthcoming  dividend  payment  which  the  buyer  of  the  share  will  receive. 
So  the  cash  prices  between  time  O  and  time  A  will  show  a  gradual  upward 
trend  along  line  OB.    A  contract  made  at  time  O  for  future  delivery  of  the 


25       Van  Dillen  (1931),  p.  13. 


26 

Louis  Bachelier,     "Theory  of  Speculation,"  trans,  in   Paul  Cootner,  ed., 
The  Random  Character  of  Stock  Market  Prices,  (1964). 


share  at  time  A,  however,  will  require  the  buyer  to  pay  a  "contango"  to  the 
seller,  equal  in  the  absence  of  disturbances  in  the  price  of  the  share  to  the 
dividend.  This  arises  since  the  seller  will  hold  the  share  until  the  delivery 
date  but  will  then  yield  possession  of  the  stock,  and  its  dividend,  to  the 
buyer  who  only  then  will  make  full  payment.  This  means  that  the  futures 
price  equivalent  for  the  cash  price  that  runs  along  line  OB  will  be  line  CB, 
which  always  lies  above  the  cash  price  but  gradually  converges  to  it  at 
dividend  payment  dates. 

-  CHART  1  ABOUT  HERE  -- 

If  Bachelier's  exposition  explains  as  well  the  differences  between 
Amsterdam  and  London  prices,  then  the  Amsterdam  prices  should  be  the 
same  as  the  London  prices  with  only  small  random  disturbances  until 
Barnard's  Act  in  1734  or  until  1737  when  Barnard's  Act  was  made  a 
perpetual  law.  Tables  4  and  5  present  regression  results  for  linear 
regressions  of  the  difference  between  the  Amsterdam  and  London  price  at  a 
given  date  on  three  variables:  1)  DAYSDIVD,  the  number  of  days  from  the 
date  of  the  observation  to  payment  of  the  next  dividend;  2)  PAYTIME,  a 
dummy  variable  set  equal  to  one  during  the  times  London  prices  were 
quoted  ex  dividend;  and  3)  AMEXPREM,  the  number  of  penningen  banco 
the  English  pound  sterling  was  worth  less  its  mint  par  ratio.  Only  the  Bank 
of  England  and  East  India  Company  stocks  are  analyzed  since  the  South  Sea 
Company  stock  was  essentially  dormant  for  most  of  the  period  after  1730. 

--  TABLES  4  AND  5  ABOUT  HERE  -- 


The  variable  DAYSDIVD  is  intended  to  capture  the  Le  Bachelier 
effect.  Its  coefficient  should  be  positive  since  the  dependent  variable  is  the 
Amsterdam  price  minus  the  London  price.  On  average,  it  should  be  equal  to 
one-half  the  annual  dividend  since  dividends  were  paid  semi-annually.  For 
each  sub-period,  its  effect  is  estimated  separately  in  the  third  equation.  The 
second  equation  in  each  panel  adds  the  effect  of  AMEXPREM  while  the 
first  equation  has  all  three  explanatory  variables.  Comparing  the  third 
equation  in  each  panel  over  the  two  tables,  one  notices  that  only  in  the  pre- 
Barnard  Act  period  does  the  constant  term  in  the  regressions  become 
statistically  different  from  zero,  and  it  does  so  for  both  the  Bank  of 
England  and  the  East  India  Company.  For  the  entire  period  1738-1794  and 
for  the  three  peace-time  periods  within,  the  constant  terms  are 
insignificantly  different  from  zero.  This  implies  both  that  the  contango 
rate  was  on  average  the  same  as  the  dividend  rate,  which  we  should  expect 
in  the  absence  of  persistent  expectations  for  things  to  improve  or  to 
deteriorate,  and  that  no  serious  barriers  existed  to  equalizing  the  rate  of 
return  on  the  same  financial  assets  in  the  two  different  countries. 

The  presence  of  a  constant  term  that  is  negative  and  significantly 
different  from  zero  in  the  pre-Barnard  Act  period  could  imply  segmented 
capital  markets  or  exuberant  outlooks  by  speculators,  if  in  fact  the 
Amsterdam  prices  were  forward  prices  consistently.  Inspecting  the  pattern 
of  residuals  and  estimating  the  regression  for  subperiods  within  the  period 
1723-1738  leads  me  to  believe  that  this  was  the  case.  On  average  the 
Amsterdam  price  was  higher  than  the  London  price  even  in  the  period  1723- 


37,  although  the  difference  was  much  less  than  it  became  after  1737.  This 
holds  for  both  stocks.  If  this  is  true,  then  the  negative  constant  term 
implies  optimistic  expectations  by  investors  during  this  period.  The 
evidence  of  the  exchange  rate  variable  presented  below  strengthens  this 
presumption. 

