Bachelier: Not the forgotten forerunner he has been depicted as. An analysis of the dissemination of Louis Bachelier's work in economics

Abstract

This article presents the results of new research on the history of financial economics by analysing the dissemination of Louis Bachelier's work. Louis Bachelier is doubtless the best known French mathematician in the history of modern finance theory. While recent studies have given us a fairly complete picture of the man himself, his work and the results he arrived at, knowledge of his contribution to the development of ideas remains imprecise. Although the direct influence of his work is analysed on occasion, no study has assessed the dissemination of Bachelier's work, and hence its impact on all scientific disciplines. This is precisely the purpose of this article: to examine the dissemination of Bachelier's work in order to better assess his impact on the development of financial economics (Jovanovic (2010) makes a similar analysis of the dissemination of Bachelier's work in mathematics). Based on a bibliometric analysis of Bachelier's work, this study aims at shedding light on his influence and explaining how the idea of his ‘rediscovery’ in the 1950s gained credence. This article demonstrates that, contrary to the widely accepted view, Bachelier's work has never been forgotten; it also shows that the discovery of Bachelier's work by economists has had no significant influence on the development of financial economics.