The debt of the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris from 1660 to 1690: a testbed for sovereign default

Pierre-Charles Pradier

Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne from Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne

Abstract: It is generally accepted that there was no proper evaluation of life annuities in the seventeenth century, thus the bankruptcy of the Paris Hôtel-Dieu 1689 is commonly attributed to this mispricing. New sources show that the prices of annuities from 1668 on are compatible with Deparcieux's mortality table discounted at the legal rate of interest. The bankruptcy resulted from incorrect provisioning of life annuities liabilities rather than mispricing. That story would have been anecdotal if the French king had not decided to borrow using contingent annuities around the same time: the Crown's plan can be shown to be unsustainable

Keywords: life annuities; financial revolution; early modern Europe; hospitality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G22 N13 N23 N43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2016-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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ftp://mse.univ-paris1.fr/pub/mse/CES2016/16057.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The debt of the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris from 1660 to 1690: a testbed for sovereign default (2016)
Working Paper: The debt of the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris from 1660 to 1690: a testbed for sovereign default (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mse:cesdoc:16057

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