Investors have too often extrapolated from recent experience. In the 1950s, who but the most rampant optimist would have dreamt that over the next fifty years the real return on equities would be 9% per year? Yet this is what happened in the U.S. stock market. The optimists triumphed. However,...

This study wants to spot and analyse the “final financial instruments” in which French households’ financial savings are invested by making transparent their intermediated investments with mutual funds and life insurance corporations. It attempts to identify where French households’...