The Present Value Relation Over Six Centuries: the Case of the Bazacle Company∗
The Present Value Relation Over Six Centuries: The Case of the Bazacle Company∗ David le Bris,y William N. Goetzmann,z and S´ebastienPouget x March 30, 2017 ∗We would like to thank Vikas Agarwal, Bruno Biais, Chlo´eBonnet, Claude Denjean, Ren´eGarcia, Jos´e Miguel Gaspar, Alex Guembel, Pierre-Cyrille Hautcœur, Christian Julliard, Augustin Landier, Laurence Le- scourret, Junye Li, Patrice Poncet, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Steve Ross, Sandrine Victor, Maxime Wavasseur and especially Marianne Andries, Ralph Koijen and Nour Meddahi, as well as seminar and conference partic- ipants at the Toulouse School of Economics, the CIFAR-IAST conference, UC Irvine, HEC, ESSEC, Georgia State University, Casa de Velazquez - Madrid, and the AEA meeting 2016 for helpful comments and sugges- tions. We also wish to thank Genevi`eve Douillard and Daniel Rigaud, from the Archives D´epartementales de la Haute-Garonne, for their help in finding and reading original documents. yUniversity of Toulouse, Toulouse Business School zYale School of Management, Yale University xToulouse School of Economics, University of Toulouse Capitole (IAE, CRM) The Present Value Relation Over Six Centuries: The Case of the Bazacle Company Abstract We study asset pricing over the longue dur´ee using share prices and net dividends from the Bazacle company of Toulouse, the earliest documented shareholding corpo- ration. The data extend from the firm’s foundation in 1372 to its nationalization in 1946. We find an average dividend yield of 5% per annum and near-zero long-term, real capital appreciation. Stationary dividends and stock prices enable us to directly study how prices relate to expected cash flows, without relying on a rate of return transformation.
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