This book examines financial markets from a historical perspective. Bringing together contributions from leading historians of economic thought, economists and economic historians, it offers an integrated approach and reflects on the workings of financial markets, their impact on and relation...

Introduction -- Part I: Guggenheim Prize Lecture -- The Myth of Money as a Veil -- Part II: Financial History -- British Investment Trusts 1868 to 1928: Portfolio Diversification and the Beginnings of Institutional Investment -- Early Reflections on the Democratization of Organized Markets and...

The early scientific literature which developed with the emergence of organized speculation on financial and commodity markets in the second half of the nineteenth century built on the identification of several categories of traders, from professional and amateur speculators to rentiers and...