Jean-Laurent Rosenthal
Biographic Data
| ID | 289772 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jean-Laurent Rosenthal |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jean-Laurent |
| FAMILY NAME | Rosenthal |
| SIGNATURE | ROSENTHAL J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Department of Economics, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1477. |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 149 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
A Capital’s Capital
A study of the changes in wealth and its distribution in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Paris that maps the interplay among wealth, inequality, and welfare Successful economies sustain capital accumulation across generations, and capital accumulation leads to large increases in private wealth. In this book, Gilles Postel-Vinay and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal map the fluctuations in wealth and its distribution in Paris between 1807 and 1977. Drawing…
A Capital’s Capital
The Decline of a Great Financial Intermediary
Analytic Narratives
The Political Economy of Absolutism Reconsidered
Between the mid-seventeenth century and the end of the nineteenth century, Europeans transformed their political and economic institutions to create modern states. Among the many aspects of this transformation, I focus in this chapter on four that played a key role in determining the process by which countries changed. Over these two centuries, there were three key political changes: central governments increased their control over expenditures a…
Sewers’ diffusion and the decline of mortality
The Democratization of Longevity
Entry, information, and financial development
Capitalism and Financial Development
Historical research can contribute to greater understanding of economic growth, but only if it proceeds without theoretical blinders and assumptions imposed by past definitions of capitalism. We will make this case, by taking one particular historical example—mortgage markets in nineteenth-century France—and analyzing the financial development that accompanied the rise of capitalism there. The French example demonstrates that there is an immense …
Inherited vs self-made wealth
Before and Beyond Divergence
[Introduction] In the past three decades scholars have reconsidered what set Europe off from the rest of the world as the site of state formation and economic changes that led to modern nation-states and industrialized economies. The themes, of course, are far older. They recur in the inquiries of great social thinkers from Montesquieu and Adam Smith to Karl Marx and Max Weber. Europe’s, particularly England’s, success moved scholars to assess ot…
The health cost of living in a city
Making do with imperfect law
Cet article part d’une comparaison fine entre des entreprises similaires opérant au même moment sous des lois très proches, dans deux pays, pour étudier la mise en œuvre concrète de formes de sociétés originales, intermédiaires entre les sociétés traditionnelles de personnes et les sociétés de capitaux. La SARL a été créée par une loi française de 1925 sur le modèle de la GmbH allemande de 1892. Cette forme de société a été très populaire dans ch…
Pouvoir et propriété dans l'entreprise. Pour une histoire internationale des sociétés à responsabilité limitée
Une longue tradition admet la supériorité de la société anonyme comme forme d'organisation. Une autre, plus récente, estime que les systèmes juridiques anglo-américains donnent aux investisseurs une meilleure protection que les systèmes de droit civil. Cet article remet en cause ces deux idées. Il s'intéresse à l'introduction des sociétés à responsabilité limitée en France, en Allemagne, au Royaume-Uni et aux États-Unis à la fin du XIXe siècle et…
Putting the Corporation in its Place
In Memoriam
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
"Discussion of Axel Leijonhufvud's "The Individual, the Market and the Division of Labor in Society
This paper is a comment on The Individual, the Market and the Division of Labor in Society by Axel Leijonhufvud which can be found at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2206517
Wealth Concentration in a Developing Economy
Using large samples of estate tax returns, we construct new series on wealth concentration in Paris and France from 1807 to 1994. Inequality increased until 1914 because industrial and financial estates grew dramatically. Then, adverse shocks, rather than a Kuznets-type process, led to a massive decline in inequality. The very high wealth concentration prior to 1914 benefited retired individuals living off capital income (rentiers) rather than en…
Révolution et évolution Les marchés du crédit notarié en France, 1780-1840
Cet article cherche à comprendre comment se créent (ou se détruisent) les techniques de savoir des marchés du crédit ainsi que les institutions auxquelles s'adosse ce capital social essentiel à leur fonctionnement. Il examine soixante-sept marchés locaux répartis dans toute la France en saisissant leur évolution à partir de trois coupes situées de part et d'autre de ce choc majeur qu'est la Révolution pour pouvoir en suivre les effets. Le crédit …
The Development of Intermediation in French Credit Markets
We document how intermediaries shaped markets or, conversely, how market institutions constrained intermediaries. In Dijon, where the Estates of Burgundy’s debt amounted to nearly half of all bonds in that small market, there was limited need for intermediaries. In the 1740s the borrowing needs of the province expanded, and the estates began to borrow in Paris, where their debt remained a small fraction of the market, and where they relied on not…
An Analytic Revolution in Comparative Politics
Over the last decade rational choice and formal theory have gained increasing prominence in comparative politics, portending a potential analytic revolution in the field. Like the behavioral revolution of the 1960s, the analytic revolution of the 1990s is motivated in part by the desire to make comparative politics more rigorous by utilizing analytical tools such as game theory and spatial models developed largely by economists and positivist sch…
