Pioneers of Financial Economics:

Contributions Prior to Irving Fisher

Edward Elgar Publishing (2005 forthcoming)

by

Geoffrey Poitras (ed.)

Professor of Finance
Simon Fraser University

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: Geoffrey Poitras, Simon Fraser University

PART I: The Historical and Philosophical Background

Chapter 1 Commercial Arithmetic, Theology and the Intellectual Foundations of Jacob Bernoulli’s
‘Art of Conjecturing’
Edith Sylla, Department of History, North Carolina State University,161 Harrelson Hall, Campus Box
8108, Raleigh, NC 27695-8108 (edith_sylla@ncsu.edu)

Chapter 2 Isaac Le Maire and Early Share Trading in the Dutch East India Company
J.G. van Dillen, University of Utrecht; Asha Majithia and Geoffrey Poitras, Faculty of Business
Administration, Simon Fraser University (poitras@sfu.ca)

Chapter 3 Joseph de la Vega and the “Confusion de Confusiones”

José Luis Cardoso, Department of Economics, Institute of Economics and Business Administration,
Technical University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal (Rua do Quelhas, 6 1200 Lisboa)
(jcardoso@iseg.utl.pt)

PART II: 18th Century Contributions

Chapter 4 The Life Annuity Valuation Problem: From Halley to de Moivre

Geoffrey Poitras, Faculty of Business Administration, Simon Fraser University (poitras@sfu.ca)

Chapter 5 John Law and the Mississippi Scheme

Antoin Murphy, Department of Economics, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland
(aemurphy@tcd.ie)
Chapter 6 Duvillard’s “Researche sur les Rentes” (!787) and the Modified Internal Rate of Return
Yuri Biondi, Centre Auguste et Leon Walras, ISH Universite Lumiere Lyon 2, 14 Avenue Berthelot,
69363 Lyon CEDEX 07, France (yuri.biondi@etu.univ-lyon2.fr); J. d’Avignon and G. Poitras
(translators), Faculty of Business Administration, Simon Fraser University.

PART III: The 19th Century “Science of Financial Investments”

Chapters 7 The French School: Jules Regnault

Franck Jovanovic, Department of Economics, Glendon College, York University, 2275 Bayview
Avenue, Toronto, Ont., Canada, M4N 3M6 and Philippe Le Gall, University of Angers, France and
University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, philippe.legall@univ-angers.fr

Chapter 8 Economic Instruments and Theory in the Construction of Henri Lefevre’s “Science of
the Stock Market”
Franck Jovanovic, Department of Economics, Glendon College, York University, 2275 Bayview
Avenue, Toronto, Ont., Canada, M4N 3M6

Chapter 9 The Emergence of the Random Walk Hypothesis and the Nineteenth-Century “Science
of Financial Investments”
Alex Preda, Department of Sociology, School of Social and Political Studies, Adam Ferguson
Building, George Square, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, EH8 9LL
(a.preda@ed.ac.uk)

PART IV: Early 20th century contributions

Chapter 10 Louis Bachelier

Robert Dimand, Department of Economics, and Hichem Ben-El-Mechaiekh, Mathematics
Department, Brock University, 500 Glenridge Ave., St. Catherines, Ontario L2S 3A1, Canada
(rdimand@brocku.ca)

Chapter 11 Professor Bronzin’s Option Pricing Models

Heinz Zimmermann, University of Basel, Switzerland and Wolfgang Hafner, Windisch, Switzerland,
(heinz.zimmermann@unibas.ch)

Chapter 12 Early contributors to Financial Management:

William Lough, Edward Meade and William Ripley
Morgen Witzel, Editor-in-Chief, Corporate Finance Review, Price Farmhouse, Leigh, Kent TN11
8HR, UK (wblock@centrenet.co.uk)