Imperial chancellor Bismarck's system of social insurance (with its three pillars health, accident and pension insurance) was an important role model for social security systems across Europe and in the US. How the introduction of the German system changed economic expectations and decisions of the German workforce has not been researched, though. This article tries to close this gap by analyzing the development of Prussian savings banks' deposits in the late 19 th century. The introduction of social security can affect private savings in at least two different ways: on the one hand, it might induce households to reduce their precautionary savings; one the other hand, it might give people a reason to reflect on their financial needs at old age or when sick, thereby increasing their motivation to accumulate private savings. To identify the causal effect of social insurance on private savings in Prussia, we employ a difference-indifference like approach. We show that, in our example, social security crowded out private savings considerably. JEL Codes

Analyzing 474 cases of firms going public in the German capital between 1892 and 1913, we show that innovative firms could rely on the Berlin stock market as a source of financing. Our data also reveal that initial public offerings (IPO) of innovative firms were characterized by particularly low underpricing, comparatively high first trading prices, and no long-run underperformance. We interpret these empirical results as evidence for the surprising fact that in the period of the Second Industrial Revolution the Berlin stock exchange was already a well-functioning market for new technology. (JEL G14, N23)

In this introduction, we review the state of the art of stock market history in Germany and preview the main findings of the articles published in this special issue. In Germany, scholars have long focused on institutional aspects of stock market history. Yet, starting in the late 1990s, quantitative work also started to take-off. Some of the articles published in this special issue go further down this road. Moreover, several of the following papers deal with the history of German stock markets during the interwar period, a period so far neglected by research.

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This article provides evidence that smaller, regional public financial intermediaries contributed to Germany's industrial development, using a new dataset of the foundation year and location of Prussian savings banks. This extends the bank–growth nexus beyond its traditional focus on large universal banks. Since savings banks were public financial intermediaries, our results further suggest that state intervention can be successful in the financial sector, particularly at the early stages of industrial development when capital requirements are manageable, and access to international capital markets is limited.