Understanding financial derivatives during the South Sea Bubble: the case of the South Sea subscription shares

This file is part of IDEAS, which uses RePEc data

Understanding financial derivatives during the South Sea Bubble: the case of the South Sea subscription shares

Author Info

Gary S. Shea ()

Additional information is available for the following registered author(s):

Gary Stephen Shea

Abstract

South Sea Company subscription shares were compound call options on the firm’s own original shares. From the description of shares found in 6 Geo. 1, c.4, a theory of their pricing is developed. A method for computing subscription share values is also developed. Calculated theoretical values for subscription shares are compared to the shares’ historical values and a close correspondence between the two is demonstrated. The pricing of the subscriptions appears to have been quite rational and explainable using simple financial economic theory.

Download Info
To download:

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. Information about this may be contained in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

Publisher Info
Paper provided by Centre for Dynamic Macroeconomic Analysis in its series CDMA Working Paper Series with number 0512.

Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML (with abstract), plain text (with abstract), BibTeX, RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite), ReDIF
Length:
Date of creation: Dec 2005
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:san:cdmawp:0512

Contact details of provider:
Postal: School of Economics and Finance, University of St. Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL
Phone: 01334 462420
Fax: 01334 462444
Email:
Web page: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/cdma
More information through EDIRC

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Jinyu Chen).

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
N23 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - Europe: Pre-1913
G13 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Contingent Pricing; Futures Pricing

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

NEP-ALL-2005-12-20 (All new papers)
NEP-FIN-2005-12-20 (Finance)
NEP-FMK-2005-12-20 (Financial Markets)
NEP-HIS-2005-12-20 (Business, Economic & Financial History)

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

Geske, Robert, 1979. "The valuation of compound options," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 63-81, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)

Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

Gary S. Shea, 2007. " Arbitrage and Simple Financial Market Efficiency during the South Sea Bubble: A Comparative Study of the Royal African and South Sea Companies Subscription Share Issues," CDMA Working Paper Series 0716, Centre for Dynamic Macroeconomic Analysis. [Downloadable!]

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Did you know? All RePEc services are meant to be be free forever, as they are all run by volunteers.

This page was last updated on 2009-11-25.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Department of Economics, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Connecticut using RePEc data on a server sponsored by the Society for Economic Dynamics.