The European Association for Banking and Financial History has just started a new working paper series, with Chris Colvin as one of the editors. Along with my co-authors, I have a new working paper available in this series. The paper looks at ownership diffusion in the last half of the nineteenth century. Surprisingly, we find that ownership was much more diffused in the past than we expected. It was also diffuse compared to twenty-first century corporations. The paper is available here.
According to Robert Shiller , speaking at Davos, Bitcoin is a perfect example of a bubble - story here . Shiller sees Bitcoin as a backwards step in the evolution of money. George Selgin , a free banker, takes an opposing view - click here . Although he doesn't believe that Bitcoin is money, he sees its development as a fascinating turn in the evolution of money. In particular, he lauds the fact that Bitcoin production is constrained and cannot be infinite. There is a short video below where Bitcoin explain how it works.