Following Waterloo, managing French public finances represented a daunting task. Defeated France had lost a substantial part of its population and territory. The country was partially occupied and France was to pay huge amounts as reparations to the victors. Furthermore, France's reputation had...

During World War II, the art market experienced a massive boom in occupied countries. The discretion, the inflation proof character, the absence of market intervention and the possibility to resell artworks abroad have been suggested to explain why investing in artworks was one of the most...

The emergence of the gold standard has for a long time been viewed as inevitable. Fluctuations of the gold-silver exchange rate in world markets were accused to lead to brutal and unsustainable switches of bimetallic countries’ money supplies. However, more recent work has shown that the...