Professor Robertson conducts research on the history of financial markets. Her book manuscript and working papers shed light on the evolution of securities markets and the relationship between finance, governance, and society. Some of the topics she pursues include: the origins of popular investment, public finance and economic development, early securities regulation, financial analysis and investment advice, OTC securities exchange, and anti-finance populism.
Professor Robertson’s first book manuscript examines the development of securities markets under the Bonapartist regime of the Second French Empire (1852-1870), which mobilized public finance on an unprecedented scale to economically modernize France. This process transformed banking, legislation, and regulation, while popularizing investment and speculation among new swathes of French society. Her research examines financial transformation within an imperial context from the perspectives of an array of historical actors—from novice retail investors, curb brokers, and policemen stationed at the stock exchange, to bankers, ministers, and the Emperor Napoleon III. For instance, while financial journalists produced literature to educate an enlarged investing public, police agents struggled to control illegal trading spilling onto the sidewalks around the stock exchange. This investigation of financial life “from below” intersects with an analysis of decision making “from above,” which considers how the Second Empire attempted to master the financial markets as an object of everyday governance. The regime tried to bolster liquidity and investment, while restricting volatility and speculation, a project that was thwarted by the effects of international market integration and the first global financial crisis of 1857. Ultimately, the French state withdrew discretionary authority in favor of more liberal economic policies, such as free incorporation. Consequences of this move included the proliferation of financial fraud and the development of vocal, anti-globalist forces, which employed antisemitic critiques of concentrated financial power to explain by way of conspiracy theories the perceived erosion of state sovereignty at the behest of market pressures.
Professor Robertson conducted research for this book manuscript across more than a dozen archives and libraries, supported by the Society for French Historical Studies, the Georges Lurcy Trust, the Collège de France, the Fondation Napoléon, the France Chicago Center, the University of Chicago, and Harvard Business School.
Professor Robertson’s first book manuscript examines the development of securities markets under the Bonapartist regime of the Second French Empire (1852-1870), which mobilized public finance on an unprecedented scale to economically modernize France. This process transformed banking, legislation, and regulation, while popularizing investment and speculation among new swathes of French society. Her research examines financial transformation within an imperial context from the perspectives of an array of historical actors—from novice retail investors, curb brokers, and policemen stationed at the stock exchange, to bankers, ministers, and the Emperor Napoleon III. For instance, while financial journalists produced literature to educate an enlarged investing public, police agents struggled to control illegal trading spilling onto the sidewalks around the stock exchange. This investigation of financial life “from below” intersects with an analysis of decision making “from above,” which considers how the Second Empire attempted to master the financial markets as an object of everyday governance. The regime tried to bolster liquidity and investment, while restricting volatility and speculation, a project that was thwarted by the effects of international market integration and the first global financial crisis of 1857. Ultimately, the French state withdrew discretionary authority in favor of more liberal economic policies, such as free incorporation. Consequences of this move included the proliferation of financial fraud and the development of vocal, anti-globalist forces, which employed antisemitic critiques of concentrated financial power to explain by way of conspiracy theories the perceived erosion of state sovereignty at the behest of market pressures.
Professor Robertson conducted research for this book manuscript across more than a dozen archives and libraries, supported by the Society for French Historical Studies, the Georges Lurcy Trust, the Collège de France, the Fondation Napoléon, the France Chicago Center, the University of Chicago, and Harvard Business School.