Received the 2023 HBS Student Association Faculty Teaching Award for exceptional contributions to the experience of the graduating class.
Charlotte L. Robertson
Assistant Professor
Hellman Faculty Fellow
Assistant Professor
Hellman Faculty Fellow
Charlotte Robertson is an Assistant Professor in the Business, Government, and the International Economy Unit at Harvard Business School. She teaches BGIE in the MBA required curriculum.
Professor Robertson conducts research on the history of financial markets and political economy. Her current book manuscript examines the expansion and regulation of securities markets in nineteenth-century France during a period of pronounced economic and technological dynamism. Her archival research integrates the perspectives of state actors, brokers, bankers, police, jurists, investors, and financial journalists to produce a multifaceted account of how modern society and its institutions are transformed by financialization.
Professor Robertson received the 2023 HBS Student Association Faculty Teaching Award and the 2023 Charles M. Williams Teaching Award. She earned her Ph.D. in history at the University of Chicago, together with an M.A. in history. As an undergraduate, she studied history and mathematics at Wesleyan University. Before her graduate training, she worked as a research analyst at Goldman Sachs in New York.
Business, Government and the International Economy
Received the 2023 Charles M. Williams Award for Teaching Excellence.
Charlotte Robertson is an Assistant Professor in the Business, Government, and the International Economy Unit at Harvard Business School. She teaches BGIE in the MBA required curriculum.
Professor Robertson conducts research on the history of financial markets and political economy. Her current book manuscript examines the expansion and regulation of securities markets in nineteenth-century France during a period of pronounced economic and technological dynamism. Her archival research integrates the perspectives of state actors, brokers, bankers, police, jurists, investors, and financial journalists to produce a multifaceted account of how modern society and its institutions are transformed by financialization.
Professor Robertson received the 2023 HBS Student Association Faculty Teaching Award and the 2023 Charles M. Williams Teaching Award. She earned her Ph.D. in history at the University of Chicago, together with an M.A. in history. As an undergraduate, she studied history and mathematics at Wesleyan University. Before her graduate training, she worked as a research analyst at Goldman Sachs in New York.
- Journal Articles
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- Robertson, Charlotte. "Integral Outside: The Financial Curb Market, the Electric Telegraph, and the Politics of Pricing in Second Empire France." Journal of Modern History (forthcoming). View Details
- Cases and Teaching Materials
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- Reinert, Sophus A., Charlotte Robertson, and Robert Fredona. "Burn the Gondolas? Venice, the Ghetto, and the Seasons of Capitalism." Harvard Business School Case 725-006, September 2024. View Details
- Robertson, Charlotte L., and Mattias Fibiger. "Singapore: 'From Third World to First'." Harvard Business School Case 723-023, January 2023. (Revised May 2024.) View Details
- Research Summary
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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. - Awards & Honors
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Received the 2023 HBS Student Association Faculty Teaching Award for exceptional contributions to the experience of the graduating class.Received the 2023 Charles M. Williams Award for Teaching Excellence.
- Areas of Interest