William N. Goetzmann – författare

"[A] magnificent history of money and finance."--New York Times Book Review "Convincingly makes the case that finance is a change-maker of change-makers."--Financial Times In the aftermath of recent financial crises, it's easy to see finance as a wrecking ball: something that destroys fortunes and jobs, and undermines governments and banks. In Money Changes Everything, leading financial historian William Goetzmann argues the exact opposite--that the development of finance has made the growth of civilizations possible. Goetzmann explains that finance is a time machine, a technology that allows us to move value forward and backward through time; and that this innovation has changed the very way we think about and plan for the future. He shows how finance was present at key moments in history: driving the invention of writing in ancient Mesopotamia, spurring the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome to become great empires, determining the rise and fall of dynasties in imperial China, and underwriting the trade expeditions that led Europeans to the New World.He also demonstrates how the apparatus we associate with a modern economy--stock markets, lines of credit, complex financial products, and international trade--were repeatedly developed, forgotten, and reinvented over the course of human history. Exploring the critical role of finance over the millennia, and around the world, Goetzmann details how wondrous financial technologies and institutions--money, bonds, banks, corporations, and more--have helped urban centers to expand and cultures to flourish. And it's not done reshaping our lives, as Goetzmann considers the challenges we face in the future, such as how to use the power of finance to care for an aging and expanding population. Money Changes Everything presents a fascinating look into the way that finance has steered the course of history.

This book aims to create a strong understanding of the empirical basis for the equity risk premium. Through the research and anaylsis of two scholars who are experts in this field, this volume presents the key issues that are paramount to investors, including whether or not to use historical data as a method of equity investing, and can the equity premium reflect changes in fundamental values and cash flows of the market.

The essays in this volume are written by a distinguished and adventurous set of historians and economists who have been willing, in many cases, to step beyond their typical field of inquiry and explore the historical foundations of financial innovation. The essays are motivated by the need to place our current age of finanical revolution in historical perspective. The continuing process of financial innovation, as sophisticated as it may seem to most of the modern world, is in fact built on surprisingly few basic principles: the inter-temporal transfer of value through time, the ability to contract on future outcomes, and the negotiability of claims. This book traces the evolution of these basic principles of finance through 3,000 years of history - to the dawn of writing. The methodology that is used can be thought of as financial archaeology in the sense that the authors focus on primary survived financial documents to draw their conclusions such as clay tablets, notched sticks, sealed parchment and printed paper. The analysis of original documents is a means for economists to focus on the primary text, to analyze and interpret the object and to move interpretation and understanding of its relationship to modern financial instruments and markets. The result is a collection of interdisciplinary studies of the key innovations in finance from the Old Babylonion loan tablets, to the 1953 London Debt Agreement that span regions in Asia, Africa, North America and Europe.

Fully modern corporations appeared in fourteenth-century Toulouse, much earlier than previously believedGermain Sicard proves that Europe’s first corporations were fourteenth-century mill companies operating in Toulouse, rather than seventeenth-century English and Dutch trading companies as commonly believed. He shows that the corporate form derives from a unique ownership contract from Medieval Europe called pariage, and a culture of strong property rights and municipal self-governance. Based on archival research, Sicard’s 1952 thesis has been translated into English with an introduction that places the work in the context of new institutional economics and legal theory. It is an important contribution to research on the history and legal origins of the corporation.

"[A] magnificent history of money and finance."--New York Times Book Review "Convincingly makes the case that finance is a change-maker of change-makers."--Financial Times In the aftermath of recent financial crises, it's easy to see finance as a wrecking ball: something that destroys fortunes and jobs, and undermines governments and banks. In Money Changes Everything, leading financial historian William Goetzmann argues the exact opposite--that the development of finance has made the growth of civilizations possible. Goetzmann explains that finance is a time machine, a technology that allows us to move value forward and backward through time; and that this innovation has changed the very way we think about and plan for the future. He shows how finance was present at key moments in history: driving the invention of writing in ancient Mesopotamia, spurring the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome to become great empires, determining the rise and fall of dynasties in imperial China, and underwriting the trade expeditions that led Europeans to the New World.He also demonstrates how the apparatus we associate with a modern economy--stock markets, lines of credit, complex financial products, and international trade--were repeatedly developed, forgotten, and reinvented over the course of human history. Exploring the critical role of finance over the millennia, and around the world, Goetzmann details how wondrous financial technologies and institutions--money, bonds, banks, corporations, and more--have helped urban centers to expand and cultures to flourish. And it's not done reshaping our lives, as Goetzmann considers the challenges we face in the future, such as how to use the power of finance to care for an aging and expanding population. Money Changes Everything presents a fascinating look into the way that finance has steered the course of history.