John Turner is a Professor of Finance at Queen’s University Belfast. He believes that the past provides rich lessons for modern-day economists and social scientists.
In a series of articles with Charles Hickson and Graeme Acheson, he has helped economists understand how unlimited liability operated in the past and why limited liability is much ado about nothing. His work has also highlighted the importance of organisational form and unlimited liability to the stability of early banking systems. Maybe regulators need to wind back the clock!
John has been a Houblon-Norman Fellow at the Bank of England and in 2010 he is the Alfred D. Chandler Visiting International Scholar at the Harvard Business School.
John is also interested in investor behaviour in early capital markets and has written a series of articles on this topic. John has also developed a series of stock-market indices for nineteenth-century Britain and Ireland.
He is currently working on several issues. First, along with Gareth Campbell, he is looking at investors during the Railway Mania. Second, he is interested in the impact of the popularisation of democracy on wealth inequality and asset prices. Third, along with Qing Ye and Wenwen Zhan, he is working on asset pricing and corporate finance in nascent financial markets. Fourth, along with Graeme Acheson, he is looking at share ownership in the nineteenth century.
John has graduated six PhD students and currently is supervising four students. He is happy to hear from any potential PhD students who would like to work on financial history, law and finance, or on the impact of religion on the economy.
“Protecting Outside Investors in a Laissez-faire Legal Environment: Corporate Governance and Dividends in Victorian Britain” (with G. Campbell), Economic History Review, 2010, forthcoming.
“Does Limited Liability Matter?: Evidence from Nineteenth-Century British Banking” (with Graeme Acheson and Charles Hickson), Review of Law and Economics, 2010, forthcoming.
