:: History and Epistemology of Finance

Created in 1997, this program addresses contemporary finance, which is marked by the intensive use of models.  

We are observing:
- the need for basic reflection on the nature of market risks as illustrated not only by the prudential question of risk control and calculating financial institutions’ capital losses due to market placement, but also by the increased demand for management products with guaranteed returns,
- the emergence of an interest in elaborating an ethical approach to financial markets such as implementing ethical operational rules, creating various commissions to deliberate these questions, and developing management tools for ethical and shared returns funds.  

We have decided to examine these two questions:
- how can a critical analysis of the hypotheses about financial models be useful,
- more generally, we propose to perform an audit of hypotheses about current financial models using tools in epistemology and historical critique.