Earnings of Capital in the English Shipping Industry, 1670–1730

Ralph Davis

The Journal of Economic History, 1957, vol. 17, issue 3, 409-425

Abstract: The mainsprings of the entrepreneur's activity are his expectations of profit. Being aspirations, these are rarely expressed, but they are founded on objective facts—upon the experience of profits actually earned. Until the days of the limited company or corporation, actual profits were close secrets. Few records survive of the profits of individual enterprises before the nineteenth century, and little is known of general levels of profits and profit expectations. This paper attempts to throw some light on the subject by an exploration of some financial records of the English shipping industry in the decades around 1700. The records are of special interest because the assets of this industry were expensive and long-lived units; it was natural to relate earnings to an annual rate of return on the capital invested in those units. The industry was, moreover, a large and rapidly growing one.

Date: 1957
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:jechis:v:17:y:1957:i:03:p:409-425_08

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Journal of Economic History from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().