The Random Financial Fluctuation, the different understandings of new a research object (1930-1950)
The historical construction of modern financial economics has been widely analyzed autonomously from the rest of the economic thought. Hence, an unanswered question is how financial markets become a specific topic of research distinct from the rest of economics research and requiring its own subfield in the second half of the 20th century. The present article aims to take a first step to answer this issue. We analyzed the construction of one of the main and the earlier object of research in financial economics: the Random Character of Financial Fluctuation. We show that the RCFF has been understood in two different ways: (a) a former approach that focuses on constant patterns and denies the random fluctuation as an object itself, (b) a new approach that focuses on the explanation of the random fluctuation itself. We conclude that the second approach will prevail after the 1960s in financial economics.
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Keywords: Efficient Market Hypothesis, Random Fluctuation
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