Emerging Stock Markets in Hostorical Perspective: A Research Agenda

This paper surveys the recent empirical literature on emerging stock markets of the last quarter of the 20th century and elaborates on its theoretical insights and empirical methods to design a research agenda on the “emergence†of equity markets in European peripheries before 1913. We present some preliminary evidence, both qualitative and quantitative, on the timeline and patterns of stock market emergence. The cases of the Madrid and several South-East European stock exchanges (Vienna, Belgrade, Bukarest, Sofia, Athens, and Istanbul) are used to exemplify. In the second part of the paper, we focus on three key empirical issues which should be addressed by financial historians: the determinants of stock market development, the realized return on market indices, and the specific characteristics (higher volatility, persistence, non-normality) of returns.