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Financial Markets and Cliometrics

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Handbook of Cliometrics

Abstract

The study of financial markets is a growing part of cliometrics for at least three reasons. First, appreciation of the role financial markets played in the rise and spread of capitalism has grown, along with concerns about financial crises. Second, accessibility to the immense amount of data generated by financial markets keeps improving thanks to continued advances in digital communications technology. Third, analytical techniques for determining the behavioral patterns of time series have advanced. While typically only price data for financial assets are available without the corresponding volume of the assets being traded, the consequences of sharp, or sustained, changes in the price of financial assets can be detected in other economic data. Interesting insights on fundamental historical issues are also possible by applying economic and political theory to cliometric studies of financial markets.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Weak form efficiency of efficient financial markets: all past prices of a stock are reflected in today’s stock price, which typically follows a random walk.

  2. 2.

    Semi-strong efficiency: all public information available is incorporated into a stock’s price.

  3. 3.

    See (Coffman and Neal 2013) for an extended analysis and review.

  4. 4.

    See, for example, Davis and Gallman (2001) and Kindleberger and Aliber (2011).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 3070 Lane Woods Court, 43221, Urbana, IL, USA

    Larry Neal Ph.D.

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  1. Larry Neal Ph.D.
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Correspondence to Larry Neal Ph.D. .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. BETA/CNRS (UMR 7522), University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study, Strasbourg Cedex, France

    Claude Diebolt

  2. University of Wisconsin Department of Economics, La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA

    Michael Haupert

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Neal, L. (2014). Financial Markets and Cliometrics. In: Diebolt, C., Haupert, M. (eds) Handbook of Cliometrics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40458-0_14-1

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