Canary in a Coal Mine: Did Financial Investors See World War I Coming?

Avni Önder Hanedar, Mehmet Gökhan Göktan and Tunç İnce

Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 2025, vol. 72, issue 4

Abstract: A series of ongoing geopolitical conflicts characterized the years leading up to 1914. Although some countries, such as the Ottoman Empire, faced severe political and economic challenges, the impact on the global financial system was uneven. Our paper examines whether declining bond prices signaled investors' expectations of coming conflicts. By highlighting the difficulty in foreseeing geopolitical instabilities, our results offer a historical perspective on the wars of the early twentieth century. They suggest that investors began to anticipate the onset of major wars due to the uncertainty arising from regional conflicts in Africa and the Balkans.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/sjpe.70016

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:scotjp:v:72:y:2025:i:4:n:e70016

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0036-9292

Access Statistics for this article

Scottish Journal of Political Economy is currently edited by Tim Barmby, Andrew Hughes-Hallett and Campbell Leith

More articles in Scottish Journal of Political Economy from Scottish Economic Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().