There  remain  differences  between  the  regression  estimates  for  the 
Bank  of  England  stock  and  the  East  India  Company  stock.  On  average,  the 
price  difference  was  1.6  points  for  Bank  stock  and  2.5  points  for  East  India 
stock.  This  reflects  the  generally  higher  dividend  rates  paid  by  the  East 
Company  stock.  In  sum,  these  regression  results,  combined  with  the 
evidence  of  extremely  tight  market  integration  presented  in  the 
introduction,  demonstrate  that  what  small,  but  persistent  differences  in 
prices  remained  between  the  Amsterdam  and  London  markets  for  the  British 
securities  were  due  to  the  London  prices  being  cash,  or  spot,  prices  while 
the  Amsterdam  prices  were  forward  prices. 

When  the  semi-annual  dividend  payment  dates  approached,  the 
transfer  books  for  the  particular  stock  would  be  closed  so  that  the  sums  due 
to  each  owner  could  be  calculated  and  made  ready.  During  this  period 
which  usually  lasted  two  weeks,  the  stock  would  be  quoted  ex  dividend. 
Any  deliveries  of  stock  taking  place  during  that  period,  then,  would  not 
include  the  dividend  about  to  be  paid  since  the  clerks  would  be  in  the 
process  of  making  the  payment  ready  for  the  currently  registered  owner.  So 
the  variable  DAYSDIVD     was  calculated  as  the  number  of  days  from  the 


21 


given  date  to  the  day  the  first  ex  dividend  quote  appeared  in  the  Course  of 

the  Exchange.    In  Amsterdam,  on  the  other  hand,  it  appears  that  the  quoted 

price  was  always  with  dividend.    In  the  printed  form  shown  by  Dickson  for 

sales  of  stock  made  in  Amsterdam  for  delivery  (and  payment)  in  London, 

explicit  provision  is  made  that  if  the  receiver  of  the  stock  does  not  get  the 

current  dividend,  then  he  deducts  that  dividend  from  the  stated  price  he 

has  agreed  to  pay.      This  is  stated  clearly  in  a  contract  dated  4  April  1730 

between  Jacob  Reynst  and  David  Leeuw,  both  of  Amsterdam,  that  Dickson 

translates  as  follows: 

I  the  undersigned  acknowledge  to  have  Bought  from  Heer 
David  Leeuw  One  Thousand  Pounds  Sterling  Capital  Shares  of 
the  Bank  of  England  at  London,  at  a  price  of  a  Hundred  and 
Forty  Five  and  a  Quarter  per  Cent  remaining  after  the 
Dividend  paid  last  October,  for  settlement  on  next  15  May,  the 
which  11000  I  oblige  myself  to  receive  in  London  at  the  stated 
Price.  And  in  case  in  the  interim  any  Dividend  is  paid,  it 
shall  be  to  my  profit  and  to  reduction  of  the  above  Price. 
Contrarywise  all  supplementations  and  Calls  shall  be  at  my 
expense,  in  the  usual  way.  All  done  in  good  faith  at 
Amsterdam  the  Fourth  April  Seventeen  hundred  and  thirty. 

To  capture  this  difference  in  practice  in  quoting  prices  during  the 
period  dividends  were  being  calculated,  a  dummy  variable  was  created, 
PAYTIME,  which  was  set  to  a  value  of  one  for  the  first  observation  after 
the  ex  dividend  quotes  began  in  London.  It  proves  to  be  positive,  as 
expected,  and  usually  significant,  especially  in  the  earlier  years.  It  also  has 
the  felicitous  effect  of  reducing  substantially  the  serial  correlation  in  the 
regressions. 


Dickson,  (1967),  p.  335.    This  was  a  pre-printed  form  except  for  those 
items  shown  in  italics,  which  were  entered  by  hand. 