Session 2b
Fiscal regimes have become progressively more centralized and though the trend extends over nearly a millennium, the process accelerated in the early nineteenth century. The growth of central government budgets as a fraction of the economy and relative to local and regional budgets is well known. Many believe that the process has been driven by changes in citizens' demand for social services and therefore have associated it with democratization a…
Analytic Narratives Revisited
We welcome the animated debate raised by Analytic Narratives concerning social scientific methods and the scope of rational choice. Advocates of mathematical and rational models have long claimed they have much to tell us about situations where behavior can be quantified or where the situation under study recurs many times. However, it was thought impermissible for rational choice theories (and rational choice) to venture into the analysis of big…
Analytic Narratives
New Work in French Economic History
Why should historians—and especially French historians—pay attention to economic history? After all, isn’t most of it written by economists? And aren’t their methods and concerns alien to most historians? In short, can’t it just be ignored? \n \nWe say no. It would be a mistake to ignore economic history, particularly for French historians. Indeed, some of the best recent work in economic history concerns France, and although much of this scholar…
Inherited vs self-made wealth
Sewers’ diffusion and the decline of mortality
Private Credit Markets in Paris, 1690–1840
Relying on a large sample of private and public loan contracts taken from Parisian notarial records, this article examines the private borrowers and lenders who participated in the credit market between 1690 and 1840. It explains the important role notaries played in the market, describes the types of loans available to borrowers and lenders, stresses the importance of the life cycle in explaining the recourse to indebtedness, and ends with a dis…
The health cost of living in a city
Credit Markets and Economic Change in Southeastern France 1630-1788
The Development of Irrigation in Provence, 1700-1860
Quantiative and qualitative evidence suggest that the returns to irrigation in France were similar during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Old Regime failed to develop irrigation because of fragmented political authority over rights of eminent domain. Since many groups could hold projects up, transaction costs increased dramatically. Reforms enacted during the French Revolution reduced the costs of securing rights of eminent domain
Pouvoir et propriété dans l'entreprise. Pour une histoire internationale des sociétés à responsabilité limitée
Une longue tradition admet la supériorité de la société anonyme comme forme d'organisation. Une autre, plus récente, estime que les systèmes juridiques anglo-américains donnent aux investisseurs une meilleure protection que les systèmes de droit civil. Cet article remet en cause ces deux idées. Il s'intéresse à l'introduction des sociétés à responsabilité limitée en France, en Allemagne, au Royaume-Uni et aux États-Unis à la fin du XIXe siècle et…
Rural Credit Markets and Aggregate Shocks
Using a complete enumeration of credit contracts for a rural area in Burgundy, this article examines how credit markets functioned and what role they served. Credit markets distributed funds to a large fraction of the population, and they were organized to mediate problems of asymmetric information. A central constraint on credit markets, however, was the threat of government intervention. Because of this threat, capital markets remained relative…
Redistribution and Long-Term Private Debt in Paris, 1660–1726
Based on a large sample from Parisian notarial records, this article examines the long-term private credit market in Paris in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and analyzes how it was affected by government-caused redistribution. It estimates the level of private indebtedness from 1662 to 1789, explains the problems the credit market faced, and determines who profited and who lost when government defaults, banking reforms, and c…
Entry, information, and financial development
The Development of Intermediation in French Credit Markets
We document how intermediaries shaped markets or, conversely, how market institutions constrained intermediaries. In Dijon, where the Estates of Burgundy’s debt amounted to nearly half of all bonds in that small market, there was limited need for intermediaries. In the 1740s the borrowing needs of the province expanded, and the estates began to borrow in Paris, where their debt remained a small fraction of the market, and where they relied on not…
New Work in French Economic History
Why should historians—and especially French historians—pay attention to economic history? After all, isn’t most of it written by economists? And aren’t their methods and concerns alien to most historians? In short, can’t it just be ignored? \n \nWe say no. It would be a mistake to ignore economic history, particularly for French historians. Indeed, some of the best recent work in economic history concerns France, and although much of this scholar…
The Fruits of Revolution
In The Fruits of Revolution Jean-Laurent Rosenthal investigates two central questions in French economic history: To what extent did institutions hold back agricultural development under the Old Regime, and did reforms carried out during the French Revolution significantly improve the structure of property rights in agriculture? Both questions have been the subject of much debate. Historians have touched on them in a number of local studies, yet …
Politics and Public Finance in France
Économie et Politique. Les marchés du crédit à Paris, 1750-1840
