Financial markets as a Le Bonian crowd, from Keynes's mass psychology to modern behavioral finance

Les marchés financiers en tant que foules à la Le Bon: De la psychologie de masse de Keynes à la Finance Comportementale

Claire Barraud ()
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Claire Barraud: UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes, UGA UFR FEG - Université Grenoble Alpes - Faculté d'Économie de Grenoble - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes

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Abstract: This article identifies several significant commonalities between crowd psychology, as initiated by Le Bon (1895) and Freud (1921), and Keynes's (1936) approach to financial markets in Chapter 12 of the General Theory, an approach later echoed and deepened by behavioral finance in its macroeconomic dimension (Shiller, 2000). We find that by following Le Bon's typology of crowd psychology, the works of Keynes and of behavioral finance reflect and corroborate it. The link between Keynes's financial approach and crowd psychology has been mentioned, but it has never been developed. This article aims to do so, in order to enrich this field of research with a complementary perspective

Keywords: Keynes; Behavioral finance; Mass psychology; Crowd psychology; Financial market (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-12-01
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