Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-5xszh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T22:30:26.507Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Marine Insurance in Britain and America, 1720–1844: A Comparative Institutional Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 May 2007

Christopher Kingston
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Amherst College, Amherst MA 01002. E-mail: cgkingston@amherst.edu.

Abstract

This article examines how the marine insurance industry evolved in Britain and America during its critical formative period, focusing on the information asymmetries and agency problems that were inherent to the technology of overseas trade at the time, and on the path-dependent manner in which the institutions that addressed these problems evolved. I argue that the market was characterized by multiple equilibria because of a potential lemons problem. Exogenous shocks and endogenous institutional development combined to bring about a bifurcation of institutional structure, the effects of which persist to the present day.

Type
ARTICLES
Copyright
© 2007 The Economic History Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aoki Masahiko. Towards a Comparative Institutional Analysis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001.
Banner Stuart. “The Origin of the New York Stock Exchange, 1791-1860.” Journal of Legal Studies 27, no. 1 (1998): 113-40.Google Scholar
Barbour Violet. “Marine Risks and Insurance in the Seventeenth Century.” Journal of Economic and Business History 1, no. 4 (1929): 561-96.Google Scholar
Caballero Gonzalo, and Christopher Kingston. “Comparing Theories of Institutional Change.” Paper presented at the ISNIE annual meeting, 2006.
Clauder Anna Cornelia. “American Commerce as Affected by the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon, 1793-1812.” Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1932.
Cockerell H. A. L., and Edwin Green. The British Insurance Business: A Guide to its History and Records, 2nd edition. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994.
Crothers A. Glenn. “Commercial Risk and Capital Formation in Early America: Vir-ginia Merchants and the Rise of American Marine Insurance, 1750-1815.” Business History Review 78, no. 4 (2004): 607-34.Google Scholar
Davis Joseph Stancliffe. Essays in the Earlier History of American Corpora-tions. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917.
Dawson Warren R.The London Coffee-Houses and the Beginnings of Lloyd's.” Journal of the British Archaeological Association 40, no. 1 (1934): 104-34.Google Scholar
de Roover Florence Edler. “Early Examples of Marine Insurance.” This JOURNAL 5, no. 2 (1945): 172-200.Google Scholar
Fowler J. A. History of Insurance in Philadelphia for Two Centuries (1683-1882). Philadelphia: Review Publishing and Printing Co., 1888.
Fowler William M.Marine Insurance in Boston: The Early Years of the Boston Ma-rine Insurance Company, 1799-1807. In Entrepreneurs: The Boston Business Community, 1700-1850, edited by Conrad Edick Wright and Katheryn P. Viens, 151-79. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1997.
Gibb D. E. W. Lloyd's of London: A Study in Individualism. London: Mac-Millan and Co. Ltd., 1957.
Gillingham Harrold E. Marine Insurance in Philadelphia 1721-1800. Phila-delphia: Patterson and White Co., 1933.
Glasgow City Archives. Glasgow, UK: Mitchell Library.
Guildhall library, Manuscripts section. London, UK.
Hamer Philip M., Ed. The Papers of Henry Laurens (16 vols). Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1968-2003.
Hansard T. C., Ed. Parliamentary Debates. London: Hansard, 1812.
Harrington Virginia D. The New York Merchant on the Eve of the Revolu-tion. New York: Columbia University Press, 1935.
Harris Ron. Industrializing English Law: Entrepreneurship and Business Organi-zation, 1720-1844. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.CrossRef
Harris Ron.. “The Formation of the East India Company as a Cooperation-Enhancing In-stitution.” Mimeo, Tel Aviv University, 2005.
Hennessy Elizabeth. Coffee-House to Cyber Market: 200 Years of the London Stock Exchange. London: Ebury Press, 2001.
Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collections. Philadelphia.
Huebner Solomon. “The Development and Present Status of Marine Insurance in the United States.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 26 (1905): 421-79.Google Scholar