En rejetant l'événement et le temps court pour le temps long, la tradition qu'ont longtemps illustrée lesAnnalestendait à réduire la politique à l'économie et à oublier l'histoire des États au profit d'une histoire des sociétés. Il se trouve que cette approche n'a inspiré que peu d'études consacrées à l'évolution pluriséculaire des rapports de crédit. Pourtant une telle histoire aurait certainement un sens. Elle permettrait de distinguer deux gra…
Révolution et évolution Les marchés du crédit notarié en France, 1780-1840
Cet article cherche à comprendre comment se créent (ou se détruisent) les techniques de savoir des marchés du crédit ainsi que les institutions auxquelles s'adosse ce capital social essentiel à leur fonctionnement. Il examine soixante-sept marchés locaux répartis dans toute la France en saisissant leur évolution à partir de trois coupes situées de part et d'autre de ce choc majeur qu'est la Révolution pour pouvoir en suivre les effets. Le crédit …
An Analytic Revolution in Comparative Politics
Over the last decade rational choice and formal theory have gained increasing prominence in comparative politics, portending a potential analytic revolution in the field. Like the behavioral revolution of the 1960s, the analytic revolution of the 1990s is motivated in part by the desire to make comparative politics more rigorous by utilizing analytical tools such as game theory and spatial models developed largely by economists and positivist sch…
Making do with imperfect law
Cet article part d’une comparaison fine entre des entreprises similaires opérant au même moment sous des lois très proches, dans deux pays, pour étudier la mise en œuvre concrète de formes de sociétés originales, intermédiaires entre les sociétés traditionnelles de personnes et les sociétés de capitaux. La SARL a été créée par une loi française de 1925 sur le modèle de la GmbH allemande de 1892. Cette forme de société a été très populaire dans ch…
"Discussion of Axel Leijonhufvud's "The Individual, the Market and the Division of Labor in Society
This paper is a comment on The Individual, the Market and the Division of Labor in Society by Axel Leijonhufvud which can be found at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2206517
The Development of Irrigation in Provence, 1700-1860
Quantiative and qualitative evidence suggest that the returns to irrigation in France were similar during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Old Regime failed to develop irrigation because of fragmented political authority over rights of eminent domain. Since many groups could hold projects up, transaction costs increased dramatically. Reforms enacted during the French Revolution reduced the costs of securing rights of eminent domain
The Fruits of Revolution
In The Fruits of Revolution Jean-Laurent Rosenthal investigates two central questions in French economic history: To what extent did institutions hold back agricultural development under the Old Regime, and did reforms carried out during the French Revolution significantly improve the structure of property rights in agriculture? Both questions have been the subject of much debate. Historians have touched on them in a number of local studies, yet …
The Fruits of Revolution
In The Fruits of Revolution Jean-Laurent Rosenthal investigates two central questions in French economic history: To what extent did institutions hold back agricultural development under the Old Regime, and did reforms carried out during the French Revolution significantly improve the structure of property rights in agriculture? Both questions have been the subject of much debate. Historians have touched on them in a number of local studies, yet …
Private Credit Markets in Paris, 1690–1840
Relying on a large sample of private and public loan contracts taken from Parisian notarial records, this article examines the private borrowers and lenders who participated in the credit market between 1690 and 1840. It explains the important role notaries played in the market, describes the types of loans available to borrowers and lenders, stresses the importance of the life cycle in explaining the recourse to indebtedness, and ends with a dis…
Credit Markets and Economic Change in Southeastern France 1630-1788
Rural Credit Markets and Aggregate Shocks
Using a complete enumeration of credit contracts for a rural area in Burgundy, this article examines how credit markets functioned and what role they served. Credit markets distributed funds to a large fraction of the population, and they were organized to mediate problems of asymmetric information. A central constraint on credit markets, however, was the threat of government intervention. Because of this threat, capital markets remained relative…
Économie et Politique. Les marchés du crédit à Paris, 1750-1840
En rejetant l'événement et le temps court pour le temps long, la tradition qu'ont longtemps illustrée lesAnnalestendait à réduire la politique à l'économie et à oublier l'histoire des États au profit d'une histoire des sociétés. Il se trouve que cette approche n'a inspiré que peu d'études consacrées à l'évolution pluriséculaire des rapports de crédit. Pourtant une telle histoire aurait certainement un sens. Elle permettrait de distinguer deux gra…
Redistribution and Long-Term Private Debt in Paris, 1660–1726
Based on a large sample from Parisian notarial records, this article examines the long-term private credit market in Paris in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and analyzes how it was affected by government-caused redistribution. It estimates the level of private indebtedness from 1662 to 1789, explains the problems the credit market faced, and determines who profited and who lost when government defaults, banking reforms, and c…
Politics and Public Finance in France
Analytic Narratives