Since  transfers  of  stock  had  to  take  place  in  London;  where  the 
actual  stock  had  to  be  paid  for  in  pounds  sterling,  we  should  expect  some 
effect  in  the  Amsterdam  market  from  fluctuations  in  the  exchange  rate 
with  London.  Taking  deviations  in  the  observed  sight  rate  from  the  mint 
par  ratio  as  the  measure  of  changes  in  the  exchange  rate  (AMEXPREM), 
what  effect  should  one  expect  on  the  Amsterdam  price  of  an  English  stock 
(in  English  pounds  sterling)  of,  say,  an  increase  in  the  value  of  the  English 
pound  relative  to  the  Dutch  guilder?  Recognizing  that  any  effect  will  be 
merely  transitory  until  prices  are  equalized  on  the  basis  of  the  new 
exchange  rate,  one  might  expect  the  demand  for  English  stock  in 
Amsterdam  to  be  shifted  downward  (any  given  price  in  pounds  sterling  is 
now  felt  to  be  more  expensive  by  a  Dutch  purchaser)  while  the  supply  of 
the  English  stock  in  Amsterdam  would  be  shifted  outward  (any  given  price 
in  pounds  sterling  is  now  more  attractive  to  a  Dutch  supplier).  The  effect 
of  these  shifts  in  both  demand  and  supply  is  to  reduce  the  price  of  the 
English  stock  in  Amsterdam  relative  to  its  price  in  London.  Since  the 
dependent  variable  in  the  regressions  is  the  Amsterdam  price  minus  the 
London  price  while  the  independent  variable  for  the  effect  of  the  exchange 
rate  is  the  price  of  the  pound  sterling  in  terms  of  Dutch  bank  money  less 
the  mint  par  ratio,  the  expected  sign  on  the  exchange  rate  variable  is 
negative.  That  is,  the  higher  the  value  of  the  pound  on  the  foreign 
exchanges,  the  lower  we  expect  the  price  of  a  British  security  to  be  in 
Amsterdam  relative  to  London. 


23 


In  fact,  the  estimated  coefficient  for  the  exchange  rate  variable  does 
not  prove  to  be  statistically  different  from  zero  in  the  earliest  period  and 
when  it  does  become  significant  it  has  a  positive  sign!  After  mid-century, 
however,  it  always  has  the  expected  sign  and  is  often  significantly  different 
from  zero  as  well,  especially  in  the  regressions  from  which  outliers  have 
been  removed.  The  anomaly  that  needs  to  be  explained  then  is  the  positive 
sign  and  significant  effect  before  1750,  especially  during  the  War  of  the 
Austrian  Succession.  The  most  likely  explanation  stems  from  the  fact  that 
the  period  from  1723  to  1750  was  precisely  the  period  when  the  Dutch  built 
up  their  holdings  in  the  English  joint  stock  companies  and  long  term 
government  debt  most  rapidly.  Dickson  found  that  Dutch  holdings  of  Bank 
of  England  stock  rose  from  10.5%  of  the  total  capital  in  1723-4  to  30.3%  in 
1750  while  their  share  of  East  India  Company  stock  rose  from  13.4%  to 
21.4%  over  the  same  period.28  It  would  appear,  then,  that  in  this  period  the 
massive  inflows  of  Dutch  capital  to  the  English  long-term  securities  market 
were  sufficient  to  drive  up  the  value  of  the  English  pound  whenever  surges 
of  Dutch  demand  lifted  the  Amsterdam  price  above  its  predicted  level, 
based  on  the  purely  technical  factors  embodied  in  our  variables  PAYTIME 
and  DAYSDIVD. 

The  final  step  taken  in  the  regression  analysis  was  to  remove  outliers. 
Analyzed  the  graphs  of  predicted  vs.  actual  values  of  the  Amsterdam- 
London   price    differences   revealed    a   very   close   clustering   of    the   actual 


28  Dickson,  (1967).     Calculated  from  Tables  47  and  48,  pp.  312-13  for 

1723-4  and  from  Tables  50  and  51,  p.  321  and  p.  324,  for  1750. 


1J 


values  to  the  regression  plane  with  a  few  (less  than  2%)  of  the  observations 
causing  much  of  the  unexplained  variance.  Setting  these  equal  to  the 
predicted  value  (or  the  actual  value  in  the  few  cases  where  it  turned  out 
that  an  error  had  been  made  in  the  data  entry),  improved  the  goodness-of- 
fit  greatly,  without  altering  the  size  or  significance  of  the  estimated 
coefficients.  (An  exception  is  the  AMEXPREM  variable  which  did  prove 
responsive  in  some  time  periods  to  the  removal  of  outliers.)  Some  of  the 
outliers  may  be  due  to  errors  of  transcription  in  the  original  data  source. 
Some  of  the  numbers  in  Van  Dillen's  table,  for  example,  appear  to  be  in 
error  —  two  digits  are  reversed  or  two  columns  are  reversed.  But  most  of 
the  anomalies  in  Van  Dillen  appear  to  occur  in  the  Amsterdamsche  Courant 
as  well.29 

This  leads  us  to  confront  the  second  source  of  transcription  error  — 
that  from  the  original  source  on  the  actual  trading  day  in  London  or 
Amsterdam  to  the  printed  source  used  now  by  historians.  This  must  remain 
a  matter  of  speculation,  but  extensive  use  of  the  Course  of  the  Exchange  by 
the  author  has  not  revealed  other  examples  of  typographical  errors  —  e.g., 
inconsistencies  in  the  date  headings  which  had  to  be  altered  with  each  issue 
or  reversal  of  data  entries.  But  it  is  true  these  would  be  easier  to  pick  up 
by  the  original  typesetters  as  well. 


