Portfolio Diversification During the Belle Époque: When the Actual Portfolios of French Individual Investors Met Behavioral Finance

Maxime Merli () and Antoine Parent
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Maxime Merli: LaRGE Research Center, Université de Strasbourg

Working Papers of LaRGE Research Center from Laboratoire de Recherche en Gestion et Economie (LaRGE), Université de Strasbourg

Abstract: In this article we unearth the first real portfolios of French individual investors of the Belle Époque by reinvestigating the study of Des Essars and the comments of his contemporaries (Coste, Neymarck, and Leroy Beaulieu). The results are striking: we find strong elements of behavioral finance during the first era of financial globalization. Both the actual portfolios and the comments and advice of the financial analysts of the time reveal traces of behavioral finance and, more specifically, echo very clearly behavioral portfolio theory a century before its modeling. This discovery is important not only from the point of view of the historical depth of behavioral finance, but also for the persistence and legitimacy of the questions that behavioral finance has always addressed to standard finance.

Keywords: Financial History; Individual Investors; Behavioral Finance; Behavioral Portfolio Theory. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G11 G14 G15 N20 N23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-cbe, nep-cwa, nep-his and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lar:wpaper:2022-01

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