The book is a compelling combination of economic and financial theory, economic and business history, and the history of economic thought. What it really does is consider modern theories of corporate financial and managerial structure in the If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at http://eh.net/

By examining the relationship between measurement and regulation at the Interstate Commerce Commission between 1887 and 1940, the following article sheds light on a little-studied component of the commission's work. It argues that the nature of the accounting and statistical tools used by the ICC had an impact on the regulatory process, specifically that the difficulties encountered in the development of accurate and relevant railroad statistics often undermined the agency's ability to achieve its regulatory goals. At the same time, a changing economic, political, and social environment affected the regulators' perception of the type of data necessary to gain control of the industry's structure.

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In this article Projessor Miranti contrasts the differing reactions of leaders in the public accounting profession to the structure of national economic regulation that emerged in America during the first decades of the twentieth century. Specifically, he focuses on the actions taken by two national professional organizations, the American Association of Public Accountants and its successor, the American Institute of Accountants, at two important junctures in the history of financial reform: the establishment of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Trade Commission and the organization of the Securities and Exchange Commission. In assessing these experiences, his article concentrates on identifying the changing circumstances and political contexts that gave rise first to an associationalist response and then to a statist response to the problem of ordering the nation's financial markets.

Using a broad socio-economic conception of capital markets' agencyrelationships, this study analyses an important economic transition in US economic history. It focuses on the institutional and informational changes that attended the reform of corporate governance and regulation in the railroad industry during the three decades after the depression of 1893 which was marked by extensive bankruptcy in the nation's largest business sector, the railroads. Institutional and social responses to this crisis provide a rich source in understanding the evolution of property rights and of institutional arrangements for enhancing corporate transparency and capital market efficiency. This study emphasises the notion of path-dependent learning as a driver for institutional evolution and shows how institutional responses were not limited to simple short-term firm-specific owner-manager relationships as is often usefully addressed by modern agency approaches. It also encompasses a variety of social, institutional and environmental factors that are often more important in explaining the dynamic nature of organisations, capital markets and financial reporting.