This book offers 14 contributions that examine key questions in bank decision-taking, constitution of confidence in banks and risk management practices from Early Modernity to the twentieth century. It explores how the various mechanisms of bank decision taking changed over time. Chapters also...

The evolution of risk management has resulted from the interplay of financial crises, risk management practices, and regulatory actions. In the 1970s, research lay the intellectual foundations for the risk management practices that were systematically implemented in the 1980s as bond trading...

What determines risk-bearing capacity and the amount of leverage in financial markets? Using unique archival data on collateralized lending, we show that personal experience can affect individual risk-taking and aggregate leverage. When an investor syndicate speculating in Amsterdam in 1772 went...