This study examines the impact of British capital flows on the evolution of capital markets in four countries--Argentina, Australia, Canada, and the United States--over the years 1865 to 1914. In substantive chapters on each of the countries it offers parallel histories of the evolution of their financial infrastructures--commercial banks, nonbank intermediaries, primary security markets, formal secondary security markets, and the institutions that provide the international financial links connecting the frontier country with the British capital market.

The authors treat macroeconomic models as composed of large numbers of micro-units or agents of several types and explicitly discuss stochastic dynamic and combinatorial aspects of interactions among them. In mainstream macroeconomics sound microfoundations for macroeconomics have meant incorporating sophisticated intertemporal optimization by representative agents into models. Optimal growth theory, once meant to be normative, is now taught as a descriptive theory in mainstream macroeconomic courses. In neoclassical equilibria flexible prices led the economy to the state of full employment...