29 

The  ten  most  dubious  numbers  in  Van  Dillen  were  checked  against 
xerox  copies  of  the  Amsterdamsche  Courant  obtained  from  the  New  York 
Public  Library.  Only  three,  those  for  East  India  stock  on  November  16, 
1733  and  April  3,  1789  and  that  for  South  Sea  stock  on  November  25,  1793 
proved  to  be  Van  Dillen's  mistake  in  transcribing. 


25 


Studying  the  pattern  of  residuals  for  the  period  1763-1778,  when  the 
largest  number  of  outliers  occurred,  suggests  another  explanation.  The 
outliers  in  this  period  appeared  as  a  result  of  sharp  movements  of  very 
short  duration  on  the  London  Stock  Exchange.  If  one  had  taken  the 
observation  for  London  of  three  days  previous,  for  example,  in  most  cases 
the  difference  from  the  Amsterdam  quote  would  have  been  largely 
eliminated.  If  the  next  observation  was  also  an  outlier,  it  was  nearly  always 
of  opposite  sign.  This  suggests  that  information  of  great  influence  on  the 
price  of  English  stocks  was  reaching  one  market  well  before  it  reached  the 
other.  Since  our  observations  are  taken  from  the  same  day  in  both  markets, 
ephemeral  information  of  the  kind  associated  with  panics  (the  panics  of 
1763  and  1772  occur  in  this  period)  that  reaches  one  market  before  the 
other  will  not  be  reflected  in  the  price  difference.  In  anything  other  than 
panic  situations,  this  is  not  a  problem  since  the  Amsterdam  prices  are  taken 
only  every  two  weeks  and  most  of  the  information  flow  that  has  occurred 
in  that  time  interval  will  also  have  reached  the  London  market.  It  is  not 
surprising  then  that  the  worst  goodness-of-fit  occurs  in  the  period  1763-1778 
and  again  in  the  period  1790-1794. 


IV 


In  sum,  the  regression  results  strengthen  the  conclusion  that  these 
two  markets  were  efficient  and  well-integrated  from  the  second  quarter  of 
the  eighteenth   century  on.     The   spot  prices  quoted   in   the   London  market 


followed  a  random  walk  process  consistent  with  efficient  markets.  The 
forward  prices  in  the  Amsterdam  market  were  highly  correlated  with  them. 
The  semi-annual  dividend  payments  in  London  then  produced  regular 
patterns  in  the  Amsterdam  prices  both  from  the  Le  Bachelier  effect  and  the 
practice  of  London  quoting  prices  ex  dividend  during  the  preparation  of 
dividend  payments  while  Amsterdam  quoted  them  with  dividend.  These 
regular  patterns,  however,  were  sometimes  masked  by  unusual  expectations 
(e.g.,  during  the  War  of  the  Austrian  Succession),  fluctuations  in  exchange 
rates,  or  panics.  In  those  periods  we  find  random  walks  in  general, 
although  the  War  of  the  Austrian  Succession  remains  an  anomaly. 

The  significance  of  these  findings  will  be  seen  differently  by 
economists  and  historians.  For  historians,  they  will  simply  confirm  in  large 
part  the  authoritative  work  of  P.G.M.  Dickson  on  the  operation  of  the 
London  capital  markets  in  this  period  and  his  perceptive  comments  on  the 
Dutch  influence.  Dickson's  work,  in  turn,  relied  heavily  on  the  earlier  work 
done  by  Carter,  van  Dillen  and  Wilson.30  All  are  agreed  on  the  importance 
and  effectiveness  of  the  integration  of  these  two  capital  markets  at  the 
dawn    of    modern    capitalims.       After    all,    even    Karl    Marx    raged    at    the 