Jackson Gordon. “Marine Insurance Frauds in Scotland 1751-1821: Cases of Delib-erate Shipwreck Tried in the Scottish Court of Admiralty.” Mariner's Mir-ror 57 no. 3 (1971): 307-22.Google Scholar
Jackson Gordon. Hull in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Economic and Social His-tory. London: Oxford University Press, 1972.
John A. H.The London Assurance Company and the Marine Insurance Market of the Eighteenth Century.” Economica 25, no. 98 (1958): 126-41.Google Scholar
Kingston Christopher. “Intermediation and Trust.” Working paper, Amherst College, 2006.
Marryat Joseph. “Observations on the Report of the Committee of Marine Insurance,” 1810. Reprinted in History of Insurance, volume 8, edited by David Jen-kins and Takau Yoneyama, 209-99. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000.
Martin Frederick. The History of Lloyd's and of Marine Insurance in Great Brit-ain. London: MacMillan and Co., 1876.
Massachusetts Historical Society. MHS Collections, Series 7, vol. 10: Commerce of Rhode Island, vol. 2: 1775-1800. Boston: MHS, 1915.
Massachusetts Historical Society Collections. Boston.
McCusker John J.The Early History of ‘Lloyd's List’.” Historical Research 64 (1991): 427-31.Google Scholar
Mitchell C. Bradford. A Premium on Progress: An Outline History of the Ameri-can Marine Insurance Market 1820-1970. New York: American Institute of Marine Underwriters, 1970.
Montgomery Thomas H. A History of the Insurance Company of North Amer-ica. Philadelphia: Press of Review Publishing and Printing Company, 1885.
North Douglass C.The United States Balance of Payments, 1790-1860.” In Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century. Studies in Income and Wealth of the National Bureau of Economic Research, vol. 24. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960.
Oldham James, Ed. The Mansfield Manuscripts and the Growth of English Law in the Eighteenth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
O'Rourke Kevin. “The Worldwide Economic Impact of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1793-1815.” Journal of Global History 1, no. 1 (2006): 123-49.Google Scholar
Palmer Sarah. “The Indemnity in the London Marine Insurance Market, 1824-50.” In The Historian and the Business of Insurance, edited by Oliver M. Westall, 74-94. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1984.
Phillips W. Alison, and Arthur H. Reede. Neutrality: Its History, Economics and Law, Volume II: The Napoleonic Period. New York: Columbia University Press, 1936.
Postlethwayt Malachy. The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce. London: W. Strahan, 1774.
Price Jacob M., Ed. Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774. London: London Record Society, 1979.
Raynes Harold E. A History of British Insurance. London: Pitman and Sons, 1964.
Roelker William Greene, and Clarkson A. Collins. One Hundred Fifty Years of Providence Washington Insurance Company 1799-1949. Providence, RI: Roger Williams, 1949.
Rothschild Michael, and Joseph Stiglitz. “Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Mar-kets: An Essay on the Economics of Imperfect Information.” Quarterly Jour-nal of Economics 90, no. 4 (1976): 629-50.Google Scholar
Ruwell Mary Elizabeth. Eighteenth-Century Capitalism: The Formation of American Marine Insurance Companies. New York: Garland, 1993.
Select Committee on Marine Insurance. “Report from the Select Committee on Marine Insurance.” London: House of Commons, 1810.
Shannon H. A.The Coming of General Limited Liability.” Economic His-tory 2, no. 6 (1931): 267-91.Google Scholar
Smith Walter Buckingham, and Arthur Harrison Cole. Fluctuations in American Business 1790-1860. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935.
Supple Barry. The Royal Exchange Assurance: A History of British Insurance 1720-1970. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Sutherland Lucy. A London Merchant 1695-1774. Oxford: Oxford Univer-sity Press, 1933.
Weskett John. A Complete Digest of the Theory, Laws and Practice of Insur-ance. London: Frys, Couchman and Collier, 1781.
Westall Oliver M.Invisible, Visible and ‘Direct’ Hands: An Institutional Interpreta-tion of Organizational Structure and Change in British General Insurance.” Business History 39, no. 4 (1997): 44-66.Google Scholar
White Philip L., Ed. The Beekman Mercantile Papers 1746-1799. New York: New York Historical Society, 1956.
Woodward Patrick Henry. Insurance in Connecticut. Boston: D. H. Hurd and Co., 1897.
Wright Charles, and C. Ernest Fayle. A History of Lloyd's. London: MacMil-lan and Co., 1928.