Mark W. Geiger

Independent Researcher

This paper describes progress on continuing research into the role of social networks at the early Chicago Board of Trade. Founded as a chamber of commerce in 1848, within ten years CBOT had transformed into the world’s first derivatives exchange. CBOT remained the largest such exchange for over 150 years, and its revolutionary market model spread...

This paper considers an important milestone in the United States government’s transition from rule by “parties and courts,” and development of a bureaucratized, empowered state authority. At the beginning of the Civil War, the United States and the Confederacy embarked on the largest military mobilization in American history, and one of the largest...

Even in well-mapped countries, minor civil division (MCD) boundaries change repeatedly, often while keeping the same place names. The “shifting sands” problem complicates issues of data compatibility in longitudinal studies, when it doesn’t preclude a line of inquiry altogether. In other instances, though historical sources often record local place...

The United States has stricter laws than any nation against insider trading in financial markets, but the earliest of these laws date only from 1909. Before that, stock and commodities exchanges governed themselves with minimal external oversight. Mark Geiger will present a close-up view of member relationships and business practices within the Chi...

This paper presents research from a book in progress on the customary, unwritten code of conduct on exchanges and linked financial institutions. The research for this book has been funded in party by fellowships from the Center for Economic History at the University of California, Los Angeles, the United States Studies Centre at the University of S...

Editor's Note: The following represents the acceptance speech for the Watson Brown Prize for best book published on the Civil War era in calendar year 2010. Tad Brown, president of the Watson-Brown Foundation, awarded the prize for the book Financial Fraud and Guerrilla Violence in Missouri's Civil War, 1861-1865, published by Yale University Press...

From the publisher: This highly original work explores a previously unknown financial conspiracy at the start of the American Civil War. The book explains the reasons for the puzzling intensity of Missouri’s guerrilla conflict, and for the state’s anomalous experience in Reconstruction. In the broader history of the war, the book reveals for the fi...

This paper profiles a group of entrepreneurs who organized six new banking corporations in St. Louis between 1857 and 1859. In doing so they virtually founded the state’s banking industry, despite having little prior banking experience themselves. Many of these men also promoted other important enterprises in the city. Preliminary analysis indicate...

Presentation to the 2007 Economic History Association annual conference, Austin Texas, for the Columbia University Prize in American Economic History in Honor of Allan Nevins for the best dissertation in North American economic history completed in 2006.

This dissertation describes a previously unknown financial conspiracy that occurred in Civil War Missouri. In early 1861, a group of senior state politicians and bankers plotted to divert money from the banks and the state treasury, to arm pro-southern military units. The plan failed, but caused great collateral damage, including mass insolvency am...

This dissertation describes a previously unknown financial conspiracy that occurred in Civil War Missouri. In early 1861, a group of senior state politicians and bankers plotted to divert money from the banks and the state treasury, to arm pro-southern military units. The plan failed, but caused great collateral damage, including mass insolvency am...

This dissertation explores a previously unknown Civil War financial conspiracy that backfired and caused a great deal of collateral damage among Missouri's pro-southern population. In 1861, a small group of pro-secession politicians, bankers, and wealthy men conspired to divert money illegally from Missouri's banks to arm and equip rebel military u...

This paper links the guerrilla fighting in Civil War Missouri with a previously unknown Confederate financial conspiracy that originated at the outset of the War. In 1861, a small group of highly placed politicians and wealthy southern sympathizers secretly planned to divert money from the state treasury and the banks, in order to arm rebel militar...

In this paper, I present a case study in the transition from the state banking system that preceded the American Civil War to the national banking system that followed it. In Missouri, besides the macroeconomic forces at work, firm-level events hinging on communal relations resulted in a virtually complete turnover in the banks' officers, major sha...