Alice  Carter,  "Dutch  Foreign  Investment,  1738-1800,"  Economica,  20 
(1953),  pp.  322-340;  "Dutch  Foreign  Investment,  1738-1800,  in  the  Light  of 
the  Amsterdam  'Collateral  Succesion'  Inventories,"  Tijdschrift  voor 
Geschiednis,  (1953),  pp.  27-38;  and  "The  Huguenot  Contribution  to  the  Early 
Years  of  the  Funded  Debt,  1694-1714,"  Proceedings  of  the  Huguenot  Society 
of  London,  19  (1955),  p.  21.  All  these  are  reprinted  and  summarized  in  her 
book,  Getting,  Spending  and  Investing  in  Early  Modern  Times  (1975).  Cf. 
Charles  Wilson,  Anglo-Dutch  Commerce  and  Finance  in  the  Eighteenth  Century, 
Cambridge:  University  Press,  1941,  and  his  "Dutch  Investment  in  Eighteenth 
Century  England,"  Economic  History  Review,  2nd  series,  12  (1959),  434-439. 
Van  Dillen's  works  have  been  cited  above. 


27 


establishment  of  the  National  Debt  in  England  as  the  single  most  effective 
device  in  the  "primitive  accumulation  of  capital". 

For  economists,  the  quantitative  results  should  strengthen  their 
confidence  in  doing  analytical  work  on  the  financial  relations  between 
London  and  Amsterdam.32  The  pioneer  work  in  this  regard  was  done  by 
Eagly  and  Smith  who  used  interest  rate  and  foreign  exchange  rate  data  in 
the  framework  of  an  interest  rate  arbitrage  model.  Their  results,  according 
to  them,  "support  the  general  hypothesis  of  a  trend  towards  increased 
integration  among  money  markets  during  the  course  of  the  century,  but  at 
the  same  time  they  show  that  during  individual  sub-periods  there  was 
considerable  variation  in  this  trend."33  This  could  as  well  be  the  conclusion 
from  the  results  above  but  my  emphasis  would  be  on  the  high  level  of 
integration  that  existed  at  the  beginning  of  the  second  quarter  of  the 
eighteenth  century  and  the  continued  efficiency  of  the  operations  of  both 
stock  markets  rather  than  a  trend  toward  improved  integration. 


31  Karl  Marx,  Capital,  London:  Lawrence  &  Wishart,  1970,  v.  I,  Ch.  31, 

pp.  754-6. 

Two  works  should  be  mentioned.  Brian  Parsons,  "The  Behavior  of 
Prices  on  the  London  Stock  Market  in  the  Early  Eighteenth  Century," 
unpublished  Ph.D.  dissertation,  University  of  Chicago,  1974  concentrates  on 
the  daily  course  of  prices  during  the  South  Sea  Bubble  and  finds  the  market 
operated  efficiently  although  he  finds  unexplained  differences  in  the  price 
quotes  from  different  sources.  Philip  Mirowski,  "The  Rise  (and  Retreat)  of 
a  Market:  English  Joint  Stock  Shares  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  Journal  of 
Economic  History,  41  (September  1981),  559-577,  compares  internal  accounts 
of  profitability  for  several  joint  stock  companies  with  the  pricing  of  their 
equity  on  the  stock  market.  He  finds  increasing  discrepancies  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  century. 

Robert  Eagly  and  V.  Kerry  Smith,  "Domestic  and  International 
Integration  of  the  London  Money  Market,  1731-1789,"  Journal  of  Economic 
History,  36  (March  1976),  p.  210. 


True,  these  operations  were  disturbed  by  repeated  wars  --  each 
fought  with  different  financial  techniques  and  consequences,  by  trade 
disturbances,  and  by  occasional  financial  panics.  Nevertheless,  it  must  be 
emphasized  that  these  disturbances  never  changed  the  fundamental 
economic  characteristics  of  the  two  markets  in  the  way  that  modern  policy 
measures  of  sovereign  nation  states  manage  to  do.  There  were  no  attempts 
at  independent  national  monetary  policy  by  either  country  in  the  period 
1723-1794  —  i.e.,  no  controls  on  capital  movements,  no  withholding  taxes  on 
dividend  or  interest  payments  to  foreigners,  no  changes  in  monetary 
standards,  no  managed  exchange  rates,  and  no  attempts  to  regulate  Ml,  M2, 
or  M3.  There  was  an  absence,  therefore,  of  the  modern  impediments  to 
efficient  operation  of  multiple  listing  markets.  (Witness  the  current 
difficulties  in  expanding  multiple  listings  of  stocks  among  the  members  of 
the  European  Community.)  In  other  words,  a  remarkably  modern  pair  of 
capital  markets  were  permitted  to  interact  in  an  unfettered  (and  hence 
unmodern)  fashion.  This  may  be  why  economic  integration  occurred  first  in 
these  capital  markets  well  before  comparable  degrees  of  integration  could  be 
achieved  in  goods  markets,  much  less  in  labor  markets. 


