Risk Management in the First Emerging Markets

我们详细研究了股市参与者在现代资本主义第一次大金融危机-1720年南海泡沫之前、期间和之后的反应。我们利用我们收集的数据，并将收集伦敦市场上所有在1720年危机之前、期间和之后持有这些资产的个人的持有和转让情况。我们对这些资产分布的变化的分析，尤其是在1721年至1730年期间发生的变化，将是对第一次金融资本主义危机期间参与者重新分配金融风险的深入研究。有关伦敦居民在1722年议会选举中的纳税评估和投票行为的额外数据，将被用来比较不同类型的投资者在泡沫破裂后如何改变他们的金融投资组合。这将使我们能够探索使英国金融体系的基本结构能够吸收股市崩盘的冲击，然后在很大程度上基于这些参与者的私人倡议而反弹的因素。18世纪第一季度金融创新、金融资产市场的新参与者以及实验性政治制度的结合提供了一个天然的实验室，可以在其中检验当今新兴市场正在尝试的许多替代方法。在当时最早的新兴股市中，只有伦敦市场能够在股价暴跌的冲击中幸存下来，这对我们研究这一幕中的个人行为具有特殊的意义。此外，我们的工作假设是，这个市场的发展，特别是关注适合市场参与者管理其个人风险敞口的金融工具的流动性，可能推动了私人投资，最终使英国在19世纪末成为世界上第一个工业国和占主导地位的经济体。

We examine in detail the responses of stock market participants before, during, and after the first great financial crisis of modern capitalism - the South Sea Bubble of 1720. We exploit data we have collected and will collect on the holdings and transfers of the major financial assets available in the London market among all individuals who held these assets before, during, and after the crisis of 1720. Our analysis of the changes that took place in the distribution of these assets, especially in the period 1721 to 1730, will be an intensive examination of the reallocation of financial risk by participants during the first crisis of financial capitalism. Additional data on the tax assessments of London residents and their voting behavior in the Parliamentary election of 1722 will be utilized to compare how different types of investors shifted their financial portfolios after the bubble's collapse. This will allow us to explore the factors that enabled the underlying structures of the English financial system to absorb the shock of a stock market collapse and then rebound, based largely on the private initiatives of these participants.The conjunction of financial innovations, new participants in the markets for financial assets, and experimental political regimes in the first quarter of the 18th century provides a natural laboratory in which many of the alternative approaches now being attempted in today's emerging markets can be examined. Alone among the first emerging stock markets of the time, the London market was able to survive the shock of the collapse of stock prices, which gives special significance to our study of individual behavior during this episode. Further, it is our working hypothesis that the development of this market, especially focused on the liquidity of financial instruments congenial to the needs of the market participants for managing their individual exposures to risk, may have given the impetus to private investment that eventually made Britain the first industrial nation and the dominant economy of the world by the end of the nineteenth century.