I have been working with Qing Ye and Clive Walker on a paper which looks at the effect of the media on financial markets in nineteenth-century London. The main finding of our paper is that there is a media discount which appears after the emergence of arm's-length ownership and increased market participation. This suggests that diffuse ownership may be a prerequisite for the media effect. Our findings help explain why the media appears to have little effect on present-day developing country financial markets. The working paper is available at the QUCEH website.