29 


Table  1. 


Correlation  Coefficients  between  London  and 
Amsterdam  Prices  for  Stock  of  Bank  of 
England,  South  Sea,  and  East  India  Company 
for  1723-1794  and  Various  Sub-periods  of  War 
and  Peace,  (levels  and  first  differences  of 
actual  prices) 

Period        Bank  o 

1723-1794 
(changes) 

Peace 

8/09/23  -  10/19/39 
(changes) 

11/11/48  -  7/14/56 
(changes) 

2/18/63  -  3/04/78 
(changes) 

12/06/82  -  9/22/90 
(changes) 

War 

10/21/39  -  10/23/48 
(changes) 

8/04/56  -  2/05/63 
(changes) 

3/02/78  -  11/20/82 
(changes) 

10/08/90  -  12/19/94 
(changes) 


England 

East  India 

South  Sea 

0.994 

0.993 

0.989 

0.589 

0.624 

0.394 

0.978 

0.990 

0.951 

0.381 

0.544 

0.505 

0.983 

0.988 

0.983 

0.327 

0.370 

0.361 

0.993 

0.997 

0.974 

0.656 

0.716 

0.389 

0.996 

0.988 

0.969 

0.570 

0.578 

0.153 

0.988 

0.977 

0.954 

0.536 

0.593 

0.305 

0.976 

0.963 

0.979 

0.655 

0.610 

0.408 

0.823 

0.943 

0.907 

0.465 

0.536 

-0.004 

0.988 

0.984 

0.986 

0.803 

0.644 

0.664 

Table  2. 


ESTIMATED  ARMA  MODELS  FOR  BANK  OF  ENGLAND  AND  EAST 
INDIA  COMPANY  STOCK  PRICE  CHANGES  IN  LONDON  AND 

AMSTERDAM 


Time  Period 


Bank  of  England 


London 


H-R 


B-J 


Amsterdam 
H-R    B-J 


Entire  Period 
1723-1794 


0,0    0,0 


0,0    0,0 


Pre-  and  Post-Barnard 


1723-1737 

0,0 

0,0 

1738-1794 

0,0 

0,0 

Peace  Periods 

1748-1756 

0,5 

0,0 

1763-1778 

2,0 

2,0 

1782-1792 

0,0 

0,0 

War  Periods 

1739-1748 

3,0 

3,0 

1756-1763 

0,0 

0,0 

1778-1782 

0,0 

0,0 

0,0 
0,0 


0,1 
0,0 
0,0 


0,0 
0,0 
0,1 


0,0 
0,0 


0,1 
0,0 
0,0 


0,0 
0,0 
1,0 


31 


Table  2  (cont.) 

East  India  Company 

Time  Period         London  Amsterdam 

H-R   B-J  H-R   B-J 

Entire  Period 

1723-1794  0,0    0,0  0,3    0,3 

Pre-  and  Post-Barnard 


1723-1737 

0,0 

0,0 

1738-1794 

0,0 

0,0 

Peace  Periods 

1748-1756 

0,0 

0,0 

1763-1778 

0,0 

0,0 

1782-1792 

0,0 

0,0 

War  Periods 

1739-1748 

0,0 

0,0 

1756-1763 

0,0 

0,0 

1778-1782 

0,0 

0,0 

2,0  0,0 

3,0  3,0 

0,0  0,0 

0,0  0,0 

0,0  0,1 

0,3  0,3 

0,0  0,0 

0,1  0,1 


Table  3. 


Regularity  of  Observations  from 
the  Aitisterdamsche  Courant, 
Sub-Periods  of  Peace  and  War,  1723-1792. 


Period         Mean       Variance      No.  of  obs 


1723-39         15.1         28.55  391 


1739-48         16.01        43.87  207 


1748-56         15.35        19.05  185 


1756-63         15.72        25.90  153 


1763-78         15,94        97.34  357 


1778-82         14.98        10.16  115 


1782-92         15.17        21.94  189 


33 


Table  4. 
Regression  Results  for  the  Bank  of  England, 
Amsterdam-London  Price  Differences  Explained 


Summary  of 

1723-1794; 

with: 

1:  Days  to  Next 
2 :  Changes  in  the 
3 :   Whether   the 


Dividend  Payment   (DAYSDIVD) ; 
Exchange  Rate  (AMEXPREM) ;  and 
London   Price   was   with   or 
ex    dividend    (PAYTIME) . 
[Outliers  removed  and  set  to  regression  plane.] 


