This paper aims at giving an explanation of the changes in the number of bankruptcies during the second part of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. We firstly study the evolution of the French insolvency law and then we introduce some regional aspects. We indeed observe that the...

This paper aims at giving an explanation of the changes in the number of bankruptcies during the second part of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. We wonder in particular whether changes in bankruptcy law, which are substantial during the period, suffice to explain the rise in the...

We analyze a new blue chips (large caps) stock index for France from 1854 to 1998. We detail its methodology and show that it differs profoundly from earlier indices, and that it is more consistent with the French financial and economic history. We suggest this result casts some doubt on many...

This paper is chapter 13 of a book forthcoming in January 2007 under the title Histoire du marché financier français au 19 ème siècle (a history of the French capital market in the 19th century). In this chapter, we discuss the changes in the supply of securities on the French capital market...

In this paper, we try to measure the impact of the changes in French bankruptcy law in the 19th century focusing on the behaviour of economic agents as users of bankruptcy law for the sake of finding the best solution to their economic problems. Debtors used bankruptcy law in order to minimize...

This paper is the first result of a project aiming at understanding the history of bankruptcy law from an empirical economic perspective. By contrast with some proponents of "law and economics" (e.g. La Porta & alii, 1998), we consider that the impact of bankruptcy law on national economic...

Most empirical knowledge on the long term performance of financial investments is derived from the behaviour of the most successful markets. Recent research has tried to broaden the sample of markets studied towards European ones, many of which were among the worlds’ most developed up to World...

We analyze a new blue chips (large caps) stock index for France from 1854 to 1998. We detail its methodology and show that it differs profoundly from earlier indices, and that it is more consistent with the French financial and economic history. We suggest this result casts some doubt on many...