Students of comparative politics have long faced a vexing dilemma: how can social scientists draw broad, applicable principles of political order from specific historical examples? In Analytic Narratives, five senior scholars offer a new and ambitious methodological response to this important question. By employing rational-choice and game theory, the authors propose a way of extracting empirically testable, general hypotheses from particular cas…
Analytic Narratives Revisited
We welcome the animated debate raised by Analytic Narratives concerning social scientific methods and the scope of rational choice. Advocates of mathematical and rational models have long claimed they have much to tell us about situations where behavior can be quantified or where the situation under study recurs many times. However, it was thought impermissible for rational choice theories (and rational choice) to venture into the analysis of big…
Analytic Narratives
New Work in French Economic History
Why should historians—and especially French historians—pay attention to economic history? After all, isn’t most of it written by economists? And aren’t their methods and concerns alien to most historians? In short, can’t it just be ignored? \n \nWe say no. It would be a mistake to ignore economic history, particularly for French historians. Indeed, some of the best recent work in economic history concerns France, and although much of this scholar…
An Analytic Revolution in Comparative Politics
Over the last decade rational choice and formal theory have gained increasing prominence in comparative politics, portending a potential analytic revolution in the field. Like the behavioral revolution of the 1960s, the analytic revolution of the 1990s is motivated in part by the desire to make comparative politics more rigorous by utilizing analytical tools such as game theory and spatial models developed largely by economists and positivist sch…
Session 2b
Fiscal regimes have become progressively more centralized and though the trend extends over nearly a millennium, the process accelerated in the early nineteenth century. The growth of central government budgets as a fraction of the economy and relative to local and regional budgets is well known. Many believe that the process has been driven by changes in citizens' demand for social services and therefore have associated it with democratization a…
The Development of Intermediation in French Credit Markets
We document how intermediaries shaped markets or, conversely, how market institutions constrained intermediaries. In Dijon, where the Estates of Burgundy’s debt amounted to nearly half of all bonds in that small market, there was limited need for intermediaries. In the 1740s the borrowing needs of the province expanded, and the estates began to borrow in Paris, where their debt remained a small fraction of the market, and where they relied on not…
Révolution et évolution Les marchés du crédit notarié en France, 1780-1840
Cet article cherche à comprendre comment se créent (ou se détruisent) les techniques de savoir des marchés du crédit ainsi que les institutions auxquelles s'adosse ce capital social essentiel à leur fonctionnement. Il examine soixante-sept marchés locaux répartis dans toute la France en saisissant leur évolution à partir de trois coupes situées de part et d'autre de ce choc majeur qu'est la Révolution pour pouvoir en suivre les effets. Le crédit …
Wealth Concentration in a Developing Economy
Using large samples of estate tax returns, we construct new series on wealth concentration in Paris and France from 1807 to 1994. Inequality increased until 1914 because industrial and financial estates grew dramatically. Then, adverse shocks, rather than a Kuznets-type process, led to a massive decline in inequality. The very high wealth concentration prior to 1914 benefited retired individuals living off capital income (rentiers) rather than en…
Putting the Corporation in its Place
In Memoriam
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
"Discussion of Axel Leijonhufvud's "The Individual, the Market and the Division of Labor in Society
This paper is a comment on The Individual, the Market and the Division of Labor in Society by Axel Leijonhufvud which can be found at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2206517
Pouvoir et propriété dans l'entreprise. Pour une histoire internationale des sociétés à responsabilité limitée
Une longue tradition admet la supériorité de la société anonyme comme forme d'organisation. Une autre, plus récente, estime que les systèmes juridiques anglo-américains donnent aux investisseurs une meilleure protection que les systèmes de droit civil. Cet article remet en cause ces deux idées. Il s'intéresse à l'introduction des sociétés à responsabilité limitée en France, en Allemagne, au Royaume-Uni et aux États-Unis à la fin du XIXe siècle et…
Making do with imperfect law
Cet article part d’une comparaison fine entre des entreprises similaires opérant au même moment sous des lois très proches, dans deux pays, pour étudier la mise en œuvre concrète de formes de sociétés originales, intermédiaires entre les sociétés traditionnelles de personnes et les sociétés de capitaux. La SARL a été créée par une loi française de 1925 sur le modèle de la GmbH allemande de 1892. Cette forme de société a été très populaire dans ch…
Before and Beyond Divergence
[Introduction] In the past three decades scholars have reconsidered what set Europe off from the rest of the world as the site of state formation and economic changes that led to modern nation-states and industrialized economies. The themes, of course, are far older. They recur in the inquiries of great social thinkers from Montesquieu and Adam Smith to Karl Marx and Max Weber. Europe’s, particularly England’s, success moved scholars to assess ot…
The health cost of living in a city
Economics (23 works) · Political science (20 works) · Historical Economic and Social Studies (17 works) · European Political History Analysis (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Politics (10 works) · Business (9 works) · Finance (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Finance (8 works)