Subperiods 

1723-1739 

1739-1748 

1748-1756 

1756-1763 

1763-1778 

1778-1783 

1783-1790 

1790-1794 


[Peace,    Pre-Barnard] 

[War  of  Austrian  Succession] 

[Peace,  no  financial  crises] 

[Seven  Years'  War] 

[Peace,  Panics  of  1763  and  1772] 

[War   of   American   Independence] 

[Peace] 
[French  Revolution,   start  of  war] 


(A-L)DIF   DAYSDIVD   AMEXPREM   PAYTIME   CONST   R2 


DW 


PANEL  A:  1723-1739 

OLS      .005       .002      1.999    -.140   .30   1.78 
(4.365)     (.241)    (8.839)   (-.520)   (1.083)      387 


OLS 


.010 
(8.772) 


.003 
(.308) 


-.397   .16   1.63 
(-1.348)      388 


OLS 


.009 
(8.780) 


-.480   .16   1.63 
(-4.006)       389 


Panel  B:  1739-1748 


OLS      .009       .056      1.141    1.284 
(5.343)     (4.952)     (3.549)  (4.016) 


31 


1.55 
203 


OLS 


.012 
(7.862) 


.056 
(4.843) 


1.118 
(3.436) 


28 


1.40 
204 


OLS 


.011 
(7.164) 


-.233 
(-1.32) 


20 


[T-statistics  are  in  parentheses  under  respective 
coefficients] 


1.25 
205 


.010 

.003 

(7.15) 

(.245) 

.012 

.002 

(9.39) 

(.159) 

.012 

(9.42) 

Table  4.  (cont.) 

(A-L)DIF   DAYSDIVD   AMEXPREM   PAYTIME   CONST  R2    DW 

Panel  C:  1748-1756 

OLS      .010       .003       .758    -.137  .34   1.51 

(2.728)  (-.468)  181 

-.275  .32   1.32 

(-.936)  182 

-.316  .32   1.32 

(-2.18)  183 

Panel  D:  1756-1763 

OLS      .011      -.014       .515    -.193  .19   1.40 

(1.139)  (-.495)  149 

-.250  .19   1.38 

(-.646)  150 

.071  .19   1.36 

(.317)  151 


Panel  E:  1763-1778 

OLS      .016      -.008       .243    -.537  .32   1.44 

(.869)  (-2.30)       353 

-.577  .32   1.42 
(-2.52)       354 

-.353  .32   1.42 
(-2.555)       355 


.011 

-.014 

(4.69) 

(-1.078) 

.012 

-.013 

(5.95) 

(-1.02) 

.012 

(5.99) 

.016 

-.008 

(10.95) 

(-1.206) 

.017 

-.009 

(13.04) 

(-1.222) 

.017 

(13.07) 

35 


Table  4.  (cont.) 
(A-L)DIF   DAYSDIVD   AMEXPREM   PAYTIME    CONST   R2    DW 


Panel  F: 

1778-1782 

OLS 

.010 

-.025 

.567 

-.14 

.21 

1.60 

(3.79) 

(-2.683) 

(1.102) 

(-.428) 

111 

OLS 

.011 

-.025 

-.223 

.21 

1.53 

(4.95) 

(-2.67) 

(-.676) 

112 

OLS 

.011 
(4.82) 

.364 
(1.442) 

.16 

1.42 
113 

Panel  G:  1782-1790 
OLS 

OLS 

OLS 


.017 

-.033 

.492 

-.122 

.35 

1.72 

(7.56) 

(-4.31) 

(1.105) 

(-.520) 

185 

.018 

-.032 

-.196 

.35 

1.70 

(9.08) 

(-4.280) 

(-.870) 

186 

.019 

-.166 

.29 

1.55 

(8.90) 

(-.706) 

187 

Panel  H:  1790-1794 

OLS      .009  -.002      1.761      .568  .20   1.58 

(2.21)  (-.179)    (2.462)    (1.14)        75 

OLS      .015  -.002                 .253  .15   1.44 

(3.90)  (-.165)               (.509)        76 

OLS      .015  .207  .16   1.44 

(3.93)  (.504)        77 


TABLE  5. 
Summary  of  Regression  Results   for  the  East  India 
Company  explaining  Amsterdam-London  price  differences 

(A-LDIF)  with: 

1:  Day  to  next  dividend  payment  (DAYSDIVD) ; 
2 :  Changes  in  the  exchange  rate  (AMEXPREM)  ;  and 
3 :   Whether  the  London  price  was  with  or  ex 

dividend  (PAYTIME) . 
[Outliers  removed  and  set  to  regression  plane.] 

