Why Do Firms Pay Dividends?: Evidence from an Early and Unregulated Capital Market

Why do firms pay dividends? To answer this question, we use a hand-collected data set of companies traded on the London stock market between 1825 and 1870. As tax rates were effectively zero, the capital market was unregulated, and there were no institutional stockholders, we can rule out these potential determinants ex ante. We find that, even though they were legal, share repurchases were not used by firms to return cash to shareholders. Instead, our evidence provides support for the information–communication explanation for dividends, while providing little support for agency, illiquidity, catering, or behavioral explanations. © The Authors 2013. Published by Oxford University Press [on behalf of the European Finance Association]. All rights reserved.

John Rich as Opera Patron

This article traces the sustained support that theatre manager John Rich offered to operatic endeavours in 18th-century London. Rich effectively entered the contemporary discourse regarding the valid definition of opera through the kinds of works he supported, and also through the prefatory comments to two works staged at his theatre.

Chiton phylogeny (Mollusca Polyplacophora) and the placement of the enigmatic species Choriplax grayi (H. Adams & Angas)

Shallow marine chitons (Mollusca:Polyplacophora:Chitonida) are widespread and well described from established morphoanatomical characters, yet key aspects of polyplacophoran phylogeny have remained unresolved. Several species, including Hemiarthrum setulosum Carpenter in Dall, 1876, and especially the rare and enigmatic Choriplax grayi (Adams & Angas, 1864), defy systematic placement. Choriplax is known from only a handful of specimens and its morphology is a mosaic of key taxonomic features from two different clades. Here, new molecular evidence provides robust support for its correct association with a third different clade: Choriplax is placed in the superfamily Mopalioidea. Hemiarthrum is included in Cryptoplacoidea, as predicted from morphological evidence. Our multigene analysis of standard nuclear and mitochondrial markers demonstrates that the topology of the order Chitonida is divided into four clades, which have also been recovered in previous studies: Mopalioidea is sister to Cryptoplacoidea, forming a clade Acanthochitonina. The family Callochitonidae is sister to Acanthochitonina. Chitonoidea is resolved as the earliest diverging group within Chitonida. Consideration of this unexpected result for Choriplax and our well-supported phylogeny has revealed differing patterns of shell reduction separating the two superfamilies within Acanthochitonina. As in many molluscs, shell reduction as well as the de novo development of key shell features has occurred using different mechanisms, in multiple lineages of chitons.

Race, space and politics in Mid-Victorian Ireland: the ethnologies of Abraham Hume and John McElheran

There has been much scholarly debate about the significance and influence of racialist thinking in the political and cultural history of nineteenth-century Ireland. With reference to that ongoing historiographical discussion, this paper considers the racial geographies and opposing political motivations of two Irish ethnologists, Abraham Hume and John McElheran, using their racialist regimes to query some of the common assumptions that have informed disagreements over the role and reach of racial typecasting in mid-nineteenth-century Ireland. As well as examining in detail the racial imaginaries promulgated by Hume and McElheran, the paper also argues for the importance of situating racialist discourse in the spaces in which it was communicated and contested. Further, in highlighting the ways in which Hume and McElheran collapsed together race, class and religion, the paper troubles the utility of a crisp analytical distinction between those disputed categories.

Changing the intellectual climate

Calls for more broad-based, integrated, useful knowledge now abound in the world of global environmental change science. They evidence many scientists' desire to help humanity confront the momentous biophysical implications of its own actions. But they also reveal a limited conception of social science and virtually ignore the humanities. They thereby endorse a stunted conception of 'human dimensions' at a time when the challenges posed by global environmental change are increasing in magnitude, scale and scope. Here, we make the case for a richer conception predicated on broader intellectual engagement and identify some preconditions for its practical fulfilment. Interdisciplinary dialogue, we suggest, should engender plural representations of Earth's present and future that are reflective of divergent human values and aspirations. In turn, this might insure publics and decision-makers against overly narrow conceptions of what is possible and desirable as they consider the profound questions raised by global environmental change.

Banished to the Barn - John Doherty and 'Bonnie Kate'

John Doherty (1900-1980) was one of the most influential Irish musicians of the twentieth century. His music has had a lasting impact on Irish traditional music making around the globe. This paper traces the development of his setting of the canonical reel 'Bonnie Kate'. Using transcription historical investigation Doherty's style is examined in comparison to his contemporaries.