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"Financial fraud is a serious and seemingly intractable problem. Financial scandals regularly punctuate newspaper headlines and regulators and auditors appear bereft of effective responses. But has this always been the case? This book quantifies financial crime in the UK using three centuries of data. It demonstrates how financial fraud and scandal vary according to systematic economic and institutional arrangements. In doing so, it retells the history of British capitalism, from the mercantilism of the eighteenth century to the financial capitalism of the twenty-first century, illustrating the often negative consequences of economic ideology, policy and structure. It identifies periods when fraud has been less problematic and contrasts these with times when it has surged. The variation of outcomes reflects the balance of power between the state, industrial and financial sectors, the provision of credit through risky lending, and the effectiveness of audits. "Rogue traders" and other flawed individuals are frequently the focus of blame narratives constructed with the intention of deflecting comprehensive systematic reforms"--

AbstractThis article considers how international economic expansion impacts on the composition of elite groups on boards of companies. We examine, why, at the height of the British Empire, boards of national, imperial, and international railway companies, financed from London, were dominated by elites drawn differentially from the aristocracy, the military, finance, and politics. To investigate the reasons for these differences, we conduct a social network analysis of railway company boards in three countries during the second half of the nineteenth century. Results reveal that aristocratic directors were dominant in Britain, military directors in India, and financier directors in Argentina, suggesting that their influence drew on local knowledge, resource access, and network connections. They did not serve on boards for merely ornamental purposes.