The French financial sector during the interwar: what lessons can be drawn from the stock market?
Raphaël Hekimian  1@  
1 : Paris School of Economics  (PSE)  -  Site web
PARIS SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS
48 boulevard Jourdan 75014 Paris -  France

While the banking crisis of the 1930s is traditionally considered to have been relatively more limited in France than in other European countries, the literature highlights however that French investment banks faced the greatest diculties. The purpose of this chapter is to test this hypothesis with a new dataset including stock prices of all listed companies within the "banks and nancial institutions" sector at the Paris Stock Exchange over the period 1919-1939. The main activities of our banks' sample are characterized by a high heterogeneity, spanning from real estate to investment banking, through commercial and deposit activities. Our results show that during the 1930s, investment banks were indeed riskier than deposit and commercial banks, relative to the overall market.


Personnes connectées : 2