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AbstractThere have been claims that British capital was not well deployed in Victorian Britain. There was, allegedly, a lack of support for new and dynamic companies in comparison to the situation in Germany and the US. We find no evidence to support these claims. The London Stock Exchange welcomed young, old, domestic, and foreign firms. It provided funds to firms in old, existing industries as well as patenting firms in 'new‐tech' industries at similar costs of capital. If investors did show a preference for older and foreign firms, it was because those firms offered investors better long‐run performance. In addition, we show some evidence that investors who worked in the same industry and lived close to the firm going public were allotted more shares in high‐quality initial public offerings.

In this survey article, after delineating its historical origin of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), the authors summarize from the methodological perspective the empirical findings from 1960s through 1990s bearing on the EMH under the headings "supporting empirical findings as documented in 1960s", "mixed empirical findings as merged in the late 1970s through 1980s" and "challenging empirical findings as appeared in 1990s". The authors move on to sketch the ongoing debate in the 21st century based on empirical evidence available and then present an overall assessment of the EMH. Once necessary reservations and precautious interpretations are taken into consideration, the authors contend at the end of the article that the EMH is here to stay and will continue to play an important role in modern finance for years to come.

AbstractIn this paper, I use the case of financial economics to show how an innovative idea can shape a research agenda. I focus on why the efficient-market hypothesis, crystallized in Eugene Fama's research, acquired core theoretical status in the discipline of financial economics, whereas the Capital Asset Pricing Model, championed by, among others, Fischer Black, did not. I draw attention both to differences in the networks propagating these models, in particular differences in cohesion and coherence, and to differences in the methodologies underlying the models. I argue that Fama's use of "data-dredging" techniques and frequentist statistics increased the coherence of the intellectual circle around him, turning the analysis of efficiency into a collective project oriented towards the discovery of objective properties. By contrast, Black's adoption of more subjectivist methods exacerbated the individualistic tendencies of his approach and his network, increasing the incoherence of his research group.