Pioneers of Financial Economics: Volume 1

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Pioneers of Financial Economics: Volume 1

Contributions Prior to Irving Fisher

9781845423810 Edward Elgar Publishing
Edited by Geoffrey Poitras, Professor of Finance, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Publication Date: 2006 ISBN: 978 1 84542 381 0 Extent: 256 pp
The search for the pioneers of financial economics contained in this volume places the origins of financial economics well outside the conventional boundaries of the history of economic thought. Under the editorship of Geoffrey Poitras, a leading authority on the history of financial economics, these specially commissioned essays comprise contributions on the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries, and include the work of both well-known and less familiar historical figures.

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The search for the pioneers of financial economics contained in this volume places the origins of financial economics well outside the conventional boundaries of the history of economic thought. Under the editorship of Geoffrey Poitras, a leading authority on the history of financial economics, these specially commissioned essays comprise contributions on the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries, and include the work of both well-known and less familiar historical figures.

The subjects studied display a variety of philosophical foundations and include: Jacob Bernoulli, Joseph de la Vega, Edmond Halley, Abraham de Moivre, Duvillard de Durand, Jules Regnault, Henri Lefèvre, Louis Bachelier, and Vincenz Bronzin. Life annuity valuation, the modified internal rate of return, the nineteenth-century science of financial investments, and the early development of option pricing models are just some of the issues dealt with by these early thinkers and explored in depth within these pages.

An outstanding volume of original analysis, Pioneers of Financial Economics is an essential reference source of seminal contributions on the early history of financial economics.
Contributors
Contributors: Y. Biondi, J.L. Cardoso, J. d’Avignon, R.W. Dimand, H. Ben-El-Mechaiekh, W. Hafner, F. Jovanovic, A. Majithia, A.E. Murphy, G. Poitras, A. Preda, E.D. Sylla, J.G. van Dillen, H. Zimmermann
Contents
Contents:

Introduction
Geoffrey Poitras

PART I: THE HISTORICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND
1. Commercial Arithmetic, Theology and the Intellectual Foundations of Jacob Bernoulli’s Art of Conjecturing
Edith Dudley Sylla

2. Issac Le Maire and the Early Trading in Dutch East India Company Shares
J.G. van Dillen, Geoffrey Poitras and Asha Majithia

3. Joseph de la Vega and the Confusion de Confusiones
José Luís Cardoso

PART II: EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CONTRIBUTIONS
4. Life Annuity Valuation: From de Witt and Halley to de Moivre and Simpson
Geoffrey Poitras

5. John Law: Financial Innovator
Antoin E. Murphy

6. Duvillard’s Researche sur les Rentes (1787) and the Modified Internal Rate of Return: A Comparative Analysis
Yuri Biondi, translated by Jeff d’Avignon and Geoffrey Poitras

PART III: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY ‘SCIENCE OF FINANCIAL INVESTMENTS’
7. Rational Investors, Informative Prices: The Emergence of the ‘Science of Financial Investments’ and the Random Walk Hypothesis
Alex Preda

8. Economic Instruments and Theory in the Construction of Henri Lefèvre’s ‘Science of the Stock Market’
Franck Jovanovic

9. A Nineteenth-Century Random Walk: Jules Regnault and the Origins of Scientific Financial Economics
Franck Jovanovic

PART IV: EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY CONTRIBUTIONS
10. Louis Bachelier
Robert W. Dimand and Hichem Ben-El Mechaiekh

11. Vincenz Bronzin’s Option Pricing Theory: Contents, Contribution and Background
Heinz Zimmermann and Wolfgang Hafner

Index
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