[The Project | Outputs | News | Researchers | Papers | Conference]
News [Top]
New PhD Scholarship: Private Sector Finance And The Support Of Infrastructure As A Source Of Economic Growth.
The Project [Top]
The recent high-profile focus on international aid policy, debt relief and trade imbalances has had its roots in a desire to support low-income countries in their efforts out of long-term poverty. If these measures are to work in a sustainable sense, it must be that their intention is to facilitate private entrepreneurship in the poor country. The finance of such entrepreneurship is thus key. Finding the right policy and economic recommendations requires an understanding the nature of factors that impinge on the working of financial markets. Questions such as infrastructure provision, property rights, governance, regulation and taxation are all central. In short, which array of feasible policies will allow markets to work, so releasing innate entrepreneurship of the kind that allows countries to grow from within?
The work marks the culmination of over a decade of work by Dr Gary Shea, an economic historian with specialisms in finance and econometrics. Dr Shea is nearing completion of a highly novel dataset on the financial history of the industrial revolution in the UK. This dataset will form the backbone of our research. In addition, a theoretical understanding of the cliometric facts will be advanced. Professor Charles Nolan, a theoretical and empirical macroeconomist, will lead the project along with Dr Gary Shea and Alex Trew. Two research students will also contribute in a fundamental way.
Outputs [Top]
This project will produce three forms of deliverable:
The Handbook of Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Corporate Finance: A unique set of historical data (produced in Handbook form) illustrating the efforts of firms in 18 th century Britain to support the growth of their business through investment in infrastructure;
Academic and Policy Papers: Production of a series of academic papers, reports, speeches, articles and presentations based on the analysis of this data; and other more narrative based communications outputs; and
Dissemination: Holding of a high profile, academic and policy oriented conference on this topic sometime in 2008 that will be attended by a wide variety of internationally recognized experts - proceedings of the conference may be published.
This web page will collate and record each deliverable.
Researchers [Top]
Academic and Policy Papers [Top]
