Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

EurHiStock Paris conference April 29-30

The program of next week’s third EurHiStock conference is available at :

http://www.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/IMG/pdf/Prog_Eurhistock__avril_2011.pdf

Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur

I work on the history of financial markets and stock exchanges in France since the 19th century. My interest in the history of European Stock Exchanges project results from the following: - the observation that today's financial markets being well integrated, their understanding, organization and regulation require at least a vision at the European level; although organization and regulation were national, integration was certainly important in the 19th c., and we may understand better competition among markets and the impact of different regulations when studying that period. We should also learn from the variety of fates that stock markets suffered in the 20th c. - the methodological conviction that only firm level data for a large number of firms will allow substantial progress on most questions in financial history. - substantial changes in regulation are few, so that their long term observation and the comparison of the regulations of various countries (and exchanges) is key to its understanding. My present projects include: - understanding French exchanges more broadly by including the provincial exchanges (on which many SMEs were listed) into their study; this covers mostly the 1850-1960 period. - developing a conceptual framework for the comparison of the microstructures of stock exchanges and for the quantitative test of their relative efficiency. For more details, look at my PSE website, which includes links to most of my papers.

More Posts - Website

next EurHiStock conference, Paris 29-30 April

Call for applications

Motivation

As its Madrid (2009) and Cambridge (2010) predecessors, this conference will gather financial economists, financial and economic historians interested in the long term changes in European financial markets. Its new feature is that it aims at organizing a network of researchers willing to understand the financial history of Europe considered as a whole rather than as the sum of individual national financial markets. That network will in particular enhance methodological convergence between scholars from finance to history in order to systematically reconstruct and analyse stock-exchange data. A by-product of the project is the creation of a pan-European historical database of securities markets. The workshop will make a state of the art of research in stock market history and launch collaborative research projects at the European level. The six main topics will be: financial integration, initial public offerings (IPOs), microstructures of financial markets, corporate governance, emerging markets, derivative markets. On each topic, a state of the art will be presented and discussed in plenary session, and a workshop will be organized (with 3 workshops in parallel sessions each afternoon) in order to organize future collaborative work.

The organizers
Scientific committee: J. Annaert (Antwerp), S. Battilossi (Carlos III, Madrid), F. Buelens (Antwerp), C. Burhop (Cologne), D. Chambers (Cambridge), P.-C. Hautcoeur (PSE), M. Morys (York), A. Riva (EBS).

Local organizers: P.-C. Hautcoeur and A. Riva
Venue: Paris School of Economics, 48, bd Jourdan 75014 Paris

Application
Although mainly dedicated to the history of European financial markets, the conference will welcome scholars interested in non-European markets if they concentrate on the relationships between these markets and the European ones. Persons wanting to participate to the conference should send to the local organizers either a recent academic paper on any of the financial history topics covered by the conference or a (3-5 pages) statement explaining their interest, experience and projects in financial history. Especially for persons interested in developing the financial history of countries others than Belgium, France, Germany, the U.K. and the U.S., this statement should include a description of the sources available (Stock exchange archives, manuals of brokerage, price lists, etc.) and an analysis of the bibliographic references on the exchange(s) under study. Experience in membership or leadership in cooperative research projects or database building should also be mentioned.
All applicants must also mention (in decreasing order) the topics they are most interested in, in order to organize the parallel sessions as efficiently as possible.

The deadline for application is January 15th. Application must be sent to cardoville@pse.ens.fr  Answers will be delivered by February 1st.

Selected participants at the conference will be asked to send by April 15th a paper or a more detailed version of the above-mentioned statement, that will be circulated among participants.

Funding
Some funding has been gathered for the conference, which should be sufficient for travel and accommodation of most participants. Nevertheless, applicants able to fund part or all of their costs should mention it in their application and will be warmly welcomed and should mention it in their application.

