Noticia publicada el 03-11-2010
This collective book edited by Patrice Baubeau (Université Paris
Ouest-Nanterre La Défense) and Anders Ögren (University of Uppsala) is part
of the series “Financial History” managed by Robert E. Wright. It was
made possible thanks to a grant of the French Agence nationale de la
recherche (National research agency – ANR) and it is mainly the result of
numerous workshops and conferences. The book conveys one central message,
namely that history matters; this concept is enlarged to encompass a
discussion of the convergence and divergence processes of national financial
systems.
The work comprises four main parts which are gathered into chapters.
Following an introduction written as a synthesis by Patrice Baubeau, a first
part presents the social mechanisms of financial convergence. The reader will
find there a contribution by Patrick Verley devoted to institutions and
networks of Parisian brokers in the nineteenth century, followed by an
article by Jean-Luc Mastin on the resistance of the Lille marketplace to
national convergence.
The second part deals with national convergences and divergences in the long
term. David Le Bris’s article presents a correlation analysis in terms of
portfolio diversification and market integration between France and the
Unites States. Carlo Brambilia focuses his analysis on convergence in
European investment banking patterns until 1914. Finally Dirk Drechsel
studies the Swiss banking crises during the Gold Standards, 1906-71.
The third part centers on convergence and the study of historical shocks. The
short introduction by Patrice Baubeau and Anders Ögren questions the major
role played by historical events. From this point of view the contribution of
Pablo Martin-Acena, Elena Martine Ruiz and Maria A. Pons represents an
original illustration around the financing of the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39.
Richard Roberts goes back over the London financial crisis of 1914.
The fourth and last part of the book analyses convergence and monetary
constraints. The study by Kalina Dimitrova and Luca Fantacci deals with the
establishment of the Gold Standard in Southeast Europe. Antoine Gentier’s
chapter focuses on the origins of the Italian banking crises of 1893. And the
final contribution, by Jereon Euwe, concentrates on Amsterdam’s role as an
international financial center, 1914-31.
Generally speaking this book represents for all those who are interested in
historical processes of convergence and divergence of national financial
systems a very serious, useful and pleasant to read synthesis effort both
from a narrative as well as a quantitative point of view. It also provides a
good illustration of contemporary debates on the links between economics and
history. The practice of economic history is obviously closely dependent on
its institutional setting (frame).
.When reading this
book the historian finds in it an interpretative vision (verstehen) of
reality. The economist misses a more mechanical vision (erklären), more
closely linked to the literature of the last twenty years in terms of
economic growth and convergence. Actually the book tries to reconstruct a
sequence of events as precisely as possible through a minute criticism of the
sources and finally interprets them (tries to give them a meaning in a more
global context) and even determines their causes and consequences. But the
authors remain very cautious and their mistrust of this concept of – at
least deterministic – cause underlies the whole construction. It is easy to
identify at first sight the concern for the specificity, the
context-dependency and reality of the facts. The authors hope to be able to
understand the actors of the past, their values, representations, and culture
without anachronism. Their great ambition is to reach a global understanding
– mainly through a systemic analysis – of the evolution of national
financial systems. With this aim they depart from present-day economic
research. The quantitative approach is accepted and even assumed and used in
order to specifically account however for a context-dependent reality. The
verstehen has priority over the erklären, the quantitative approach is
meant as an illustration or support of the argument. The analysis is written
in a natural language and not the formalized language used by modern
economists who support the erklären, the analysis of reality through a mathematical model, in search of pure objectivity, without any reference to
non-quantitative information to be integrated into a formal construction
which leads in the end mostly to a model expressed by equations.
A more
cliometric approach might have covered both sides of this epistemological
barrier which separates history and economics. It is perfectly possible to
call on sophisticated econometric methods to be integrated into a traditional
approach of the work of the economic historian (to synthesize and interpret).
Calling upon standard economic theory to confirm or invalidate its relevance
by confronting it with data from the past to better understand the present
and even anticipate the future could have been a central element of this
analysis, this collective work, which is obviously incisive, stimulating and
promising for future research devoted to national financial systems.
Claude Diebolt, research professor in economics (cliometrics) for the French
National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the University of
Strasbourg (France), is the editor of Cliometrica. He can be reached via
email at cdiebolt unistra.fr |
