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Abstract

Today the US economy is seen as an archetype of a capitalist system in which securities markets play a crucial role. Dividends of Development explains how US securities markets became central to the institutional fabric of US capitalism during the period from the Civil War through World War I. The book shows that the development of US securities markets occurred through a process that was volatile and time-consuming, unscripted by powerful actors, and driven, above all else, by the dramatic but unstable character of the nation’s economic development. These claims about the trajectory, the operation, and the underlying dynamics of the development of US securities markets are brought together in a novel synthesis that portrays the historical evolution of securities markets in the United States as the “dividends" of the country's distinctive trajectory of economic development.