arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Bertrand M. Roehner.
It is a common belief that the behavior of shareholders depends upon the direction of price fluctuations: if prices increase they buy, if prices decrease they sell. That belief, however, is more based on ``common sense'' than on facts. In this paper we present evidence for a specific class of shareholders which shows that the actual behavior of shareholders can be markedly different.
In economics comparative analysis plays the same role as experimental research in physics. In this paper we closely examine several methodological problems related to comparative analysis by investigating the specific example of grain markets in China and France respectively. This enables us to answer a question in economic history which has so far remained pending, namely whether or not market integration progressed in the 18th century. In economics as in physics, before being accepted any new result has to be checked and re-checked by different researchers. This is what we call the replication and comparison procedures. We show how these procedures should (and can) be implemented.