Provisory program

–    April 29
o    9:30 : State of the art presentations (plenary session)
    IPOs: D. Chambers (Cambridge); discussant : tba
    Corporate governance: C. Burhop (Cologne) and M. Deloof (Antwerp)  discussant : Leslie Hannah (LSE)
    Microstructures: P.C. Hautcoeur (PSE) and A. Riva (EBS) ; discussant : Eugene White (Rutgers)

o    14:00 : Data collection and sharing (coord. F. Buelens)
o    15:30 : Topic sessions (parallel sessions)

–    April 30
o    9:30 : State of the art presentations  (plenary session)
    Market integration: Jan Annaert (Antwerp); discussant : tba
    Emerging markets: S. Battilossi (Carlos III) and M. Morrys (York); discussant : Ch. Lundblad (North Carolina) (tbc)
    Derivatives : G. Shea (St Andrews)

o    14:00 : Topic sessions (parallel sessions)
o    Next steps

Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur

I work on the history of financial markets and stock exchanges in France since the 19th century. My interest in the history of European Stock Exchanges project results from the following: - the observation that today's financial markets being well integrated, their understanding, organization and regulation require at least a vision at the European level; although organization and regulation were national, integration was certainly important in the 19th c., and we may understand better competition among markets and the impact of different regulations when studying that period. We should also learn from the variety of fates that stock markets suffered in the 20th c. - the methodological conviction that only firm level data for a large number of firms will allow substantial progress on most questions in financial history. - substantial changes in regulation are few, so that their long term observation and the comparison of the regulations of various countries (and exchanges) is key to its understanding. My present projects include: - understanding French exchanges more broadly by including the provincial exchanges (on which many SMEs were listed) into their study; this covers mostly the 1850-1960 period. - developing a conceptual framework for the comparison of the microstructures of stock exchanges and for the quantitative test of their relative efficiency. For more details, look at my PSE website, which includes links to most of my papers.

More Posts - Website

Preparing the PARIS meeting in September

Dear all

In order to prepare the Paris conference in September I think it would be a good thing if every one of the participants could provide some detailed information with regard to the stock exchanges and company related information available (and some of this perhaps already digitized) for his/her country.

I did the exercise for Belgium. I will prepare a document with an overview of the data available for all European countries. But of course this depends upon your help. Please would you send me a “state of the art” with information on what kind of documents/data you have at your disposal by now? I add the information for Belgium !

Kind regards from Belgium 

Frans

Although Antwerp had a long tradition in stock exchange life (the first stock exchange of the world has here been built around 1531), the market almost disappeared after the Spanish conquest of the town (1585) and the migration of so many people to Amsterdam.

During the Napoleonic era it was decided that stock exchanges would be founded in several places in the Belgian territories. Antwerp took the lead but was soon passed by Brussels. For Belgium the first IPO (stocks) on the Brussels stock exchange was in 1824, although the BSE was founded in 1801. Until then only bonds were listed. By the 1840s Brussels had already around 40 stocks on the listings, whereas Antwerp only had 5 stocks. By the turn of the century Brussels had grown to one of the ten most important stock exchanges (in terms of market cap per capita). After the crisis of the 1930s the BSE gradually declined. Early in the 21st century it merger with the stock exchange of Paris and Amsterdam into Euronext, later on Euronext merged with the NYSE, with the BSE becoming Euronext Brussels.

Years ago, the University of Antwerp signed an official agreement with Euronext Brussels in becoming a privileged partner. All of the historical archives as well as the official quotation lists are kept by SCOB, the Stock Exchange and Company Study Center of the University of Antwerp’s Finance Department. Besides many other documents on the stock exchange have been collected from various sources.

SCOB (University of Antwerp) has at its disposal the original official quotation lists of the Stock Exchange of Antwerp (from 1844 until the end) and those of the Brussels Stock Exchange (1832; 1834; 1839; 1846; 1847; 1853-until now). The Brussels Stock Exchange lists provide us daily stock and bond prices for all private companies as well as government bonds and municipalities, dividends (from 1873 on), numbers of stock (from 1878 on).

The official quotation lists is the main source of the digitalizing efforts of SCOB. Until 2010 only the Brussels Stock Exchange lists have been used for digitalizing (those of Antwerp have not been digitized at that time). This has been done for all stocks on a monthly basis (for prices and numbers of stocks); all dividends have been digitized. The work is continuously updated.

