The Origins of Value The Financial Innovations that Created Modern Capital Markets

by Goetzmann, William N.; Rouwenhorst, K. Geert

• ISBN13: 9780195175714
• ISBN10: 0195175719
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-08-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

From the invention of interest in Mesopotamia and the origin of paper money in China, to the creation of mutual funds, inflation-indexed bonds, and global financial securities, here is a sweeping survey of financial innovations that have changed the world. Written by a distinguished group of experts--including Robert Shiller, Niall Ferguson, Valerie Hansen, and many others--and wonderfully illustrated with over one hundred color photographs of landmark financial documents (including the first paper money), The Origins of Value traces theevolution of finance through 4,000 years of history. Readers see how and why many of our most important financial tools and institutions--loans, interest rates, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, the corporation, and the New York Stock Exchange, to name a few--came into being. We see, for instance, howancient Rome developed an early form of equity finance that resembles the modern corporation and read about the first modern corporation--the Dutch East India Company--and its innovative means of financing the exploration and expansion of European business ventures around the globe. We also meetremarkable financial innovators, such as the 13th century Italian Fibonacci of Pisa, whose mathematics of money became the foundation for later developments in the technology of Western European finance (and may explain why the West surpassed the East in financial sophistication). And we evendiscover a still-surviving "perpetuity" dating from the Dutch Age of Reason--an instrument that has been paying interest since the mid-17th century. Placing our current age of financial revolution in fascinating historical perspective, The Origins of Value tells a remarkable story of invention, illuminating many key episodes in the course of financial history.

Author Biography

William Goetzmann is the Edwin J. Beinecke Professor of Finance and Management Studies, and Director of the International Center for Finance at Yale. He has written extensively on historical capital markets and investing. And as former director of Denver's Museum of Western Art, he co-authored the award-winning book The West of the Imagination. K. Geert Rouwenhorst is Professor of Finance at the Yale School of Management and Deputy Director of the International Center for Finance at Yale. He is an expert on international finance and stock markets around the globe. The work of both authors, including their separate and joint research, has been published in all of the major academic journals in Finance, and has been widely featured in the financial press, including Barron's, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Business Week and The Economist. The International Center for Finance at Yale is an interdisciplinary research institute focused on financial economics and the role of capital markets in society.

Table of Contents

Introduction : financial innovations in history	p. 3
The invention of interest	p. 17
Roman shares	p. 31
How business was conducted on the Chinese Silk Road during the Tang Dynasty, 618-907	p. 43
The origins of paper money in China	p. 65
Paying in paper	p. 91
From tallies and chirographs to Franklin's printing press at Passy	p. 105
Fibonacci and the financial revolution	p. 123
Bonds and government debt in Italian city-states, 1250-1650	p. 145
Venture shares of the Dutch East India Company	p. 165
Perpetuities in the stream of history	p. 177
Amsterdam as the cradle of modern futures trading	p. 189
Annuities in early modern Europe	p. 207
John Law	p. 225
The invention of inflation-indexed bonds in early America	p. 239
The origins of mutual funds	p. 249
Transatlantic paper and the emergence of the American capital market	p. 271
The origins of the New York Stock Exchange	p. 299
The first "Eurobonds"	p. 313
German debt in the twentieth century	p. 327
King Leopold's bonds	p. 343
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.