scholarly journals Individual Investors and Portfolio Diversification in Late Victorian Britain: How Diversified Were Victorian Financial Portfolios?

2018 ◽  
Vol 78 (2) ◽  
pp. 435-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitris P. Sotiropoulos ◽  
Janette Rutterford
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Portfolio Diversification ◽  
Individual Investors ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Financial Advice ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Portfolio Strategies ◽  
Financial Portfolios ◽  
Financial Securities

This article investigates Victorian investor financial portfolio strategies in England and Wales during the second half of the nineteenth century. We find that investors held on average about half of their gross wealth in the form of four or five liquid financial securities, but were reluctant to adopt fully contemporary financial advice to invest equal amounts in securities or to spread risk across the globe. They generally held under-diversified portfolios and proximity to their investments may have been an alternative to diversification as a means of risk reduction, especially for the less wealthy.

The Unknowable

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. J. Mander
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Great Part ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Philosophy

This book presents a history of nineteenth century metaphysics in Britain, providing close textual readings of the key contributions to First Philosophy made by the key philosophers of the period (such as Hamilton, Mansel, Spencer, Mill, and Bradley) as well as some lesser known figures (such as Bain, Clifford, Shadworth Hodgson, Ferrier, and John Grote). The story focuses on the elaboration of, and differing reactions to, the concept of the unknowable or unconditioned, first developed by Sir William Hamilton in the 1829. The idea of an ultimate but unknowable way that things really are in themselves may be seen as supplying a narrative arc that runs right through the metaphysical systems of the period in question as, relative to this concept, these thought schemes may be divided into three broad groups which were roughly consecutive in their emergence but also overlapping as they continued to develop. In the first instance there were the doctrines of the agnostics who further progressed Hamilton’s basic idea that fundamental reality lies for the great part beyond our cognitive reach, but these philosophies were followed, immediately by those of the empiricists and, in the last third of the century by those of the idealists, both of whom—albeit in profoundly different ways—reacted against the epistemic pessimism of the agnostics. By presenting, interpreting, criticizing and connecting together their various contrasting ideas this book explains how these three traditions developed and interacted with one another to comprise the history of metaphysics in Victorian Britain.

Robert M. Young's Mind, Brain and Adaptation revisited

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Christopher Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Unique Character ◽  
Philosophy Department ◽  
History Of ◽  
Science Community ◽  
Scientific Ideas

Abstract Robert Maxwell Young's first book Mind, Brain and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century (1970), written from 1960 to 1965, still merits reading as a study of the naturalization of mind and its relation to social thought in Victorian Britain. I examine the book from two perspectives that give the volume its unique character: first, Young's interest in psychology, which he considered should be used to inform humane professional practices and be the basis of social reform; second, new approaches to the history of scientific ideas. I trace Young's intellectual interests to the Yale Philosophy Department, the Cambridge Department of Experimental Psychology and a new history and philosophy of science community. Although Young changed his political outlook and historiography radically after 1965, he always remained faithful to ideas about thought and practice described in Mind, Brain.

Suicides by opium and its derivatives, in England and Wales, 1850—1950

1985 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
England And Wales

SynopsisIn the mid-nineteenth century opium and its derivatives, such as laudanum and morphine, were the most common poisons in suicides in England and Wales. With legislative restrictions on these ‘dangerous drugs’ such a use declined. This study attempts to show this trend and indicates the large variety of these opium-related suicides.

scholarly journals Atmospheric Pollution, Health, and Height in Late Nineteenth Century Britain

2018 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 1210-1247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy E. Bailey ◽  
Timothy J. Hatton ◽  
Kris Inwood
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Child Development ◽  
Atmospheric Pollution ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Strong Negative Relationship ◽  
Late Nineteenth

In nineteenth century Britain atmospheric pollution from coal-fired industrialization was on the order of 50 times higher than today. We examine the effects of these emissions on child development by analysing the heights on enlistment during WWI of men born in England and Wales in the 1890s. We find a strong negative relationship between adult heights and the coal intensity of the districts in which these men were observed as children in the 1901 census. The subsequent decline in atmospheric pollution likely contributed to the long-term improvement in health and increase in height.

scholarly journals ‘A Kind of Geological Novel’: Wales and Travel Writing, 1783–1819

Romanticism ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
Sense Of Place ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Romantic Period ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Ongoing Work ◽  
Geological Map ◽  
Humphry Davy

This article explores the layered and multivocal nature of Romantic-period travel writing in Wales through the theme of geology. Beginning with an analysis of the spectral sense of place that emerges from William Smith's 1815 geological map of England and Wales, it considers a range of travel texts, from the stones and fossils of Thomas Pennant's A Tour in Wales (1778–83), to Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday's early nineteenth-century Welsh travels, to little-known manuscript accounts. Wales is still the least-researched of the home nations in terms of the Enlightenment and the Romantic period, despite recent and ongoing work that has done much to increase its visibility. Travel writing, meanwhile, is a form whose popularity in the period is now little recognised. These points doubly position Welsh travel writing on the fringes of our field, in an outlying location compounded by the genre's status as a category that defies easy definition.

Discipline and Revolution: Classics in Victorian Culture

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Goldhill
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Reception Studies ◽  
Victorian Culture ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Major Revision ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Nineteenth Century Studies

This book explores the dynamics of Classics in the nineteenth-century, focusing on art, opera, and fiction and how artworks come to stand for a self-aware statement about modernity—through the classical past. It raises new questions and new understandings in three major areas of scholarship: nineteenth-century studies, Classics, and the so-called Reception Studies. It examines the discipline of Classics and its place in Victorian culture, as well as some very strong challenges to the Classics as a story, which constitute a need for a major revision of the account. In particular, it considers the relationship between Classics and sexuality. It also discusses the most important revolution of the nineteenth century, and how this affects our understanding of a discipline as a discipline: the loss of the dominant place of Christianity in Victorian Britain.

Political Economy and the Science of Economics in Victorian Britain

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Tribe
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
Teaching And Research ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
New Science ◽  
University Life

This chapter looks at the historical understanding of political economy. It also describes the transformation of political economy as a general understanding of wealth and its distribution to a new science of economics. This transition can be linked to the expanding system of public education during the later end of the nineteenth century and the reorganisation of university life around teaching and research in modern subjects. The movement for wider access to higher education was associated with the formation of new university subjects in the humanities. Among these modern subjects, commerce and economics were prominent as new disciplines of study relevant to the modern world.

scholarly journals Financial Advice and Portfolio Diversification

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 178
Author(s):  
Augustine C. Arize ◽  
Tao Guo ◽  
John Malindretos ◽  
Lawrence Verzani
Keyword(s):  
Financial Institution ◽  
Portfolio Diversification ◽  
Insurance Companies ◽  
Financial Advice ◽  
Portfolio Decisions ◽  
Investment Portfolios ◽  
Diversified Portfolio

This paper examines whether households diversify their investment portfolios and whether portfolio diversification could be affected by where investors seek advice. We found that respondents find advice from banks, insurance companies, and brokerage houses less helpful compared to reading investment research and financial periodicals when making their portfolio decisions. Comparing among the advice from all type of financial institution or financial professionals, it is found that advice from brokerage houses is still the most helpful. But when looking at their actual portfolio diversification, those who rely on brokers’ advice ended up with a less diversified portfolio. These findings support our hypothesis that investors’ portfolio could be negatively influenced because of the services they received from brokerage houses. 

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