For the missing data as well as for double checking data other sources are available

An outstanding publication by an official commission of stock brokers with stock and bond prices (quarterly basis) for 1835-1855 (Commission des Agents de Change. “Fluctuations de la Bourse pendant une période de vingt ans 1835 à 1855 ou statistique des fonds publiques,” Brussels. 1855) (digitized by Google, public available on the internet).

A weakly stock exchange price list was published in the “Bulletin Officiel », later on the « Moniteur Belge ». It was composed by an official commission of stock brokers.

In 1839 Trioen published official statutes on all companies created before 1839. See : Trioen L.F.B. (1839), Collection des statuts de toutes les sociétés anonymes et en commandite par actions de la Belgique, 2 volumes, Brussels.

In 1859 Van Damme discusses all stock quoted companies. See : Van Damme E. (1859), Manuel du financier des opérations en fonds publics et des sociétés par actions en Belgique, Ghent : Verhulst.

 Courtois published eight successive volumes in the period 1855-1883 with (retrospective) information on companies, stocks, dividends etc.  See: Courtois A., Manuel des fonds publics et des sociétés par actions, eight volumes (1855-1883), Paris : Garnier Frères

Demeur published detailed (also retrospective) company information between 1857-1884 but goes back in his 1857 volume on the first incorporated companies. See : Demeur A. (1859), Les sociétés anonymes en Belgique, 4 volumes, Brussels

The 1864 publications of Vitu and Limauge consider stock and dividend information. See: Vitu A. (1864), Guide Financier. Répertoire général des valeurs financières et industrielles cotées sur les bourses Françaises et sur les principaux marchés de l’Europe, de l’Amérique et des Indes, Paris: Hachette ; Limauge E. (1864), La bourse et les agents de change. Etudes suivies d’un aperçu sur la lettre de change et d’une notice sur toutes les valeurs côtées à la bourse de Bruxelles, Brussels : Office de Publicité.

Later on students of that period published detailed information on companies. Frère studied all of the companies founded in Belgium for 1830-1914. The historical records of Laureyssens are the result of a detailed study of all of the archives of all companies for 1819 until 1857. She also gives further information until the corporate law of 1873. She classified all corporations within sectors, gave detailed accounts of the numbers of stocks and bonds and provided also information on dividends. See : Laureyssens, J. (1975), Industriële naamloze vennootschappen in België 1819-1857, Louvain: Nauwelaerts; Frère, L. (1938, 1951), Etude historique des sociétés anonymes Belges, 2 volumes, Brussels, Desmet-Verteneuil.

From 1893 on the Recueil Financier was published on an annual basis until 1975 (with detailed company information on all companies) as well as four monographs of Liévin Coppin on all stock quoted companies.

See: Coppin, L., Répertoire des sociétés par actions dont les titres se négocient plus spécialement en Belgique, 4 volumes (1893-1901), Brussels : Librairie de l’Economiste Internationale ; Recueil Financier, various issues, Brussels: Bruylant.

“Les Dossiers Financiers (Keesing)” starting in 1873 until 1940, report on company information.

Moniteur Belge, Bijlagen bij het Belgisch staatsblad, report on every company for the annual meetings of shareholders, statutes etc (since 1873).

Finally several newspapers offer extensive information. So did the Moniteur des Intérêts Matériels, the Beurzencourant, the Journal de Commerce d’Anvers, Anvers-Bourse, Echo de la Bourse and others for the 19th century and some of them for into the 20th century among others. For the last decades (since 1970) the Financieel-Economische Tijd as well as the TIJD provide detailed information on stocks, dividends, numbers of stock etc. The Brussels Stock Exchange kept detailed information on all stocks (1975-2001) comparable to the high quality data of the Recueil Financier. Besides, the “Memento der Effecten” published detailed stock and company information since 1943 until now.

Preparing the European project : a project presented to the European Science Foundation

In order to organize more deeply the European project, I applied last week for the funding of an “exploratory workshop” by the ESF. This would allow organizing a conference in Paris next April (2011) in the continuation of the EurHiStock Madrid (2009) and Cambridge (2010) conferences; in contrast to there ones however, I would like more synthetic “state of the art” and programmatic papers to be presented, most European countries to be represented and common good practices and collaborative projects to be discussed.

Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur

I work on the history of financial markets and stock exchanges in France since the 19th century. My interest in the history of European Stock Exchanges project results from the following: - the observation that today's financial markets being well integrated, their understanding, organization and regulation require at least a vision at the European level; although organization and regulation were national, integration was certainly important in the 19th c., and we may understand better competition among markets and the impact of different regulations when studying that period. We should also learn from the variety of fates that stock markets suffered in the 20th c. - the methodological conviction that only firm level data for a large number of firms will allow substantial progress on most questions in financial history. - substantial changes in regulation are few, so that their long term observation and the comparison of the regulations of various countries (and exchanges) is key to its understanding. My present projects include: - understanding French exchanges more broadly by including the provincial exchanges (on which many SMEs were listed) into their study; this covers mostly the 1850-1960 period. - developing a conceptual framework for the comparison of the microstructures of stock exchanges and for the quantitative test of their relative efficiency. For more details, look at my PSE website, which includes links to most of my papers.

More Posts - Website

Preparing the European project: Antwerp

F. Buelens, A. Riva and I met on March 26th in Antwerp at the impressing office of Frans (maybe 100 square meters overwhelmed with the collections of any kind of financial information on Belgium for that last two centuries). Frans showed us the database he has been working on in the last ten years, and we discussed the organization of the project.

In terms of database building, the following points (and likely some others) must be clarified:

–         How can one convince participants to share the data they have built (and will build) ?

  • Part of the answer is that they will be able to improve these data by including foreign details. But this may not be immediate…
  • Another answer is that this would be a condition for accessing the European database.
  • Another is to guarantee due reference to their work
  • More suggestions welcome.

–         How can one have enough coordination of data accumulation in order to make comparisons and European-level research possible ?

–         How can participants be sure they will be able to access the data ? (both technically – at distance – and legally – without undue restrictions).

–         How can participants be sure the University of Antwerp will provide the maintenance and security needed for the long term viability of the project ?

These questions should be given answers at the Paris meeting I plan to organize in September.

They can be debated on this blog up to that date.

Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur

I work on the history of financial markets and stock exchanges in France since the 19th century. My interest in the history of European Stock Exchanges project results from the following: - the observation that today's financial markets being well integrated, their understanding, organization and regulation require at least a vision at the European level; although organization and regulation were national, integration was certainly important in the 19th c., and we may understand better competition among markets and the impact of different regulations when studying that period. We should also learn from the variety of fates that stock markets suffered in the 20th c. - the methodological conviction that only firm level data for a large number of firms will allow substantial progress on most questions in financial history. - substantial changes in regulation are few, so that their long term observation and the comparison of the regulations of various countries (and exchanges) is key to its understanding. My present projects include: - understanding French exchanges more broadly by including the provincial exchanges (on which many SMEs were listed) into their study; this covers mostly the 1850-1960 period. - developing a conceptual framework for the comparison of the microstructures of stock exchanges and for the quantitative test of their relative efficiency. For more details, look at my PSE website, which includes links to most of my papers.

More Posts - Website

Next Eurhistock conference: the programme

The programme of the next Eurhistock conference, organized by S. Battilossi, D. Chambers and myself at Cambridge Judge Business School on April 8-10 is available here

thanks to David for his organization !

Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur

I work on the history of financial markets and stock exchanges in France since the 19th century. My interest in the history of European Stock Exchanges project results from the following: - the observation that today's financial markets being well integrated, their understanding, organization and regulation require at least a vision at the European level; although organization and regulation were national, integration was certainly important in the 19th c., and we may understand better competition among markets and the impact of different regulations when studying that period. We should also learn from the variety of fates that stock markets suffered in the 20th c. - the methodological conviction that only firm level data for a large number of firms will allow substantial progress on most questions in financial history. - substantial changes in regulation are few, so that their long term observation and the comparison of the regulations of various countries (and exchanges) is key to its understanding. My present projects include: - understanding French exchanges more broadly by including the provincial exchanges (on which many SMEs were listed) into their study; this covers mostly the 1850-1960 period. - developing a conceptual framework for the comparison of the microstructures of stock exchanges and for the quantitative test of their relative efficiency. For more details, look at my PSE website, which includes links to most of my papers.

