IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/halshs-01382586.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The debt of the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris from 1660 to 1690: a testbed for sovereign default

Author

Listed:
  • Pierre-Charles Pradier

    (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

It is generally accepted that there was no proper evaluation of life annuities in the seventeenth century, thus the bankruptcy of the Paris Hôtel-Dieu 1689 is commonly attributed to this mispricing. New sources show that the prices of annuities from 1668 on are compatible with Deparcieux's mortality table discounted at the legal rate of interest. The bankruptcy resulted from incorrect provisioning of life annuities liabilities rather than mispricing. That story would have been anecdotal if the French king had not decided to borrow using contingent annuities around the same time: the Crown's plan can be shown to be unsustainable.

Suggested Citation

  • Pierre-Charles Pradier, 2016. "The debt of the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris from 1660 to 1690: a testbed for sovereign default," Post-Print halshs-01382586, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01382586
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01382586
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01382586/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pierre-Charles Pradier & Katia Béguin, 2016. "Les vies à l’aune du roi et de l’Église. La valeur vénale des rentes viagères au XVIIe siècle," Post-Print hal-01314634, HAL.
    2. Geoffrey Poitras, 2000. "The Early History of Financial Economics, 1478–1776," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2151.
    3. François R. Velde, 2007. "John Law's System," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 276-279, May.
    4. Pierre-Charles Pradier, 2011. "(Petite) histoire de la discrimination (dans les assurances)," Working Papers hal-00623909, HAL.
    5. Munro, John H., 2002. "The medieval origins of the 'Financial Revolution': usury, rentes, and negotiablity," MPRA Paper 10925, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Sep 2002.
    6. J. Berthon & Georges Gallais-Hamonno, 2008. "Les emprunts tontiniers de l'Ancien Régime, un exemple d'ingéniérie financière au XVIIIème siècle," Post-Print halshs-00280039, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Antonio José Heras Martínez & David Teira & Pierre-Charles Pradier, 2016. "What was fair in acturial fairness?," Post-Print halshs-01400213, HAL.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hautcoeur Pierre-Cyrille & Riva Angelo E., 2013. "What Financiers Usually Do, and What We Can Learn from History," Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium, De Gruyter, vol. 3(3), pages 1-19, April.
    2. William Goetzmann, 2003. "Fibonacci and the Financial Revolution," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm432, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Mar 2004.
    3. Timothy Johnson, 2015. "Reciprocity as a Foundation of Financial Economics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 131(1), pages 43-67, September.
    4. Condorelli, Stefano, 2014. "The 1719-20 stock euphoria: a pan-European perspective," MPRA Paper 68652, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Dec 2015.
    5. David Hawkes, 2019. "Against Financial Derivatives: Towards an Ethics of Representation," Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, , vol. 31(2), pages 165-182, July.
    6. Maria Eug?nia Mata & Jos? Rodrigues da Costa & David Justino, 2018. "Finance, a New Old Science," HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND POLICY, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2018(2), pages 75-93.
    7. van Bavel, Bas, 2016. "The Invisible Hand?: How Market Economies have Emerged and Declined Since AD 500," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199608133.
    8. Booth, G. Geoffrey & Gurun, Umit G., 2008. "Volatility clustering and the bid-ask spread: Exchange rate behavior in early Renaissance Florence," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 131-144, January.
    9. Casson, Catherine & Fry, J. M., 2011. "Revolutionary change and structural breaks: A time series analysis of wages and commodity prices in Britain 1264-1913," MPRA Paper 27866, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Bonnie G. Buchanan, 2016. "Securitization: A Financing Vehicle for All Seasons?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 138(3), pages 559-577, October.
    11. Sorin-George Toma & Loredana Nicoleta Zainea & Dragoș Tohănean, 2019. "Global Banks: The Race for Supremacy in 2018," Ovidius University Annals, Economic Sciences Series, Ovidius University of Constantza, Faculty of Economic Sciences, vol. 0(2), pages 64-69, December.
    12. Schinckus, Christophe, 2018. "Pataphysics of finance: An essay of visual epistemology," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 57-68.
    13. Boerner, Lars & Volckart, Oliver, 2011. "The utility of a common coinage: Currency unions and the integration of money markets in late Medieval Central Europe," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 53-65, January.
    14. Geoffrey Poitras, 2013. "Richard Price, miracles and the origins of Bayesian decision theory," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(1), pages 29-57, February.
    15. Frehen, Rik G.P. & Goetzmann, William N. & Geert Rouwenhorst, K., 2013. "New evidence on the first financial bubble," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(3), pages 585-607.
    16. Antonio José Heras Martínez & David Teira & Pierre-Charles Pradier, 2016. "What was fair in acturial fairness?," Post-Print halshs-01400213, HAL.
    17. Jan Luiten van Zanden & Jaco Zuijderduijn & Tine De Moor, 2012. "Small is beautiful: the efficiency of credit markets in the late medieval Holland," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 16(1), pages 3-22, February.
    18. Jovanovic, Franck & Mantegna, Rosario N. & Schinckus, Christophe, 2019. "When financial economics influences physics: The role of Econophysics," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    19. Michel Bordo & John Lando-Lane, 2013. "Does Expansionary Monetary Policy Cause Asset Price Booms? Some Historical and Empirical Evidence," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 710, Central Bank of Chile.
    20. Jiahua Che, 2012. "Comment on "Financial Strategies for Nation Building"," NBER Chapters, in: Capitalizing China, pages 333-335, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    life annuities; financial revolution; early modern Europe; hospitality; rentes viagères; révolution financière; Europe moderne; hospitalité;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G22 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Insurance; Insurance Companies; Actuarial Studies
    • N13 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • N23 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • N43 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Europe: Pre-1913

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01382586. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.