Pioneers of Financial Economics SFU先锋金融经济学 SFU.pptVIP

HES/AFA New Orleans, Jan. 4, 2008 Pioneers of Financial Economics Geoffrey Poitras, Simon Fraser University Franck Jovanovic, Université du Québec ? Montreal Finance in Antiquity Financial Transactions – involving the future payment for loans of real goods – likely predate the use of common language Earliest examples of written language – the Sumerian cuneiform tablets -- deal with financial transactions Code of Hammurabi (circa 1750 BC/BCE) had explicit and harsh penalties for loan defaults Finance in Medieval Times Fra Luca Pacioli Finance in Art Aristotelian teachings which dominated scholastic humanism of the Church viewed business activities as banal – reflected in lack of attention to business themes in Art from the Reformation to the Enlightenment 15th and 16th C. woodcuts of financial activities from Swetz (1987) ? pale in comparison to Durer’s Four Horsemen … (1498) Until the 18th C., European artists were concerned with religious themes – e.g., Rembrandt (1633) to Pannini (1750) with ‘Jesus Throwing out the Money Lenders’ Finance in Literature Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (1600) – immortalized Shylock Joseph de la Vega Confusion de Confusiones (1688) – written in Spanish by a Portuguese Jewish émigré living in Amsterdam. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (1726) and The Bubble (1721), the first two lines: “Ye wise Philosophers explain, What Magick makes our Money Rise?” To Swift, Isaac Newton was a Philosopher The Early History of Financial Economics Where to start the history? What is financial economics? Sophisticated pricing formulae for financial securities developed before Adam Smith (1723-1790) was born Building on work of Christian Huygens (1620-1699), Jan de Witt (1625-1672) solved the price for a life annuity Das Neu Adam Smith Problem? Pricing of Life Annuities The total number of annuities sold on a life starting at year x is ?x ?x equals the sum of dx + dx+1 +...... + dw-1 where di is the number of annuities which termi