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Similarities in the Distribution of Stock Market Price Changes between the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries*
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Abstract(back to top)
Are all financial time series alike? This article raises that question by establishing that eighteenth‐ and twentieth‐century equity‐market time series behave similarly. The distribution of price changes now and then both exhibit the same patterns or regularities. In particular, the distribution of price changes is leptokurtic, and fluctuations in variance are persistent. This article provides further evidence that financial market regularities are stable and not contingent on specific times and places. The historical evidence shows that eighteenth‐century stock markets and traders are not so different from those of today.
Bibliographic Information(back to top)
- Similarities in the Distribution of Stock Market Price Changes between the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries
- Paul Harrison
- The Journal of Business
- Vol. 71, No. 1 (January 1998) (pp. 55-79)
Notes and References(back to top)
This item contains 1 note(s).
Notes
* For many helpful comments, I thank Neil De Marchi, George Tauchen, and anonymous referees. I benefitted from discussion with J. S. Kerson, H. Zhang, Eric Ghysels, Eric Ralph, John Graham, David Hsieh, and various seminar participants. I thank John Cochrane for extremely valuable criticism. Remaining shortcomings are mine.