More Posts - Website

Portuguese team shares bibliography

Maria Eugenia Mata and Jose Rodrigues Da Costa have produced a bibliography on the Portuguese financial market and the Lisbon stock exchange which they propose to share with project’s participants. Ask at memata@fe.unl.pt.

Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur

I work on the history of financial markets and stock exchanges in France since the 19th century. My interest in the history of European Stock Exchanges project results from the following: - the observation that today's financial markets being well integrated, their understanding, organization and regulation require at least a vision at the European level; although organization and regulation were national, integration was certainly important in the 19th c., and we may understand better competition among markets and the impact of different regulations when studying that period. We should also learn from the variety of fates that stock markets suffered in the 20th c. - the methodological conviction that only firm level data for a large number of firms will allow substantial progress on most questions in financial history. - substantial changes in regulation are few, so that their long term observation and the comparison of the regulations of various countries (and exchanges) is key to its understanding. My present projects include: - understanding French exchanges more broadly by including the provincial exchanges (on which many SMEs were listed) into their study; this covers mostly the 1850-1960 period. - developing a conceptual framework for the comparison of the microstructures of stock exchanges and for the quantitative test of their relative efficiency. For more details, look at my PSE website, which includes links to most of my papers.

More Posts - Website

L. Borodkin joins with a Russian team

Members may include: Prof. Dr. Leonid
Borodkin (Head of the Centre for Economic History at the History Faculty, Moscow Lomonosov State University); Assist. Professor, Dr. Anna Dmitrieva (same
affiliation); Prof. Dr. Pavel Lizunov (Northern Federal University, Arkhangelsk); Darya Anisimova and Ekaterina Fedoseyeva (MA students at Lomonosov); Dr. Gregory Perelman (San Francisco Univ.)

Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur

I work on the history of financial markets and stock exchanges in France since the 19th century. My interest in the history of European Stock Exchanges project results from the following: - the observation that today's financial markets being well integrated, their understanding, organization and regulation require at least a vision at the European level; although organization and regulation were national, integration was certainly important in the 19th c., and we may understand better competition among markets and the impact of different regulations when studying that period. We should also learn from the variety of fates that stock markets suffered in the 20th c. - the methodological conviction that only firm level data for a large number of firms will allow substantial progress on most questions in financial history. - substantial changes in regulation are few, so that their long term observation and the comparison of the regulations of various countries (and exchanges) is key to its understanding. My present projects include: - understanding French exchanges more broadly by including the provincial exchanges (on which many SMEs were listed) into their study; this covers mostly the 1850-1960 period. - developing a conceptual framework for the comparison of the microstructures of stock exchanges and for the quantitative test of their relative efficiency. For more details, look at my PSE website, which includes links to most of my papers.

More Posts - Website

Hello, fellow historian of financial market

This  blog is created in order to help develop research on the history of European financial markets in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially stock exchanges. It should serve as a tool for the participants of a research project under construction that aims at understanding the functionning of the European financial market as a whole, or as a number of interactions (to be specified) between national (or eventually local) financial markets, in particular a competition among stock exchanges.

Any interested reader is welcome to post comments. All participants in the project should post messages as well as comments.

Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur

Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur

I work on the history of financial markets and stock exchanges in France since the 19th century. My interest in the history of European Stock Exchanges project results from the following: - the observation that today's financial markets being well integrated, their understanding, organization and regulation require at least a vision at the European level; although organization and regulation were national, integration was certainly important in the 19th c., and we may understand better competition among markets and the impact of different regulations when studying that period. We should also learn from the variety of fates that stock markets suffered in the 20th c. - the methodological conviction that only firm level data for a large number of firms will allow substantial progress on most questions in financial history. - substantial changes in regulation are few, so that their long term observation and the comparison of the regulations of various countries (and exchanges) is key to its understanding. My present projects include: - understanding French exchanges more broadly by including the provincial exchanges (on which many SMEs were listed) into their study; this covers mostly the 1850-1960 period. - developing a conceptual framework for the comparison of the microstructures of stock exchanges and for the quantitative test of their relative efficiency. For more details, look at my PSE website, which includes links to most of my papers.

More Posts - Website