Économie et Politique: Les marchés du crédit à Paris, 1750-1840

Abstract

Using a new data set on public and private credit markets in Paris from 1750 to 1840, we argue that they were very sophisticated. Before 1789, these markets evolyed in response to the competition between the state and private borrowers. We find that a livre of long-term government borrowing crowded out about 1/3 livre of long-term private credit and that the long-term Paris market was only partially integrated with other capital markets. The Revolution devastated notarial credit. Despite some recovery between 1797 and 1826, Paris, unlike the provinces, did not regain its Old-Regime levels of activity. Notaries had lost their preminence in the credit system to banks. Overall the early nineteenth century appears as a financial nadir between eighteenth-century notaries and post-1850 bankers. This nadir was the result of historical circumstances like the inflation of the assignat rather that the product of archaic credit structures.

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