French managers and the organization of financial economics in the 1970s and 1980s

Abstract

This article analyzes an under-studied aspect of the history of managerial thought in France: the role of French managers in the organization of financial economics during the 1970s and 1980s. While the foundations of financial economics were established by American economists in the 1960s and 1970s, these ideas were introduced in France between the second half of the 1970s and the early 1980s, mainly by French managers trained in Canada and the United States. This article describes how these managers introduced and structured this field in France, both scientifically and practically. In addition to analyzing publications and archives, this article draws on information collected through a survey and interviews with the main French actors of this period. It also uses an original database constructed from working papers of the Centre d’Enseignement Supérieur des Affaires, and original statistical data compiled from documents of the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management. The article presents three main results. First, French managers benefited from a favorable historical context for introducing research in financial economics. Second, at that time the contributions of French managers consisted mainly in applying mainstream American models of market finance to French data, thanks to the creation of computer databases. Third, French managers largely contributed to the performativity of the financial economics in France.