Subperiods: 

1723-1739  [Peace,    pre-Barnard] 

1739-1748  [War  of  Austrian  Succession] 

1748-1756  [Peace,  no  financial  crises] 

1756-1763  [Seven  Years  War] 

1763-1778  [Peace,  panics  of  1763  and  1772] 

1778-1783  [War  of  American  Independence] 

1783-1790  [Peace] 

1790-1794  [French  Revolution,  start  of  war] 

(A-L)DIF   DAYSDIVD   AMEXPREM   PAYTIME    CONST   R2   DW 

PANEL  A:  1723-1739 

OLS 


OLS 


OLS 


.006 

-.001 

2.884 

-.477 

.24 

1.90 

(3.214) 

(-.106) 

(7.930) 

(-1.07) 

387 

.012 

-.005 

-1.00 

.12 

1.69 

(7.28) 

(-.342) 

(-2.102) 

388 

.012 

-.851 

.12 

1.69 

(7.29) 

(-4.43) 

389 

Panel  B:  1739-1748 

OLS      .015       .068      1.383    1.251    .29   1.54 

203 

.27   1.38 
204 

.22   1.28 
205 

[T-statistics  are  in  parentheses  under  respective 
coefficients] 


.015 

.068 

1.383 

1.251 

(5.74) 

(3.95) 

(2.751) 

(2.52) 

.018 

.069 

1.072 

(7.93) 

(3.945) 

(2.14) 

.018 

-.633 

(7.61) 

(-2.44) 

37 


Table  5.  (cont.) 

(A-L)DIF   DAYSDIVD   AMEXPREM   PAYTIME    CONST   R2   DW 
Panel  C:  1748-1756 
OLS 


OLS 


OLS 


.016 

.028 

2.032 

.427 

.41 

1.69 

(7.05) 

(1.40) 

(4.51) 

(.927) 

181 

.016 

2.024 

-.137 

.41 

1.68 

(7.07) 

(4.48) 

(-.62) 

182 

.021 

-.416 

.35 

1.40 

(9.91) 

(-1.85) 

183 

Panel  D:  1756-1763 

OLS      .013  -.044       .872    -.800  .27   1.43 

(5.15)   (-2.99)  (1.72)  (-1.78)  149 

OLS      .015  -.046              -.959  .26   1.38 

(6.69)  (-3.07)             (-2.16)  150 

OLS      .015  .156  .22   1.29 

(6.56)  (.599)  151 


Panel  E:  1763-1778 

OLS      .021      -.063       .835    -1.42  .19   1.56 

(6.57)   (-3.828)    (1.35)   (-2.75)  353 

OLS      .023      -.063              -1.55  .19   1.55 

(-3.03)  354 


.023 

-.063 

(8.17) 

(-3.84) 

.023 

(8.15) 

OLS      .023  .016    .16   1.49 

(.053)         355 


Table  5.  (cont.) 

(A-L)DIF   DAYSDIVD   AMEXPREM   PAYTIME   CONST   R2   DW 
Panel  F:  1778-1783 
OLS 


OLS 


OLS 


.028 

-.036 

.684    -1.40 

.41 

1.93 

(7.16) 

(-2.71) 

(.913)  (-2.83) 

111 

.029 

-.036 

-1.51 

.41 

1.91 

(8.64) 

(-2.755) 

(-3.177) 

112 

.029 

-.66 

.38 

1.77 

(8.38) 

(-1.78) 

113 

Panel  G:  1782-1790 
OLS 

OLS 

OLS 


.020 

-.028 

.839 

.359 

.33 

1.79 

(7.33) 

(-2.987) 

(1.552) 

(1.34) 

185 

.022 

-.028 

• 

.244 

.32 

1.73 

(9.15) 

(-3.005) 

(.942) 

186 

.022 

.320 

.29 

1.65 

(8.90) 

(1.215) 

187 

Panel  H:  1790-1794 

OLS      .016      -.010      1.776     .709    .19   1.69 

75 

.17   1.66 
76 

.18   1.65 
77 


.016 

-.010 

1.776 

.709 

(2.82) 

(-.501) 

(0.707) 

(1.11) 

.021 

-.012 

.495 

(4.24) 

(-.600) 

(.779) 

.021 

.267 

(4.265) 

(.527) 

Chart  1 

Equivalent  Prices  of  Spot  and  Future  Deliveries 


Time 


I